Her. Ass. Meant.

Warning: Men Behaving Rapey & 3600 Words (!!)

I am exhausted. Yes, by everything that you may (correctly) assume, but mostly by a lifetime of this mental strain; as I begin to write this, my brain is searching for the “best” sexual abuse examples to give – you know, the most horrific, rapiest, ickiest events I’ve had because if I don’t, if I don’t deliver truly awful goods to you . . . you won’t believe me. OR you’ll think, “that’s not that bad,” because that’s how my brain works. I am conditioned to beg for your belief. I am also conditioned to put it in the category, “Not that big of a deal.” Or, basically, sit down and shut up. Seriously, I think, “If I bring this shit up, I better be able to prove it without a doubt!” My simply telling you just isn’t good enough. It’s how I think, all the time. And it is exhausting. It’s what I was taught. What I learned. What most women learned.  

As women go through life with sexual harassment and assault, we hear softer terms to make it easier for men to defend, but more importantly – easier to perpetrate. Phrases and excuses like he’s just teasing, flirting, messin’ around, means no harm, thinks you’re cute, he’s just a “bad boy” – these are literally their attempt at an honest (?) excuse. I don’t know if they really think that way or know if it’s delusional. So, shoving me up against some stockroom shelves is ok because, “he’s just messin’ around, he thinks you’re cute.” The most common one I’ve heard, in which irony is fully ablaze, “I’m just fuckin’ with ya . . ..” Honestly, I’ve never understood how that is a defense. “Oh, ok, yes, please ‘fuck with me’ in a degrading, offensive, aggressive, sometimes violent, sexual manner! Randomly grab my cooch, that’s so much fun!” Then, inevitably, whoever is saying, “I’m just fuckin’ with ya” always looks at me like I’m the jerk in the situation. Which is part of the scheme, their sad attempt at manipulation. Speaking of SAD! (TMTrump), my all-time favorite bullshit explainer might be . . . locker-room talk.

At forty-seven-years-old, with thousands of female friends come, gone and still here, I’d say 95% of us have been victims and targets of sexual assault or harassment of many kinds. I want to say 100% but I cannot speak for everyone, there may be a few who haven’t, or who just don’t know an Emmy-winning cat-call (or dog bark . . . yeah, that’s a thing in LA) when they hear one.

Weinstein didn’t prompt this story, I started it a month before that vile shit broke. In therapy, I found myself talking about the harassment aspect for one of the first times. I mean, getting really pissed off about it and realizing, as all these incidents kept falling out of my mouth, how often it happens, how blatant, how offensive and aggressive it is, and how long I have tried to “ignore it and keep walking.” Which most women do.

Now, in light of the gross revelations of Harvey Weinstein, I started to think about all the near misses and real dangers I’ve been in. I am extremely lucky not to have been fully raped. What I mean by that is, I’ve never been violently violated by penetration. But that does not mean men have not tried. I feel almost a gratitude about this, which is horrible on its face because I have many friends who have not had this kind of “luck.” They did not escape this truly pathetic attempt at power and dominance by small men with huge self-loathing and hate. Hopefully, I will never know how deep this awful thing lives in them, how it colors everything; a trip to a male doctor or male masseuse or even a male mechanic. Places where women feel vulnerable or at the mercy of a strange man who will get all up in our “chassis” and our chassis, it is very triggering, for lack of a better word. Wait, let me find a better word – how about evocative? It evokes all that horrible bullshit that had no point in your life then and has less point in your life now - during a pap smear or a break job. All you want is a tune up for your girl parts, breaks that stop and a good massage, without crying.

Is this an odd analogy? I don’t think so, I think a lot of us feel this way. It’s how I feel when I encounter those situations, my whole adult life. I cried at Firestone last month because the 3 different men I dealt with did not believe my breaks were squeaking. I HAD RECORDED THEM, 3 iPHONE RECORDINGS! Yet, since they did squeak that day IN PERSON, I was an idiot woman who didn’t know what she was talking about.

