What It's Like to Be Sexually Harassed at Work - Part I

It's not scary, it's not traumatizing, it's not sympathetic. It's just sad.

Photo by Heike Trautmann on Unsplash

There is something in me that gets a hankering to write things I know no one will like. That will piss off or disgust almost everyone, for different reasons.

That feels gross, and makes me feel like the intellectual equivalent of a flasher, opening up my textual trench-coat, just to upset people. But I don’t get off on being repellant. It’s more some type of compulsion towards truth-telling, to state the dark and ugly truths, with a hope that at least one person will understand.

I’m just warning you, this is one of those stories. It’s also entirely true.

This is a “Me Too” story, from someone who had very little sympathy for Me Too.

I’ll put my cards on the table at the outset, and say that I thought most of the big headline stories were a bunch of overwrought nonsense. Oh, you wanted to be a famous movie star, so you took a meeting in a hotel room with the most notorious lech in the business, and you let him go down on you because you thought it would get you a part and eventually an Oscar. But it didn’t, and it was really gross letting an ogre like Weinstein put his mouth on you like that, and you didn’t get what you thought you would out of the deal, so now you’re seeking public adoration by playing the sexual innocent ravished by the predatorial beast. Eh, who cares. He was a lecherous ogre, and you were desperate for fame. It’s unfortunate, but not the worst tragedy in the world. That’s my view.

My story isn’t a tragedy either. It’s just a story about how these things tend to actually go down, for every-day people. I would provide a “trigger warning” about multiple physical assaults, but I don’t need to, because they won’t trigger anyone – they’re not scary, they’re pathetic.

Sorry to disappoint, but this is not a sexy story. At all. It’s not one of those stories that people read in the newspaper and become simultaneously appalled and turned on, enjoying the lurid details from a morally superior remove. There is nothing to envy here, and nothing to be turned on by. It’s grossly mundane. I was not vulnerable, nor afraid. I was not traumatized. He was not powerful, he was pitiful. The person who got hurt was his wife. There’s no tearful innocent woman overwhelmed by a predatory beast, there’s no vengeance. Just fools being weak.

But my reason for telling this story is to try to state the facts plainly, without spinning it into a sympathetic or dramatic narrative of innocence and evil. And it’s because I want to use it to illustrate why I think our laws and our cultural conceptions about these things are mostly wrong-headed, with confused underlying premises. But first I have to tell the story, before I can get to that part.

So this is Part I of the story of how I was sexually harassed as a new lawyer, by a senior lawyer in a position of authority. A man who absolutely knew better, yet did not stop himself from acting like an undignified fool. A man I mostly hated for a while, but eventually forgave and was able to laugh about the whole thing. A man that years later, I now consider a dear friend. Even his wife, who was the most done-dirty in this story, is now (as far as I can tell) over it.

It will be in three parts, because whenever I omit details, people fill them in with entirely wrong assumptions:

Part I: the background and context that built up to the first big incident. It will probably seem like there’s a bunch of irrelevant background here, but I have a point to it, in Part III, which is that the two main concepts we currently use to analyze these things, “unwelcome” conduct and “consent”, are silly, unworkable, and in some cases irrelevant, while all kinds of external environmental factors are much more important to these situations.

Part II: the ongoing circus, what happened to end it, what my calculations were in deciding how to deal with it, and how we eventually ended up friends.

Part III: some thoughts on the current state of the laws and cultural norms, why they’re mostly bullshit, and how people craft narratives to suit their own purposes and make themselves feel better. Where I think the real harm and fault lies, some possible solutions, plus a few philosophical musings on topics such as whether it’s remotely reasonable for most men to work closely with attractive young women, love, lust, free will, forgiveness, etc.

PART I – HOW I ENDED UP WRESTLING WITH MY BOSS

The Setting

The most important context here is that this all happened immediately after Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, and the world was plunging into the GFC. I was a new associate in a law firm, meaning I had the good luck NOT to have to watch half my hard-earned 401k balance disappear, like most of my coworkers. But that’s only because I barely had a balance in the first place.

If you weren’t in the workforce at the time, it’s hard to describe just how panicked the country was. The heads of all the banks had convened in Washington and scared the shit out of Congress, to convince them to cough up billions to bail them out. The bankers successfully painted a picture that the entire globe was on “the brink of systemic meltdown," one that would make the Great Depression look like a silly little dress rehearsal. No one knew when the stock market would stop plunging, and we all feared that the next day we might wake up to a ghost-town world, with empty storefronts, bread-lines, and roving bands of newly-homeless thugs.

