There are worse things I could do…

And why it keeps happening

This entry has a TW for sexual assault.

As a kid, I was an overachiever in almost everything I set my attention to. And I was a dabbler. I won the school-wide awards for band and choir, placed in the spelling bee, wrote a poem to then-first-lady Hillary Clinton when the whole Bill and Monica scandal rocked the White House (ah, what simpler times, and she wrote back!), and even won a ping-pong tournament that resulted in my opponent whipping his paddle across the room and slicing my face in half (I’ve still got the scar, but that’s a story for another day). This is all important to know, because it speaks to why nobody ever worried about me. Even when they knew.

I’d like to believe that all parents do the best that they can with what resources and information life has given them. The way that we’re raised influences how we raise our own children. And we don’t get to choose our children. I was keenly aware as a child that I wasn’t what my mother had envisioned when she finally got her precious little girl, and to this day I wish we understood each other better. Like all good parents, mine did a lot of things right. They sacrificed to make sure we had a nice home, stability, we went to the doctor when we were sick, always had food in the house, they drove me to whatever school activity or rehearsal I had, no drugs or anything like that in the house. It was also a very gendered household in the traditional sense; very conservative, strict, and not a very open one where you could talk about things. There was also one message that I got loud and clear: The worst thing I could ever do was have pre-marital sex.

This is all I’ll be saying on this topic. This is my story, not theirs, but I find it necessary to mention it as groundwork for what influenced me as a teenager and set things in motion.

I joined a children’s opera chorus when I was eleven. I loved it. By the time I was fourteen, I was too tall for the children’s chorus and auditioned and was admitted into the adult chorus. Most of the chorus members were in the 50s and 60s, which made it seem to me like the people in their 30s were basically my peers. If you don’t know, opera is a very strange art form that allows old people to play the parts of teenagers, and teenagers to play the parts of fully-fledged adults. It’s determined by voice type, body type, and who’s available. I was often given bit parts, extra walk-ons, little things that made me feel special. Looking back, it was simply because I was young and useful.

As maturing girls and women, we are put into a system that whittles us down to how men view us. Some women get to be cute, or soft, or amusing. Some are valued. Some are pretty and exemplary Stepford models. Some are beautiful. And some are reduced to sexy; not sexy in a mysterious, interesting way that encourages curiosity. Sexy in an obvious, dehumanizing way that reduces us to fleshy shells, waiting to be picked up and cast back into the sea after we’ve been enjoyed.

One autumn, while I was still in high school, I was in a production of Carmen. The tenor who was brought in to play the lead was something of a hometown hero and he was kind to me. His agent, a man in his 50s, flew in from New York for opening night. Eager to make it out of my small rust-belt town, this was someone I definitely wanted to talk to and impress. He complimented me on my costume and joked with me backstage. Because the tenor was a safe, big brother-type toward me, I assumed anyone he worked with was also safe.

We spoke in the lobby briefly after the show. He wanted to continue the conversation but was leaving the next day. The theatre was about 40 minutes from home. I had been driving for less than a year and I didn’t know the area that well. I remember it was raining. What was open late on a Thursday night? I suggested we go to Denny’s. He agreed, but said he wanted to drop his bags off at his hotel first. Keep in mind, this is before smart phones or GPS. I followed him in my car and went into the hotel lobby. What played out next was like a bad afterschool special. I look back now at so many of these events and shake my head, wishing I could look my younger self in the eyes and say, “Girl, heads up. Be smarter than this.” But then, I was not smart because I was young, and being young was unavoidable.

I intended on waiting in the lobby. He asked me if I would mind helping him carry his bags. And because I wanted to make a good impression, I obliged. Once inside his room, and with the door shut, I started to get nervous. Why did he take his coat off if we were going right back out?

One thing I know about myself now: As an outspoken 43-year-old, I will still freeze every single time. This is not a reflection of how strong or weak I am. It is a survival tactic that my body adopted in times of trauma.

