by Liz Phair
Over the course of the next few weeks, he took every opportunity to proposition me, although everyone knew he was married to one of the other executives at the agency. One time, he dashed into an elevator to catch me alone and opened a jewelry box containing an expensive pair of earrings and a necklace, saying I could have them if I fucked him. He told me he had given similar gifts to other women who worked there after they slept with him, so I shouldn’t feel weird about accepting this arrangement. He was sickeningly brazen, leering at me when no one else was looking. For the rest of my internship I had to watch where I walked, and make sure not to go anywhere I could be cornered.
It was exhausting, and I ended up dating a junior art director just to feel protected. I never told anyone about it. I learned later that this was how corporate assholes operated: The predators would dive right in whenever a new girl arrived, to “claim” her before any of the other guys could get their claws in. They were like circling seagulls picking off newborn turtle hatchlings before they could make it to the sea. I soon discovered that these douchebags were everywhere, and they were ready for us.
My next summer job was waitressing in one of the nicer restaurants at Ravinia, a refined outdoor music park north of Chicago. I often had to help with the food prep and got heckled by the kitchen staff on a daily basis. They discussed my body openly, scrutinizing my appearance, breaking it down into parts. The casual chatter didn’t bother me so much. It was annoying, but I was young, pretty, and proud to be noticed. When they crossed the line into assault, though, I felt everything change. I had that sinking awareness that, once again, I wasn’t safe.
I was carrying one of the heavy ice bins over my head, hustling to set up the buffet line before the doors opened. As I crossed through the kitchen, one of the prep chefs pulled my shorts and underwear down in front of everyone. I think he only meant to get my shorts off, to “pants” me, so to speak, but there I stood, naked from the waist down in front of fifteen men I didn’t know while they gawked at my ass and crotch. I couldn’t pull my clothes up right away, because I was balancing the ice bin over my head, and hundreds of ice cubes would have spilled on the floor. But it was deeply humiliating and dehumanizing. If it happened to me today, I would chuck the entire contents of the bin at them, ruining their carefully chopped vegetables. But back then I didn’t feel I could do that. They had seniority. They had skills. They were harder to replace than me.
All I was trying to do was show that I was competent, that I could follow directions. I was nineteen. It was clear from their smirks that they had planned this ambush, had dared their co-worker to carry out the prank on me, and it had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Maybe it wouldn’t have felt so violating if the people who saw me naked were friends, or if I were in a familiar environment. But I was at work. I had to perform my job alongside these guys for the rest of the summer. Some of them came from the city, but a lot of them were from my high school, and others were college kids like me. I blushed and cried in the bathroom, this time telling a supervisor, who did nothing about it. They were scolded gruffly for about a minute, and that was the end of the incident. It confirmed for me what I already knew: that my body was not my own sovereign territory. It was a war zone that strangers and neighbors perpetually tried to invade. I had to stay vigilant and suspicious, defending myself in even the most ordinary circumstances.
I had stalkers in college. Odd, awkward men who followed me around and wrote me frighteningly personal, minutely observational notes. They could not be persuaded to leave me alone, even after I confronted them and tearfully begged them to stop. Not even after the college administration warned them to stay away from me. To know that you’re being hunted, that your movements around campus are being tracked, that your private conversations are being overheard, is a nightmare. I can still recall the horrible feeling of coming around the corner and running into a certain young man who never smiled at me or greeted me, although by then I was perfectly aware of who he was. It was like waiting and wondering when you were going to be murdered.
When I received an alumni association award from my high school recently, a stalker bought tickets and followed me around the ceremony, grabbing my arm and insisting I read a folder of his poetry. While I was being swamped by well-wishers and old classmates, he singled out my family members one by one and discussed my career with them. I watched helplessly, unable to extricate myself from my own conversations to intercede. I couldn’t make the event organizers grasp the level of distress it was causing me. The worst moment came when I saw him talking to my son. I couldn’t force this man to leave; he’d bought a ticket. After the ceremony, I ended up hiding in the freezing cold outside the hotel, praying for the valet to hurry up and bring my car around. I watched through the window as my stalker searched the lobby for me like a fox sniffing out a field mouse in the snow. It ruined what should have been a moment of satisfaction and accomplishment.
I did a semester away during my junior year of college, assisting various visual artists in New York. I had a wonderful experience working for Nancy Spero and her husband, Leon Golub, and organizing the archives of a printmaker whose studio was located near Columbus Circle. But it was the third internship I signed up for that became problematic. Once a week, I stretched canvases for a painter on the Upper East Side. I stapled the borders, pulling the edges tight, then covered the fabric with steaming hot, stinking rabbit-skin glue. The painter and I worked alone together in his studio. He was very nice to me and took me out to eat every day. After a while, he started taking off his clothes and painting in his thin white cotton briefs. I pretended not to notice, not sure what I’d say anyway. What did I know? Maybe he was hot. It was his studio. What right did I have to tell him what to do? One day, while I was straddling a canvas frame that lay flat on the floor, he came up behind me and pressed his dick into my ass. I immediately made an excuse and left.