Every week there was news of another law firm announcing mass layoffs, and we were all petrified that we were next. If you lost your job, it was clear there would be no opening to replace it. No one was hiring. The only lawyers who weren’t terrified were the bankruptcy attorneys, who were sitting pretty. I was a corporate/M&A associate, which was about the worst place to be, as every deal dried up and disappeared. If I hadn’t been able to supplement my workload the next few years by doing some bankruptcy and FDIC work, I probably would have been toast.

The point is, I had no sense of job security when this all went down. And I also had no resources to fall back on. I had purchased a 900-sq-ft junky house in a bad neighborhood the year before law school, for less than what an Audi Q8 would cost today. But any small amount of equity I had in the house was wiped out when home prices fell in the collapse. I also had about $50,000 in student loans from law school to pay off. So between my negligible 401k, my house, my mortgage, my Ford Focus, and my student loans, everything I owned in the world amounted to a net worth of about $2,000.

I had also made the somewhat insane decision to move across the country after college, to a place thousands of miles from any family, and that was where I went to law school and got licensed. So if shit went down, I didn’t have any family members I could move in with or beg to let me sleep on their couch. Nor did I have the ability to move back home, since I now owned a house that was underwater, and I couldn’t practice law in another state anyway, and no one was hiring.

So first and foremost, I needed to keep my job. I had held many crappy jobs throughout high school, college, and after graduating, and knew precisely how much worse things could be. Which was exactly why I’d decided to go to law school in the first place. Having a job where I had an actual office, with a door that shut, and I was treated with a modicum of respect and not questioned for clocking in 3 minutes late or taking an extra 90 seconds in the bathroom was like a dream come true. I was also making three times as much money as I’d ever made before, and knew exactly how lucky I was.

As it turned out, that private office with a door that closed was not quite so wonderful in all circumstances. But even once I was getting into wrestling matches with my boss, it never once crossed my mind that I could simply quit. I knew way too many lawyers out of work, and none of them could find another job.

Who Was I?

Well, I was a newly minted lawyer, and they’re all pretty much the same.

Like I said, I’d moved across the country after college, to a place where I knew literally no one. Because I thought that sounded like a fun adventure. And after being a wild-child partier who slacked my way through most of life, I got bitch-slapped in the face by the reality of how entirely worthless my BA was upon graduating. So I spent a couple years working degrading, horrendous jobs that never paid more than $12 an hour, living without health insurance, and occasionally pawning things to cover my bills. For a while, I desperately clung to fantasies of an escape route or get-rich-quick scheme. But eventually I woke up and realized there was no long-lost relative that was going to die and leave me money, and that I had to reform myself.

So I quit the partying, adopted the ascetic life of a monk, ate peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwiches every day for five years straight, took the LSAT, and became a total dork who did nothing but study. It’s amazing how much more motivation you have with skin in the game, when you’re the one going into debt and you know the only alternative is working in a call center til you die.

Because I’d spent my life valuing people who were interesting rather than successful, all my friends were fascinating total degenerates. That meant I had zero useful connections, and I knew I had to graduate at the top of my class to guarantee a good job. My personality was neither sparkling nor particularly winning, so I had no faith I’d be able to charm my way to a good position, and knew I needed the highest grades. So that’s what I did, and I landed the good job, and it was pretty damn sweet. And then immediately, the economy collapsed.

So that’s who I was: an earnest, financially insecure, over-achieving nerd with no life, who was terrified of losing her job.

I was also very pretty – let’s just get that out of the way. It’s relevant. For a story about sexual harassment, you’re going to wonder what I looked like and how I acted and dressed, so I’ll tell you. I was young and I was considered hot. Though in my mind, both those things were a detriment at work. Law firms are tradition-bound places where grey hair still rules the day, no one wants a young lawyer, and I was in a particularly conservative, religious location. I could tell that a few of the most conservative senior partners, those in the vein of Mike Pence, were simply never going to give me projects or work with me at all, because they wouldn’t even make eye contact, let alone talk to me one on one. Luckily, the Mike Pence types were a minority. Most of my coworkers were incredibly smart, great people. But I was hyper-focused on making sure that people took me seriously.

