Horror Stories

by Liz Phair

  I have no vision beyond this, no clue about his response. But I know that when this public shaming eventually passes and he pays his price, whatever that may be, he has a chance to live without secrets, should he take it, and without self-hatred. He has a chance to evolve and grow and make up for the pain he caused. I know from firsthand experience. People can and do change. They do it quietly, without fanfare or applause. They do it for themselves, because it’s freedom. It’s also thankless and boring most days, but it’s better than going back to the old patterns. “Don’t talk about it,” I say. “Just do it.” As I walk away in this fantasy, I don’t know if I’m directing this commandment at him or at myself, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s all happening in my head anyway.

  Today, I’m angry as hell, because he’s not the person I thought I knew. My pride is wounded; though, in the grand scheme of things, that feels like a petty emotion to have. This story isn’t about me, it’s about the women who spoke up, who were emotionally invested in him and whom he betrayed unforgivably. They need our trust to reveal what happened; they need us to listen. Instead, everyone’s shouting over one another on the Internet, debating the severity of his wrongdoing, wringing their hands.

  When I see the Twittersphere lighting up with calls to throw away his music, I think: What a hysterical waste of time. By all means, boycott his shows for a while. The behavior he exhibited cannot continue. But we have more than a straw man to fight. What I want is for the whole fabric of society to improve. I’m tired of women having to call out men for their violence against us. Police your own damn selves. You do these awful things to us, and then it’s somehow our responsibility to get you to change. This is your problem to fix. I don’t want some media moment to spike and then fade away with the next news cycle. This a massive and deeply entrenched bias. It’s not going to change quickly.

  Still, these smackdowns are necessary. Only when we use collective bargaining do people take notice. It isn’t always safe or effective for women to protest, except in groups large enough to disrupt the norms. My hope for the future is that we won’t hesitate to band together to defend our interests. Women deserve respect, independence, and equality, period. We’re not carpetbaggers piggybacking on the civilization you created. You made skyscrapers and bridges and rockets? Well, we made you.

  * * *

  —

  “Look, we’ll put you up at the Roosevelt Hotel for a week. Get whatever drugs you need to stay awake, and we’ll hammer out the basic tracks…”

  “All thirty of them?” I ask, incredulous at the thought of recording six songs a day. I’m driving, and he’s on speakerphone. My son is sitting in the passenger seat.

  “Yeah. We’ll cut a bunch of first passes, and then you can let me and the guys finish it,” he says. “You won’t have to do anything.”

  I look over at Nick and roll my eyes as if I’m listening to somebody say something crazy. “But I want to be a part of the recording process.”

  “You will be. Trust me, you’re going to love this.”

  “I don’t trust you,” I say, firing my first significant shot across the bow. “You keep telling me different things, and that’s not how I want to do this record. I like recording. You should let me participate. I have a lot of experience doing this, too, and I have good ideas.”

  This is a fake conversation. We both know it’s never going to happen, but we’re still pretending that it will. He feels obligated, I feel exhausted.

  We were going to do a song-by-song response to the Beatles’ White Album—his idea. The material is all there, and some of it is great. But this new plan of his is ridiculous.

  “Okay,” I say, contradicting myself by shaking my head at my son. I just want to get off the phone. This discussion is pointless. It’s over. The project we’ve tried to make happen for two years is dead. There’s no way I’m going to do what he suggests.

  “So when you get home tonight,” he continues, “make a file and send me the whole batch of songs, okay? I want to make notes and then pass it along to the guys, so they have time to learn their parts.”

  “Okay,” I repeat disingenuously. “Listen, my son’s in the car, and I have to go.”

  “Oh. Hi, Nick.” He thoughtfully greets my son.

  “Hi,” Nick answers sheepishly.

  “Okay, I’ll do that. Listen, I have to go. Bye!” I hang up. “Jesus Christ,” I mutter. “He’s nuts!”

  “Yeah,” Nick agrees. “That didn’t sound like a very realistic plan.”

  “No,” I say, gazing off into the middle distance as I contemplate starting over again with another producer. All of this time and effort spent, and I have absolutely nothing to show for it. It’s all right with me, though. I’m relieved, and I know he will be, too. It’s the right moment to cut the cord. This is the last time we speak about our album. It’s the last time we speak at all. From here on out, it’s like we don’t know each other.

  Most guys are wonderful, brave, self-sacrificing humans. Some of them are straight-up heroes. The rest are a mixed bag battling their own psychological wounds and tormented pasts. I wish the best for my producer. I hope he overcomes his issues and goes on to lead a fulfilling, healthy life with real love, humility, and acceptance in his heart. I wish the same for myself. But the women who’ve been hurt did not deserve to be taken for a ride. They trusted his words. Can you trust mine?

  Do women lie? Sure. Are most women lying about their assaults? No. Can they prove it? Probably not. Predators are smart. They wait until nobody else is around before they start speaking crudely to you. That way, no one can call them out or bear witness to what is happening. It is rapacious, predictable behavior. They couldn’t get away with it if men were watching out for opportunists as hawkishly as women do. I go through my own life in a constant state of threat assessment.

