Me Too

So every day brings another news story about bad male behavior -- from The Donald to Harvey Weinstein, the accountant -- no, I mean the movie mogul, to ultra nerdy Al Franken.  Al Franken -- who I never thought very funny when he wrote for SNL with the less funny Tom Davis, and yet somehow became a US Senator.  Turns out he groped someone while sleeping (she was -- he was awake) and yesterday the scandal caused him to cancel his appearance at the Miami Book Fair, where I wasn't going to see him, anyway.

It's nuts.  A group of my partners were in the office last week wondering whether we had done stuff in the past that would make the news now.  No one was sure.  That's true -- a few WERE sure.

Well, it turns out I was involved with a work related sexual harassment case.  Really.  It was during my first job as a lawyer.  But, and I'm being serious, I was a VICTIM.

I had just passed the bar, and was working for an insurance defense firm I nicknamed the Addams Family, since the characters were absurdly weird.  The firm was owned by a fellow I'll call Dan, since that's his name, who was an anti semitic woman chaser.  But funnily, he had a classic Ashkenazi surname, and was thought by most to be Jewish.  He once instructed me to meet a claims manager in NYC, but warned "Count your fingers after you shake his hand -- he's a typical NY Jew."  I responded that I was, too, and Dan was shocked -- he thought my surname was too German to make me a Jew, and "I probably wouldn't have hired you if I knew."  He then guffawed.  I needed the job to pay the mortgage on our first house, and my less than mediocre law school grades didn't exactly make the legal job world my oyster, so I just shrugged it off.

The second name in the firm belonged to a woman I'll call Vanessa, since that's her name.  She was a partner in name only, but was my boss, and essentially ran the firm while Dan was flying all over the country getting business and bedding women (and sometimes men), and Vanessa was only 3 years out of law school, so ultimately the firm got sued by major clients and dissolved.  I was long gone by then.

But back to early 1987... I had just married Wifey.  Like most first year associates, I worked late hours, to bill the time to make money for the firm.  It was about 7 pm.  It was dark.  Vanessa called me into her corner office, on the 26th floor of the top building (at that time) in Miami.  She offered me a drink -- and I accepted.  She knew I liked vodka.

She always drank Bailey's Irish Cream.  Later, another refugee from the Addams Family firm explained to me why -- she was a coke head, and coke heads preferred cream drinks so as not to further irritate their chronically sore throats.  You learn a lot as a young lawyer...

She sat on the couch next to me.  Sort of too close, I remember thinking, but I was a dude, and she was  a very small woman.  She was extremely butch -- she talked like a dude, and to her credit, was a huge Canes fan.  We chatted about the recent loss, and that we would win one next year (we did).

Then she started asking me about "married life."  I told her it was great.  She confessed about always being single, and a few men who broke her heart, and it was a shame I didn't have a brother, because I was the "perfect man."

She drained her Baily's and had another.  This time she sat closer.  Next thing I knew, she put her hand on my knee, and started into my eyes.  I remember saying "Speaking of married life, I need to be getting home" and I bolted.

Now -- my resistance to her overtures never had any effect, I don't think.  A few months later, she got livid with Dan, marched into his office, and frisbeed her framed law diploma at his head.  He ducked, and somehow the thing sliced through the glass and fell to the street below.  Thankfully it was late, and no one on the ground got killed.  That was it for Vanessa as a lawyer, though my morbid curiosity caused me to check the Bar records a few years ago, and she's still an active lawyer, with an office address that looks like a condo in Kendall...

Still, I get to say Me Too, as a victim of harassment.  I got past it.  I kept my human dignity.  I guess it's worse for women.  But that's my strange and true tale...