Therefore, I knew what my stepfather was saying and the message he was sending. I knew what scenes I had jotted out in a private notebook while 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, Mom had asserted, "I don't have to justify myself to you," eyeballing me up and down. It was her right not to have to justify herself to her no-account daughter for asking, as Mom stood physically blocking my path up the staircase, why she had not gone upstairs earlier. It wasn't until I headed there with purpose-driven intention that Mom scrambled off the couch, halting at the foot of the stairs to loiter aimlessly. In my diary, a few days before, I had said I was regularly prompted for excessive justifications. It was belittling to be interrogated over such minutia as which garbage can I directed myself to or how far I open I preferred the car window.
I knew what my mother was saying and the message she was sending. She was reading my diary. My stepfather read it, too, found sexual content, then could be overheard muttering "nymphomaniac" when I was within earshot. Word of what I had privately written travelled. The "yes/no" misunderstanding was re-enacted by my co-workers when I was in the room. Then, haughty attitudes were assumed and summarily excused because I didn't deserve an explanation.
Looking back, it's obvious that texts and cell phone photos of my diaries' contents were being widely shared against my wishes. Technology amplified what word-of-mouth could readily do. Whatever the format, my explicit, private notebook entries had been stolen and effectively published, 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. On my arrival, there was no one downstairs. That meant that for a few hours, perhaps, I might have the pretense of some time free of microscopic scrutiny. 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 opposite the wall where a daisy-patterned octagonal clock was hung. The minute hand had my acute attention. It was nearly 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 on. I congratulated myself on resisting the urge to watch and get taunted by the comedian behind the desk. Yet I wondered if my refusal to watch only served the comedian's wishes anyway. He'd taken surreptitious swipes at television viewers before, as if he didn’t want his audience watching. Once, after praising activists for creating change, he'd said why he was proud of his complacent crowd: "You are doing something. You’re. Watching. T. V." I could have watched to defy him. Still, I refrained. In my writing, in secret, I wrote that I passionately loved this guy behind a desk on TV. 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.
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 believe beyond doubt that he had been talking about me on February 26th, 2007, when he celebrated British pull outs, supposedly, that is, 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 repress 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 a year earlier.
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 a cross 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.
In my defense, what a clever show it was! How addictive, once the deadpan host hooked you with his 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 the audience. He regularly shot down LGBTQ causes offhand, while exposing not-so hidden attractions in himself to the same sex.