  Men, we need you to recognize that your casual, disrespectful attitudes toward women give tacit permission to scumbags who are acting on what most men assume is harmless banter. Women have absorbed as much of this toxicity as we are capable of processing, and our anger is spilling over. We are full. We can’t hold any more.

  * * *

  —

  “How are you doing?” My manager calls me to check in.

  “Fine, I guess.” I’m still bewildered by the morning’s excitement. “It’s pretty wild.”

  “Yeah, I know,” my manager agrees. “I feel so bad for those girls.” He trails off. We both know what he’s talking about. “Did you read how some of them gave up on music because of their terrible experience with him?”

  “Yeah,” I say, thinking back on my early twenties, and how I gave up on making visual art. I wonder now if it’s because I had several bad experiences with bosses. “They should have stuck with it,” I say, ungenerously.

  “Yeah, but at that age, come on,” my manager defends them. “Don’t you remember how overwhelming it is when you’re first starting to work and you’re constantly insecure?”

  “I do.” I answer sincerely, though I’m having that older person’s reaction where I feel like I had it much harder than they do but kept fighting anyway.

  “Gosh,” my manager continues, “if I were twenty and that was my first experience in a recording studio, I would have probably gone back to school or something.” He’s lost in a reverie. I doubt that would keep them safe, but I don’t say so. Professors can be predators, too.

  “So, can I just not say anything, do you think? I really don’t want to get quoted. I don’t know what I can add. I wasn’t sleeping with him, and I really don’t think it’s my place.”

  “Oh, for sure. You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to,” my manager confirms. “Let’s wait and see what happens tomorrow, and then we can decide if you want to make a statement.”

  “I don’t,” I say. “But I think I’m going to have to.”

&
nbsp; “Well, okay.” He’s trying to be very sensitive. “Call me if you need anything. Let’s talk later.”

  I lie there for a while after our call, feeling guilty and miserable. After a few minutes I burst into tears. I have spent decades shielding myself from thoughts of what has happened to me in my life, and now that the box is open, I feel like I have no control.

  * * *

  —

  We are trapped in a culture of silence. Like many work environments, you get into the entertainment business by invitation only. I’m afraid that, by writing this, I will lose professional opportunities. I have worked so hard to come as far as I have. It seems massively unfair that women should have to risk so much so that men can go through their awakening process. But it seems like the only way. For the most part, I don’t get offended or complain about sketchy behavior, reserving my reactions for situations that threaten me personally or professionally. Does that make me part of the problem? Women have internalized our roles as caretakers to such a degree that we protect the people who take advantage of us. We learn to be understanding, to be forgiving, to love the very people who are hurting us. It’s time for men to talk about it among themselves. It’s time for men to realize this shift will benefit them, too.

  Every woman you know has stories as long as her arm. I bet they’ve never shared them with you, either. We feel sad and dirty when we think about them; like it’s our fault, somehow, for attracting the attention. Look hot! But don’t look hot! Love men! But don’t love men! Push boundaries! But don’t push boundaries! We can’t win. When something unwanted happens, we think maybe we said the wrong thing, wore the wrong thing, walked the wrong way, took the wrong job.

  Women are taught to remain within bounds or else, and the “or else” really resonates after you start to accumulate double-digit traumas. But the numbers just keep climbing. And we just keep hiding it. Why? Because the predators among you will screw with us and start rumors about us, cleverly crafted to sound believable. You’ll see us as tainted and unmarriageable. Or we hide it for the most typical reason of all: You simply won’t believe us. All I’m asking is that you try.

  The songs I wrote with this producer will probably never see the light of day. It sucks to see something interesting slip away, but loss is a part of telling the truth. Something better will grow out of it, I’m sure. Nobody’s talking about him anymore. Soon it will be someone else’s turn in the barrel. I hope the young women he hurt change their minds and pursue music again. I hope they don’t give up on their dreams because of his example. There are a lot of us women out here changing the landscape, one heart and one pair of ears at a time. It’s already better now than it was when I was growing up. And I’m benefitting from other women’s speaking out. So I guess it’s my turn to contribute some of my fuel supply to keep the collective flame alive. Fuck it. Gather around the warmth and firelight. Let me fortify you for a while.

  I’m in Paris, eating the best lavender-honey duck breast in the world. I have visions of Provence. I have flashbacks of sun-drenched wildflowers on the bluffs of Big Sur overlooking the Pacific. I feel like I’m going to pass out from the delicious richness of the juicy meat and crisped skin. It’s melting on my tongue, making me groan with pleasure. It’s 2003, but I feel like I could be enjoying a sumptuous and leisurely banquet in la belle époque.

  “Oh, try this.” I pass a forkful over to Matt, my boyfriend, who wraps his lips around the morsel and nods in agreement. “Yeah, that’s way better than mine.”

  “Here.” I push the plate between us and pass him my carving knife. We eat in silence for a few seconds, luxuriating in the atmosphere of the little bistro on rue de Je Ne Me Souviens Pas. It’s been an incredible day. I had a bit of trouble getting the ladies in the perfumery to understand my idiosyncratic pronunciation of “Helmut Lang”; after twenty minutes of my guttural yelping, the whole staff crowded around me with quizzical expressions on their faces. Then, when I finally thought to simply write it down, they all threw their heads back in relief and shouted, “Helmut Lang!” Which sounded to me exactly like what I’d been saying. But at least I was able to purchase the scent I’d come for and leave perfectly satisfied.