I went to the program coordinator, a woman, and told her what had happened to me. I said I didn’t want to go back. Since I was hoping to receive school credit for the experience, just not showing up again wasn’t an option. The coordinator called the artist and told him what I’d said about him. He was a longtime participant in the program and had never had any other complaints recorded against him. He denied doing it, and I could see the coordinator’s face change as she heard his side. It would certainly be easier for her if she could rely on him again. She forced me to go to his studio by myself and confront him with my allegations. I was shaking and stammering, my voice barely audible as I struggled to find the formal language to describe what offense he’d committed. He stood there smirking at me, sarcastically quipping, “Oh, is that what I did?” He had deluded himself into thinking I was giving him signals of consent when I knew perfectly well I’d done no such thing. He was in his forties, and I was barely twenty. He treated me like I was uptight.
I’ve had a president of a record label show me pornographic picture books in his office and instruct me to show him which positions I liked. I’ve been told by a president of a different record label to let radio programmers feel me up a little, because it would be good for my career.
I was offered a stipend of five thousand dollars a month by yet another record-label president to be his live-in mistress. I told him my monthly expenditures were twice that much, and would he kindly fuck off.
I’ve had my body discussed openly in a meeting at one of these labels, and compared to other female artists’ bodies in intimate detail—my various parts rated in front of my A&R representative, my producer, and my boyfriend.
I’ve been screamed at, threatened with homelessness, and warned that I’d never work again if I didn’t go along with a sexy, seminude photo shoot.
I’ve taken casting meetings with famous movie directors who spent the whole time asking me what kind of sex I liked, what positions I was good at, and what physical type I preferred in a partner.
I’ve had
my manager arrange business meetings with entertainment attorneys, producers, and music supervisors, only to have them try to force their tongues into my mouth.
Note to potential employers: I don’t take casual meetings anymore, as a rule. Either give me the job or don’t, but I will never meet you for drinks or dinner to “discuss an opportunity.”
I’ve had boyfriends get so jealous they’ve punched walls, doors, and even a car windshield once. I almost never date anymore.
I’ve had male fans follow me around airports, doggedly pursuing me, telling me why they’d be my perfect boyfriend. My tour manager didn’t believe me until one guy showed up four times in various parts of the terminal. We couldn’t shake him, no matter how far or fast we ran. I was desperate, because even some women don’t validate your experiences until they see it with their own eyes. “Oh, I’m sure he didn’t mean it.” “Oh, I’m sure he’s gone now.” Wrong.
Married men at parties, mentally ill men outside of shows, crazy-eyed drunk guys on airplanes, dudes who think we shared a moment of connection and who don’t want to take no for an answer.
Where does my list start, and where does it end? Where does your list start? Your sister’s list, your mom’s, your best friend’s? Where does it end? “Women Have Problems Handling Men” is not exactly an earth-shattering headline. Sometimes it feels like the problem is so big that we’ll never find our way past it. At other times, a safer world for women seems like it’s waiting just around the corner.
There’s no doubt this history has shaped my psyche and informed my art. I wish I didn’t need to have the knowledge and skills I’ve acquired from navigating the treacherous waters of the male appetite. But I do. And if my sharing this helps one girl not feel sullied or ashamed of the way she’s been treated by a selfish dickhead, then maybe it was worth it.
I had strong parents and a strong community around me. I was a lot luckier than most. And I still felt able to explore my own sexuality in adolescence. But silence is the main character in this tragedy. You simply cannot write it out of the picture.
* * *
—
My heart races as I click through every link on social media reporting details of the scandal swirling around my producer, fearful of seeing my name attached to his. My fans know that we were working on an album together, and that it got mysteriously scrapped. Now it appears that I will have to explain why. I have twelve missed calls and countless unread messages already, and it isn’t even ten o’clock. I wonder, Can I sit this one out? Can I duck this wave? My take is not germane to the controversy, I tell myself, even though my dealings with him clearly echo those outlined by the other women in the New York Times piece. I know I ought to validate them in some way, but I feel strangely paralyzed. A lifetime’s worth of coping mechanisms have left me walled up in an impenetrable fortress of denial.
I don’t feel like addressing this firestorm at all. I mean, seriously, what am I going to say? “Me too?” I hate thinking about the awful situations I’ve come through, and this guy is hardly the worst monster I’ve encountered. This fucking #MeToo movement is never going to end, because there is too much buried pain in the lives of women, too many incidents that take place when no other witnesses are present. You can’t prove any of this shit, because the assholes who do this stuff get the girls alone before they try anything.