He walked up to me and “asked” to hug me. I felt his body press into mine and little beads of rain still caught in my hair start to roll down my neck as his fingers held the back of my head. He didn’t try to kiss me, but his breath was hot in my ear as he turned me to the side and started running his hands over my shirt. I remember thinking, “How bad is this going to be? Is he going to hurt me?” As though what he was already doing wasn’t causing damage. He was moaning as he unbuttoned my shirt. I looked away. I still had on my strapless push-up bra that I had worn under my costume. His fingers fumbled at the top of the padded cups to get to my breasts. Tears started to roll down my cheek. He knew my age. He obviously knew I wasn’t an enthusiastic participant looking away and crying. But he still continued to do this. When he started to unhook my bra, I whipped around and stared him in the face. I pleaded my virginity and begged him to stop while I backed away. He did, and then proceeded to talk to me while I buttoned up my shirt and wiped my eyes like he was still interested in my singing; like nothing out of the ordinary had happened in the last thirty minutes at all. I held my head up and responded matter o’ factly about my audition pieces and where I intended to apply to college.

The next morning my alarm went off at 6:15am and I went to school like normal. I looked around my classes at the other students and wondered if any of them had experienced anything like that. I wondered what it was like to have any kind of romantic or sexual contact with anyone still so young. “I guess I’ll never know. It’s not for me,” I thought. By seventeen, I had been sandwiched between conductors and cast members a little too tightly while they cracked jokes about my age. Cast-mates or stage directors who wrapped their hands around me in photographs or staging demos for a little too long and dug their fingers in a little too forcefully. Then there was the internet stranger who was no longer a stranger at all, but a regular guest. And now this.

As maturing girls and women, we are put into a system that whittles us down to how men view us. Some women get to be cute, or soft, or amusing. Some are valued. Some are pretty and exemplary Stepford models. Some are beautiful. And some are reduced to sexy; not sexy in a mysterious, interesting way that encourages curiosity. Sexy in an obvious, dehumanizing way that reduces us to fleshy shells, waiting to be picked up and cast back into the sea after we’ve been enjoyed. And if we’re lucky, what we are shifts throughout our lives and with whom we surround ourselves. We grow to be more complex, more than one thing, and we teach- sometimes demand- others to see us as such.

I think of that night, more than twenty-five years ago, often. I think of the Sunday after just as often. It was the next performance, a matinee. The stage manager, a spry woman in her 60s, came up and held me by the elbow. “Come here!” I had known her for years. “What is this I hear about you going to this man’s hotel room after the show on Friday?” So, he told people. I was in high school, and he was in his 50s and he told people. She didn’t wait for me to respond. “Don’t do things like that! You don’t want to get a reputation!” She rolled her eyes and released my elbow. I was due in the hair and makeup room. There had been no asking if I was alright, no asking what or how it had happened. I sat there as tan pancake was patted into my collarbone and blush dotted into my décolletage to highlight my cleavage. I ran the French text of the opening cigarette chorus through my head as my long, curly wig was pinned onto my scalp. No time to be tender-headed about things. It was 1:00pm on a Sunday and I wondered who else knew.

Over fifteen years later, I would be a finalist in a singing competition. Now a mother with two young children, my body and appearance had shifted to reflect my life. Behind the judges’ table sat three men. One of them was the agent from so many years ago. As is customary, after they announced the winners, the singers were required to stay and speak with the judges. I stood there, with years of life and experiences stacked up that on one hand made that night long ago seem like a blip on the radar, and on the other hand was a formative event that drove home to me in my young mind who I was in this world and what I was expected to be.  

We had a brief stare down. “We know each other, don’t we?” He was noticeably older, a little thinner and his hair white, but his voice and style remained the same. I felt my gaze wince when he spoke.

“Yes, we do.” It was all I could manage to remain stone-faced.

“Well, I’ll tell you. You’re great, but I just couldn’t award you a prize because you have all these time gaps in your resume.”

“I was busy.”

I was used to being questioned about the gaps. You’re expected to have a linear, laser-straight trajectory if you’re serious about the craft. How could I begin to answer what led to the gaps and how what filled them was so much more reflective of the lives the characters on the operatic stage led than any training program could supply. How could I explain the hypocrisy while standing in a noisy, fluorescent-lit room of women in gowns and men with secrets ranking us like livestock at a county fair?