every kitten figures out how to get down, whether or not you ever show up

[lotesse]

This essay from an anonymous female international journalist describing her assault by a respected male member of her field is intense and gorgeous: "There’s a little irony I appreciate here because, the evening I got groped and ‘be a good girl’d, the Very Respected Journalist and I had been discussing Philip Roth in the bar where we went for drinks. We talked about the American novel in the twentieth century – he was defending Updike, I was making the case that the line-up would be better if we replaced Mailer with Auster – we were exchanging these ideas as though we were two equals. As though I was a member of the club of Very Respected Journalists who I respected so very much. Two hours later, however, I had nothing intelligent to add as he forcibly tried to prise my legs apart and I just repeatedly, sickly and quietly, 'no, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, please, can you stop.'

"I guess if Philip Roth wrote that scene it would be a profound comment on the human condition. I write it and it just makes me – unheroically, so unlike a Very Respected Journalist – want to sit in the shower until I have scrubbed my skin off."

(hat tip to Shakesville for the link)