The main way I did that was by trying to be as bland and sexless as possible. Every day I wore a formless button-down shirt, work slacks, and flats. Never a skirt, never anything form-fitting – I would never even consider a short-sleeved shirt. The only jewelry I wore was grandma-like pearls, I never wore open-toed shoes or bright colors, and I kept my hair styled in a plain and boring manner: dork central was the goal. I also toned down my personality, suppressed anything spicy I was inclined to say, and was basically Ms. Boring Bland Vanilla Porridge.

My fear of being thought a bimbo tipped into outright paranoia when I got put on some “Sexy Lawyers” internet list, which I only learned about when a reporter called and asked me how I felt about it and whether I was considering suing. I was sitting at my desk, with spiked adrenaline and a bright red face, googling my name to find out what the hell she was talking about, when my email pinged and I saw the link was being circulated on the firm’s internal associate-discussion list. I sat there stammering on the phone when there was a knock on my office door, and the rest of the day was a procession of coworkers coming in to either (1) check if I was okay and sympathize, or (2) laugh and try to high-five me. The whole firm quickly found out, I was mortified, and it was an early view into the lightning rod of sexual politics at work.

Almost all my female coworkers were sympathetic. I don’t think they were faking it, they seemed to genuinely understand it was a hit, professionally, and not something you wanted marring your reputation. In particular, some of the senior female partners were VERY nice about it, and protective of me. Of course, they had lived through the era when there were almost no female lawyers at all, and they had to deal with truly rank, blatant sexism. So they were kind to me. The older men also seemed sympathetic, though awkwardly so, and mostly they were just appalled that such an undignified thing could happen on the internet, which was still sort of new to them, back then. Some of these guys were still dictating to their secretaries, and barely using email. They found the whole thing offensive and gauche. And most of the younger guys under 40 thought it was hilarious, said they wished they’d be put on a list like that, had zero comprehension why it would be embarrassing, and accused me of false modesty – some with a clear tone of resentment, and a tinge of hostility.

That’s just the way it is. There is simply no way to have a bunch of people think you’re hot, without a bunch of other people resenting you for it, and wanting to take you down a peg or three. Woe is me, I know. I’m give this background to highlight just how paranoid I was about being viewed seriously and professionally, and how much I was NOT playing up sexuality or, god forbid, ever flirting with anyone. On this factor, I truly was innocent in this story. On others, maybe not so much.

And I should note, in a win for gender parity, that we had a male associate who looked like an Abercrombie model years later, he was subjected to exactly the same treatment. In fact, it was much worse in his case, because no one bothered to hold back or try to hide it. Instead, they just overtly talked about his appearance non-stop and treated him like a himbo. He was never taken as seriously as he would have been if he wasn’t such a twink, and eventually he washed out and was asked to leave. Probably because he wasn’t paranoid like me and seemed to enjoy being called hot. So he never bothered with any measures to counteract people thinking he was an airhead.

But this incident propelled my efforts to portray myself as an unthreatening, androgynous robot into overdrive.

As an associate, your job is to impress and kiss the ass of all the partners, so that they give you good projects with increasing levels of responsibility, and good annual reviews. And you have to do this through a 6-year slog of servility, never screwing up, so that eventually they’ll all vote to make you partner too. My adherence to being a personality-free cipher of competence apparently worked, because my performance reviews were always the same: Kryptogal is a star associate with phenomenal work product, but she’s way too uptight and reserved and needs to work on being more friendly and building relationships in the firm.

(Sidenote: later, once I made partner, I dropped the act and came out blasting with my real personality. Then I heard a lot of “wow, I didn’t know you were so opinionated” lol).

So that was me. A reformed party girl turned uptight, paranoid, reserved star associate.

Who was he?

He was a partner, of course, but he wasn’t much older than me. This wasn’t a Harvey Weinstein type situation with an ogre older than my dad. He’d gone directly from college to law school, and had become a partner and was promoted to a leadership position at the youngest possible age, so he was only a couple years older. In appearance, he was a fairly standard, milquetoast WASP. Neither unattractive nor particularly handsome, neither fit nor flabby, neither short nor noticeably tall. He was almost just a perfectly generic composite of what AI might come up with if you prompted “white corporate lawyer in his 30s”. He was also, of course, the last person you’d suspect.

