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Archive for the ‘true crime’ Category

Today is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. Here are some of my thoughts on why violence against sex workers happens and some suggestions for helping to end it:

Violence against sex workers boils down to two things: a woman who demands money for sex is a woman who is saying NO to sex without money. For all of our fancy talk and progress, our society STILL does not wholly support women’s right to say NO. Our problem is not just with women charging money for sex, our problem is with women SAYING NO to sex with men unless the men meet conditions set by women.

We still do not wholeheartedly agree that women own their own bodies. We still do not wholeheartedly agree that women should have the right to determine the circumstances under which we choose to allow people access to our bodies. We still think that one woman’s individual sexuality is responsible for wreaking havoc on men’s behavior, on other women’s happiness, and on children everywhere. We still blame individual women’s sexual agency for bringing about the downfall of all that’s good for the Christians’ cause, for the feminists’ cause and for unraveling the the moral fabric of society. We still believe women shouldn’t be allowed to capitalize on natural resources the way that men do — we fear the complete disintegration of order in our society if women are allowed to openly capitalize on and dominate the biggest demand in the marketplace.

Violence against sex workers is all about refusing women the right to NOT consent to sex; this refusal is RAPE. We’re all (as a society) accessories to rape by not supporting sex worker rights.

Violence against sex workers is violence against women. Violence against sex workers is often an act of angry insistence that women are of no value except what men, their brainwashed handmaidens, certain hysterically irrational feminists, and society place on them or allow them to be, and that a woman who values her body enough to deny someone access to it unless they provide her with money or material compensation is a woman who has stepped so far out of line that she deserves to be punished or committed to the care of Concerned Women who insist no woman in her right and undamaged mind could have chosen sex work willingly.

Gary Ridgeway, The Green River Killer, did not just target prostitutes because he knew crimes against people who work the streets are harder to solve; that makes it sound like he would have been happy killing just about ANYbody when that’s not the whole truth. He didn’t want to and never did kill homeless veterans or women who consented to having sex with him for free. Gary Ridgeway said, “I picked prostitutes as my victims because I hate most prostitutes and I did not want to pay them for sex.” That hatred of sex workers and the belief that charging money for sex is loathsome, unjustifiable, immoral, indecent, “devalues” women (the most absurd charge of all), and/or somehow dirties or corrupts a society that would otherwise be asexual outside of the bonds of married love or male ownership permeates our culture and is not unique to serial killers. Gary Ridgeway was able to talk openly with his neighbors about his desire to exterminate prostitutes without them batting a fucking eyelash; chances are you yourself have tolerated similar hate speech without objection when you would certainly have responded differently had the target of the hatred been twelve year old Catholic schoolgirls or boy scouts or soccer moms.

When people say that women’s bodies and sex are SO VALUABLE and precious that it’s taboo to put a real dollar amount on sex acts, they are talking irrational, brainwashed rubbish, pure and simple. Violence against sex workers is not so much about women charging money for sex as it is about women having the right to WITHHOLD sex and to define the terms under which they will CONSENT to sex. Any of us who deny sex workers the right to set the terms of consent is effectively denying ALL WOMEN their right to consent or not consent to sex. Do not tell me or any other woman that she can only have sex when she loves someone or is attracted to someone or is sex-positively horny for someone or is in the politely prized possession of a husband. Do not tell me or any other woman that she is “too good” to work in the one industry that women naturally should dominate. Do not tell me or any other woman that it’s more respectable to do ANYTHING for money other than turn a trick. All of that bullshit is part of the the same belief system that claps people on the back who perpetrate violence against sex workers and says, “what you did to her? SHE’S A PIECE OF GARBAGE AND SHE FUCKING ASKED FOR IT.” And that? That’s part of the same belief system that enables violence against ALL women. It’s also part of the same belief system that leaves women in helping professions like teaching, nursing, and mothering grossly underpaid and overworked: because women should not do the most important jobs in the world for MONEY, we should do them for LOVE. You know what that I call that? A BIG FAT CROCK OF SHIT.

