Sexual Harassment

Trigger warning: sexual harassment, groping.

As a woman, I’ve experienced my fair share of sexual harassment in the thirty-something years I’ve been around. Catcalls from men hanging out of van windows as I walked home from school in uniform. Getting my ass grabbed in nightclubs and bars by all and everyone with a dick. That one guy who locked me in his room and refused to let me go until I fucked him again…

I’m used to sexual harassment. Uncomfortably familiar with it. Well-versed in smiling nicely whilst also trying to side-step into my escape. It’s a dance that women have had to tiptoe their way through for decades, centuries, millennia.

And it’s shit.

If you say no in too venomous a way, be prepared for that man to follow you home in the most frightening way possible, demanding to know why?

If you’re not interested in his vulgar advances, you’re going to have to get used to the fact that you’re clearly an ugly and/or frigid bitch.

And if you have the audacity to get annoyed by a man’s groping hands, he might stalk/kidnap/rape/murder you.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

It’s a tale as old as time.

Will it ever stop? Probably not. We can smash the patriarchy all we like, but where does it get us? Because I’m still petrified to talk about it. I’ve been sitting on this blog post for MONTHS. I’ve written, re-written, deleted, broken a couple of pens, thrown a lot of stuff, and cried too many tears. I don’t know if I’ll ever have the balls to share it, and I really don’t know why.

Perhaps it’s because I don’t have much in the way of evidence, so there’s little point in reporting it. I’ve collected as much as I could, but it wouldn’t be enough.

It never is.  

So, I think it’s time for my confession here, even though it’s definitely not my sin.

With a deep breath, a steady stream of tears trickling down my cheeks, and trembling hands, here we go…

I am (was?) being sexually harassed

One day, Bob hugged me for longer than necessary. Not long enough to be weird… but still, long enough and close enough for it to be weird to me. Maybe he’s having a shitty day, I thought to myself, brushing it off. I didn’t want to bring it up. What if I was the one being weird? It was probably just an innocent hug.

A few days later, there was another hug. This time, Bob pressed his body against mine, then shimmied up and down in a super inappropriate way. It made me uncomfortable. Obviously so. So much so, in fact, he made a joke about it.

I told myself, if he does it again, I’m bringing it up. I couldn’t quite believe that he was sexually harassing me. I must’ve been reading too much into things. What was fucking wrong with me?

Bob has been married to Mary for twenty-ish years…

And Mary is my blood relative.

But then, he tried to kiss me as I left their house. I think. He seemed to aim for my lips, so I turned my face, not wanting his horrid mouth anywhere near me, let alone my lips. His sloppy kiss landed on my cheek instead.

His hugs soon turned into gropes as I squirmed every which way possible to get away without causing a fuss. There’d be tiny little touches that were so tiny, I wasn’t sure he’d actually done it. A grab of the ass. A quick brush of my breasts. A hand gripping my arm with more strength than before.

I hadn’t told anyone. I couldn’t tell anyone. Maybe he’d seen that as consent? So, the next time he tried to hug (grope) me, I said, firmly and clearly, “No, thank you.”

He acknowledged how uncomfortable I felt. He even messaged me to apologise.

But it didn’t stop. Every time we were alone in a room together he’d try to touch me in some way. 

For a while, I avoided going to Bob and Mary’s home. Then, when I did need to go there, I essentially followed Mary around like a bad smell, to avoid being anywhere alone with him. She must’ve thought I was a lunatic. What was I meant to say to her, though?

Yo, I know he’s your husband and all, but I think your fella has been groping me and he won’t stop.

I’m the slutty one in the family. My loved ones have met more boyfriends (and a couple of girlfriends) than friends. Would they really believe me over him? Who was more likely to be the sex-crazed maniac – the formerly slutty, wild, unmanageable sex blogger or the happily married family man?

“Hiya mate,” he said one time. “We need to talk about Mary’s health.”

I said no. I didn’t want to talk to him about anything.

He asked again.

I guilt-tripped myself into agreeing. What if Mary, one of my loved ones, had cancer, or something else that I didn’t yet know about? What if something bad had happened? Or she’d been diagnosed with something?

I mean, it was unlikely that Bob would tell me about Mary’s health complaints before Mary did, but still, could I run that risk?

I didn’t call my grandfather one night. He’d fallen down the stairs, then died the next day.

It’s a thing for me now.

Reluctantly, I agreed to talk to him – in public, like a coffee shop, where I could scream “SEXUAL HARASSMENT” if necessary.

He drove to one of the beaches on the Isle of Sheppey, which is miles away from my house, barely has any phone signal, and is secluded during out-of-season times of year. He parked in a car park, turned off the engine, walked around to my side, opened the door, then beckoned for me to get out.