He was married with children, religious, and conservative – that part isn’t so surprising. He was from a prominent and well-respected local family, with several judges in his family. That’s also not surprising. But here’s what was: he was a pretty nice guy. He wasn’t volatile or wild or emotional. He didn’t drink. He was known as one of the more even-keeled, calm, mild-mannered guys in the firm. Measured, in control, politically astute, and quite well-liked. Not one of the big swinging dicks or the chest-pounding assholes. Not one of the manipulative narcissists. Not one of the neurotic stress-cases on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He was friends with everyone, and well respected. I’ll call him David in this series.

David was the last person anyone would believe would act like he did – including me.

Good God, Can You Get To the Good Part Already?

Sorry for the long wind-up.

Here’s what happened: I was working for David and he fell in love with me.

I know, I know, “in love” is a loaded phrase. It’s a thoroughly objectionable label, for a married guy with kids who was acting like a slimy rat bastard. We view being “in love” to have sacred properties, so it seems vulgar to apply it to something so sordid.

And anyway, there was nothing real about any of it, David just conjured up an imaginary love affair in his own head. He didn’t really know me, he didn’t even WANT to know me. He wasn’t curious about me, he didn’t respect me, he didn’t care about me at all, though he sure thought that he did. It was all just a lust-fueled fantasy in David’s head. I was not a real person to him, I was barely relevant at all. I was an avatar for him to look at, and project his fantasies onto. You could replace me with lots of other women, in the same situation, and the same exact thing would have happened. In fact, it has. Millions of times, all over the world.

All of that is true. He was not really in love with ME, he was in love with an entirely made-up idea of me, a figment of his own imagination.

But here’s the thing. Whatever David was, it was entirely indistinguishable from any man in love. The way he acted, and the emotional impact it had on him, was no different than any other love-drunk fool. The behaviors were precisely the same, so I’m just going to use the same word to describe it. Maybe that means I’m lacking in spiritual depth, but I don’t see a good reason to call identical behaviors something different. Maybe that’s offensive. Or maybe it just means that a man falling in love is simply not very deep or profound to begin with. It might feel like it to him, for a while. But it’s just a cocktail of hormones and neuro-transmitters, triggered by the right environmental cues. Perhaps.

So what happened is that I was working on corporate projects for him, and it all started out fine. I liked working for him, better than I did for some of the Boomer guys, who were a pain in the ass. David was nice, he was reasonable. I was not solely working for him, as only about a third of my projects were under his supervision. But law firm associates work all the time, and I rarely went home before 8 pm. So it was still a lot of time. And as an associate, it’s your job to laugh at the partner’s jokes and do their bidding and pretend that you like them. That can be dangerous.

But for a while, it was all normal, until I started noticing David seemed to be making excuses to come into my office. He was dragging things out, making assignments last longer than they should. He would bring in his notes on my drafts instead of just emailing me, and he’d stand behind my desk, and lean over me to go over his comments. That was completely unnecessary, but he wasn’t actually touching me, so I wasn’t sure if I was imagining things.

But as this went on, I started wondering if maybe he had a little crush. I didn’t have much to point to, other than sensing he was talking to me more than he should, and making up reasons to be around me. Our work was extremely boring, and he seemed too into it.

This slowly got worse. He kept spending more and more time in my office. Eventually, he made a habit of waiting until all the staff had left at night, and right when I was getting ready to leave, he’d come into my office and start talking. This infuriated me. I already spent too much time there, I wanted to get the hell out and go home. But NO, every evening he’d come in and plant his ass in a chair and I’d have to sit there for an hour listening to him talk. He’d usually start off with something work-related, but quickly it would turn into a personal or pointless conversation, with mostly him talking. I listened to him tell the same stories over and over, and even if I interrupted to indicate that I’d heard that one before, he’d just carry on, making me listen one more time.

After a few months of this, it was no longer deniable, the guy had a crush. I started to seriously dislike him, and dread having to talk to him. I tried to sneak out at the end of the day without him noticing, but he seemed to have a radar for when I was leaving, and there he’d appear.

Eventually, he was blatantly staring at me as if in a trance. He’d sometimes be talking and just trail off, staring at me with a googly-eyed look on his face, saying nothing, just far off somewhere in his own mind.

