Amanda Palmer and the Banality of Sexual Assault

I've met five known sex predators, including Amanda Palmer. The harrowing story told by New York Magazine keeps running through my brain.

Note - Sunday, March 2nd. Dear Readers: It is so crazy to me that over 2,000 people have read this post. If you don’t mind, could you let me know how you are finding this essay? I have no clue as to where all these likes are coming from. And I appreciate all of you for engaging with my story. It motivates me to keep writing about my life and sharing with others.

Before I dive into a deep dark well, I need to share a real high point this week. A dream come true, really, for any alterna 90’s teen. Another Jane Pratt Thing (by that Jane Pratt, that Sassy Jane Pratt) published my It Happened to Me essay: When My Grandmother Died, I Raided Her Beauty Products…and now I look better than ever!

But here we go…abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

In the last two months, I’ve had blood tests, new pills to take, a discussion about psych meds with terrifying side effects, lethargy, and now chronic bronchitis. My body is getting better.

The sickness crawled into my brain after I read New York Magazine’s enraging (and well-researched) feature on author Neil Gaiman…and his ex-wife, musician Amanda Palmer. Amanda Palmer sought out young vulnerable girls, her fan girls, desperate girls, girls needing mothers, and carried them to her husband like a cat with a mouse in its mouth.

Amanda knew Neil Gaiman. The person, not the author. She really knew him. It makes me sick that my youngest daughter loves Gaiman’s Coraline so much. This daughter is nine years old. Her name sounds a lot like Coraline, and I am not talking to her about this. She can enjoy her movie.

The truth about the United States, maybe the world, is that sex predators and child molesters mostly do whatever they want. I know first-hand of three sex predators wandering freely around the world; unknowingly, I met them. And then I learned what they did.

The first molested a person I love dearly at age six. I met this predator at a Christmas dinner. Another molested an 11-year old girl in the parking lot of a world-famous amusement park. I stayed at the home of this predator in a SF Bay-area hippie beach community. The third one raped me, when I was twenty-one years old. I met him when he found me online and invited me on as a keyboardist in his about-to-make-a-studio-album band.

I had my own band, and I wanted to be loved. And I wanted to be famous. I thought I was tough. I thought I was punk. But, looking back, all my songs were a cry for help. And my catharsis, before I had my psych meds and teaching career, was screaming and groaning and singing, performing a confessional set with a wall of noise behind me, writhing and slithering on stage. All reptile brain.

I hate myself every time about how I have done nothing to lock these sex predators. I’m sure they have racked up plenty of other victims by now. I don’t know what to do. My writing is all I have. And, really, who cares about victims of sexual assault anyway?

I met Amanda in the Boston music scene of the early 2000s. In Allston, a Boston University slum where students lived alongside rock band kids. Allston had the parties after-hours. You’d get a ride across the river after a show at the Middle East or TT’s. Maybe Charlie’s Kitchen on a Monday.

The bathroom of Allston’s Model Café served as the set of my sexual assault. Memoirist and essay curator Sari Botton published my essay about this horrible experience, My Big Break, on her wonderful Memoir Land site. On the day this essay went live, I worried that my rapist, a now rather wealthy man who could easily afford a lawyer, would read it and take me to court. Or worse.

Nothing like that happened. Instead, I got the story out of my system and into the world. Good. It’s not good enough. But good.

To be very clear, Amanda Palmer never hurt me personally. But, still, I wish I’d never met Amanda Palmer. I don’t like the fact that I’ve met sex predators in the flesh.

Before she was the world-famous Ted-talkin’ Amanda Palmer, I knew her as that goth girl running around buck naked again at parties. Amanda Palmer sprinted. Like an Olympic gold medalist in the sport of track. Her drawn-on eyebrows didn’t even smear from sweat. She could run like that grasping a bottle of red wine, too. Impressive.

People introduced me to her maybe four or five times. After all, I was the singer of a band. She was the singer of a band. I played piano. She played piano. I had a birthday. She had a birthday. You get the idea.

Amanda never said hello. She looked through me. An ice woman. To be fair, maybe she had muscle tension or something from long shifts as a living bride statue in Harvard Square. But when people introduced us, she would just stare for a few seconds, then walk away. I had nothing to offer her, after all.

After reading the New York magazine piece, my predator count reached four.

Wait, five. I was introduced to former Boston City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo at a neighborhood block party, when I was with my three little daughters and husband. Only a few days after his sexual assault allegations became public. Ricardo shoved his hand into my husband’s, a real strong shake. A delusional neighbor had introduced Ricardo as “the best guy in the world”, and Ricardo just went for it. David washed his hands over and over again that night. Ricardo never considered that showing up there, even if the allegations were false, might really upset people. Campaign. Campaign. Campaign. I almost forgot about Ricardo here I wish I could forget forever.

I don’t want to know anything anymore. I hate thinking about all these crazy people because I get scared of going out in public. I even get scared sitting without the tv or a phone or some kind of distraction. I can’t read a book when I’m like this. Out in the big, wide world, I could be right next to a predator and not even know it, anywhere I go. My daughters and my students deserve a stable adult to support them, not Mr. Nervous diving for cover when a leaf brushes a window.

I function. Outwardly, I function. As a mother and a teacher, I push through. Only I’m not really there. I hear my voice talking, see my feet stepping, my hands typing as my mind floats away, up in space, beyond our galaxy. Without gravity, the atmosphere carries all that’s inside me far, far away. As far away from predators as it can go.