What does it take to establish a pattern?

Further Explorations of Vulnerability and Power

When I left San Francisco last year, I had a 300+ page manuscript under my belt that, at the time, felt like my reason for waking up in the morning. The project hit me from February to May as an urgent balm for what was then an all-consuming grief: a break from someone who, over the course of a little more than a year, had also been my reason for waking up in the morning. That they held this status while I was 10 years into a committed relationship made things complicated to say the least, but Ian, proving to be a heroically empathetic listener, chose to talk me through the decisions made at that crazed, transformative, thorny time, and we grew through it. Or from it. Or because of it. Or all three.

Still, the pain of that fresh void in my life was a different one from any I had ever experienced and I didn’t “not have words for it,” I had too many. I wrote them all down. By the time I had enrolled in an MFA program, I felt ready to shape this open wound into a piece of real art. Perfect timing, because my choice to enroll there had been a direct result of an exhilarating phone conversation I had with a professor I’ll call Steve. Steve seemed to hold onto my every word as though nothing mattered more than this manuscript. I started to feel like the ongoing pain of the dramatic ordeal had been worth it. This project could be something. Could offer something. And after losing the most influential writing collaborator and friend I’d ever had, I suddenly had a mentor of sorts who could help me take this book to the next level.

His feedback on my first 20 pages indeed guided me through the process of turning a puddle of sentence-shaped tears into something that’s worth your time. I was relieved, for every conceivable reason, and knew without a doubt that I could trust him with vulnerable work.

There were moments in his office that I felt uncomfortable but I ignored them, because his feedback made me into a stronger writer and hadn’t I just moved across the country to become one of those? He had a reputation for being “oblivious” and “stuck in the 1950’s” so of course he was going to say things off the cuff that would seem inappropriate these days. That’s just him, that’s how he is, etc. etc. etc.

I was still grateful for how readily he made himself available to me and, ultimately, for his faith in my capabilities. His standards were notoriously high and if he couldn’t stand your shit he told you that right in workshop, in a manner I often found unnecessarily vicious and even disrespectful but, at bottom, didn’t mind because he never talked that way about my work. He liked my work, and to my raw grieving heart and scalded spirit, that meant something.

There I was, then, across from him at the tiny table in his office, listening to him talk about nonfiction. “There are a lot of memoirs out there, I’m sure you know some of them, that make the narrator into either the victim or the hero,” he said. “How boring. Give me a flawed narrator.” He lingered over that word, “flawed”, with relish.

He then leaned forward, almost closing what little space was between us, and his voice dropped half-an-octave into an unmistakably seductive tone. “I think you can think of a few flaws in yourself,” he said. “Don’t you?”

Given his palpably suggestive tone and his familiarity with my manuscript, he might as well have said, “Aren’t you the one who let lust overcome her, couldn’t control your sex drive in the presence of a hot younger writer from Los Angeles?” Having written essays that mentioned his own marriage-ending affairs, he wasn’t just making me vulnerable, he was drawing a connection between his own Deviance and mine — when there are no commonalities. (What happened to me regarding the unwitting star of that story was part of a web of circumstances complex enough to fill a literal book.)

I couldn’t argue his unspoken points, though, as he looked at me with a self-satisfied smile. I was holding a gigantic reusable water bottle and I downed most of it in one gulp. “Yeah I think I’ve got that down!” I blurted out, confirming that yes I could think of some flaws, which he well knew.

Then I left the office. He didn’t touch me, but it felt like he had. I made some shaky-voiced calls and was told to report to a woman I’ll call Esmeralda.

“Well,” she said, when I laid out all the uncomfortable moments I’d been pushing back and piled this most recent one onto them. “You are a woman who writes very frankly about sex, and unfortunately, some people are just not comfortable with that.”

“He’s plenty comfortable with it,” I assured her, so socked-in-the-stomach by this shameless victim-blaming that it would be months before I realized that she’s never read my writing about sex. That she’s aware of its existence means she’s going off of what Steve told her. I laugh wryly to imagine how he might have summed up my work to a colleague he’s so close to that many people assume they’ve dated. Yeah, he’s the uncomfortable one.

Steve is so brazenly self-assured that he published a non-fiction essay in a well-known outlet (then again in a collection) about a past Title IX case against him whose investigation made him contemplate suicide but came to nothing. I found out about this essay because he shared it at a public reading, so it’s almost ridiculous not to name it here. My therapist posited that the motivation behind such an essay is a challenge and a smirk: investigate me all you want, I am untouchable.

The investigation I instigated also came to nothing because there was “no established pattern,” despite the fact that I’ve heard many rumors to the contrary. When the first woman to allege that Neil Gaiman sexually assaulted her came forward years ago, she was told that his abominable behavior was not story-worthy because there is “no established pattern.” Now, a total of five women have come forward. That’s a pattern, and one that’s likely ongoing. The accusations now stretch from 1986 to 2022.