If that’s not enough for you to think about, here are some suggestions for behavior I think would go a long way in changing this mindset that promotes violence against all women via endorsing violence against sex workers/subverting sex workers’ rights:

*Don’t sit in mute and complicit witness when your friends, coworkers, acquaintances, partners, etc. use hateful speech against women and sex workers. Use peer pressure by expressing disapproval of expressions of hostility towards sex workers. Challenge them to rethink their prejudices. Tell them they sound like crazy fucking assholes. Tell them you don’t want to hear that shit and walk away from them. Just do *something* instead of accepting that it’s okay. Even if they respond initially with belligerence or defensiveness, it will give them food for thought and make them think twice the next time they feel like saying that. Anything you can do to break down the assumption that prostitutes and sex workers are “fair game” is a step in the right direction.

*Never, EVER, shortchange a sex worker, refuse to pay a sex worker after receiving service, demand or force a sex worker provide services she doesn’t want or hasn’t agreed to, or tolerate someone bragging who does any of those things. Stealing service from a sex worker IS RAPE. Also, make sure our justice system knows that assaulting or forcing a sex worker to perform or endure sex acts without meeting her (or his) terms and conditions IS RAPE, not some lesser charge (read this story for an example).

*Buy time with a sex worker. Pay your sex worker with the same respect and appreciation you give any other person who provides you with service. Hell, pay your sex worker with GREATER respect and appreciation than you’d give other service providers because sex workers do their work at greater social costs and legal risks. Act as proud of supporting your favorite sex workers as you are proud of supporting your favorite record store, restaurant, mechanic, or chiropractor.

*Let people know you support sex workers, and have the balls to say that you proudly patronize sex workers (if you do). Be vocal in your support for sex workers’ rights. Let people know you think sex work is a valuable service and that women own their own bodies, are capable of making their own decisions about what to do with them, and should not be denied the right to set the conditions (and prices) to access them under their own terms. Insist that NO ONE — not the government, not other women, not their husbands or boyfriends or jealous stalkers, and not their customers — should tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her own body, either for free or for money.

*Think critically about sex work and prevailing attitudes towards sex workers. Question media portrayals of sex work, and
do so OUT LOUD to get other people thinking and talking about it too. Ask yourself whether or not your positions on sex worker rights are consistent with your other positions on women and women’s rights (example: if you believe no one should interfere in a woman’s right to an abortion, why is it okay to interfere with her right to charge someone money to touch or be touched by her?).

*Recognize and publicize that not all sex work is the same while also acknowledging sex work for what it is, wherever it is (in many marriages, for example). DO NOT equate sexual slavery with sex work performed by consent. Feminists: don’t get all hysterical and irrational by insisting that all sex work is intrinsically bad; it’s horrible when women and girls are kidnapped, forced to act as sex slaves, are raped, assaulted and killed but you just sound like fucking morons with your inability to separate those crimes from sex work done by women who CHOOSE to do it on their own terms. EVERYTHING A WOMAN DOES WITH HER BODY OR INVITES SOMEONE ELSE TO DO WITH HER BODY SHOULD BE DONE ON HER OWN INDIVIDUAL TERMS. It is unacceptable for anyone, man or woman, to set those terms for another woman (or man).

*Read about sex work, sex worker rights, womens’ rights and feminism (from as many sources/voices as possible). Be open-minded. Be rational. Decide what’s right for you and let other people decide what is right for themselves. Understand that sex worker rights are a gender issue and educate yourself about other gender issues. Do what you can to understand and prevent rape (that’s right, ESPECIALLY if you are a guy).

*Let your elected representatives, local law enforcement and government agencies know that you support sex worker rights and that discrimination against sex workers is intolerable and counterproductive. Have arguments handy that illustrate the perverse double standards used to regulate socially acceptable industries vs. the sex industry. Learn what a “victimless crime” is and do not tolerate people trying to turn bullshit abstractions into crime. Write to the media and complain when you read or hear biased reporting on sex work-related stories.

*Demand higher wages for ALL work traditionally viewed as “women’s” work: mothering, caretaking, nursing, teaching and WHORING.

*Support womens’ right to reject men. It is crucial to women’s right to choose that they be allowed to choose other women as mates and be given the same rights and privileges that heterosexual partners enjoy. Women should not have to insist that they didn’t “choose” to be queer and that it was all decided biologically. Lesbians should not be obligated to soothe ruffled feathers by promising that they really love and appreciate men, just not in that “special” way (even if it’s true). Stopping violence against women mostly means stopping men from perpetrating that violence, and the first step in doing that is insisting that men are not ENTITLED to our bodies. The second step is making everyone believe it. We do not need to make excuses for saying no and those of us who DO say no (whether by not having sex with men, not shacking up with men, or by specifying the conditions under which they will have sex and/or specify the TYPE of sex they will have with men) should not be punished for it.

