I found it odd that last night’s diary topic, consent, was suddenly the theme of conversation at the dinner table. Did “yes” mean “no?” Could “no” mean “yes?” Did my mother mind if my stepfather took the butter dish? “Yes,” Mom said. My stepfather suffered a moment of make-believe confusion and declined to grab the butter dish that was within easy reach. “Do you mean ‘yes,’ yes, or yes, ‘no?’” he asked her, as I observed from the other side of the table. Mom nodded. He took the butter. Then, to offer a full explanation that wasn’t asked for, he said “It’s hard to tell! You could mean that it’s not okay, or could mean that it is! You know…” After my years of living in the house, I’d seen years’ worth of salt shaker, serving bowl and side-dish passings across the table during meals with not one instance of confusion over what was meant by the answer to “Please pass the peas.”
Therefore, I knew what my stepfather was saying and the message he was sending. I knew what scenes I had jotted out in a notebook I shared with no one while hunched over in bed, alone in my room, the night before. The scenario I wrote out was explicitly sexual, consent being at the crux of the action, and the “yes” given by one persona described in my diary, required clarification.
Another night’s exchanges had been similar. “I don’t have to justify myself to you,” Mom asserted, eyeballing me with a head-to-toe once over. It was her right not to have to justify herself to a no-account person such as myself for asking her, as she stood physically blocking my path up the staircase, why she had not gone upstairs earlier when she wanted to get her book. It wasn’t until I headed there with purpose-driven intention that she chose to scramble off the couch and toward the one route to the second floor. Only at the foot of the stairs did she abruptly stop and loiter, any trace of hurry gone, in a perfectly implausible coincidence. As my private notebook scribblings from the night before these events documented, I had noticed the amount of justifications and motives I was regularly prompted to supply. I believed I shouldn’t have to take such pains to explain myself for choices such as which garbage can I directed myself to when I threw away a used tissue or how far down I preferred the car window. Such minute interrogations were belittling, I had observed to myself in my strangled longhand.
I knew what my mother was saying and the message she was sending. She was reading my diary. My stepfather was also reading my diary, finding sexual content and continuing to read it. The news travelled, because it wasn’t long before playacted versions of the “yes/no” misunderstanding were being re-enacted by my co-workers when I was in the room. Then haughty attitudes were assumed and excused with the pretext that no one owed me, and especially me, an explanation.
Looking back it seems obvious to me that text messages, cell phone photos and possibly videos were being passed around to communicate the contents of my diaries and the themes that could be used to most effectively to harass me, but the technology only amplified what would word-of-mouth could readily do. Whatever the format, this communication sharing showed me how my explicit, private diaries had been stolen and effectively published, while stripping me of all agency in the process.
I shut the door to the house behind me with a soft thud, gathering the keys in my hand to quiet their tell-tale tinkle. I would not be so lucky as to have no one else at home, but on my arrival, I was relieved to see there was no one downstairs. That meant that for a few hours, perhaps, I could be semi-alone, and in peace, without my mother or stepfather acting as observers, commentors, and arbiters of my behavior. I took in a deep breath and let it out.
I reheated a bowl of rice in the microwave and sat at the kitchen table to eat. I watched the minutes crank by on the clock above the phone in the kitchen, and saw that it was almost eleven thirty. A knot clenched in my chest. I had lost my appetite, but continued to absently fork mouthfuls of food into me. My show was almost on, and I could watch it, in the illusion of solitude, on the television downstairs if I but turned on the device. I wouldn’t. I congratulated myself on resisting the urge to watch and experience being taunted by the comedian behind the desk. In refusing to watch the show, I wondered if I was obeying the comedian’s mandates or not. He’d taken surreptitious swipes at television viewers before, as if he didn’t want his audience watching. Following statements of praise for activists who were creating change, he’d said why he was proud of his seemingly complacent crowd: “You are doing something. You’re. Watching. T. V.” Motivated to contradict his wishes, I could have watched to defy him, even if forming part of his viewership ultimately bolstered his fame. Still, I refrained. I had decided, in my writing, in secret, that I passionately loved this comedian behind the desk on TV. I had had a dream. I was paying the price for that.