“So, what’s happening with Mary?” I asked, getting right to the point. I didn’t want to be out any longer than we had to. “Where’s the coffee shop?”

“What do you think about us becoming friends with benefits?” he replied, snaking an arm around my waist. I froze in fear and kept staring at the sky. It wasn’t a cold evening, but my whole body trembled.

This man has been in my family for close to twenty years.

And he was trying to fuck me.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” I spat, pushing his arm away. I was trying really hard to be calm. Really fucking hard. It was a dark evening and we were in a secluded car park, on the edge of the beach… again, with no phone signal. None. Zero. Not even one bar.

One thought went through my mind:

What if he left me there and drove off? Hit me? Strangled me? Drowned me?

I didn’t think he would… but I didn’t believe he was capable of sexual harassment, either.

I had lied to people about where I was going, and there’s zero phone signal at that beach.

My blood ran cold.

“Oh, come on,” he said, wrapping his arm around my waist again. “It’s just a bit of fun.”

“I want to go home now,” I said quietly.

“We’ll just walk along the beach first, then we’ll go home.”

I don’t know why I nodded and walked along the beach with him, but I did. Shellshocked. Shaking. A couple of tears escaped and slid down my cheek. He kept trying to hold my hand. I kept pulling it away. He kept pulling me closer. I kept stepping to the side. 

I made it home in one piece, thank fuck, but I cried myself to sleep that night. It scared the absolute living shit out of me, and I was furious with myself for being stupid enough to believe he’d take me to a local coffee shop… and not sexually harass me.

I avoided him at all costs after that. I stopped going to Bob and Mary’s house. In fact, I did everything in my power to stop seeing him, so he started sending progressively explicit messages. 

“You like women, don’t you?” he said in one message, with an accompanying lesbian porn video.

On the anniversary of my Gramps’ death, after he’d seen me cry with Mary about it, he said this: 

Fast-forward a few months, and I was at their house, following Mary’s every step like a lost puppy.

“Can you help me with this phone thing, mate?” Bob asked.

“Sure,” I answered, grabbing his phone, feeling safe-ish because Mary was in the room. 

Several porn tabs open. Nice. Not my business. Problem one solved, time for problem two. Oh, he’s following a shit ton of naked women and porn accounts. Lovely. Again, not my business, so I solved problem two for him. Then, it was time for problem three, which is when I saw that he was talking to several other women, the majority of which had half-naked profile pics. Still, I kept it to myself, and solved the final problem. 

And then Mary went upstairs to use the bathroom.

Seconds after she’d left the room, Bob reached over, declared that he could see the outline of my nipple through my t-shirt, then tweaked it really hard.

I recoiled, utterly repulsed, but he grabbed and bear-hugged me tight, refusing to let me go, shimmying his body up and down mine. I froze, my whole body rigid and tense, but my brain was screaming for me to elbow him, punch him, scream really loudly, anything.

“I’m getting a stiffy,” he whispered.

Thankfully, that’s when Mary came back down the stairs. Bob wandered out into the garden, probably to hide his “stiffy.” I made my excuses and left, crying all the way home.

I couldn’t understand why I kept fucking freezing. How could I just freeze like that? How could I have let him touch me like that? What the fuck was wrong with me? I should’ve punched him. Screamed for Mary. Shouted something, anything.

But I didn’t.

I politely side-stepped.

I said fucking thank you when I made the lack of consent clear.

I even tried to hide it from his wife.

Why? For him? For me?

After several sleepless nights, half a mental breakdown, and a couple of minor family arguments, I decided to tell Mary…

Nothing happened. Nothing has changed. They’re still together. He doesn’t know that she knows. Mary said, she believed me… but how can she believe me and still be with him? How can she act like absolutely nothing is wrong?  

I now avoid family events that Bob attends. I’m never in a room with him. Never. Not even for a second. I don’t look at him. I don’t talk to him. He doesn’t exist to me. People have noticed, but I just scowl when they ask me. What’s the point in me telling more people who probably won’t believe me?

Well, with the exception of that one other female relative… who told me that Bob once did the same thing to her, too. (I had a hunch, which is why I spoke to her about it.)

And she was a fucking child at the time.

I’ve never understood the need or desire to murder someone until now. Now, I get it. I’m a rational, law-abiding (ish) human being, so it’s all thoughts and no action… but I get it. Some people just don’t deserve to breathe.

Instead of resorting to literal murder, I told him to leave me alone, then blocked him everywhere.

He blamed me. Obviously. 

This whole situation has fucked me up a great deal, folks. It’s been fucking me up for almost two years.

I’m so tired of life testing me.

I’m just damn tired.