I told the investigator that I was worried Steve might hurt someone, someone younger and more vulnerable than me. Among the rumors I’d heard — this one confirmed by several people — was that Steve had to cease his once-regular practice of holding student gatherings at his house because of reprimands about his off-campus behavior. “Has this investigation done anything to protect anyone in the future?” I asked.

Having already told me that the previous Title IX investigation had no bearing on my case because all cases are isolated (which seems to contradict the need for an established pattern), she said that if someone else came forward, having my case on record would establish a pattern. In attempt to assuage all manner of boiling feelings around this issue, I said to my therapist, “I can’t say for sure that Steve is not capable of sexual assault, but I can say for sure that his standing means everything to him and he would never do anything to damage his own reputation.”

She sighed. “Yes,” she said, “But the problem with these guys is that after years of getting away with certain behaviors, they start to wonder how far they can push the boundary.”

We can’t go quantum-punishing anyone for acts that we have hypothetical reason to worry they might commit in a possible future, but I keep hearing the refrain, “Don’t bother reporting, they won’t do anything,” applied to various cases where unequal power dynamics are at play. How is anyone supposed to be held accountable for abuses of any kind when “They won’t do anything, don’t bother reporting” is such a subdued and expected response? We’re past Take Back the Night rallies: we need to take back broad daylight.

The German newspaper Der Spiegel has dutifully reported on the Neil Gaiman allegations (my fellow non-German speakers can read the Google-translated text), but American media remains eerily silent. Edendale Strategies, a high-profile Crisis Management firm, is handling all media requests around the matter, and Gaiman is now on record asserting that, “There is no public interest in this story,” a reasonable conclusion to draw when you’ve hired a high-profile Crisis Management firm to assure as much.

Steve is not, to my knowledge, represented by Edendale Strategies, nor, to my knowledge, does he have reason to wish he were, and not just because Esmeralda has his back. Still, she does, and it makes me wonder if he’s at all grateful for the essentially-PR work she’s doing for him behind the scenes. Is anyone in power grateful for the unpaid PR work done for them by virtue of their position? Neil Gaiman allegedly said to one of his victims, “I am a very wealthy man, and I’m used to getting what I want.” Entitlement and gratitude don’t tend to go hand-in-hand.

Where does that leave us? As Gaiman’s friends in the book world and his longtime investors in the Hollywood/Netflix/Amazon Studios realms either puzzle privately or dismiss the allegations altogether — no way to know which, because they’ve not yet gone on record — I’m struggling not to see the world in stark reductive power terms. This is a new struggle for me. I’ve become adept at identifying mislaid feelings of hopelessness that masquerade as angry lash-outs. When I witness or am on the receiving end of such treatment, I tend to psychoanalyze my antagonist so minutely that by the end of my tireless emotional labor session I’m convinced I’d behave just as they did, if I were in their position.

But your friendly narrator is well aware of their “flaws.” I know where insecurity and vanity and a hunger for escape and a need for validation can get me, I know what projection and a longing to fulfill a certain self-image and a terminal weakness for clever lines and amorous behaviors can compel me to do. I know which of my early wounds still ooze with psychic puss and how susceptible I am to finding ointment in other people, specifically people I find dazzlingly attractive who’ve never had to nurse me through a breakdown.

None of this means I would abuse my authority. I would never use a student’s vulnerable manuscript — or any piece of writing — as an invitation to make insinuating remarks about their personal life. I would never treat a reader as though they should feel privileged to be speaking to me, and I can never forget that 18, 19, and 23-year-olds are impossibly younger than I am. Were I institutionally protected and swimming in accolades the way Steve and Neil Gaiman are, I still would not behave as they behave.

But that doesn’t help the women who’ve come forward, and it certainly doesn’t help the women who are still afraid to. The message from US publishing, so far, is that Gaiman’s allegations aren’t newsworthy. If Steve sets his sights on anyone else, they’ll be told to report to Esmeralda, who will likely “explain” that Steve says inappropriate things sometimes because he’s a little out of touch, old-fashioned.

There is no mask more calculating or systemically effective than cluelessness. But anyone who says “He knows exactly what he’s doing” will be asked to prove it. How do we prove it? Nothing serves as evidence until a predator unequivocally crosses a line. Too often, when lines are crossed, bystanders collectively whisper, “We knew.”

To all the survivors out there, I wish you fortifying support. To people struggling to come to grips with the notion that their loved one is a predator, I’ve been there and I know it’s a horrifying trial. I wish you courage, so that you stand with the women who need your voice right now. To all the enablers out there, fuck your cowardice: you will never be thanked by the predators you protect, but you would be shown endless gratitude by their victims if you remembered your own humanity.

Humanity is not just flawed: it’s shared. That’s where its strength is. Here’s to finding that strength, and to not having to search for too much longer.