“Just come with me, we can go for a walk.” He took a small step, gesturing toward me.
“Don’t hurt me! Don’t hurt me!” I shouted, bidding on don’t hurt me to attract pedestrians’ attention. Stepping back, I put my hands up. “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me!”
Passersby craned their necks. No one interfered but it was sufficient, causing him to retreat. He took off, the little dog marching at his feet.
I fled. Running, I wove in and out, zigzagging through streets. In retrospect a fruitless endeavor, assuming he had discovered my address. I called my father the moment I got home. At first he didn’t believe me.
The police were notified. The man was arrested, having not complied with the restraining order. I didn’t press charges.
It turned out he had undiagnosed schizophrenia. We came to a settlement of sorts. He would live with his father and begin mental health treatment. He would not come near me or contact me in any shape or form, which he has not. It all ended rather abruptly. And if there is a tiny morsel of goodness in all of this, it’s that he was finally seen. He could now receive support for his pain. Perhaps that was all he was asking for? I hope he got the help he needed, I hope he never did this again.
I managed to forgive him, but it wasn’t easy. There was a lot at play when I would abuse my body, having done it since I was a small child. This event hurled it all forward. As if I was running through an unconscious checklist:
People cut themselves, I’ll try that.
People get wasted, I’ll try that.
People stop eating, I’ll try that.
People repress, I’ll try that.
I would take a small knife to my room, place the tip on my upper arm, close to the shoulder. Pressing down, dragging it slightly, enough to see that red, enough for that relief. That did not last long. I got wasted one night by myself in Toronto, this is something people do to help, my brain divulged. I drank vodka straight from a juice glass at the small blue chrome dining table in the kitchen. Sipping, then tipping the bottle for more. Poor Wiebke came home to a wasted, emo teenager, Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl” on repeat.
Used to be one of the wretched ones and I liked you for that
Now you’re all gone, got your makeup on and you’re not coming back
Can’t you come back?
Number three is what stuck. It seemed to be the solution, food restriction my new norm. This all coincided with puberty, my body continuing to develop, but not like Mark’s. Reality settled in, I would never see myself in the mirror, I’d forever feel this disgust, and I punished my body for it. Research has shown that transgender and gender-nonconforming youth are four times more likely to struggle with an eating disorder.
My brain became consumed by counting calories, time passing, how to make myself full without making myself full. When to make the clear herbal tea that satiated my gut just enough. Endless gum chewing. Avoiding. I’d measure my All-Bran in the morning, the soy milk, too. Dismissing Wiebke’s concerns, I’d bring a protein bar to school for lunch and allow myself to eat only half of it. At least the flashes of him had dissipated. At least walking down the street I could stress about bread instead of the residual terror. A knife in the back. Putting my fear in a sandwich so I could control it. So I could forget it.
It is not as easy to forgive my father. I’m going to come to Toronto and kick your ass. When his kid needed safety, when his kid needed love, when his kid needed protection, he threatened violence. Outraged because I had the audacity to communicate with an older man on the internet when I was a minor. If I didn’t deserve care in that moment, if I didn’t deserve safety and love, when would I ever? That sentence has lived in my body much longer than the man’s threats, his obsession, his fingers fondling my arm.
7
LEECHES
I learned early on I could not have my parents at work with me. Sitting on a small wooden swing, I was filming a scene of Pit Pony in the front yard of the MacLean family home in Cape Breton. I was acting with Shaun Smyth, an astute actor, understated and nuanced. We swayed gently as his character consoled mine, his hands dirty from coal. I liked him; he was handsome, slightly gruff but kind. Working with kids can be a lot, and I appreciated his generosity and patience.
My father was in my periphery. My focus went from the moment in the scene to my dad with his 1970s Nikon taking black-and-white photographs. I clamped shut, that freezing again. Whatever that thing was I could supposedly do—create an honest emotion with an expressiveness that the adults said translated to the screen—abruptly stopped when I felt his presence.
A similar sensation occurred when my mom would watch. This was around when I was arriving at the age where being a tomboy was no longer a cute look. The lurking pressure to change was omnipresent, a consistent state of disapproval. I imagine she may have prayed for me to not be gay. I needed some space.
At eleven, I had asked them to hide if I was shooting, but that wasn’t enough. No longer could I release myself to the emotion, that sensation, the rush that I loved, it would stop. Eventually I suggested they not come at all. They did not take it personally, even though I was unable to articulate the why of it all. It shocked me that I had asked for what I needed, despite being afraid, and that someone had listened. Perhaps they were relieved. They both worked full-time and often it wasn’t even possible for them to show up.
For the second season of Pit Pony, the horse wranglers, Lee and Jerry, and their sixteen-year-old daughter, Fallon, were my chaperones. They were kind and let me live with them. They had a house that was close to the soundstage and a ranch about a twenty-minute drive from Sydney in Leitches Creek. We would swim in the river on their property, and I would practice flipping my wet hair to the right like the other boys did when they emerged from the water. We would pick leeches from our bodies, just grabbing and yanking, unbothered. It made me feel like the young guys in Stand by Me, except they were terrified of the leeches and I was not. It made me feel brave. Did that up my chances to achieve my dream, to look like River Phoenix in a white T-shirt?
Despite playing and having to dress like a girl in 1904 while working, these times let me be closer to the boy I was. I was somewhere new, with adults, people who had not known me before. I was making friends, real ones, the kind who encouraged my feelings, championing that little guy, letting him breathe. I had an opportunity to exist as myself, start from scratch, the cool loner on the ranch. This freedom on and off set transferred to the work. I loosened up. I was happy.
My parents almost never came to work with me ever again. If they did, it was just a visit, but I would not allow them to come to set. This increased my vulnerability in ways, I’m sure, but having witnessed some of the worst stage parents you could imagine, I am glad I experienced the other version. I’ve watched adults slowly chip away at their children, their overprotection a form of neglect. If they were a character in a screenplay the first note would be “too much,” but they aren’t actually watching, they aren’t really listening. All the value wrapped up in work, in image, in followers. The opposite of what acting should be, a disintegration of ego, not the stroking of one. It ends careers.
Even though I preferred my path, my lack of healthy boundaries still did not bode well. As puberty transmuted me into a character I had no interest in playing, my isolation, insecurity, and unknowing grew. I desperately needed to anchor myself. In new cities, with no friends, alone in hotel rooms, it was not hard for someone to prey. I’m sure they sense that. Like the man I met online. A lonely kid is a perfect target.
There was the director who groomed me when I was a teenager. His frequent texts made me feel special, as did the books he gifted me. He took me to dinner at Swan on Queen West. Stroking my thigh under the table, he whispered: “You have to make the move, I can’t.”
On a project not long before, a crew member had done the same. In between takes he would talk to me about art and films, Kubrick naturally. He invited me to hang out on a Saturday afternoon. After a walk in the rain he grabbed me, asserting we go upstairs. Pulling me in to his body, I could feel his hard cock against me.