Yes, Me Too. It Was My Secret for Years.

I didn’t hesitate to chime in on Facebook to post “me too” — to say — yes, yes, indeed, I had been sexually harassed or assaulted. The truth is that I had been harboring the story of what had happened to me for nearly 45 years.

It was my dirty little secret — one I could pull out at whim when I needed to make myself seem vulnerable. To admit to vulnerability. To be a victim. It was the excuse I kept in my back pocket to get out of jury duty when they asked if there was any reason I could not be impartial in a criminal case.

Truth be told, I could not be impartial. And it was not an excuse. I couldn’t tell you the name of the movie I saw last week. But I could lay out in exquisite detail what happened to me when I was walking home on a chill-to-the bone Ides-of-March Day when I was 16 years old. I could tell you what I was wearing that day — my favorite corduroy jacket with the fake sheepskin lining and my patched-up baggy jeans.

I could tell you that my hair lay flat and long, I had not discovered makeup, and that I didn’t think I was pretty like my friend Toni.

I could tell you that when I got off the bus that day, peering down the long block that would connect me to my home, that I could remember seeing him from a distance. There he stood still at the edge of the road, a gaping wide avenue usually filled with passing cars and kids, and families walking home from the Chinese buffet. That day the street was empty.

As I neared the end of the block past the house I would pass almost every day on my way to the bus to take me downtown to school, I noticed him knocking at the black front door. But no one answered. And as he turned slowly to face me, I remember thinking, I should just cross the street. I can’t put my finger on why. Nor why I did not listen to that voice telling me to do so. But I did not.

He walked toward me, as if in slow motion. He called out to me, “hey!” And in that fleeting moment, as I turned to look at him, I saw the glint of a long knife. He was tall and muscular, and not much older than me. He commanded me to come with him. I could have screamed. I could have run. But I could not. I stood firmly in place, weighing my options.

One minute I was walking home from the day’s events with my best friend Karin, and thinking only about the dinner waiting for me at home and the evening’s babysitting job in two hours’ time. And the next, I was being dragged, a knife at my throat, to the back of an outdoor shed, out of view from the street and behind the very house that until that very moment of time was just a place I passed every day — with the black door and the long driveway.

He ordered me to lay down on the cold, hard, mossy mound of dirt. “Take off your pants,” he barked. He had the knife pointed at my chest, he towered over me, and all I could think about was that I had not bargained for this end to my day. I had my parents waiting for me, and a babysitting job. And my two sisters. And my dog Butch. And I might not make it home.

As I peered up at the gray sky that mid-March Day, my mind was rife with calculations. If I did scream out, would anyone hear me? How long, oh how long, would it take for him to decide to use the knife he had since tucked away in his back pocket? Would he hurt me? Would I live?

So, I did what I was told. I laid down on my back, and I felt an out-of-body tug as he pulled my pants down my legs, tore off the buttons of my favorite corduroy jacket, and pulled up my shirt. I felt the full weight of his body go heavy against mine. I felt myself go slack. I cannot tell you how long I lay there for sure. It could have been minutes. It could have been a half hour. But I remember feeling like I had been cast in some strange version of a “this is your life” movie. Except I didn’t know the ending.

As I lay there, listening only to the sounds of his heavy breathing, I tried to take a brief inventory of all the things that had brought me to this place and time. I was only 16, and my list was not that long. I had not yet driven a car or found true love or a grand passion. My footprint in this world was small.

I was jolted out from these thoughts rumbling through my head by the piercing voices of three young boys. They couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8. Clearly, they knew him. “Get out of here,” he hissed. And they ran away, laughing, yelling, “Ooh, I’m going to tell on you!”

No sooner had the boys disappeared, then he stood up abruptly, pulling up his pants and telling me to get up and go. But first he asked me for my phone number. What? As if what had just happened had been some mutual falling together. As if we had planned this random rendezvous outside on a cold, damp day in March, behind an outdoor shed. I ticked off some numbers, I pulled up my pants, I fumbled for the loosened buttons on my jacket. And then I ran, breathless. I did not stop until I found my way home. I pried open the front door of the house, where my parents were waiting for me, dinner on the table, and my dog Butch to greet me.

I did not say much. But I said enough. Numbers were dialed, and the police came, and I was whisked away to a city hospital and a private room with cops and notepads. My description was good. Just an hour after my report, he was spotted, sitting nonchalantly at a pizza joint along the avenue, eating a cheese steak, with his brother who he had come to meet. I had to ID him. It was him. There was no mistaking it. He had the knife, and the kids who had found him out back had put him on the scene with me. He told them it was consensual.

He was in fact my age, and released to the custody of his parents. We went to court nearly four or five times over the next year. He was there the first time, and after that each time, someone was missing — a detective, a witness — till finally, there was just me and my parents, sitting through proceedings and dismissals and bench warrants — but no case and no day in the court.

I did not walk by that house again for years — even when I had left for college and made only weekend visits home. There were times when I thought I saw him on the street. Each time, it knocked the breath right out of me. Could it really be him?

Each time, I was brought back to that day — when the only thing that stood between me and my envisioned life was the glint of a knife. And while I slowly resumed my life, I can’t say the memory of that day did not stay with me. That it did not somehow shame me into a series of fleeting relationships with boys and men I didn’t really like. That it took me years to shake that sense of feeling powerless and inert — to find my voice and use it.

But here’s the thing. I survived that day as I would so many others that threatened to unmoor me. Undeniably, I found my voice and started using it — if only by the tap, tap, tapping sound of these computer keys. Undeniably, that thing — that terrible, horrible, no good thing — happened to me. But I survived it. I learned to drive and fell in love with a wonderful man who I married. I became a mother. I pursued a few grand passions, not all of them successfully. But the years of silence coupled with shame came at a price, and I paid that price. And I will no longer be silent. That is why I did not hesitate to use this relentlessly public space to say: Yep, yep, yeah, me too.