Me Too Part two

Part 2:

When I was a young kid living in Oak Park Michigan, I remember neighbor kids  having videotapes of explicit pornography. When their parents weren't home, a group of neighborhood kids would gather around these kids  giant living room  television consoles  to take in the terribly bad acting and sexual acts between the men and women porn stars who were paid for their obscene performances. Kids can be  curious, and parents can be negligent.

When I was a young  kid, I remember going to the drive in movie theater with my mom and step dad to see movies like "Porkys", and "Cheech and Chong", "Fast times at Ridgemont high" etc etc etc.. When a sexually explicit scene would begin, my mom and stepdad would hold up a large yellow Tupperware bowl full of popcorn between the two front seats they were occupying to prevent my eyes from viewing the content. It never worked, but there was something obviously  in them that knew I shouldn't be watching , because their instinct in the moment was to block me from seeing.

When I was 15,  I went to a Kronk Boxing match event held at  a large hotel in the Detroit area. My moms friend Norman had invited us. They were looking for girls to hold the round cards...you know the "ring girls". My mom volunteered me. I was given a pair of short tight boxing shorts and a tight half shirt and sent to the hotel bathroom for a wardrobe change. I can't remember how much money I made, but it was enough to make me want to come back  and work another event.  I was so  uncomfortable  the second time I went,  I  hung up my short shorts and my  short lived "career" as a ring girl. 

My mom didn't mean any harm, she was just really excited that I had the physique to do something like this. She was always a little insecure about her own build. She grew up in a very different era than I did and just parented to the best of her ability in the culture we were in. Not long after this, I started wearing alot of baggy clothes, tie dye shirts and such. She could never understand why I would waste "such a body" with my ugly clothes. I didn't really understand it either. But it more or less protected me from sexually explicit comments I'd receive as a young teenager.

Daytona Beach:

Before my baggy clothes phase, I remember going to Daytona beach with my mom and getting catcalled by men old enough to be my father. It was disturbing. And it wasn't every man, but one in a thousand is enough to make you sick about the world you live in. When you're a kid, you want to believe that most grownups have it all together and are safe people. When you're a young teen and that stuff happens to you, you realize how corrupt and unstable the world really is.

Dunkin Donuts:

When I had just turned 16 years old,  I told my mom I was spending the night at a friends house. The friend told her dad she was spending the night at my house. We both spent the night on acid and ended up in the parking lot of farmer Jacks and Dunkin Donuts In Union Lake, Michigan. We terrorized the midnight shift at Farmer jacks by running around the store acting like clowns. It may have been fun for some of them to witness such a goofy site of two girls laughing their heads off and trying to make the fruit and vegetables speak to each other in an elaborate display in the produce section. In the parking lot , we ran amok, feeding  seagulls until they nearly attacked us because of we were holding large bags of potato chips and they seemingly were multiplying and coming from every direction . Later into the night, we sat on the curb facing an empty parking lot  and talked about life for hours and hours. We were so exhausted from our "trip" that by 5 am  we sat in my parked  car sitting in front of the  Dunkin donuts.We were  waiting for  a reasonable time we  could both go home and get some rest without raising any red flags to my mom and her dad  we'd been up to no good.

A man in his late forties or early  fifties parked his car  not far away from us and  noticed this car of two giggling young girls. He  came over to find out what we were doing. We talked for 15 or 20 minutes and had a decent light hearted  conversation. He said he was up early to go fishing.  To us, he seemed like my friends dad and had been carrying himself that way  in our conversation, so neither of us felt threatened at all.  And then in an instant,  that  changed. This strange perverse   darkness came over him, I'll never forget it, it was palpable . I was sitting  in the drivers seat of my car  while my friend was sitting in the passenger seat. The man was standing outside of the passenger side window which was rolled down. He suddenly had  this dark and perverse snickery  twitch that came over his face right   before  he said these words to  us:

 "I live just down the road, and I have cake at my house. You girls can come over and take a shower so I can  watch your naked glistening bodies". It was  disturbing, and my poor  friend was in  closer proximity to him than I was. I quickly rolled up her window as she  hit the seat lever to push her body down just to get away from his face. I was in shock at his words....he had just been so nice to us, he was so old! neither of us were prepared for what he said. And his offer was cake? ...seriously Cake?? You know what that does to a girls insecurity to hear that some pervert thinks she can be lured in by some old cake?! I pulled my car out of the spot and drove away as fast as I could. 

We saw him a year later in a Rams horn restaurant late at night on a weekend. He was sitting with another man. He didn't notice us, but we noticed him. My friend walked over to his table, told him how disgusting he was and she spit in his face, then we left. I guess she felt better...the whole thing was disturbing.

I wore baggy clothes, tie dye shirts and wrapped flannels around my waist after that episode for a year or so...it was easy because Nirvana had just introduced  grunge to the culture.  

