I could never cover it all in a tweet or even a tweet storm unless it was like the storm of the millennium. I am quite sure that I am not alone, either. I am going to try to catalogue my personal experiences with uninvited male attention, assaults and sexism over the course of my decades of life in chronological order as best I can.
In thinking about this chronology, I keep remembering more and more things that I have tucked into the file over all of my time on this planet as a girl, teen and grown woman.
It is really strange to dive in because I don’t feel weak, but I know that all of these paper cuts and some of the deeper wounds are the reason that I do not wear dresses when I go out without the escort of a man, friends or my dogs.
I operate in a sort of nonlinear mental state most of the time. While I am actually very strategic and very analytical in my thinking and my job — as it happens — I am also an emotional being. As strong and stalwart as I was taught to be, I was actually born an empath. I am inclined to be open to others that I meet. I am inclined to be forgiving. I am also liberal and so I approach people who are not like me with a sense of exploration and interest in understanding their perspective. I am not a pushover. I am not a Zelig, but I will give space to those people who I encounter to be themselves even if I would not ally with their thinking or perspective in a given situation.
Fundamentally, I approach my interactions with others as a learning experience and I figure that they are mere mortals such as myself who are going to have potential flaws, but hopefully valuable things to contribute to the “party” we call life.
Life’s rich tapestry…
- When I was about 12, a man in a black Porsche pulled up next to me where I was waiting for my school bus one morning. He rolled down the passenger side window and smiled. He asked me if I wanted to suck his dick. I was 12 and had NO clue what exactly that meant — at that point I still thought that the song Afternoon Delight really was about the picnic and fireworks — never occurred to me that daylight fireworks along the lines of what I was thinking was pretty much a good clue that I was missing the point. However, his “offer” did strike me as amiss and so I said, “No, thank you.” and ran like hell most of the length of my block back to my house where my parents were still getting ready for work. The police were called and they were actually really professional and nice. But I felt humiliated by the experience. I felt that I had done something wrong and, yuck, it was so bad that the police had to be called. My parents were also great. Really no one that day made me feel badly about myself, but there was something about that encounter that made me feel like I had done something terribly wrong.
- My bus pick up spot was moved up the block so that it was right out front of our house. I had to explain that to my school mates on the bus. I had to explain that a man had asked me to “suck his dick” and I didn’t even really understand what exactly that meant. I put on my brave, “take one for the team” hat and explained that we all needed to know about this man and should be aware of our surroundings. He did show up at one of our bus drop off sites a week or two later making the same offer to some of my school mates who knew enough about him to also run like hell when he stopped and asked them the same thing he asked me. So, it was a good thing that my humiliation was publicized.
- The year before this Porsche-driving child molester showed up, there was a woman raped across the street from our house. To say it was brutal and horrible what happened to her would be to understate the event. She was about 19 and had been at a bar nearby. She met a guy at the bar who offered to walk her home. Instead of being her protector, he became her torturer. What he did was rape and beat her badly, but her horror did not end when he split. She then went door-to-door on our block asking for help. Ringing doorbells and knocking on doors. One woman did come to the door as she stood beaten and bloodied begging for help and she said that she could not let her in because she was babysitting her young grandsons. My parents and I heard her blood curdling screams and my father went out to see what was wrong. My mother called the police. With no prompting from either one of them, I went to my room and closed the door. My dad brought her into our house and she screamed bloody murder for the better part of an hour. I never saw her. The police came and they were actually pretty “okay” — this was in the 70s when police often were not okay to rape victims — but it took them forever to arrive. I know because I petted my cat listening to her screams and sobbing for a very long time. It was about 45 minutes. I watched the clock wanting to know when her pain and mine would end. I was too young to know that her pain would not end just because the police had arrived. We had two beach towels that I loved that my mother used to sop up the blood that was dripping from the woman’s injuries that night. There was so much blood that they both had to be thrown out. I was angry at my mother for using those towels, but really I was angry that something so horrible had happened and I simply did not understand such awful sadness and pain. I never saw the girl. I just heard her pain that night and saw those towels soaked in her blood. I never was nice to that lady down the street who declined to help that girl again. I shunned and ignored her for the next six years that we lived on that block. That probably wasn’t right, but that is how I dealt with her. I read everything I could find to read about rape to try to make sense of that night. I had NO CLUE what sex was, but I needed to understand what could bring about a young woman’s blood curdling screams.
