[ ] Who Run the World?

Along with many others, I’ve been reading and thinking about the Epstein files lately. Considering our world leaders and all the harm some of them do, with little to no accountability. I mean - last night a man who I can only characterize as a cartoon villain gave the state of the union address and there were people applauding the emperor’s fine garments all along. A man who has been accused of harming women and girls again and again, whose nature is revealed over and over on our television screens, and he remains in power.

Of course, the power dynamics of older men and young girls is something I’ve thought and written about before. For example, my poem “Mustangs” talks about these patterns in the music industry, as well as in my personal experience.

As teen girls, my friends and I often had to deal with “creepy old men,” as we called them. This is common for many young girls. Either you’re nodding along, remembering - or you should ask the women in your life how old they were when they noticed grown men noticing them, approaching them, flirting with them, grooming them, harassing them, sexualizing them. Note: their answers will probably bother you.

Most of the creepy old men were easy to read with their leery-eyed looks, their greasy appetites visible from miles away. Slowing their cars down and turning their heads while I waited for the bus. Or sitting next to me on the bus and saying disgusting things. Sometimes, it was even the bus driver. Or the waiter at the restaurant, or the man behind the counter at the store, or walking down the street, or etc. etc. etc. It was constant and hideous and a very normal part of my day any time I left the house.

There is one man in particular who has come up a lot in my memory recently.

I was fifteen when I met this man. I probably looked about like this:

The man was a friend of a friend (of a friend, maybe). He was older, maybe late twenties, early thirties (he kept his age - and much else - a secret). A musician, a producer, he said, or something like it. Not a celebrity, but someone who worked behind the scenes of the industry, he said. This was the 90s - long before I could have Googled him. Anyway, he saw me somewhere, without me noticing. Liked my look. Asked for an introduction. Got one.

It started with him asking me and my friends if we’d be in a music video. I was fifteen and fearless, sometimes on fire, sometimes a husk, so I said yes. Even though I didn’t know him, hadn’t heard the song, I knew my friends and was sure we would protect each other from doing anything too dangerous. He assured us it wouldn’t be anything gross, no skimpy clothes, nothing sexual. We all agreed, and then it was a matter of scheduling the shoot.

He got my number, and then began calling me. Every day. Keeping me on the phone for hours. Talking about music, the industry, all the connections he had and people he knew. All the secrets he kept. I didn’t know whether or not to believe him, but I didn’t know anyone famous, and it was interesting. He offered to mentor me in the business once he learned I had a strong interest and perhaps some talent in singing, songwriting, performing.

Weeks passed, and the grooming was underway. How special and unique I was, how talented, how mature. Destined for greatness. He started making promises about my future and all the doors he’d open for me. He gave me little gifts, nothing I remember now. He was going to buy me a car. Give me an apartment. Get me in the studio. I listened, hopeful and desperate in some ways – I was a very depressed teenager who was vulnerable in ways that were easy for him to see. And while I was vulnerable, I wasn’t naïve. I knew the trope – even rolled my eyes sometimes and waited for him to make his move and become a “creepy old man” so my suspicions could be proven correct.

Months passed, the grooming intensified, and the video shoot never got scheduled. At some point it stopped being a subject of conversation, like it never existed, like it wasn’t the whole reason for us to know each other. He lost all interest in my friends. He got more and more laser focused on me. Obsessively. He called constantly. If I didn’t answer his calls, he would show up to where ever I was, even when I didn’t tell him where I would be. I’d come home, and his car would be parked out front, waiting for me. Sometimes he would pull up to my high school, or to my friends’ houses, demanding to see me. Always giving some story of emergency to other adults to convince them to give him access to me, and it always worked - even on my grandmother. It was embarrassing, until it was annoying, until it was scary.

I was always clear with him that our relationship was not romantic, that it never would be. And he always agreed, that we were friends and he was just looking out for me. Sometimes when they saw us together, people would ask if he was my boyfriend, and I was emphatic in my NOPE. I had a boyfriend, who I am sure I made out with in front of him more than once (I was fifteen, after all, and didn’t mind PDA), just to emphasize my position. And while the obsession and possessive behavior ramped up over time, he never tried to get sexual with me, which kept him in the “nice guy” category in my mind rather than the “creepy old man” category I kept waiting for him to drift into. And there were the promises – so many promises – all dangling like a carrot on a string, none of which ever materialized. Maybe they were never real. Or maybe they never became real because I was never willing to play along.