Does rape or attempted rape affect you when battling a male mechanic? Yup.

My earliest memory of a bad situation was at twelve. I was in eighth grade. Someone’s parents were gone and we were probably boosting from the liquor cabinet. All I remember is that eventually I was outside with two boys who had me up against the side of the house, in some bushes. One had his hands up my shirt and one had his hands down my pants. I just remember being silent. Then someone walked around from the back yard and the boys dispersed, fast. I sheveled my disheveled outfit and just wondered off. I probably went back into the party. I really don’t know.

At thirteen I had a nineteen-year-old boyfriend. For a year. He was not abusive, but we were highly sexual. I look at that now as an insane thing. I had no idea what I was doing. A “real man” seemed to love me, I was all-in, in my thirteen-year-old brain. My parents knew. They didn’t like it but they didn’t stop it. To be fair, I don’t know if they could have.

At fourteen I was at a girls' sleepover. I ended up sleeping on the living room couch alone. In the middle of the night my friend's sixteen-year-old brother woke me up, got on top of me and we had sex. I said and did nothing. He left when he was done. I don't know what I thought, I probably thought "he really likes me." Uhg. 

At fourteen, fifteen, sixteen there was a group of 20something guys who made the rounds through all us, a pack of six or seven girls who shared clothes, make-up, houses, secrets and these guys. R, A and T are the three I can remember. Two are on fb (that I know of), so I'm using initials only. R slept with almost all of us. I believe he was in his mid-twenties. They were all over 21, though. Legal adult men. We were all freshmen and sophomores in high school, most of us not yet driving. But we spent a lot of time in the back seat of their cars.

At eighteen, already living on my own, I had really bad acne. My cheek was so swollen I thought I might have a staph infection. I went to my GP (a man) thinking he could refer me to a dermatologist. After a few minutes of him poking at it he said, “I’m not sure. I’m going to give you a pap smear to see if everything’s ok.” I did not understand this at all. But I was eighteen, I didn’t understand most anything - and I was not about to argue with a doctor. You just don’t do that, right Ladies? Yeeeeaaah. There was no diagnosis and no referral. I left feeling really grossed out and never saw him again.

At twenty-one I moved in with a boyfriend my own age, but he was possessive as shit. I thought this meant he loved me that much more! His name was Jacob. I felt captive for that year, no matter what I did. I could have been handcuffed to him and he would’ve found some fault, some jealousy to blame on me. Finally, he cracked. He threw me through a wall in our kitchen and I landed outside on the back porch, where I immediately got up and ran down the street. He chased me. He convinced me to come home. He called his older brother to speak to me (who was gay so it somehow made him an advocate for women?) and then the neighbor got into the mix. It was a shit show. I stayed at the neighbor’s for a few hours, then, I’m sorry to tell you, I went “home.” I don’t remember how long it was before it happened again, but when it did, I left. It wasn’t “sexual” abuse, but it was about the same thing, power and control. It didn’t end when I left, he kidnapped my cat. A gift he’d given me when it was a kitten. I couldn’t take the cat the night I left because I was going to stay with friends/saviors and one was allergic.

After weeks of a stand-off and hiding the cat at someone else’s house, he gave in but only if he could give him directly to my sister. However, I figured out and showed up where the cat was hidden. Jacob was there, he opened the door just a few inches to obscure the cat, I demanded the cat, he refused and reflexively I kicked him in the balls - with all my might. Then I ran. Amazingly, he still turned the cat over to my sister a few weeks later.

