"Dress Up"

From the time I was 12 until 16 I babysat for my neighbors who had seven children. It was in the sixties so I did this for fifty cents an hour. When I turned 16, the father invited me to work with him in his real estate office which was in their house. "Dress up," he said, so I crossed the field in my high heels and pretty dresses, slip through the fence, and help him by filing and performing simple tasks. I remember him asking me to stand on his desk and change a ceiling light bulb while wearing a tiger print dress and black patent high heels. One Sunday he phoned me and asked if I’d come meet a client and help him show a client an apartment that was for rent. "Dress up," he said. I crossed the field in my best sandals and white shift that I had made myself which had huge orange flowers on it. We drove to a town seven miles away and entered the empty dark apartment. Suddenly he grabbed me, embraced me, and planted a big sloppy kiss on me! I shoved him hard and expressed my shock. He immediately acquiesced and begged me not to tell anyone. I was lucky that he wasn’t a brutal weirdo but, you know, I kept it to myself. Just as I did when the husbands of two of my friends propositioned me and as I did when my boss took me to lunch along with my two-year-old son, laid a fifty on the table and asked for a blow job. I didn’t keep it to myself when a professional architect with whom I worked pulled a very weird sexual prank on me or when another boss offered me a hundred to approach a customer wearing nothing but a fur coat and flash him. I am fortunate that I was never seriously hurt, raped, or molested in any way, but I spent my entire young life fending off men and their inappropriate shenanigans! It was considered normal and the weight was on us to keep our mouths shut to protect the guilty.