Like many young girls, I was afraid of being “mean” to someone who had been “nice” to me. I had confronted many bullies and obvious monsters by this point, but this was something different. No obvious danger, never any attempt to physically harm me. But over time, I knew the situation wasn’t okay. As his obsessive and controlling behavior continued to escalate, I became more wary of him, more avoidant. I would ignore his calls, avoid going home, stay with different friends to get some space.

I was scared. Of him, for him. I was afraid if rejected him outright he would stop me living my dreams. He’d find a way to drown out my face and voice and make sure no one would ever know about them. I used to think he would swallow my name and disappear my future. Sometimes I feared he would harm himself if I turned away and yes, I was even afraid of the guilt I would feel for the sigh of relief I might exhale. I was much too nice for that.

One afternoon, I stopped in at my grandmother’s house, and there he was, parked out front. I rushed inside, still avoidant. My grandmother hugged me when I got in the house, asked if I noticed him out there. She pulled back the curtain, pointed, said he’d been parked out there for days. Days. And it wasn’t the first time, she said. He does this when he can’t find you, she said. I didn’t even live there. He drove away as we watched from the window.

When the phone rang twenty minutes later, I knew it would be him. This time, I answered. Told him our friendship was over, that it was too much, to stop calling me and that I didn’t want to see him again. I was still afraid, but I became more afraid of what I was experiencing than I was of whatever obscurity he might banish me to. It became much less frightening to say no no no. I am myself. I belong to myself. I will not tolerate another moment of this.

I told him I would have the gifts he’d given to me waiting for him at my mom’s house the next morning if he wanted them back. Morning arrived, and I left the box with my brother, told him the guy would be coming to pick it up. I left to run errands with my mom to avoid having to see him again, make it easier. As we finished the last errand, I walked down the aisle at the grocery store and there he was, staring at me from the other end. He had shaved his head. He looked wrecked. I shook my head, no, turned around. He followed, desperate to change my mind, make me talk to him. I got louder with my no, leave me alone, I don’t want to talk to you, making a scene until my mom heard me and came to my side. He finally left then, or maybe he stood there dissolving into memory as we walked away – I’m not sure. But it was done (mostly – at least, until I was an adult).

Even now, I’m not sure who this man actually was. I mean – I had a name I called him, but I don’t know if it was real. I’m not sure if anything or everything he told me back then was real. It doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is, I’m proud of that teenaged me. She endured a lot, and this situation was just one small piece of that. But she set a boundary and held it, and the adult me has survived a lot of difficult situations because of this skill I developed then. Trusting my instincts and saying no, even when it hurts someone’s feelings.

It is true that I still look over my shoulder, even these decades later. And perhaps I am more sensitive than most when it comes to being observed without my explicit consent. Granted, there have been others, much more frightening and dangerous since then, and many directions in which I could point the blame.

In a workshop the other night, I was journaling about fear and wrote - is it really a fear if it’s a memory? Who can say. Either way, I draw the curtains and lock the doors and cover the cameras and check the mirrors. I still hold my solitude, my privacy, as sacred gifts I had to break at least a few grown men to keep as my own. I still do not regret closing those doors and choosing myself.

Which brings me back to the Epstein files. And R. Kelly. And Elvis Presley. And Steven Tyler. And Chuck Berry. Remember that song by Neil Diamond “Girl, you’ll be a woman soon” – and if that weren’t gross enough, remember when Quentin Tarantino brought it back into our collective consciousness with the Pulp Fiction soundtrack? And and and and and and and. I mean. We could list names all day – like the files do … the grooming and exploitation of young girls by talented and/or powerful and/or wealthy men (and regular-degular men) seems foundational to the world’s power structures and perhaps always has been.

I’m grateful to have survived the creepy old men of my youth. My heart breaks for all the girls who didn’t and won’t survive them. There are and have been so many, too many. I look forward to building a future with people who will hold predators accountable for their harms, and do everything in our power to keep the vulnerable among us safe.