If I was out of the office for a day or two, he would tell me how much he missed me, how work was no fun without me. I could tell by his whole demeanor that he was just SO EXCITED to see me every day. It was sad. Our conversations were not that fun or interesting. Sometimes, when he was talking to me, another coworker would come in and join the conversation, and he would get visibly annoyed, jealous even, like they were stealing precious time from him. He started saying things like how much he liked talking to me, how much it helped him decompress, how I understood him.

That was not true, because by this point, I hated him, and these “conversations” were just him talking at me. I barely said anything. Sometimes I behaved in a manner that I thought was quite blatant in expressing annoyance and wanting to get away, but he either did not care, or did not notice, or was too caught up in his little fantasy of whatever it was he thought was going on.

I will admit though, that every once in a while, maybe one out of 5 or 7 visits, I’d be in a particularly good mood or he would have something actually fun and interesting to talk about, and on those occasions, I would engage in a friendly manner, laughing and participating like you do when you want to be there. I’ll also admit that I never said anything to him that would call him out. He had not yet quite crossed a clear line, and there was always plausible deniability, but I knew the truth. Saying anything seemed like it would be presumptuous and make him mad, and I could not have a guy who could fuck up my career mad at me. So that was my fault. I probably could have found a way to shut it down before it got even worse. I was a coward. I was afraid that if I offended him, he might retaliate by turning the other partners against me and talking me down. I didn’t know what he’d do.

So, depending on how busy and stressed I was, I cycled through several emotions:

1. I felt pity for him. I concluded that because David was from such a conservative, religious background, he must have no experience interacting with women who weren’t his family members. He was so unused to it that he was ripe to get a crush on any semi-viable woman in whose presence he happened to be. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but that was what I thought, because the whole thing seemed like almost an automatic reaction. Like a cat chasing a laser pointer, or a mallard going after a decoy. It didn’t feel like it was “about” me, or about anything, really, other than him having a woman in his line of sight that he thought was pretty, and that starting to mean something to him. I didn’t have any other explanation, because all the other partners I worked for were also men, and this wasn’t a problem with any of them. Just him. It was sad, that sitting in an office with someone who didn’t want to be there was the highlight of his day, so part of me pitied him.

2. I also sometimes hated his guts. This motherfucker had a wife who had never worked, who was totally dependent on him. He had kids, and during this time she became pregnant with another child. This slimy shitbag was sitting there disrespecting his pregnant wife every night and wasting my time when he should be at home with his kids. I felt sorry for her, and I loathed him, and I hated that I had to be nice enough to avoid a bad performance review.

3. Eventually, it dawned on me that he seemed to think that whatever was in his head was mutual or reciprocated, and that profoundly offended me. He didn’t say it, but that’s how he started to act. He developed an air that implied that we had a secret, unspoken thing going on. Now at the time, I had a boyfriend I was living with, which David knew perfectly well. And he also knew that my boyfriend was a sexy, artistic guy who played in a band and had a man-bun and was the total opposite of David in every way. And this vile, pompous ass had the audacity to think I would EVER be interested in his religiously-hypocritical, married with a pregnant-wife, boring, dockers-wearing ass?? When I had a hot man who actually knew and cared for me at home!? The fucking nerve. The ego. This completely enraged me that he would dare think I would be interested. I would sometimes sit there fantasizing about lunging across my desk and throttling him with my bare hands, or bashing a lamp across his skull. That’s how fucked up it was. He’s sitting there thinking about making love in the candle-light or something, and I’m thinking about violently murdering him.

Thinking back, my guess is that David assumed I thought my boyfriend was a loser, because he didn’t make much money. David probably thought he was a catch in comparison, because he made so much more money as me. He was extremely wrong about both of those things. I never gave a shit about how much money a guy made. I still don’t. I wasn’t trying to have kids, I was finally making great money myself, and this was entirely unimportant and irrelevant to me. But in David’s world, where most women didn’t work and a man’s ability to make a good living was paramount, it sort of makes sense. But that just shows how little he knew or understood a damn thing about me.

David Makes His Move

So here's how it all came to a head. We were working on a big acquisition, which was work we were lucky to have, given the economy had melted down. There was going to be a closing he would have to travel for, out of state for two nights. I did not think it was necessary for me to go, but of course he insisted I do. This was not something I could say no to, but I DREADED this trip.