I say I decided in secret, in my writing, because the contents of my notebooks, jotted down night after night in my room alone, were entirely private. I was all too aware of the consequences of speaking my mind, especially while living in my mother’s house, and kept my writing to myself. Or so I thought.
It was a moment that went on for years, a moment in which there was no telling who S_____ was, exactly, or what he wanted. He was attracting attention, and jealously guarding it, without exposing the intensity of his need for eyes, ears and focus on himself. This actor’s shtick was mutely honorable yet simultaneously self-serving, because he could fault the character for objectionable behavior that might otherwise have dimmed his celebrity.
It would be more than a decade before I’d figure out that he had been talking about me on February 26th, 2007, when he celebrated British pull outs, supposedly as a segue to talking about the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq. He then prompted the audience to respond if they liked it, at which remark he then smirked, bit his lip and stroked his chin to get control of his mirth. What could be funnier than blatantly needling me with the sex story he’d acquired that I wrote for myself, alone, crouched in a bedroom of my mother’s house? I had scrawled it out over a year earlier. This was the story.
I imagine propping myself on one elbow to observe him sleeping. I’m that close that I see out of place hairs in his eyebrows. If his mouth were open, his breath would likely stink. If I could count the hairs in his eyebrows, you can bet I’m seeing the ones in his nostrils to boot. I force myself to ignore this. I draw my free hand down and work it across his closest hairy thigh. I’m not bothered by the hairy thigh. I like it. I bring my face to within a finger’s width of his and I take it all in. The pores of his skin. The grey shadow of his unshaven cheeks. The sighing of his breath that I with my insistent closeness make my breath. I take it in. The imprint of the pillow case fabric on his face.
He’ll suck in a sharp, waking breath and his head will roll back and forth before his eyes pop open. I won’t move. A pucker of the lips away from contact, I’ll let my eyes devour him instead. Up, down, over. I never knew the intensity of such a stare.
And his eyes will open, and since it’s my fantasy, he won’t say “Get off, I’ve got to go to work,” or “You’re obsessed.” He’ll say “Mmmm. That’s nice,” and let me busy myself with his warm, hairy groin while he pulls himself up to kiss me. He occupies himself with that. I’ll want to put my lips other places and he’ll let me do that. He’ll sweep the hair out of my face as I do it and leverage himself up on his elbows to watch the action. I can’t tell if he’s into it or not, except that he sometimes drops back flat off his elbows and fixates on the ceiling. Probably he’s counting, or focusing on the least sexy thing he can imagine, because there’s a strain in his voice when he tells me “You’d better stop, or I’m not going to be able to go on.” That’s why I stop.
That’s when I position myself near his head and he strokes my hair back and kisses my cheeks, face, neck, and lips. Almost as if he loved me. We are side by side now, and then he rolls me on to my back. He digs his hand into my crotch and I allow this. He’s still kissing me. He stops and starts and slows, and slows next to nothing. He’s not kissing me anymore. He lifts himself and rests his full weight on my body laid flat. He lets me feel him resting there. He props himself up on his elbows and stares and stares me in the face. I’m spreading myself and making way. I’m tilting my hips to receive him and he’s smirking and pressing himself down where he is, so he can’t go in. So he won’t go in. But he’s smirking. He knows what he’s doing. As if to prove just that, he stops staring at me. He drops back down to where we are chest to chest, from where he kisses once my shoulder, the side of my neck, my ear. He’s going to make me ask for it. He’s not going to let me go until I ask him.
“S______, please.”
“Mm-hmmm.” He’s planting random, casual kisses in the places he can reach without getting off my chest. I can hear his breath heavy in my ear, like listening to the sea in a conch shell when he vocalizes.
“S______!” All I can do is pound him on the shoulder.
I can hear his lips part when he smiles near my ear but he doesn’t laugh. He says, “What?” and he’s loosening the squeeze between us down below. Now I can feel him. About to enter but not really.
He’s back to staring me in the face again.
“Please just do it,” I tell him.
“And what was it you wanted me to do?” His smirk is unbearable. When I can’t respond he gives me the tiniest taste and pulls out.
“What was it?”
“Unhnmm,” finally I submit. I have to goddamn plead with him for it.
“Please put your penis in me. Please, S______, please.”