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Here are posts on the same subject by Audacia Ray and Seska.

Anyone else with posts on the subject can provide links in comments.

SCANDALOUS!

Voyeurs: if you saw me masturbating yesterday and wondered what I was reading to fan the flames, it was a little porn-story-magazine thingy featuring guy-on-guy sex. With lots of really good drawings of gigantic cocks surrounded by sensuous big lips, horny sailors, etc.

And if you saw us fucking yesterday and wondered what was on the television that was so damned erotic, it was Notes on a Scandal. Note: I am not one of those people who romanticizes or excuses real life women (especially teachers) who fuck young boys, particularly not Mary Kay Letourneau, but that’s a subject for a different blog entry. Aside from the naughty hot sex scenes, I loved the wicked narration from Judi Dench’s deliciously evil character. She was like a combination of John Malkovich and Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons, Snape, and Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley all rolled into one nasty bit of work.

I know we’re supposed to be critical of portrayals of lesbians and older women and women in general as scary unhinged monsters, but I love and celebrate Barbara Covett and her fiendishly manipulative pursuit of female companionship and sexual pleasure. She made me hot — best movie villain I’ve seen in a long time.

*****

After my show today I spent most of my time working on a new website; I’ll give you more details on that tomorrow or Tuesday. I’ve also been really sleepy even though I got eight hours of sleep; I needed to take a couple of naps today, probably because I got no exercise yesterday as I spent many splendid hours in bed (see above) masturbating, reading and fucking.

Want to know what I always find “funny” about stories like this: At Least 20 Killed in Virginia Tech Shooting?

I think it’s “funny” that they try to avoid pointing out that it’s a male who did it. AGAIN. I mean, you can count on one hand the number of females who go on shooting sprees, but no one bothers to ask themselves why that is. Instead we just accept that guys dominate violent crime while we very pointedly avoid any attempt to acknowledge the obvious (that might mean we’d have to question gender roles, right, and we don’t want any of THAT).

On the one hand, I suppose not even bothering to mention another boy/man shot up a school shows that WE ALL KNOW it’s guys who do this stuff, but the problem I see is that no one is willing to ask themselves WHY it’s boys and men who do it. Seriously, if you aren’t “into” gender issues and looking for that kind of questioning coverage of the news, you aren’t going to see or hear it mentioned at all. THAT’S A PROBLEM. Maybe *the* problem. Let’s all pretend that this has nothing to do with how we raise little boys!

In my whole life I have only heard one story in what could only vaguely be considered mainstream media (on NPR) talking about gender and school shootings and trying to offer insight and solutions. I know that a lot of people “get it” and many folks reading my blog are among those getting it, but the general population? That’s what I worry about.

“BEST COCK” AWARD & JAMES ELLROY

Oooh, my boy/girlfriend, Delia, is this week’s “Best Cock” and “Horniest” viewer-awards winner on iFriends.

Eat your hearts out!

*****

While Delia is webwhoring today/tonight, I’m driving her crazy with cam issues and complaining that she’s not in the spycam chat. I’m sure she loves that. When I’m not busy doing that, I’ve been working on other stuff, eating, DDRing, and READING.

An engrossing book, finally! I was trying to take a break from true crime, but this true story of James Ellroy’s mother’s murder beckoned to me: My Dark Places. Yeah, the guy who wrote L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia, neither of which I’ve read (but did digest in movie form).

Having just opened the book today, I’m not too far into it yet but as a woman and sex worker (and true crime story hobbyist) I’m intrigued by the perspective of a boy who lost his mother in a brutal sex crime and then became a man making his living creating popular entertainment out of stories of — you know — brutal sex crimes. I suppose it’s nothing new, these stories told by men of raped and murdered women, but Ellroy is a good storyteller and this particular story is incredibly personal so it’s fascinating the way he starts out with such a depersonalized narrative maintaining a giant distance between his adult self, the little boy he was at the time, and his mother. I can’t wait to see how it progresses.

You know how people like to point at sex workers and label them damaged goods, drawn into the sordid skin trade never by choice but always by some history of past and present victimhood? Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. We do our jobs because we were sexually abused or because we’ve been brainwashed by pop culture into thinking we’re only valuable as sex objects, blah blah blah. And we need to be rescued.