Did he hit on me? Yes. Did I take him up on it? No. Is that why he lost interest in our record? Maybe, partially. But that’s not the main reason things didn’t work out in the studio between us. Not enough money, no label, other projects beckoning both of us, and mismatched approaches to the recording process were all factors in the decision to abandon ship. Still, a thought continues to nag at me. I remember confessing to my friend in the car one night that I didn’t think he’d ever finish the album unless I slept with him. I’d been afraid to say it out loud. It sounded conceited. I didn’t mean that he was all fired up about me in any real or significant sense. Just that I suspected from the way he blew hot and cold that without that extra kick of excitement, that frisson, his own interest in the project wouldn’t last.
Truth is, compared to the transgressions of other powerful, unscrupulous men, his behavior toward me was almost acceptable. He actually tried to inspire me, and to create an opportunity for us to make art. But in other ways he used me. When his demons were rattling him, I would stop communicating and let whatever irritation I felt die down. He was a pain in the ass, mercurial, constantly changing his agenda from one day to the next, but he was also hilarious, a brilliant improviser, and a genuinely hopeful, helpful (when he wanted to be), sensitive person. I mostly liked him a lot.
At this stage in my career, his stature in the industry didn’t intimidate me. There wasn’t an imbalance of power between us. I never considered him aggressive; I never felt coerced. He did blast our project out over social media before he should have, to garner as much press as possible for his own latest release—milking my name for all it was worth—then promptly fucking off on tour for six months, leaving my songs to languish unfinished. That stung. The fucker.
He pestered me about a photo of my ass, and mentioned that he knew just what to do with my type of butt. But he also talked about books and space and Star Wars. I enjoyed hanging out at his studio and getting stoned with him. He was a reliable source of weed when it was still illegal. Anytime he got sentimental or romantic, I changed the subject. As one does. I never thought he really meant any of it. He was fun. Some of my friends who recorded with him back in the day still refer to him as “the Devil.” He can be maddening. He adores his cats. That’s about all I know for sure. I never suspected that he was a manipulator on the level being described here. Then again, I learned from a young age that just because you don’t see the behavior doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
One thing that really jumps out at me in the reporting is how this man seemed to seek out and home in on women who were in need of help somehow, who were insecure or a little lost for some reason. Whether that was because he could manipulate them more easily or because he related to that state of mind himself, I don’t know.
When he first approached me about us making a record together, I was floundering. I was in the dead zone career-wise, and bereft. My life as a mom was coming to a close as my son was preparing to go off to college. I was unsure how to get back into the rock-and-roll game, how to be Liz Phair again. I wanted to reclaim the life I’d had as an artist, but I felt cut adrift from my previous career. My producer was an excellent muse for a while, giving me song prompts to get me writing again. He really listened to the songs I sent him. It was moving to have another songwriter care about my writing process. I became effortlessly prolific under his tutelage, enjoying the fluency of our communication.
When it came time to record in the studio, however, our approaches clashed. Instead of complementing each other’s abilities, we got in each other’s way. I asserted myself more than he liked in the studio. I didn’t want to play ingenue to his Svengali. This was my music. I needed to connect to the process, but I felt increasingly off-balance. When I complained, he said he was intentionally staging our sessions to make me feel that way. He told me that I should get in touch with being inexperienced and on the verge of losing control. That piece of direction takes on an unsettling cast when you look at his attempts to seduce teenagers. What the hell was he thinking? He said that was where the Guyville magic came from, and I believed him; but what we were tracking sounded sloppy and unrehearsed. He preferred to wing it and see what we captured. That wasn’t how I like to work, but I didn’t say anything. I went along with his plan. I kept going along with his plans, because he was the one with the studio.
Now I’m glad we never finished. I don’t have to carry the stigma of his tarnished reputation when I look back on my catalog. I get to have sympathy, because everyone can see how hard he was to accommodate, and my resistance to his control looks like
good judgment. It wasn’t, really. I wanted to make that record. I wanted it more than he did. But I wasn’t willing to compromise myself to do it.
* * *
—
This winter, before the story came out about his misdeeds, I saw him proudly post about completing rehab. I called my manager to ask if I should try one more time to get the songs we worked on into shape. I was still totally willing to work it out. That’s when my manager told me he was in serious trouble, for something he wouldn’t specify, and that I absolutely should not resurrect the association. My immediate concern was for his well-being. I thought about reaching out, but I’d been given the information in strict confidence and knew I couldn’t contact him. I immediately guessed that the trouble was in line with what it turned out to be, but there’s a difference between hearing about something in the abstract and reading a firsthand account of it.
As I write, I’m looking at his picture and imagining him confronting me about this essay. In my mind, he’s standing three or four feet away from me with a tough and defiant expression on his face—daring me to try it. We are deciding whether or not to hug in greeting. “You know how you always hate what I write at first?” I say. “How when I’m confrontational, it offends and hurts you? But then you read it again later and realize it’s not as bad as you think, and you understand what I’m trying to say?” He has his arms crossed and his legs planted far apart, not budging an inch. “Well, take another crack at this in a year or two and really listen,” I tell him. “Don’t just react to the assault on your ego. I’m defending you. I’m defending you when you’re indefensible.”