At twenty-eight, I fell in the parking lot of a Bank of America in San Fransisco and severely broke my upper arm. I was so contorted, the EMT thought I may have broken my back. I was in between insurance, literally having applied for a Blue Cross Individual policy two weeks prior and was in limbo. My Dad sent me to a fancy San Francisco lawyer he knew through his personal Seattle lawyer to get some cost covered by B of A. While waiting for the deposition, Blue Cross actually accepted me and covered the last 4 weeks on my 8 week recovery, (long before the ACA, amazing, no?). At the deposition, B of A did not budge. I was looking for no more than ambulance & ER cost. Really, no pain and suffering or anything. B of A did not budge. After the meeting, my lawyer walked me to my car. As we stood on a corner waiting for the light, he said, “That didn’t go very well. You should have worn a short skirt and some heels.” I said, "Really?" but in an earnest way and not in a that is SO wrong way, as I should have. His boss had a relationship with my Dad so a week later he called and asked how it went. I told him what his guy said. The firm paid those bills and gave me $750 (in 1998 dollars) not to sue. I wanted to be a good girl and not cause a ruckus. I didn’t deserve to cause a ruckus. I took it and shut up. I probably sent a thank you note to the firm as well.  

At thirty-four I moved to LA. I landed and quit four restaurant jobs in four months due to misogyny, drugs, booze and downright abusive managers. In one of those restaurants I met an ally named Ed. He was geeky and kind and stood up for me, I was the only woman on staff. Thirty plus employees, front and back of the house. The. Only. Woman. The manager would not speak to me directly; he would tell a male waiter what bothered him about my service and it would get relayed to me. It was often through Ed, so we became pals and that’s probably why I gave the place five weeks and not one. When I did quit, our friendship floundered a bit, he professed having a crush on me and was also using coke. I wasn’t interested in either.

Weeks after I quit, he showed up on my doorstep late one night. He was fucked up and had some weird story and needed to come in. I was 80% asleep when I answered and immediately tried to get him to leave. He seemed distressed or something and pushed his way in. At the time, I did not have a couch, only a bed in my studio apartment. He sat on the edge of the bed mumbling. I was trying to figure out if he was ok. He asked if he could just rest for a while. He’d never made any advances toward me so I had no reason to think he was going to. I said sure and crawled under the covers, while he stayed on top of them. Well, you can guess how long that lasted, about a minute, then he was under them and pressing up against me, whining, “come ooooon, coooome oooon….” I said, “WHAT? Stop it Ed, seriously, stop it!” and I pushed him off the bed, he hopped right back on and I fully woke up. I sat up and with both hands shoved him off the bed again then I jump out and yelled, “LEAVE!” and started pushing him to the door. Thankfully it was only three feet from the bed - studio living. He whined and cried about it the whole time, I was just incredulous. I remember having a really hard time getting him out the door, he started to put up a fight, and the whole time I just kept thinking, “Is he seriously trying this? This is like a bad afterschool special - is he serious?” I don’t know why, but even after a lifetime of sexual harassment, instances of assault and physical abuse I still can’t tell or believe it when someone is trying to rape me.

I got really pissed and flung the front door wide open and gave Ed one final shove and he fell backwards into the yard. I slammed the door shut. He got back up and banged on it for a minute, I yelled I would call the cops and he stumbled away. He called me two weeks later and apologized, but didn’t remember it “being all that bad.”  I never saw or spoke to him again.

At thirty-four and a half, I had finally settled into a decent restaurant job and gotten my footing in LA. I had a customer one day who was a novelist. We began chatting about writing and he kindly offered to meet with me outside the restaurant for a longer discussion about it and the industry in general. He was twenty-plus years older than me, married and Jabba-The-Hutt like. He didn’t come off as smarmy, or maybe I was just too naïve. Either way, we agreed to have lunch at El Coyote a few days later. We met outside and he abruptly grabbed my hand gave me a kiss on the cheek. I didn’t think much of it; this can be a typical Hollywood greeting when everyone acts phony for the first few months like you’re their new best friend. We ordered an appetizer and iced tea and began a chat. Immediately, I realized he was not there to mentor me. He started in on personal details saying he lived in New York, where his wife was, but had an apartment here, to himself. I quickly blurted out, “Well, me and my boyfriend just moved into together over by the new Target on La Brea.” Me and my imaginary boyfriend. He suddenly ordered a beer. “So, you live with your boyfriend?” “Yup.” “And you’re happy?” he said. “Yup.” I replied. The beer came, he downed it, then said, “I guess this thing isn’t going to happen, then.” “What isn’t going to happen?” “Look, I’m not interested in mentoring anyone. I’ve gotta get going.” As he gathered his coat, suddenly he couldn’t find his wallet. Yeeaaah. I had to pay the bill because I didn’t allow Jabba-The-Hutt to sexually manipulate me, noted author and humanitarian that he is.