You don’t hear people saying that about the James Ellroys or the cops, though, do you? Because men are not victims, they are HEROES. They turn it around and do something PRODUCTIVE with their lives, right? But sex work . . . THAT’S not productive. No, but if I were to write books with pictures of dead swollen-headed mommies that would be okay — not damaged at all! Talented . . . rich . . . respected and admired. You can respectably write stories which are made into movies featuring mutilated skin-flick actresses and you don’t have women trying to adopt you out of your life of crime and rehabilitate you into a humble-but-DECENT job (ex. flipping burgers at McDonalds, helping at a daycare in an inner city, or maybe teaching if you’re smart enough) the way they would if you were a sex worker. Funny how that works, eh?

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Some sex-worker linkage:

*Sex Workers Make Art (and raise money from dildo craftiness)

*FurryGirl is going to be on Night Calls! I don’t have an actual link to it, but here’s a quote from her members-only area:

I’ve been invited to be a call-in guest on “I’ve been invited to be a call-in guest on Playboy Radio’s Night Calls with Ginger Lynn and Christy Canyon. (If you have Sirius satellite radio, I hope you’ll be able to tune in!) They’d like to talk to me about Veg Porn and the Veg Sex Shop for Earth Day, which is Friday the 20th. It’s really cool to get that level of media attention for my sites, and I’m excited about it.

Follow-up analysis:
See, for some reason I can’t imagine anyone thinking that these people would be healthier or more productive if they were writing books about savage woman-killings instead of making porn. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

Read Violet Blue’s When A Man Hates A Woman:

Imagine being a girl and working really hard to earn the reputation of a respected voice in the world of tech journalism and blogging — a world populated by disproportionately more men than women — and to find yourself the target object of a hate-filled Web site. The tone and content of the hate site centers around sexually threatening you, suggesting ways you could be killed and have your corpse defiled, stating that you are a ’slut’ and that your gender is also in question. Your straight male colleagues don’t have this problem.

I’ve had some horrible things said to me online as a webwhore, but honestly NOTHING as calculated and fanatical as the venom of these people tormenting female tech bloggers. Of course, when I *do* get trolled it’s almost always in response to something I’ve done or said that challenges gender roles or people’s religious or political beliefs. Fucking Tucker with a strap-on, for example, set off my only vehement stalker/critic who carried on for years with his fantasy of how my dad must have “tickled my taco” and turned me into a depraved ass-raping lunatic. I also get a considerable amount of freaking-out and hostile chatter from the peanut gallery during my group shows when I have the AUDACITY to, you know, SPEAK rather than moan like a sick whale while spreading my holes. Hearing a camgirl talk about current events really pisses off a lot of guys. I can totally understand if it frustrates a person looking for pure porn and they don’t want to stay and listen to the chatter, but the level of anger these guys spew because a woman DARED to stray out of fuckhole-mode reaches beyond mere frustration and into the realm of a virtual lynching where they are trying to punish me for stepping out of line.

Reading this article makes me realize how much safer I am in certain respects as a webWHORE than as a woman trying to make it in a “legit” male-dominated industry. It’s scary. SCARY! I have to admit that I actually think the Kathy chick got a little carried away over that panty-face photochop, though. It’s hard to say since I didn’t see it in context, but on its own I have a hard time imagining I’d be afraid to leave my yard because of it or anything said with a similar tone. On porn “webmaster” boards we hear the same kind of violent misogynistic crap-spewing and it never really occurred to me to not attend a webmaster conference because of the things those people say and obviously THINK about women. It’s not that I don’t think those people are potentially dangerous, it’s that I THINK MOST MEN ARE POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS. Everywhere. Anywhere. I don’t need to read their anonymous internet posts and comments to suddenly be clued into that truth — I’ve known it my whole life. Women have every reason to be afraid whenever they are alone in a strange place or in the company of strange men or even men they think they know really well. Do you really need to have someone post a picture of you with a photoshopped noose around your neck for you to feel threatened? Fuck, I feel threatened just walking to and from the grocery store alone.

I’m not trying to downplay the severity of the very personal threats to these women, I’m just saying that all. women. are. in danger. all. of the time. The fact that any of us are surprised when these threats come to light sort of boggles my mind. Still, the format of these threats to these bloggers along with what triggered them is very telling and worthy of attention.