Virgin Islands:

When I was 17 years old, my aunt had her wedding in St. Thomas. She was married in a synagogue on a mountaintop with bare feet and  sand floors. She and her husband had become close with a British couple they'd met on vacation years earlier who were in attendance. Their reception was on a mountaintop. I'd been hanging out with her new husbands   niece that week . This girl was from Seattle, and just a few years older than I . Kind of a hardcore gothic girl. During the reception, I wandered into one of the ladies rest rooms. My aunt and uncles travelling  British friend  followed me in and pinned me up against a wall and started kissing me. He told me he had been watching me at dinner and knew there were sparks between us. I was 17, I told him I didn't see sparks between us but rather I'd seen his wife. I left the bathroom and confided what happened to this girl from Seattle. She thought we had to take advantage of the situation. So she invited him out with us the next night to use him to pay for everything. It was a terrible plan, it was her way to flip the situation to give us control. I was so uncomfortable going in to the night.  We ended up ditching him early on and eventually found ourselves at a local club in the mountains with a mixture of tourists and  islanders. 

The Seattle girl met an islander at the club she wanted to leave with , and told me to just get a ride back to the hotel with his friend. This scrappy little islander drove me back to the hotel and then  followed me into my  room before he chased me around for almost 15 minutes.  I was terrified and ready to stab this guy with a pen I found on the desk. I thought I was going to  be raped. I scared him enough with my pen slashing that he left the room. I'm thankful to this day that I'm 5 foot 8 and he wasn't bigger than me. 

Rave:

When I was 19 years old, I was living in Mount Pleasant after my second year at Central Michigan University. I was renting a room from a friend. We were friends with alot of people that lived there and would have parties often. I remember people getting so drunk they'd end up making out with each other. It was hookup culture on steroids, bisexuality, homosexuality, just plain sexuality on full display. I was always disturbed by it. I loved my friends, but I didn't want to make out with any of them. I'd leave when it got to that drunken orgy point and go home or just walk downtown  by myself to clear my head.

That same summer, my roommate took me to a midnight rave in downtown Detroit.  She introduced me to some of her friends , one of them introduced us to one of the DJ's. . He offered me ecstasy which I'd never taken before. He handed me  me four pills  and told me I could take them all. I didn't know four tabs was 4 too many, most people would consume one. I have flashes of memory from the rest of that night. I remember him leading me away through some rooms that were empty, and I remember I wasn't at the rave anymore but at this guys house. I don't to this day have any idea where it was. I just know it was outside of Detroit somewhere. He raped me repeatedly throughout the night. I was completely incapacitated. My friend,  realizing I was no longer at the rave, just left and headed back to Mount Pleasant. She wasn't even concerned that I disappeared,  she never called the police. She just left. 

The next day, and it was pretty late in the day  when I started to get my head back, I was in this persons house. He offered to drive me back to Mount Pleasant and I agreed because I had no other option. It was an awkward drive. When we got there, he wouldn't leave. He introduced himself to my friends and  he actually set up his speakers and equipment in the parking lot where I lived to give my friends a show. I just went upstairs, locked my door and went to bed.

I met my first ex husband a week later. He had a van and I was ready to leave Michigan. I think my heart secretly yearned for a boyfriend to leave with so I wouldn't be exposed to the world of men without a reason and excuse not to engage with them. He was a layer of protection.  My ex husband wasn't a rapist, or a pervert as far as I could tell. He just happened to be a drug addict. its strange to see the hardness I had in my life that followed after all these events in my life. I never wanted to be controlled by men, so I was the one dealing the drugs, in charge of my relationships. I didn't like feeling controlled, so my other option was to always be the one in charge...that didn't end well either. Thats another story to tell later.

Life of Hardknocks:

Life continued to be pretty hard after that for many many years. Eventually I was divorced. In the  years that followed  I was a single mom working two waitressing jobs just to make ends meet. I eventually went back to college and completed my bachelors degree in finance. I felt I had really "pulled myself up by the bootstraps". I had MANY walls and would describe myself as a hard hearted ardent christian hating liberal at that time in my life. Why did I hate Christians? I don't really know. I believed many stereotypes about them and they were my political enemy who got in the way of progress. I was just lost and broken. And the enemy of lost and broken unrepentant shame filled people is Gods people. I didn't even know any Christians to have a reason to hate them...I just did. I thought they were stupid, gullible, unenlightened, racist, bigoted people.

Universalism and "enlightenment"

My last year or so of college around 2004,  I met a man who "pastored" a newly progressive church in West Michigan. He was in my yoga class at the Y, he was probably in his early forties and he had frosted highlights in his hair. I thought he was gay when I befriended him. He wasn't; he was actually married with kids. But that didn't stop him from inviting me to lunch to pursue our friendship. I was genuinely confused and intrigued when I learned he was the pastor of a church. But he explained he really was more of a Buddhist/ Atheist and his goal was to enlighten his flock that the bible was simply a book full of stories made by men. We talked for hours and he would often tell me he was going to quit pastoring and start a business with me "life coaching" people. I thought it was a fabulous idea. In hindsight, I can see how ridiculous it is that I actually believed I had any business life coaching anyone. I wasn't even healed myself , apparently i was good at hiding it.  We talked over coffee, he met me at the beach, he even invited my kids and I over while his wife was out of town to swim at their pool.  We were walking from his home to the beach to swim and he told me how sexually attracted he was to me but he knew his limits. He told me how intriguing single moms were.  He asked if I would come back later that night ,without my kids,  to watch this new show he loved. It was Sacha Baron Cohens new show, " Da Ali G show". I declined and stopped talking to him. . He ended up losing his "church" and now sells his wisdom online....mostly to lost  single mothers women from what I can see. 