At thirty-seven an Al-Anon fellow attacked me in a parking lot after a Sunday morning meeting. He had the same whine as Ed, “Coooome ooooon, Rebecca” as he grabbed me tight by my waist and shoved me up against a car, trying to kiss me. I pushed him off and said, “What are you doing??” He tried it again, I shit you not. Weeks later, in some kind of mentally fucked up way of apologizing, he gave my phone number to a slimy independent health insurance agent (I’d been without health coverage for a while and spoke about it in meetings) who called me and tried to sell me a scam policy. This Al-Anon guy not only broke my anonymity; he gave out personal info AND used my confidential sharing to manipulate some kind of . . . I don’t fucking know what AND used a slimy, aggressive male stranger to do it! There was so much wrong with that, I just can’t. I still see him, periodically, in meetings to this day.

Since the time I grew tits and an ass (twelve to thirteen) I have endured sexual and sexist harassment on a constant, if not daily, basis in the world at large. And still do. I began writing this because I had been complaining about two years of construction workers (next-door) excessively harassing me, and recently a couple of them blocked my path on the side walk so they could talk dirty to me and make animal sounds. It prompts me to ask this question; I’m forty-seven now, does it never end?

I’ve even been harassed in my car on freeways, highways, on ramps, off ramps, stop lights, and many garden variety city streets. Today, on La Brea, an old man next to me at a stoplight looked right over at my tits. Slowly and unapologetically. I looked right back at him, he didn’t flinch. The "best" are men in big trucks, they get right up next to you and keep pace because they are high up and have the best view. They make noise of just say "Hi!" And if they pass you, you can see them using their giant side mirrors, still trying to get a look at you. It is bizarre.

I’ve also had road rage that's turned into sexual harassment. A couple years back, at a four-way intersection, a guy blew threw a stop sign and almost hit me because he thought I had a stop sign too, which I did not. It was a two way stop. Four streets converge, two signs stand. It's still that way, at the end of my block. I slammed on my horn and flipped him off for almost killing me, and went on my way. He pulled a u-turn and hauled ass, I mean rubber was burnt, right up to my bumper. I was already on the phone with 911. I had seen him turn around in my rearview and I knew it was trouble because, yes, I’d experienced this before. Now, I was in front of my house but didn’t want to stop – he would know where I lived. So, I went to the corner to take a right turn, still on the phone with 911. He pulled up on my left, rolled down his passenger window to say something and I cut him off, “I have the police on the phone . . .” and he instantly said, “Did you tell them I followed you because you’re hot? Yeah, Cops, she is hot! I’m just trying to get a date!” This was the most baffling thing I may have ever had directed toward me. He went from white-hot, kick-my-ass anger to creepy pimp-like mojo with a lean back and weird hand gestures. And then he took off. 

Sadly, I have a couple more like that. I'll end with just one. A guy got so pissed at me on The 10 West, he followed me ten miles to the PCH. At the first red light he spit on my car and screamed "I will follow you home and cut off your hands!" I was on the phone with the cops, so it was also overheard and recorded by 911. Police could not do anything about him, although we had his license plate, physical description, recorded threat, et al. As they informed me, he had not done anything to me. The operated said, in a strained manner, “He would actually have to follow you home and . . .” I finished her sentence, “. . . cut off my hands?!?” “Well, yes, or try to.” That was her last statement to me. The creep sped off and I hung up, pulled over and cried. I just cannot unpack that logic. The logic of that man and the logic of that law. Nor should I have to. None of us should have to. 

This is not our fault. It is NOT our thing to fix. But, regrettably, it is our thing to battle.

And so it goes. 

r. roberts

Sunday, October 22, 2017