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Release of that Bill Cosby deposition is making me wonder just how much of the much-vaunted Boomer “sexual revolution” of the late 60s and 70s would be described as “rape culture” today.
The line between seduction and rape wasn’t clearly patrolled in those days. Don’t be so uptight, men were constantly scolding reluctant women. Here. Have some of this – ludes, grass, wine, acid, whatever. It’ll help you shed those bourgeois inhibitions.
“Bourgeois inhibitions” being a code word for, No, I really don’t feel like fucking you.
Of course, Cosby went well over even this line by dispensing with the offer or lying about the offer – This is Benadryl! For your allergies! Ri-i-i-i-ght. Some serious psychopathology at work there. Who knew Dr. Huxtable was such a serious student of Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice?
Still. The basic modus operandus – Relax! Here – have some drugs! – was pretty much par for the course back then in the circles I ran in whether they were the political activist circles at UCB or the club circles in the back of Max’s Kansas City.
Ironically, this was the time when feminism was taking off.
###
Of course, I was a particularly vulnerable young woman. Raised by a woman with a severe borderline personality disorder. Utterly invisible, a piece of baggage in the back of this woman’s life, until suddenly, at the age of 16, I was gifted with a superpower – supernatural beauty! Helen of Troy was jealous. I had PREY written my forehead in letters that were invisible to me but clearly visible to anyone who’d ever written away to Playboy or Penthouse for those magic glasses. My experiences may not have been typical. I craved attention, and sex was a surefire way of getting attention.
Still…
###
I had to walk out of Godfather II. I’d been taken to see it by a young investment broker in New York, handsome enough, personable enough, but Not My Type so I had no interest in dating him let alone sleeping with him. But he had been very, very persistent. So I thought, I’ll go out with him this once. What harm can it do?
There was this scene in the movie…
A young hooker had just been killed by a Senator. He’d gone berserk while having sex, smashed in her head. And the Mafia guy called in to fix the situation soothed the Senator, “It’s gonna be okay. She has no family.”
Those words pierced me to the very bottom of my soul. She has no family. No one to protect her. No one to care about her. All she was was a sexual commodity.
I had no real family either.
I got up at that point and walked out.
The handsome young investment banker followed. He was furious. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!” he hissed when we were back in his Porsche.
Which I remember thinking was a bizarre thing to say. First because he didn’t ask me why I’d gotten up and left, and second because he assumed there would be other times.
Then he reached over, grabbed me by the neck, thrust his face against mine and stuck his tongue down my throat.
I broke away and slapped him. Hard.
He grabbed the top of my dress and ripped it.
I went straight for his eyes with two fingers.
I’m still not sure how I had the presence of mind to do that. This was at the height of my modeling career when I was down to about 120 pounds and looked like an Auschwitz camp counselor.
(A couple of years later, I was deep into Tai Kwon Do. With my Tai Kwon Do skills, I actually managed to roundhouse kick a guy in the face when he was trying to grab my purse once. I broke his nose.)
But anyway, I got out of the investment banker’s car, and it was weird because I didn’t even feel all that upset. This was just something else that had happened. I figured out how to rearrange the torn dress so I could subway back to the apartment on West End Avenue I crashed at when I was modeling in New York with seven other girls.
Kiki noticed the rip, asked me about it. I told her.
Kiki made a face. “Oh, one of those,” she said. Then her face brightened. “Hey, you wanna get high?”
And that was that.
I still haven’t seen Godfather II to this day.
The line between seduction and rape wasn’t clearly patrolled in those days. Don’t be so uptight, men were constantly scolding reluctant women. Here. Have some of this – ludes, grass, wine, acid, whatever. It’ll help you shed those bourgeois inhibitions.
“Bourgeois inhibitions” being a code word for, No, I really don’t feel like fucking you.
Of course, Cosby went well over even this line by dispensing with the offer or lying about the offer – This is Benadryl! For your allergies! Ri-i-i-i-ght. Some serious psychopathology at work there. Who knew Dr. Huxtable was such a serious student of Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice?
Still. The basic modus operandus – Relax! Here – have some drugs! – was pretty much par for the course back then in the circles I ran in whether they were the political activist circles at UCB or the club circles in the back of Max’s Kansas City.
Ironically, this was the time when feminism was taking off.
###
Of course, I was a particularly vulnerable young woman. Raised by a woman with a severe borderline personality disorder. Utterly invisible, a piece of baggage in the back of this woman’s life, until suddenly, at the age of 16, I was gifted with a superpower – supernatural beauty! Helen of Troy was jealous. I had PREY written my forehead in letters that were invisible to me but clearly visible to anyone who’d ever written away to Playboy or Penthouse for those magic glasses. My experiences may not have been typical. I craved attention, and sex was a surefire way of getting attention.
Still…
###
I had to walk out of Godfather II. I’d been taken to see it by a young investment broker in New York, handsome enough, personable enough, but Not My Type so I had no interest in dating him let alone sleeping with him. But he had been very, very persistent. So I thought, I’ll go out with him this once. What harm can it do?
There was this scene in the movie…
A young hooker had just been killed by a Senator. He’d gone berserk while having sex, smashed in her head. And the Mafia guy called in to fix the situation soothed the Senator, “It’s gonna be okay. She has no family.”
Those words pierced me to the very bottom of my soul. She has no family. No one to protect her. No one to care about her. All she was was a sexual commodity.
I had no real family either.
I got up at that point and walked out.
The handsome young investment banker followed. He was furious. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!” he hissed when we were back in his Porsche.
Which I remember thinking was a bizarre thing to say. First because he didn’t ask me why I’d gotten up and left, and second because he assumed there would be other times.
Then he reached over, grabbed me by the neck, thrust his face against mine and stuck his tongue down my throat.
I broke away and slapped him. Hard.
He grabbed the top of my dress and ripped it.
I went straight for his eyes with two fingers.
I’m still not sure how I had the presence of mind to do that. This was at the height of my modeling career when I was down to about 120 pounds and looked like an Auschwitz camp counselor.
(A couple of years later, I was deep into Tai Kwon Do. With my Tai Kwon Do skills, I actually managed to roundhouse kick a guy in the face when he was trying to grab my purse once. I broke his nose.)
But anyway, I got out of the investment banker’s car, and it was weird because I didn’t even feel all that upset. This was just something else that had happened. I figured out how to rearrange the torn dress so I could subway back to the apartment on West End Avenue I crashed at when I was modeling in New York with seven other girls.
Kiki noticed the rip, asked me about it. I told her.
Kiki made a face. “Oh, one of those,” she said. Then her face brightened. “Hey, you wanna get high?”
And that was that.
I still haven’t seen Godfather II to this day.
