We are upstairs in the top room of the building. Most of us are sharing rooms, but the director of our theatre show, a friend and colleague, and the only man in the group, has a spacious room to himself, replete with a couch, bookcase, a couple of grimy glasses and half a bottle of whiskey. I had teased him the day before, about his ‘director’s suite’.
But we aren’t yet toasting our triumph. The first show had been a little bumpy and now, after all the other cast members left, the director and I poured another drink and thrashed out our plan – how to make the changes needed to elevate the work just one step higher, into glory.
We’re a good team. He’s intuitive, confident, intense and emotional – trusting his vision, but open to everything that arises from anyone. I’m calm and fluid, always trying to find constructive solutions, and with an eye on the subtle dynamics of a group. This is the first time we’ve worked together, but we’ve known each other for many years, spent time in each other’s homes, happily greeted the births of each other’s children. Our partners know each other and we love each other as friends.
By the time the drink was drunk, we had talked our way to clarity. We knew what to do the next day in our afternoon rehearsal. It was late night elation, that feeling when you’re setting things straight and adrenaline is high.
He said his shoulders were really painful, he’d been anxious throughout the day, and so I sat behind him on the couch and massaged them. Not a perfunctory rub: I gave it my best, asking him if he could turn his head to the left and right, trying to knead out the hard lumps of muscle. I finished and he turned and hugged me, then kissed my cheek, then aimed for my lips. I twisted my head and his kisses landed in that awkward spot on the corner of the mouth. To deflect, I hugged him back, my body reacting with mild alarm to the unmistakeable advance.
“Goodnight,” I said, standing up. “See you in the morning.”
His eyes followed me to the door, a wistful, puppy dog look.
Walking downstairs I shook my head and smiled wryly. So, that just happened.
I was surprised, of course, and mildly flattered. It had been a long while since a man tried to kiss me. It didn’t feel terrible to be desired. I knew that he had been ‘soft on me’ years before, when we’d just met, but I’d never reciprocated and had always been in a relationship. He was in one too now, with a three-month-old child. I knew they were open, but as a mother of a four-year-old I had strong doubts about the equality of that arrangement. But, whatever, that was their choice. I had made mine.
The next morning, I awoke feeling uneasy. Something had happened, that was
undeniable. At lunch, with two good friends, I casually mentioned the ‘something’. I was
laughing it off, but they did not find it funny at all. Thank god for friends who are attuned to each other – and to the small, bright, flashing light of denial. During and after our conversation, a chain of emotions and memories was set in motion. I’d been in this kind of situation several times before. The crude dynamics were similar: a work relationship in the theatre field, a man in a position of power who wanted things I did not want to give him, the gut-twisting convolutions of managing his thwarted desire while trying to keep working together (for the sake of the art!).
Those experiences were distant, and buried, but as I walked through the streets of
Amsterdam, on my way to rehearsal, the familiar discomfort felt very acute. Was this really happening again?
SITUATION 1
I was 24 years old and had graduated from theatre school two years before. A young, eager (probably desperate) theatre director who was making her own work, as well as acting, designing, assisting with whatever she could get. My work made absolutely no money, but cost money to make. My friends and I were all in the same boat, and we just did it, no matter what. We were always hoping for a great opportunity to arise.
One day, out of the blue, I was contacted by a man I vaguely knew. I had met him
through a neighbour, who was also in the therapy business. He was a psychiatrist, a specialist in sleep disorders with a thriving practice on Harley Street in London and an entire clinic in Edinburgh. When I had first met him, about two years before, he had shown a keen interest in my career – at least that’s what I thought he was interested in. On the phone he had invited me to his house, which was in my childhood neighbourhood.
“Come over. Now. I have something I want to talk to you about.”
I arrived at his driveway, rang the bell and entered the leafy property through his electric gate. The house was large, lavish and conspicuously empty of his wife and child. I think we sat outside in the garden, where I seem to remember a peacock wandering between the plants, flaunting and guzzling. Memories have faded, and the setting was not the thing about this encounter that stuck with me. In a dizzying couple of hours I was invited to perform my new theatre piece at the Edinburgh Festival, at his venue, commanded to immediately call my collaborator to get her agreement, which I did, and then he called his travel agent to book our flights (he clearly had a lot of airmiles to spend). We probably also drank a cup of coffee. I was speechless.
He wasn’t. The next thing that I knew, there was a celebratory dinner booked for the two of us at a very expensive French restaurant and I was instructed to reappear at 8pm at his house to get in his sportscar. No, I shouldn’t drive myself to the restaurant, it was better if we took his car.
The meal was rich, in several ways. One bottle of very expensive red wine was swiftly followed by another. I hid my nerves by drinking; I hid my wariness by talking, to a psychiatrist, let’s not forget, who had me fixed in his gaze and plied me with questions, particularly about previous relationships.
Should I have gone to the dinner? Perhaps not. Could I have easily refused? No. I
certainly didn’t feel I could have. Should I have drunk so much wine? Probably not. Did I think it would help me get through the evening? Yes, indeed.
At the end of dinner we returned to his house, in his shiny status car. The trees were dark, and everything was forebodingly quiet. I stalled on the doorstep, trying to find a way to say goodbye and get into my car, but was quickly and resolutely ushered inside, for a nightcap. I was not attracted to this man, I wanted to leave, but he was extremely talkative and coercive.