First professional Job:

In 2005 I was working at my first professional job. A company we owned was located in the same building. I was friends with one of the sales guys, who again, was probably in his late forties and married. He invited me to lunch one day. We went and he decided he wanted to make a pit stop so he could show me his new house, this large building he'd  renovated to a large space he could rent out for weddings and such (today its used for democratic fundraisers). As soon as we walked in the building, I could sense  that weird uncomfortable dark perverse vibe I'd experienced before. I was relieved   when we left and I was back in my cubicle at work. Not long after that, maybe just a few weeks later,  he came to my cubicle to tell me about some giant big wheel he found on the internet he really wanted to show me. He had the page saved on his computer in his office. So I followed him to his office and he closed the door behind me...then he asked me for a hug, again that dark perverse snicker was there. I was glad the door wasn't locked. I declined the hug, and I got out of there, and I never talked to him again. 

Second Professional Job

In the last job I held, one of the guys would always ask  me and another gal to skip as we walked through the manufacturing plant. Of course we never did, we'd just laugh. One of the guys I talked to , like many of the employees, literally said to me in the middle of a conversation at an employee Christmas event..."I just want to give it to you so hard right now"....we were having a normal conversation, and that's what came out of his mouth. I told him he needed to find a good bible believing church. He never said stuff like that to me again. 

When Jeff and I were dating long distance....I was still working for the pharmaceutical plant. I'm a very friendly, pretty open easy to talk to person. I talk to everyone. One day, someone came in and said "the garbage guy is looking for you"....seriously, the garbage guy I'd talked to once. Later that year,  my landscaper guy sent me ridiculous text messages trying to hook up with me. I remember asking Jeff "Do I just give off slutty vibes?" I decided some things needed to change after a lifetime of inappropriateness. So much needed to change.  Sadly there's SO many more stories in between these stories...theres just TOO many to keep going so i'll switch gears here.. 

At this point I'd like to offer some   suggestions in  avoiding these situations  in life and to prevent yourself from becoming the target of sexual rape, abuse, and harassment. I've been on this earth for 42 years and I've learned a few things.

1. Be smart- its an ugly broken world so stay on guard. No one can be naive anymore

2. Don't do drugs, don't drink until you're incoherent...you avoid 90% of these situations by just avoiding being part of the drug and party culture. Enjoy a beer or a glass of wine ONLY when you're with people you know and trust.

3. Don't hang out with married men alone EVER. Don't drive in cars with them, go to lunch alone with them, meet in their office with them. Just don't. And if you're a married woman, just don't be with any man who isn't your husband alone...EVER. Don't share a ride with him to a company lunch, a company event. ride in your own car, let him take his own car, not worth saving a few bucks in gas.

4. Talk about Christ often . He's a real crowd clearer for perverts. If someone still persists, give them information for a good gospel preaching church and tell them they need Jesus, TODAY.

5. I call any male friend of mine 20 years older than me "Pops"...every one. I actually have alot of older male friends because I play pickleball. I've only had one situation that made me uncomfortable, every else is a gem....I call them all pops....they're all old enough to be my pops...almost all  of them treat me like a daughter and well calling them "pops" just establishes that I view them that way.

6. Call people out in love when they cross the line, rebuke them to their face instead of behind their back. If you think they might be an actual assault threat, tell your HR department if youre at work, and  the women you work with. If you're assaulted or you believe someone is a danger, CALL the POLICE and file a report.

7. Don't believe that porn is good for your relationship, its not. Its perverse and its harmed and destroyed families and our culture. Our culture is sick because we believed for so long that it was harmless. Its not. Dont fall for the lie.

8. Don't meet with any man alone...not even a male pastor...always meet with pastors who bring their wives along for counseling. Just don't give an opportunity for bad things to happen, ever.

9. Choose wise friends, your party friends aren't usually your real friends.

10. Don't always believe people who blame Christian men for everything. The same people who were inappropriate with me through the years are the same people I see lam blasting Christian Republican white men as being evil. We're all prone to evil....and  hypocrisy evidently. 

Since I've become a christian 11 years ago now this season....I've never had a sexual advancement made towards me from a christian man in any church i've attended or my  circle of Christian friends. Not once. I know that's not true for everyone because I've heard other women with bad experiences with men in their faith circles.....that has NOT been my experience, not once. I can attest OUTSIDE my christian circle...it was CONSTANT.  So be intentional, and smart..especially when raising your kids! Talk to them!