As it approached, I could tell he was getting giddy. He was acting like a kid before Christmas, and I knew he was going to pull something. I was terrified he was going to use the opportunity to declare his feelings. I didn’t think he would do more than that, but I had a huge knot in my stomach, just thinking about how awkward it would be, or how I was going to maintain a professional relationship without upsetting him or making him hate me.

So we go on the trip, and when we get to the hotel, I tell the clerk my name, to check in. She can’t find the reservation. I tell her to look again. David acts innocent, and asks if there’s a problem. I ask him for the confirmation number, since his secretary was supposed to reserve the rooms. He gives it to the clerk and she says there must be some mistake, because she only has ONE room reserved, in David’s name, not two. That motherfucker. I knew it.

Years later, when this was something we could joke about, David told me that when the clerk said that, I turned and gave him the most deadly, hateful look he’d ever seen on anyone’s face in his life. The “look of death”, he called it. I believe it. I said to them, in my stoniest voice, that they better sort it out, now, and I better get my own room with my own bed, because if they couldn’t figure it out, he was going to drive me around to every hotel in town until he found one that did. I was furious.

They found me a room. David seemed a little bashful. What a jackass.

But he didn’t pull anything the first night. We spent the next day at the client’s office, working on the deal, and that night the client took us out to dinner. When they dropped us back at our hotel, we’re walking towards our rooms and he says:

Let’s watch a movie, it’s too early to go to bed.

No, I’m tired, I need to go through emails and go to sleep.

Come on, don’t be so lame, we’re on vacation!

Uh, we’re not on vacation. We have to be back at the client’s office at 8 tomorrow, I need to sleep.

You’re no fun.

Fine, I’m no fun.

I get to my room and say goodnight, but instead of continuing down the hall to his own room, he stops and stands there.

I have my key card in my hand, but I don’t want to open my door while he’s there.

And I swear to fucking God I watch some kind of….force…take over his face. He suddenly seems like he’s in an altered mind-state, like he’s hypnotized, though he’s totally sober. He looks like a different person. I get the sense he has played this scenario out in his mind so many times, and imagined what he wants to happen, that he’s resolved not to let his one chance go by, without going for it. He no longer cares. It looks like there’s someone else behind his eyes, and he’s intense, he’s serious, he's breathing hard. Whatever he’s been nurturing for months in his mind, he has let off the leash, and suddenly he’s not pretending or playing around anymore.

The change in his demeanor is so extreme that I immediately drop all pretension of pretending I don’t know what he’s thinking, or trying to be professional and polite:

David, go to your room. Now.

No.

David! I mean it! Go to your room right now. I’ll see you in the morning.

No, I want to talk.

David!! I’m serious! I’m going to bed. I’m tired. You need to go to your room.

I don’t care.

David, COME ON!! Get out of here! I want to sleep!

I don’t care.

You. Need. To. Go. To. Your. Room.

I didn’t really know what to do. Scream? Threaten to call the police? I suppose I could have, but that seemed awfully melodramatic. To be clear, I was NOT afraid he was actually going to rape me or anything. I wasn’t afraid of that at all. I was just afraid he was going to talk me to death, and confess his feelings. And I just wanted him to leave me alone, so I could take a shower and get in my PJs and go to sleep because we had to be up early the next day. I was not afraid of him, I was profoundly annoyed and did not want to spend the next hour negotiating my way out of this situation while preserving his dignity intact. But I also didn’t want to stand there any longer, so finally I said Fine! Five minutes, then you’re leaving.

I walk in, and suddenly realize there is nowhere to actually sit in a hotel room, other than a bed, and I sure as hell was not going to sit on the bed. Nor was I going to remain standing, as both places made it too easy for him to come at me. So instead, I pulled the one chair out from the little desk, and sat in that. The chair had arms on it, so I figured as long as I’m in the chair, there’s nothing he can do.

Oh, was I wrong.

I’m about to tell him “go ahead, you have five minutes,” when this mofo actually tries to climb onto my lap, straddling me like he’s a stripper giving me a goddamn lapdance.

This completely shocks me. I did not expect this, and I couldn’t believe it. It’s repulsive. It’s embarrassing. I CANNOT BELIEVE he’s doing it when he’s not even drunk. The utter boldness and lack of giving a shit is breath-taking.

