It’d been six years as of last month and I’ve tried a few times to write about what happened that night but the truth is I still can’t really believe it did and probably I would rather just not think about it and continue living my life. This is the story, or some version of it, I hear or read from many other survivors, that their assault doesn’t define them as a person, and of course I believe them. Every experience is different and everyone has their own way of coping with something so unbelievable and traumatic. That trauma though, at least in my case, it isn’t doing me any good being bottled up—in fact it’s been dominating my thoughts all winter, as if I subconsciously realized the anniversary was near.
I had wanted to share my story at the height of the #MeToo movement when so many brave women were sharing theirs but I realized that was their moment, it was a women-powered movement, and that as a straight cisgender man I should sit it out and let them have it, and to be frank I was still reckoning with what happened in my head anyway. It’s still so blurry on the edges, patches of darkness and thickness throughout. I feel like I was underwater and had the bends that night. And like many other men who’ve been sexually assaulted, when it happens and after it happens we often don’t even realize what it was, that we were even assaulted. I know that sort of thing occurs with women and non-men as well, people of all genders or of no gender and of all sexual orientations, but there’s definitely a not-entirely-untrue stereotype that all straight men are completely sex-driven and that their insatiable horniness fuels their every move and word. I wouldn’t say I fit the stereotype at this point in my life but I understand why it exists. Most men are creeps who want to exert power over women through cat-calling, manipulation, lying, all sorts of terrible behavior of which misogyny and sex and privilege are the driving factors. How could a person like that ever be assaulted? But it happens.
Middle- and high-school-aged boys report being the victims of dating violence, including physical abuse, at rates similar to girls. In a 2015 study, 43 percent of high-school and college boys said they’d been the victim of some form of sexual coercion — verbal, physical, substance-related — and 95 percent said the aggressors were girls. And large-scale surveys of college students — including the 21,000 who participated in the Online College Social Life Survey and the 9,616 involved in Columbia University’s Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation — have found that roughly one in eight men have experienced something that meets the criteria for sexual assault; in over 80 percent of those cases, one study found, the perpetrators were female.
One in eight is not an insignificant number, and as it’s so smartly pointed out later in that linked piece, an important but rarely discussed topic around the #MeToo movement was and is empathy and understanding from men to non-male survivors.
Maybe my deeper fear was that surfacing boys’ stories would distract from the #MeToo progress of girls and women. But perhaps the opposite is true. After all, the notion that all boys are sexually insatiable, incapable of refusal, regret, or injury reinforces the most retrograde idea of masculinity. What’s more, if a boy is supposed to deny his own violation, how can he feel compassion for — or even recognize — a girl’s?
It was February 22, 2013 and we were in Atlantic City. New Found Glory were playing a one-off show at the since-shuttered House of Blues on the boardwalk, with the Menzingers supporting. My partner at the time and I were big fans of both bands—we played Radiosurgery non-stop in the car, an extremely catchy record that I can’t listen to anymore, and the Menzingers were writing great songs back then that I also can’t really listen to anymore although it’s not their fault. In the throes of our first Philly winter, flying down the Expressway for a punk show and a night in AC seemed like a great idea. We reserved a room at a Holiday Inn, got our tickets and went. I’d never been to a beach when it was cold outside, I remember thinking how different the ocean air felt in this climate compared to Florida, and how sad and quiet Atlantic City seemed. It was the offseason of course but there was still an emptiness to it that gave me a melancholy feeling which is now a lot of people don’t visit anymore because they want to remember it as it was and they also want it to come back but the only way it will come back is if people visit so it’s a real catch 22 there.
We ordered some overpriced drinks—this was long before I realized you could just play a penny slot machine and drink for free—and made our way into the venue, which was a wide, large room with a low ceiling and the usual worldly House of Blues artwork on the walls. I remember thinking it wasn’t as nice as the other HOBs I’d been to in Orlando and Cleveland because that’s how my music industry brainworms crawled at the time. We hung out around the back of the room for the first few bands, which if I recall correctly were the Scandals, Candy Hearts and Man Overboard, and then moved up for the Menzingers’ set. I stayed near the perimeter of the pit like an old man while my partner shoved her way to the front as she often would when we were at shows together, which was fine. I was a little drunk but definitely still coherent and aware of my surroundings. The Menzingers being from Philly, they got a great reaction. It was clear a lot of people were there mostly just to see them. Lots of fists in the air, singing along, dancing, the whole deal when a fun punk show is happening. At least that’s what you see above the fray.