- When I was 14, a close friend of the family who is gay came over for dinner on a night when I was to go off for a school dance. I was so awkward. I was still trying to grow out the terribly ill-thoughout Dorothy Hamill hair cut that I had gotten a couple of years before. I was pudgy and I had these boob things emerging from my chest — PLUS I was having to shave and figure out the whole tampon thing. It was a nightmare time of my life. I had chosen a royal blue dress {a color that I actually don’t think is great for me, but it was “in” at the time} and I had high heels and panty hose pulled over my shaved {WTF, god?} legs. We were all in the living room waiting for my date {who I can’t remember, at all} and our family friend was staring at my legs. I was totally bereft. “What is wrong with my legs? Did I miss a spot shaving?”, I thought. I looked at him and as if he knew that I was on the verge of panic he said, “Who knew that you had such great legs!?” It was clear that it was a compliment, but I had NO idea what “great legs” meant. I also did not know at the time that he was gay and I also didn’t think that he was being creepy, but I did know that I was totally out of my depth. I had no clue what he was talking about because sex was so foreign. I still thought that Afternoon Delight was about a picnic and literal fireworks at that point. All of my study of rape had not even clued me in. I should mention also that my parents were not the kind of people who shielded me from sex or the realities of how babies get made. I just had not connected all of those dots primarily because I was still too young to even be interested, I think. I wasn’t a “participant” in the adult sexual world at that point in my life and so I had no understanding of why anyone in their right mind would think that legs, boobs, butts or anything else were “sexy”. In my head the question was essentially, “WTF is sexy?” In any case, I went off to that dance off balance. I didn’t know if other people would fixate on my legs for reasons that I could not fathom or understand. I spent a lot of the night worried that people could see my legs at that dance.
- By the summer that I turned 15, my hormones started to kick in and kissing boys seemed like a reasonable proposition. My parents were interesting and incredibly supportive however embarrassing they could be at some points, they were not prudish about sex and conversations about it. They actually did something very early in my life that paid off later which is that from the time I was very young — starting from like my fifth year on this planet — they told me that if ever I met a boy and wanted to sleep with him (at five the interpretation of this was funny), that I should come to them to talk about it and that they would support me. They never said that I should be “in love” or that I should be married if I wanted to “sleep with a boy”. They just said that I should talk to them so that they could “help” make sure that I was okay.
- In my 15th year, I dropped a lot of my preteen pudginess and went back to high school with more of my hair looking less stupid, more confidence and a newly found desire to kiss boys. Guys in my high school who had not given me the time of day the year before were talking to me all of a sudden. I was annoyed with them. I was still the same person from the year before, I just wasn’t as pudgy and I wasn’t as unsure of myself…
- I chose to date outside of my tribe because my tribe had been a disappointment. I met a guy via my social network who ironically drove a Porsche. His was red, I think. He was very nice to me and that was good until it wasn’t good at all. He wanted me to sleep with him and as much as my hormones were raging for the experiment, I just was NOT ready for that. My parents were not his biggest fan, but they were tolerant of him. Probably lucky because I am headstrong. One afternoon I met him after school at a friend’s house. He was terribly sweet until he was terrible. He pulled me into a bedroom and onto a bed, pinned me down and told me that it was time for me to “put out”. That was NOT romantic or even remotely erotic! lol
- In that moment I thought about my parents saying that if I really loved someone and wanted to sleep with them, I should talk with them. I realized that I could never justify this guy to myself much my parents. Still pinned down under him on the bed, I said “No”. Somehow he both got up and managed to toss me onto the floor off of the bed. It hurt, but I escaped.