He’s trying to kiss and maul me, and I am fighting him off.

I would actually pay good money to see a bird’s eye video of this little wrestling match, because it was so completely preposterous. Humorous even, in the absurdity. I’m saying Stop It! STOP!! Get OFF me!! And he is completely not giving a fuck. We are literally wrestling in an arm-chair.

It is the least sexy thing that’s ever happened in the history of the world. At one point, I am holding my hand clamped over my mouth so he can’t kiss me, whipping my head back and forth. At another, I have both my hands over HIS face, smashing it to push him away. He’s trying to grab my wrists and I’m trying to grab his. I’m smacking his hands away from my boobs. We’re both getting out of breath. It’s ridiculous.

I cannot believe he is doing this, what THE FUCK is he thinking?

I’m telling you, this was the most retarded struggle of all time. Picture what happens when a grown man is attempting to kiss and sexually maul a grown woman, but he is not willing to actually hurt her. And she is trying to prevent him from kissing or mauling her, but without actually hurting him. This wasn’t some fake LARPY rape fantasy. It wasn’t erotic or sophisticated in any manner. It was more like slapstick. In an armchair. It was whatever the total opposite of sexy is.

It probably looked a lot more like when one sibling is trying to hold down the other to give them a wet willie, than like a sexual assault. I can’t even call it a sexual assault, because he didn’t manage to kiss me or do more than paw at my chest while I slapped him away. He may have ended up kissing my hair or something, but I did not let him get at my face. We were literally chair-wrestling. I wanted him to get the fuck off me and I was NOT going to give in.

But he must have been hoping I would, because this went on for way too long. It felt like 15 minutes, but I guess it could’ve been less. It was long enough that we were both out of breath with disheveled hair and clothes.

But he did finally gave up, and collapsed onto the bed in dejection. I was right, he wasn’t going to rape me. I never thought he would. He wasn’t a psycho, he was just wanting things to play out the way he hoped, and went for broke. And in the process, he tossed every shred of dignity out the window, and there was zero point, anymore, trying to pretend this wasn’t completely embarrassing. It was all out on the table now.

So what did he do? He laid there and dumped out all his emotions. How miserable and unhappy he was, how he hated his life, how his wife just thought he was a walking paycheck, how often he’d thought of leaving her and running off with me, of marrying me, of how perfect we would be together, how happy, how he thought about me all the time, how seeing me at work was the only thing that made him happy anymore. He cried. That bastard, I actually felt slightly bad for him, at the tears. So I sat there and talked him down. It was the most pathetic thing you’ve ever seen in your life.

Once again, I was simultaneously filled with pity that a grown man had allowed himself to become so degraded, and fury that he expected me to sit there and patiently listen to his problems, as if I was his therapist. I was sitting in a chair, listening to my boss cry about his marriage while he laid on my hotel bed, and I could not believe any of it. I had not thought he was so far gone. But he’d gone through all the calculations in his head, of how much alimony he’d have to pay, how much child support, how he’d tell her, what he’d tell the firm. It was ludicrous, and I told him that none of this was ever going to happen. Apparently, he imagined I would be totally down to support his deadbeat ass by continuing to work for him, just while also being his geisha. It was so appalling it was almost comical. This motherfucker. This motherfucker’s poor wife. He was delusional. He’d built up an alternate reality in his head.

I finally convinced him to leave the room, after about two hours. We had round two of our wrestling match, this time standing up, as I walked to the door to bolt it behind him. But that one didn’t last long, it was a half-hearted attempt on his part. He was defeated.

We had another full day with the client the next day, before we could go home.

So, what do you think happened after this?

Did I turn him in at work? Tell his wife? Go for a big settlement? Change my mind and realize that I loved him after all? No, none of that.

And what about him? Was he so terrified I would turn him into HR, or his wife, that he started plotting to murder me? Was he so embarrassed that he would avoid me after this? Would he realize the error of his ways, and apologize and shape up? Would he retaliate? No, also none that.

You’ll have to read Part II to find out. It won’t be so cringe, I promise. That part’s about the continuing ordeal, what happened to end it, why I did what I did, how he got at least a bit of comeuppance, and how I came to eventually sort of appreciate the whole thing, after it was over, at least as a life lesson, and one that eventually cemented a real friendship.