The floor was fairly crowded in our area and I could see my partner about 10 feet in front of me. I noticed someone grabbing me from behind but didn’t think anything of it at first, because as easy as it is to not grab someone in that setting, I know that it does happen and in many cases it’s just an accidental brushing, nothing sexual or predatory about it. It’s a punk show, stranger’s bodies are going to be touching, et cetera. But then it happened again, and a third time. Harder. This was intentional. I turned around to find a middle-aged woman with dark brown hair, piercing brown eyes and a tan. She was fit, and wearing a pink baseball cap. She had a drink in her hand. I don’t want to assume, but years of service industry work has made me very good at spotting intoxicated people and she seemed very drunk. I looked at her while moving her hands away from my body with mine and politely asked her to stop touching me. I turned back around toward the stage and a few seconds later it happened again. This time, a little more forcibly, I yelled at her to stop. No one around us was paying attention to what was happening, best as I could tell. It happened again and again and again and I reacted the same way. I eventually moved a little bit, as best as I could anyway in such a crowded space, while still trying to enjoy the show. I hadn’t moved far away enough and she found me and continued to grope me without my consent. I turned around again and pointed to my partner, saying that she was right there, I’m not interested, that whole thing, as if an assaulter cares but I didn’t know what else to do except leave which I didn’t want to do, though at this point I was extremely uncomfortable. She came up behind me again, grabbed my ass with one hand, began to kiss my neck and stuck her other hand down the front of my pants, touching my penis, she was really feeling me up, and I froze momentarily. I now know this is a common reaction but at the time it seemed so strange, to feel so utterly incapable of defending myself. Then something broke inside of me, well a lot of things actually, and I pulled her hand out from the front of my pants, turned around and began screaming at her. I don’t remember anything that I said. I was hysterical. I just wanted her to leave me alone. I do remember the look on her face, one of disgust, as if I should’ve just stood there and took it, that I should be thanking her. She squinted and yelled “Fuck you!” to me and walked away. The whole episode didn’t last for more than a song or two. I watched the rest of the show and afterward, told my partner about what happened but not in a way that framed it as assault because I obviously wasn’t thinking of it in that context. A drunk lady felt me up was all. That’s what so many people do when they’re assaulted, look for other justifications for why it happened, they blame themselves, they blame drugs and alcohol, I would learn. Writing this now my heart is pounding out of my chest with anger.
I didn’t think about it again for years but I now realize how much my assault changed my behavior. For a while I was truly terrified to go to shows. I started drinking more. I never wanted to visit Atlantic City again, never wanted to hear those songs again, never wanted to feel that crisp winter ocean air again. I usually get bummed out when venues close, especially in places where there aren’t very many to begin with, but I felt relieved when the House of Blues shut its doors there. It weirdly felt like a small sense of closure, like I’d survived and won.
I returned to Atlantic City last summer. Megan wanted to go to the beach and AC was easy to get to without a car before NJTransit shut down the rail line, which happened in September 2018 so that Positive Train Control could be installed and was supposed to be restored by January but is now looking like Memorial Day weekend for service resuming. South Jersey really gets put on the backburner compared to North Jersey it seems. Anyway we got a room at Harrah’s for a couple nights, walked that same boardwalk, ate a bunch of pizza, took pictures in front of Guy Fieri’s restaurant, drank a lot of free drinks at the penny slots, took a few scary Jitney rides and spent most of the rest of our time at Harrah’s indoor pool because it was entirely too hot outside to be on the beach. We roamed freely. We partied and we relaxed. I had a wonderful time. But the assault was in the back of my mind for the duration and that trip was the catalyst (no New Found Glory pun intended) for me to revisit that night, confront my trauma in a very real way for the first time, and move on with my life as best I could. I’ve been thinking about it just about every day ever since. This newsletter today is hopefully the final part of that journey. I also can’t afford therapy so here we all are.
If you’re reading this and you’re in a similar boat, just know that you are strong, you are not defined by your assault, and that it’s not your fault, that it’s okay to be afraid, and it’s okay to process your trauma in whatever way works the best for you, and that I believe you.