I don’t have a story
The podcast I co-host got sponsored by a new-wave bra company that champions body positivity and body diversity, and as part of our advertising agreement I had to order a bra from them. I was very interested and excited in this, because bra shopping has more or less been a non-question for me. Blessed with what would probably be a 36AA if such a bra was ever manufactured — I am wide and flat and should have been a swimmer, probably — the adolescent horror and thrill of suddenly having boobs to manage and shop for has never really been on the table. I remember so vividly, the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, staying with an old friend from middle school and hanging out in her bedroom. She was lying on her bed and reading a magazine and said, apropos of nothing, “ugh, don’t you hate it when your boobs slide down to your armpits when you’re reading?” I nodded, having no idea what she was talking about.
Anyway, this bra company didn’t carry a 36AA, but after taking a quiz about what $68 expertly engineered bra would be perfect for me, I ordered whatever they recommended. It arrived wrapped in delicate pink tissue paper, and I took it out and held it up and felt my heart sink. I knew from looking at it that it would look ridiculous on me; trying it on confirmed that. They had a number to call where you could talk to a “fit specialist” and of course I did that, and some nice girl in the Bay Area told me that if that bra didn’t fit me, they had a selection of leisurewear bralettes.
But I don’t want a bralette, dammit! I am not a tween, and though they aren’t much to write home about I do have breasts that must be managed. This company’s advertising seems to trumpet the arrival of a “bra for every woman,” and even within their progressive spectrum of what that means, I fell on the outside of it. The whole process carried a lot more gravity than I expected.
The bra arrived in the heat of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation firestorm, which had me on edge and moody all week for both the obvious reasons and reasons that I was more confused about articulating, or whether or not I should. The prospect of an attempted rapist and alcoholic being given a post in the highest court in the land is the most harrowing and torturous chapter of the MeToo world we now live in, and the stories from my friend and peers and people I don’t know but follow on Twitter started being dropped almost hourly. Most women I know have been raped or sexually assaulted in their lives. The most visible and audible woman’s experience right now is that of the victim; those with platforms and followings are being encouraged to share their story in solidarity, in order to shore up the most prominent, contested ones, to create a narrative that yes, this does happen, it happens all the time.
I don’t have a rape story, and I don’t have an assault story. In the past year, wondering why I don’t has led me down a weird guilt spiral that inevitably ends with the re-realization that there’s no reason that I don’t. There’s nothing I did right. It just didn’t happen to me. This is disconcerting to me, in the context of a life where I have always felt left out of the things that supposedly comprise the experience of being a woman. It’s not just the bra thing, though that’s a useful metaphor. I’ve always felt left out of femininity, I’ve always had more male friends than female friends, going back to early childhood. Girls tormented me as a child, and as an adolescent, and as an adult; on the whole I have felt the emotional violence of other women more acutely than that of men. And yet, I know the latter exists.
Sometimes it feels like sharing one’s own story of assault is the only powerful tool a woman can have against a patriarchy in its violent death throes, which often leaves me feeling useless in our social media-driven dialogue. The stories of sexual violence coming from women both famous and not, while harrowing, has also, to this outsider at least, appeared as a kind of global bonding experience. Which is really important for those who have been victims. But I want there to be a language for women to be advocates for each other that goes beyond “me, too” in its most literal sense. Because I cannot honestly say “me, too,” and yet, nearly any woman I’ve ever been close with enough has told me about that time in college, or that date that went bad, or that time in eighth grade. I believe them, and I believe women I’ve never met before, not because it’s happened to me, too, but because I know how the world works and I believe them.
I want to tell one story that is not a rape story, but it is a Hollywood story, and it’s a story about a powerful Hollywood man. This story might not end the way you think it will!
When I was in college, a male classmate of mine wanted to cast a famous actor, let’s call him Gary, in his thesis film. His dad had some connections, and I had gamely signed on to be my friend’s AD, which meant when he went to a swanky event with the purpose of being introduced to this guy and hopefully turning it into a collaboration, he asked me to come along. I was excited, we were very young and to land this actor for a student film would be a coup; it felt like a bank heist. On the way over we were giddy and silly, “what if Gary says yes? What if he wants to do a feature?” etc etc. It was fun to at least be party to a young white man’s Hollywood dreams on the cusp of coming true.
We went to the venue with his father. I expected that at some point my friend’s dad would introduce us to Gary, and then let us take the lead and talk about this film my friend wanted to make. But my friend’s dad didn’t seem to know how to go about it. Maybe he didn’t really know Gary at all. Who knows. My friend had also frozen up, and I remember sitting at the bar, my gaze going from this father and son, over to Gary in the corner of the room, who looked all too approachable. “You guys are too scared?” I asked incredulously. “Why don’t you go over and charm him with your feminine wiles,” my friend said. It was a joke, but of course it wasn’t, and I felt like I had a lot to prove, so I went over and introduced myself to Gary.
I don’t remember much about our conversation, I remember his eyes on me, and I remember feeling giddy and high with the power of his attention. I should maybe emphasize — Gary is extremely famous. You all know who he is and you probably love him. He has a pretty stellar reputation. I didn’t have a particular thing for him, but after that conversation I remember feeling like I understood what real stardom was about. I had “dated” a minor TV star very briefly before that but this was on another level. Still, I was very mission-oriented, and made sure the conversation came back to praising my friend’s script, and how awesome the film was going to be. I told him he had to see the film he had worked on with his dad, that had played at Berlin — Berlin! — so he could appreciate their genius. Gary seemed amenable to this. I had some little note cards from a Japanese stationary store in Little Tokyo on me, and I wrote my phone number down on one of them and gave it to Gary, who seemed beyond charmed. Then I went back to my friend and his dad, buzzing, but cynical enough to shrug. “I’m sure he’ll never get in touch, but we’ll see!”