Hmmm. I keep coming back to this entry to edit it and have to do it again after following more of the links and reading more of the context and, well, HMMMMMMmmmmm. I have a hard time relating to some of the dramatic responses to some of the heckling. When it comes to putting people’s families in jeopardy by destroying their privacy or sending harrassing and explicitly threatening emails I think that is criminal. But having the police say that a photoshopped picture of a woman with panties over her face is an overt physical threat is going WAY too far.

FEED THE WHORES TO THE PIGS!

Here in the Pacific Northwest I feel like I’ve grown up in Serial Killer/Sex Predator central in between Bundy, Ridgeway, Yates, Duncan, Shriner and other super-notorious criminals. One of these piece-of-shit-guys was up in Vancouver, another guy like Ridgeway who killed lots and lots of streetwalkers and then ground up their bodies and fed them to his pigs. I didn’t realize that he hasn’t even been “brought to justice” yet until I read this entry in Audacia’s blog. The wheels of justice turn slowly, while the flesh-grinders spin quickly out of control.

HELD PRISONER

Last night we watched part of this Frontline special on women from the Ukraine and other poor countries who are sold into sexual slavery, raped, beaten, and held prisoners without payment for turning tricks. Of course the stories were horrifying (though not quite as bad as the one I heard on NPR once of an Albanian woman who’d been so severely beaten so many times by her pimp that she no longer had arms or legs: thrown out of a moving car a few too many times).

Not a good bedtime story, anyway. Not good.

I wound up having horrible nightmares. I was being held captive by the guy I lost my virginity to. He was crazy and going to torture and kill me. The look in his eyes was totally insane and no matter where I went, he was there. Everything was locked up but eventually I somehow made it out onto the roof but realized that even if I flew away he would follow me.

I woke up panting and sweating. I *hate* that shit.

I am looking at a community notification flier. With a picture of a guy with scary unrepentant predatory straight-staring eyes and a really freaky closely-shaved haircut. I have another picture of him . . . and me standing next to him ten years earlier. Innocently average and handsome for a homecoming dance. Wow. The same guy. It’s the same guy. The same guy I determined to have pop my cherry when I was 18 years old. My dad always told me I had a taste for shit.

I know it probably sounds bizarre but . . . I don’t regret losing my virginity to him. Even though he tried to tell me afterwards that my mom paid him to have sex with me (which I almost believed even though I knew if my mom would have paid someone to sexually initiate me it wouldn’t have been *him* — she tried to talk me into losing it to someone more “experienced” but I insisted that he was the fellow virgin with whom I intended to share this rite of passage). Even though it’s nothing to brag about and the thought of having intimate memories revolving around this disturbing person should make me shudder and wish to forget . . . I don’t wish I never knew him or did it with him. I can’t explain it. My mom thinks I have a potentially dangerous fascination with people who are bizarre and live on the fringes bordering normalcy. I guess she’s right.

I just want to try to understand. The dangerous part is that inside me there’s an unshakable belief (delusion?) that we are all the same. It’s an ideal I cling to for the sheer horror and soaring hope that it gives me. Or maybe that’s the justification I use to pursue my macabre fascination and unusually high comfort level with freaky people.

This sounds off the subject, but I am feeling the need to read more Carson McCullers. I love her and her characters so much. Reflections in a Golden Eye is what I need to read right now.

I remember catching him in the alley when I was 16. And knowing but not really caring that he wasn’t just walking to a friend’s the way he said. Knowing there was a different reason for him being in the dark alley where the inside of my sister’s and my bedroom was visible through the wooden blinds.

I remember being 18 and finally having an unspoken fantasy come true. He knocked on our bedroom window. And I came out and we fucked standing on the cinder-block steps outside our back door while my mom slept inside and my sister wound up waking up and asking what was going on.

I remember being 19 (after he and I stopped talking and no longer fucked) and sleeping by myself in the detached garage we had converted into a bedroom. I remember all of the times I’d lie in the dark there listening to what I *knew* were human noises right outside my door. Whoever it was would get in there stealthily enough to not set off the motion detector. I wonder how many times I took a trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night and might have sleepily walked right past what must have been him. I remember I lay there alone once in the middle of the night, disconnected from the house and my mom and my sister. And this time he tried to open my door. It was locked. He knocked. He tried repeatedly to turn the doorknob. He wouldn’t answer me when I asked who was there. He didn’t say anything. I didn’t know who it was. I always wondered if it was him but never thought it was. It didn’t line up right. I never thought he would be that weird with me. So silent and anonymous with me who was not a stranger. The rest of that night I laid there in bed scared to death and having to piss like a racehorse until the sun came up.