- A friend who was devoted to him, was happy that we did not gel. Even after I told her how all of that went down, she was still all about him and they got together. I tried to tell her that he was kind of bad news, but she was in love. I’d like to think that what I experienced was my fault and that they had a great future, but the guy really was a dick and she was a very nice person who should never have feared being tossed off of a bed.
- In the spring of my sophomore year, I had met a boy that I cared for. We were at a beach party at a friend’s house. It was a fun day and afternoon. I was there with a date. I went into the old beach shack to use the ladies room which accessed through the small bedroom. I came out and a friend and classmate was in the bedroom. He did this totally weird thing {to me at the time} and he stopped me as I was leaving. He grabbed me and told me that I was beautiful. I was ‘like’, “what?” Before I knew it he had flipped me onto the bed and was on top of me professing something along the lines of desire, but honestly the experience was so surreal that I don’t know what he was saying. I do remember his hot breath in the CA cold beach wind on my face. I am athletic and was particularly so then, I somehow was able to take the six foot guy and flip him off of me and pin him. I said, “WTF are you doing, dude?” He started to cry and apologize. I said, “Its okay. Just chill out. I am leaving now.” He asked if I was going to tell on him and I said that I would not, but that he really needed to get a grip.
- By the end of my sophomore year in high school I had secured a place in a foreign exchange program where I would finally test out my French language education that started when I was born with my mom and formally when I was seven. I was placed with “a family” which consisted of a fantasic woman whose family was away for the summer. She was “the bees knees” for a lot of reasons. We had a great time together. I had my sixteenth birthday under her care and between her and my mother there was a plan to make sure that I had that celebration regardless of being far away from everyone. Madame not only made sure that I had a contemporary social life, she made sure that I had a 16th birthday party with people around my age. My party was surprising and nice. A boy in the group made me a fantastic birthday cake. All of the kids brought me sweet presents even though they had known me five minutes at that point. I still have many and still cherish the book about Monet that one of the women brought me. I was so embarrassed! The attention was so kind. At my party, I went to the ladies’ room the entrance which was in a bedroom in the house where my party was. I came out of the bathroom and there was one of the guys at the party….
- The boy who was tall, dark and handsome, took my wrists in his hands and said some flattering things to me as I was passing through to the door out of that bedroom to return to the party. I laughed, smiled and thanked him for his compliments as I tried to exit the bedroom. But he had a firm grasp on my wrists and he twisted them up above my head, shoved me against the wall and pressed himself against me holding my wrists and my body against the wall. WHOA?! It got more interesting as he explained that because I was an American from California, I was totally asking for his affections. I was ‘like’, “Whoa, dude, I have no idea what you are talking about.” I did this in French. I was fully pinned against the wall. He told me that I was a slut. We had met about 90 minutes earlier and only barely had direct conversation between us. I think that he was being pretty judgmental. He said that “Everyone knew that girls from California were sluts,” as I struggled to get away from him, but I was pinned. It was scary to say the least. I decided to scream bloody murder at which point most of the people at the party came to my rescue. Another total humiliation, though. Why was I a target? What had I done wrong? Why was it that men thought that I was so awful that I would be ripe for their taking? I was glad that unlike the rape victim in my neighborhood years earlier, my screams were not ignored.
I am too tired to continue writing this tonight and I would think that I’ve gone too long for any reader. I’ve got several more decades to cover.
You, dear reader, are probably too tired to continue reading beyond the five years that I cursorily touched on here.
If you are a reader who thinks that it would help if I continued the catalogue of weariness, please let me know. All I can say is that I am kind of stunned by this exercise in that I have only gone through about ten percent of my entire life of experiences and I haven’t even gotten to the really intense stuff, yet.