We left shortly after. I remember wondering if this had been the plan all along, to throw me at Gary like in order to have an audacious, talked-about thesis film. I probably felt more flattered at the time than anything else to be considered worthy bait.
I remember where I was when Gary called my little Motorola flip phone — in my cubicle at the camera shop I worked at, probably reading Jezebel. I remember the surreality of his voice — that voice! — coming through the speaker. “This is Gary,” he said. Duh, I thought. He wanted to know if I wanted to see a movie with him, maybe get dinner after. Ever the professional, I asked if we would talk about my friend’s film. He seemed uninterested. I also, it should be mentioned, had a boyfriend at the time, and though I was starstruck I was not starstruck enough to just go to dinner and a movie with Gary with no pretense of artistic ambition on the table. I refused politely, but said that if he ever wanted to watch the film, I would get him a copy.
My friend, obviously, was tickled beyond belief by all this. This had become a secret extracurricular, a spy mission we would whisper about in between classes. My friend was adamant that we get Gary a screener of my friend’s father’s film, and soon I had negotiated an arrangement, with the stipulation that I now wonder about the legitimacy of, that I could not just leave it with him. I had to watch it with him, at his house, and take the DVD with me.
I remember driving up the winding hills to Gary’s house, playing M.I.A.’s Kala extremely loudly to pump myself up. I remember being buzzed in at the gate and walking up a staircase through tropical plants and water features until I arrived at Gary’s modernist, castle-like home perched in the hills. I remember how empty his home was, how sad it seemed. He asked if I wanted anything to drink, and I said, water, and he opened up his impressive Sub-Zero which contained a Brita pitcher and a lone tray of grocery store sushi.
We went to the living room, me clutching the little plastic DVD case like it was the one legitimizing thing in the whole room. I was there to help my friend, I was there to help my friend. I gave it to Gary, and he put it in the DVD player — shockingly, the DVD player in the living room didn’t work. We would have to go to the one in his bedroom.
I don’t remember if I could see right through this at the time, certainly by the next day I could. Gary put in the DVD in his bedroom entertainment system and then laid back on his California King bed, his lanky legs crossed over the fur throw. He held out one arm, beckoning me, and I pretended not to notice. There was a small ottoman at the foot of the bed, and I sat on it, hunched forward throughout the entirety of my friend’s dad’s stupid awful sophomoric Berlinale-approved movie, sipping on my water, being so good and professional and helpful.
Gary eventually turned down the opportunity to be in my friend’s UCLA undergrad thesis film, no fucking shit. I never heard from him again. I wonder if what would have happened if I would have joined him on the bed, and if my friend would have had Gary — THE Gary, in his thesis film, and if it would have set him off on an exciting idiosyncratic career as a young auteur. How great that would have been for my friend.
I got a lot of mileage out of that story for many years — the time I went to Gary’s house and he tried to get me to watch a movie with him in his bed. I played it up for laughs. I was certain that I looked like the cool person in that story.
A few things I appreciate a decade after the Gary incident:
- Gary never tried anything with me. I sat on that ottoman, and there I stayed. I took the DVD with me when I left, he kissed my cheek, and that was that. Gary, in my experience at least, was a good guy in a Hollywood full of bad ones, and I was lucky.
- My friend 100% tried to offer me up as bait to get Gary to be in his UCLA undergraduate thesis film, and so did his adult father, and this was funny to them.
- Yes, I was good and drank water and sat on the ottoman, but Gary is a big person, and if he wanted to change that he could have. It wouldn’t have mattered what I did right
- Whenever I see Gary in a film — or in person, which has happened a few times because of my job — I get incredibly anxious and crazy feeling, despite the fact that he was good and really didn’t do anything wrong — because I remember being in that weird empty luxurious house, and now I can look back and realize how young and dumb I was and how one of my young dumb male peers decided to use that to his advantage.
The MeToo movement has me reinterrogating events like this and others, where I was powerless but the worst didn’t befall me. Why, why, why? It’s a stupid question. Is there something about me that just doesn’t attract violent men, socially or romantically? Is it my AA tits? My general left-behindness in all things popularly understood to be a part of the “female experience?” I’ve been so stupid, so many times, and experienced plenty of degrading shit that still doesn’t fall into the category of assault and isn’t something worth airing because it doesn’t torture me; I don’t have PTSD, it hasn’t meaningfully disrupted my life. (My own brain does that on its own.) This is not the moment for non-stories like mine.
But I absolutely believe that there was nothing particularly game-changing that kept any of that from happening to me. And I understand the dynamics of a scene like that — where you’re alone in a guy’s house way up in the hills and he’s the one with all the power, when you’re alone with a guy in his car and he won’t unlock the door to let you out, when you black out and find out a guy you thought was your friend was throwing himself on you in your absence. Any of those guys could have been rapists, and they weren’t. Nothing about me or my actions would have changed that.
I have felt pent up with all of this for a year, as soon as it became apparent that the dominant dialogue among women would be sharing stories of trauma and violence. Because I don’t have a tale of horror to peel off and lay before the reading public, but I have just a regular-ass life experience that absolutely corroborates all those tales of horror. It is not much — and I hope it stays that way. But I thought I’d share it.