After some negotiation, he does. He doesn’t like cock, he likes the term penis, he won’t stand to have it insulted, such as “your filthy dick, you damn bastard,” he wants my request to be polite and genteel. Full of old-fashioned courtesy and obsequiousness. At least, that’s what he wants this time.
To give in is the most exquisite, sublime pleasure I will ever know. But it’s disgusting all the same for what it has cost me emotionally. For the hoops I’ve had to jump. The hoops are why it delights him, though. It makes me wonder how long I’ll really like having him.
I knew what S_____ was saying and the message S_____ was sending. I was being violated. I tried to make my peace with it. I wrote myself consoling perspectives, such as that I loved him, and that he had my best interests at heart.
S____’s trolling didn’t start or end with one story. As often as my mother would read my diary, he’d ape it and comment on it. Then, I noticed any kind of creative output I’d made, if he found out about it, he’d find a way to use it himself. The concept of a pun-filled parody website I had about eggs, with corresponding pamphlets to promote it, for example, I watched him turn into a web-accessible birth announcement for an eagle named after him on his April 19, 2006 show. A viewer mail letter I had written as a teen to my favorite late night show that made it to air, on June 16, 1989, made its way to S____ and got reproduced nearly blow-by-blow in his October 18, 2006 show. Then, I found him inserting mundane aspects of my life in the show, such as a pair of raspberry color corduroy pants I wore. Alternately taunting, then pointedly seductive, I saw his moods on the show responding to or reflecting my own. Barely able to believe this crowd-sourced version of sexual harassment was actually occurring, I couldn’t talk about it, much less put a stop to it.
None of the sub textual messaging was openly acknowledged. Efforts I made to address it, by direct confrontation, were predictably turned against me. I was crazy, paranoid, hysterical. My mother, while she was stealing my diaries and passing them around, had her own unique spin on it. How arrogant it was of me to assume anyone cared about what I was doing! It was me that was creating this pointless drama by having feelings about it, when I could just forget it and let it go. Plus, it was my fault for not talking to anybody. Not that anybody cared.
I mean, of course people are going to want to violate me and plagiarize my writing and content ideas. That’s the natural result of not being talkative and friendly. Oh, and these people don’t care about me, particularly, either, just in case I got grandiose ideas thinking I might benefit by somebody having any empathy.
In my defense, what a clever show it was! How addictive, once the deadpan host hooked you with his sweeping, utterly uninhibited feelings and outlandish thoughts. To watch the show was to hold this comedian’s hand while he roiled with emotion and to laugh at him without suffering the consequences of finding him perfectly risible. For having such a low opinion of Hispanic immigrants, he seemed to know more about why they weren’t at work that day than most of audience. He regularly shot down LGBTQ causes offhand, while exposing not-so hidden attractions in himself to the same sex.
Really nothing about me is a secret, because everything about me is a secret. I don’t voluntarily speak up or share myself with other people, which means I am friendless. To my disgust, my opting out of social sharing has also meant I am an object of curiosity to others, and that curiosity has generated a wave of popular sentiment against my having any privacy. Whatever I’m doing, we’ve collectively and informally decided, we have a right to know, to share it unreservedly, to remark on it, form opinions of it, and then to either deliberately or inadvertently bring consequences for what I have or haven’t done or how I’ve done it.
Reader, you probably don’t understand. Okay, fine. You’ll understand soon enough, and it’s already too late to stop. Although I’m sure you won’t, please enjoy the Orwellian world you’ve created when the reality you’ve engineered around me comes to pass for you. When you want to park close to the door but can’t, because your health insurer would raise your premiums too high, or when, thanks to data trends, you can’t risk the purchase of a Snickers for fear of being evicted or fired, remember me. See me smiling, as I know I will, because you have certainly earned this outcome. I don’t think I should have to live like this, and I don’t think you should either, but you wanted to show me. You were eager to stick it to nasty old me, and boy, did you. Well done. Of course, without realizing it, you’ve fucked yourselves over at the same time. And oh, my, how fucked you are. I won’t be bothered to contain my glee about that. Wow do you deserve it. Privacy doesn’t matter, right? How rude it was of me to assume that I had some kind of “right” to keep things such as my writing to myself. We can congratulate each other for bullying me under the pretext of forcing me to learn to defend myself. I obviously never do that, and if I don’t, it must be for lack of opportunity. That I’m not being harassed enough, is my problem.