Asking for it?

Reading first-hand accounts by women who were preyed upon by Weinstein has sparked some memories of my own.

I have never had a massive dude bar my exit from a room while jerking off into a potted plant, but I have had strangers jerk off in my general direction. This always happened out-of-doors & I could always get away. Once, when I was 30, it even happened while I was jogging around a lake. Dude was in the bushes going at it & I happened to glance toward the sound of him. He looked oddly possessed, half-dressed with his dick in his hand. It was freaky. I kept running, my face betraying none of the disgust & anger I felt. -figured that he was looking for some sort of outburst, so I denied him that.

Some not-so-fond memories--

Wearing a bathsuit at the pool. 'You don't look fourteen!', say adult men, poolside, staring at my chest. I felt like crawling into a hole & disappearing.

A bespectacled, newly hired manager called Tucker Nunn kisses me on the cheek after a short chat about work. The restaurant isn't yet open & no one else is around. I am 17 & this is my first real job. The kiss was unexpected, felt icky & I certainly wasn't 'asking for it'.  Later on, I tell a trusted male manager what happened. The next day, a red-faced Tucker comes marching up to me as says, 'How dare you go behind my back and tell the other bosses!' Um, so it was my fault?

I'm 18 & working in a retail shop. A co-worker spends most of our shared shifts following me around the clothing racks, trying to get me to go out with him & trying to touch me. I say 'no' a gazillion times. He might be deaf cos he keeps on with it. I eventually tell my female boss. The guy is shit-canned for that & basically doing dick-all while at work.

Two years later, I'm traveling through Germany with a couple of friends. We're in Berlin. It's just after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I remember hardly anything from the trip aside from visiting a club called Klo (slang for 'toilet' in German) & taking a taxi ride. We put our luggage in the trunk--turns out to be a mistake--and are driven to the train station. At some point during the cab trip, the driver turns to me, saying something, and puts his hand on my knee. I shrug his hand away. He does it again, I remove his hand a second time. I am glad to not be alone with him in the car & wonder how much bolder he would have been had I been a solo passenger. There's further negotiation with him at the train station. He won't release our bags from the trunk until we pay him more money than he's owed. We give him the extra Marks, get our bags & beat feet.

I have a job at an ice-cream parlor. The owner, Jesse, grabs my boob. It's Halloween & the staff have been encouraged to dress up. My co-worker is a black cat & I am a peasant. The costume is a bit drab and the furthest thing from sexy, not like it should matter. My bosom, never very ample to begin with, is only slightly amplified by the sort of no-frills corduroy bustier I am wearing. I guess this is why Jesse suddenly grabs my boob like it's an old-timey car horn. 'Eee-oooh!' The squeeze hurts my chest. I register upset. Jesse says, 'I thought they were fake!' (Really? If I were to have stuffed my bra, then why would I have stuffed it to such an unremarkable size?) I suppose my boss could have just asked. Or better yet, stayed schtum & kept his grubby paws to himself.

Tit grabs, crotch grabs, butt grabs. There's been a lot of that sort of thing since puberty hit, but none since turning 45. Attention from men, both good and bad, seems to fall off a cliff when we women hit a certain age. Peri-menopausal years are a bit like donning a cloak of invisibility. If it spares me having to see one more furious masterbator in the park, then I guess I'm good with it.