Should I have let him kiss me? Of course not. Should I have kissed him back? I didn’t want to, but I did. Should I have let it go further? I wish I hadn’t.
But I do remember something of what was going through my mind.
‘Just go with the flow, then get out. Just go with it for a bit, then leave. If you play his game just a bit, you’ll get out of this with the least harm.’
When I got home in the early hours of the morning, after driving drunk and tear-blind through the streets, I was sick, sick, sick. I vomited French food and red wine until dawn and the next morning called my best friend, weeping with disgust and regret. It was already all clear. It had been a set-up, a total set-up. The invitation to Edinburgh, the hasty booking of flights, the zipping off to dinner, the car, the empty house, the wheedling, interrogative, intimate conversation, the wine, the whiskey.
And it didn’t stop there. Of course not. His attention only intensified. For the next
months, in the lead up to the Festival he tried to buy me with a series of escalating promises, and gifts that appeared with the post: first a luxury hotel stay, then books (Naomi Klein: The Beauty Myth!?!), a painting, an inscribed iPod (this was the 2000s), then an offer to fund my Master studies in the UK, then a wild promise to buy me a theatre. Buy me a theatre! The man was used to getting what he wanted, just like every other wealthy, successful narcissist.
I felt hounded, hunted, sickened by his pursuit. I didn’t read the books, I told him
directly that I was not interested, then ignored his calls, and that stupid goddamn iPod... I left it in its box for ages and then finally took it out, and with a coin I scratched out the inscription:
‘If music be the food of love…’
So, you may be wondering why the hell I didn’t just cancel the show – what kind of a spineless career artist would still go and perform? It’s the question I have asked myself many times. But a last anecdote might help with this.
At the height of the dilemma, I went to the house of a former lecturer, a mentor of mine, for advice. I explained the situation and he looked at me thoughtfully, then he took a drag of his cigarette and said to me, in a voice like a film noir parody:
“Darling, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.”
I have never forgiven him for that. And never forgiven myself for not getting out of the situation as quickly and cleanly as possible. It did harm, the deflection, the compromise. It harmed my sense of integrity and confidence. And it made me cynical.
Until recently… Now I forgive us all, even that pathetic, manipulative man. I mean, I’m older, thank god, and thanks to him, and others like him, I know what to watch out for.
I got myself into some sticky situations, this was one of them. Or, maybe I should rather say, I was manipulated into some sticky situations that I didn’t know how to get out of. And yes, let’s be clear, I also got some really shitty advice.
I am no longer an object of sexual currency – a young, pretty woman, who knows that she holds some power, but doesn’t understand its danger, or how to use it. I’m forty this year and I know what I’m worth.
So, back to the present. My friend and collaborator has tried to kiss me the night before and I am now on my way to rehearse with my female collaborators before performing our show. I notice that I am anxious about how he will treat me. Will he be moody and angry, because I didn’t ‘go with the flow’? Will I need to twist myself into strange shapes to accommodate this new, unwanted dynamic between us, and therefore in the group? I have experienced more bad behaviour than that one story, that past incident. I worked with other men who shouted and raged and vented their shit onto me and everyone around – until I drew a clear line.
This is minor in comparison, but still, I don’t like it and I don’t want to have to deal with it. That is the key thing. We are colleagues and friends. And however much our artistic process was collaborative, horizontal, as the director of the show he is in a position of power, it’s his name headlining. I don’t want to have to perform the unwelcome emotional labour of dealing with the fallout of his impulsive actions. It’s just not fair. With every step my sense of outrage builds. By the time I reach the theatre I am bristling, my armour is on.
Our work is feminist in intention and construction. We have been ‘gathered around the legacy’ of the iconic Nawal El Saadawi, Egyptian feminist writer, psychologist, doctor and activist. We have followed a meandering creative process to create a fantastic, vital piece of theatre. We have negotiated and talked our way through triggering moments, conflicts, high emotions and more. If need be, I will have to speak out. If I am treated strangely today, I will be a hypocrite not to immediately address it.
We sit in a circle on stage and greet each other. I meet the eyes of each individual in this intelligent, unique group, and I meet his eyes, those of my friend. I see no resentful residue in them. He starts to talk and quickly invites me to take over.
“Can you tell them what you said last night – you had it very clear?”
I do, and it’s a relief to share our plan. We are still a good team. So, then we all rehearse, and figure it out on the floor, and that night the show is the best yet. Afterwards, we bask in the pleasure of our success and later, at a bar, I drink whiskey after whiskey, and I dance on tables. I drink too much and spend the next day ill.
I will talk to my friend soon. I will explain to him how I felt, what that fleeting moment triggered in me. Because it’s not about just him, or me. I owe it to my younger self to be heard, and to every other woman who has experienced these kinds of sticky, messy, confusing, unfair situations. Speaking up, speaking out, this is how we burn out the shame and regret. Shit happens, people will try to get what they want, and there are some opportunistic, leery, manipulative men out there. But let me give you, and my younger self, some advice…
“Darling, you never gotta do anything you don’t want to.”
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