  Now, after this remarkable meal, at a wonderful little restaurant we happened upon by chance, I am quite sure I’ve had the quintessential Parisian experience, complete with romance. I’m just about to order dessert when Matt suddenly jumps up out of his seat and starts throwing a flurry of euros down onto the tabletop. “We’re going to miss the show! We have to go!” He doesn’t mean the theater, or some burlesque extravaganza. He is referring to our show—my show, to be more specific. We are the performers, and we’re supposed to be onstage in twenty minutes.

  We run out into the street and try to hail a cab. We have wandered so far afield in our happy daze that we’re turned around and can’t find our bearings. It’s all side streets, with no taxis in sight. We start running. I try out my broken French on every pedestrian we encounter. “Pardon, s’il vous plaît, où est le Paradis? Le rock club?” Most of the natives can’t understand me and shrug in sympathy or laugh at us, as we race by in desperation—praying that we’re headed in the right direction. We finally run into someone who both speaks English and is familiar with the venue. It’s too late to catch a cab. We jog the entire mile and arrive only five minutes late, but with stomachs churning from our rich meal. We have to go out onstage before we can even catch our breath.

  I hadn’t realized that the music halls in Paris allowed their patrons to smoke indoors. I’m facing a thick cloud of cigarette smog. “They may be thin, but they’re not healthy,” I mutter, referring to the oft-quoted stereotype of Parisian women. I ask the crowd if they wouldn’t mind lighting up outside, or even abstaining altogether, to spare my voice. My request elicits jeers. If anything, in response to my plea, they smoke more. It’s awful. I’m in the middle of a song when I feel my left vocal cord, the one I use for all my low tones and thick timbre, give out completely. It simply stops working. The audience can’t tell, especially after the audio signal is patched through the soundboard and has reverb slapped on it, but I know I need both my vocal cords to get through an entire show, especially in the midst of this toxic nicotine cloud. I keep singing, but I start trembling out of fear. I’m currently on a pop tour, playing some vocally challenging numbers, and I have to be audible above the volume of a full band. It’s only our second number. I have fourteen more to go. It’s akin to an airplane flying with one engine: I can do it, but it’s a nail-biter. If anything goes wrong after this, I won’t be able to continue.

  Instead of moving around and engaging with the audience, I stay extremely focused and still, planting my feet front and center and keeping my eyes nearly closed. This is not performance; it’s survival. At some point I feel a tickle in my throat, and I have to suppress the urge to cough. Tears are streaming down my cheeks, but somehow I make it through the entire seventy-five-minute set using only my weak, reedy soprano. I am incredibly grateful to the muse for supporting me, and fairly impressed with myself.

  After we get offstage, the band and I swap our horror stories of the night, and of our individual struggles to overcome the toxic fumes. Someone teaches me how to say “Go fuck a duck” in French so I can use it on the rude crowd the next time I’m here. We feel grateful to be American and are glad we are flying back to the States tomorrow. All in all, we had fun, but I feel a little under the weather later. My throat is sore. I hope it doesn’t turn into a bad cold. I have a lot of holiday performances coming up, and I need to be at full power for this season.

  My health takes a turn for the worse as soon as we get off the long flight home. The plane’s dry air was murder on my vocal cords. Even after a day of rest, I’m sick as a dog, but I have to show up to work. I have a temperature of 103 degrees, and I’m about to go on live television. I’m distracted. I just got a bikini wax in the greenroom, and now the hair and makeup person at
NBC has given me Shirley Temple ringlets for the performance. I look at myself in the mirror, and I want to walk out of the building.

  “Do you think anyone will notice?” I whisper to my tour manager sarcastically.

  “Honestly? It’s not great,” he says with a laugh. “I mean, it’s definitely a look. It’s a bold statement; let’s put it that way.”

  There’s no time to fix it. I have to go out on set in five minutes. I’m here to sing “Winter Wonderland” as part of Rockefeller Center’s annual tree-lighting ceremony. I’m uneasy about using a prerecorded backing track. It feels suspiciously like karaoke, and I suck at that. Everybody tells me it’s going to be fine. They wrap me up in a huge soft blanket while we wait outside on the plaza for change-over. Despite my covering, the fever is making my teeth chatter uncontrollably. The acetaminophen I took is no match for this flu. Tremors travel up and down my body. I am afraid to take anything stronger, in case it makes me delirious.

  When the program goes to a commercial break, they usher me into a little open-air booth and sit me down on a stool. Stylists fuss with my hair and makeup. A tech comes in and adjusts the baffling on one of the lights, his crotch hovering right in front of my face. They’ve got heat lamps aimed up at me from below, so at least I’m not shivering. I’m worried I’ll feel disconnected from the music, though, with no instrument in my hands and no musicians around me. Singing along to a canned track feels impersonal. I don’t trust it.