That said, being violated by a complete stranger—as gross as it was—was a lot less traumatizing for me than being violated by someone I knew and trusted. When I was in college, I had a boyfriend force himself on me after we broke up. I know, LOL.
Back then I had no idea how to end a relationship, so I sort of just acted like an asshole until the guy I was dating eventually ended it himself. This was foolproof and foolish. After I spent weeks applying this method on one particularly stubborn boyfriend, he finally acquiesced after a three-hour melodramatic argument over my very obviously shady texting habits. He stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door. Success! I remember exhaling with relief that it was finally over, grateful that I was never going to see him again. Finally I could act like an asshole without someone constantly forcing me to lie about my behavior! (Just in case you’re getting my mental health timeline confused, this was when I was twenty, way before I learned how to just tell people the truth.)
Within five minutes he stormed back into my apartment, coming at me with an erratic gait and a demonic fury in his eyes, like something had possessed him, or like he had just done an eight ball of cocaine. His energy was terrifying because it was at once aggressive and apologetic, like he knew he was about to do something terrible. I felt myself trying to scream, but my throat closed up. He forced me into the bedroom and onto the bed. I don’t know if my thrashing was making him hit me by accident or if he was actually hitting me. Whatever it was, I was getting hit in the face a lot. It all got very blurry. He said a couple of things that I’m still too grossed-out to share, but I remember eventually surrendering, thinking it would be much easier to just make the situation consensual so I didn’t have to live with being raped. He had been my boyfriend for a year, so what was the difference? I could just rationalize that it was breakup sex, makeup sex, whatever sex might justify something otherwise too terrible. I could feel my brain needing to spin the situation into something I would be able to live with.
Then some primal force inside me way more powerful than my conscious brain said, “Oh, fuck this shit.” I don’t know how, but out of nowhere I grabbed him by the face, and mind you I had very long acrylic nails at the time, and said quite calmly, “If you don’t get off me I swear to God I will actually kill you.” I specifically remember saying “actually.” I must have been pretty convincing because he did back off enough for me to squirm out. I put a coat on and ran twelve blocks to a train station.
I took the train home to D.C. to my mom’s apartment. I didn’t tell her what happened because I didn’t want to upset her. My codependence told me that it would be too stressful for her codependence.
Maybe the real point here is that as I write this, I’m starting to feel like an ungrateful brat, a spoiled asshole who doesn’t even know what being victimized is or what real sexual assault feels like. I’m obsessing over you guys thinking, “This girl is white, she has an alarm system, that guy didn’t kill her, she was able to escape . . . How dare this delusional snob complain about anything?” And perhaps that’s where the crux of all this lies: That whenever I’m treated in a degrading way, all I can think is that other women have it so much worse than I do, so my experience doesn’t matter. This is probably true by the way, but it’s also a rationalization that just protects the people who acted in an inappropriate manner. What I’m thinking is: If we don’t share our less severe experiences, we enable a mentality that could snowball into something that is way more severe.
For a long time I pretended that these experiences didn’t happen. But to discount them altogether would be implying that they don’t matter or that other women’s seemingly small wounds aren’t worth attention either. Everyone’s wounds count, no matter how seemingly infinitesimal. For me, these small offenses were like little cracks in a wall that bother you, but not enough to get the wall completely replastered. “Oh, they’re barely visible,” you think to yourself. But over time, little cracks become bigger cracks. Then all of a sudden the only thing that can make you feel better is, well, crack.
I feel lucky to have a job that allows me to talk about this kind of stuff publicly because after a show people feel safe to share their stories with me, which can be healing for both of us. I get to meet incredible, fascinating people all over the world. I also sometimes meet stupid morons. I would have to say the city with the highest concentration of stupid morons is probably Las Vegas. The reason I feel I can say this is that most of the people I meet in Vegas aren’t from there and don’t even live there. If you are a native, I’ve never met one of you, probably because you’re too afraid to leave your home and run into one of the aforementioned stupid morons.
Vegas is simultaneously the best and worst place to perform stand-up. I mean, Belgium was pretty weird. When I performed in Antwerp, the whole crowd laughed in unison, which you’d think my anal-retentive perfectionist brain would love because of the predictable order, but it was actually super eerie given that us comedy folk are used to chaotic crowds and erratic laughter. Stand-up is like a mutual verbal assault: I yell at you guys, you yell back at me, but we love each other anyway.
Vegas can be a very useful place to perform because there is a big cross section of people in the audience, so if the material works, it probably works in like thirty states and a couple of random countries. Vegas also always makes me step up my game as a performer because I know good and well that I’m competing against beautiful naked women covered in glitter and feathers with zero cellulite right next door, dancing their tits off. I often can’t even be bothered to wear a bra onstage, much less dance my tits off. So if people come see me in Vegas, I know I have to bring it, given the other yummy options available. Especially if you got confused and thought seeing “Cummings” on a marquee meant you were going to an erotic massage house, in which case my show will be very disappointing.