But today looking at this flier I realize it must have been him. It must have been him. Two years before he was convicted for sneaking into people’s houses and touching girls he didn’t know in their sleep. Criminal Trespass. Sexually Motivated Felony. Did he grab something to steal on the way in?? Or while he was running out??

I probably would have opened the door in the middle of that night if I’d have known it was him. If he would have said something. But I don’t think that’s the way it was supposed to work. I wonder if I knew him before he knew what he wanted. I wonder if he got caught and convicted before he knew what he really was going to do. Or if that was all there was to it for him. Supposedly that’s pretty unlikely statistically speaking. People like this (like what?) usually mature as criminal freaks, with their crimes escalating in severity and violence and seriousness and perversion as time goes on.

What would have happened if my door had been unlocked? What would have happened if I would have opened it? There is such a range of possibilities. Sad. Scary. Or fumbling to retain normalcy.

Oh well. Who cares?? I’m going to Memphis.

But first I’m going to drive to the end of the road. In the twilight. And drive slowly looking in windows lit from the inside. Knowing that he’s probably in one of them. A beastly self-centered miserable mystery.

And later tonight I will drive home to my safe city so I don’t have to sleep here less than a mile away from where he probably is. So I don’t have to lie here and remember what it was like to imagine that someone was outside watching me. To imagine someone was close to my door. To tell myself I had an overactive imagination but then wind up experiencing the bizarre intersection of reality and paranoid suspicion.

I can’t recall if I ever mentioned this before, but the guy I lost my virginity to when I was 18 is now a registered sex offender. My sister found this out a few years ago quite by chance by punching in the zip code of our small hometown into an online database of level 2 and 3 sex offenders. And there he was. Anyway, I never did find out exactly what he did (online it just says he’s a level 2 sex offender and his crime was a “sexually motivated felony”).

Well, last night my mom called to tell me that she saw a community notice posted at the fire station (don’t ask me why my mom was hanging out at the fire station) warning residents of his move within our town. Why the fuck doesn’t he get out of our town?? God! You’d think he’d move somewhere where nobody knows him. WHY has he chosen to reside in this small town for the past six years since his criminal activities? Now he is living up the road from my mom and dad and grandma and grandpa. Which is odd because the last time I drove up that road all the way to the end I had the distinct feeling he was there. Eerie.

Anyway, my mom didn’t take the time to read the whole notice (I plan on reading it quite thoroughly when I go visit day after tomorrow) but apparently he was breaking into people’s houses and climbing into bed with them. Apparently not raping them but hopping into bed and fondling them. A mother with her four year old son. An 11 year old kid. Who the fuck knows what else. . . .

Are my wierdo-detecting sensors messed up? I used to think he was just being melodramatic when he told me that he was a bad person and did really bad things. As far as I know he started doing this shit long after we were doing our thing together. Who knows, maybe I turned him into a freaky pervert?

There’s a part of me that is shock-resistant. That doesn’t believe that some people are “worse” than others and that we’re *all* capable of doing amazingly crazy, bizarre and violent shit. With him it always seemed as though he were trying to *prove* he was a freak, not that he really was. He believed he was *so* different. I believed he was just obsessed with himself and his perceived differences to the point where he lost all perspective. I remember him telling me about his stepdad coming in and sitting on the bed while he was sleeping. Or *pretending* to sleep. And his stepdad stroking his thigh while he “slept”. That’s it. That’s all. Gross, but apparently that is all the sexual violation he suffered. I then shared with him things that had happened to *me* that were more violating. Not to discount his experience with nastiness, but to just let him know I knew what it felt like.

I remember a year later the subject came up and he had absolutely no recollection that I’d told him I experienced anything like that. His mind was so completely absorbed with his *own* experiences he just had no room for thinking about anybody else. The fact that he seemed to be missing the ability to empathize with others — that’s the one time I recognized that he might indeed be different and bad. Well, I guess that and the time that he told me that he always felt like a million spiders were crawling all over him after we finished having sex.