dear roy
Dear Roy,
You don't know me and I don't really know you.
I only know what I've read about you over the last couple of weeks. So yeah, pour yourself a drink.
and wipe that fucking smile off your face
roy "old dirty bastard" moore
roy "i keep getting older but they stay the same age
as when i was still taking geography classes" moore
roy "your face makes me need a shower" moore
You were 32 and she was 14, that's one thing I know about you.
You approached her while she was sitting with her mom on a bench outside the courthouse where you were a judge, that's another thing.
You told her mom to go on inside and deal with her custody hearing, that her daughter didn't need to hear any of that business, that you'd hang out with her daughter. The implication being that you'd keep her safe. That the business you'd be giving to her was somehow more age-appropriate than listening to a custody hearing.
That's a thing.
That's an interesting fucking thing. For a man who claims he didn't think anything was wrong with propositioning a child. If nothing was wrong with asking her out why didn't you do it front of her fucking mom, Your Honor?
But okay, woah. We're getting ahead of ourselves.
I saw the picture of her in the Washington Post. She was pretty, and oh boy, I know that most men assume that the youngest age pretty girls come in is "legal."
I wasn't as pretty as she was when I was 14, but I was okay. And since I have you here, I want to give you just a few moments behind the curtain so you can understand what it's like to be a passably attractive 14-year-old girl.
1. When I was 14 I was a freshman in high school.
I'd had a boyfriend for eight months, which is basically a fifty-year marriage in middle/high school time.
My mom would drop us off at the mall. One time we made out while "The Wedding Singer" played on the big screen. When the last ballad started and we wound our fingers together and I cried a little when Adam Sandler sang, "I wanna grow old with you." He wiped my tears away. Shut up, it was incredibly sweet and still reminds me why I loved him. We were 14.
He'd always been tall and skinny, but over the summer between eighth and ninth grade he got shoulders and a good haircut and suddenly he was visible to all the girls. I was on the taller side too, and in the line between childhood and adulthood, where my body wasn't soft like a child's anymore, but soft like a young woman's. My softness migrated from my cheeks into my chest, and from my belly onto my butt, and hey, even though I was awkward and bookish and sweet Christ those bifocals, I was also suddenly, undeniably female.
I broke up with him when I heard a rumor that he'd gone skinny-dipping with another girl in the class, at a party I wasn't allowed to go to because her parents hadn't been home. I hadn't even been asked.
It wasn't betrayal that made me end it; it was embarrassment. I'd never skinny-dipped with him, had only seen him naked when I dared to open my eyes for a split second, like a reverse blink. And if I'd had the chance I'm not sure I would have done it, anyway. I was inexperienced and terrified of being bad at sex. But I also understood that I was in high school now and that skinny-dipping with my tall, cute boyfriend was mandatory. If I wanted to keep him.
This is what happens in the heads of 14-year-old girls:
We're scared and curious about the sex that we're beginning to understand is required that we perform but not enjoy. We want, for the first time, really, to be great at sex. We want to be irresistible and powerful. We want to be sirens. We want to be fortresses. We want to draw men to us, but not into us. We want the power to turn ourselves invisible when they get too close.
2. When I was 14 I broke up with that boyfriend and started taking diet pills.
My friend's older brother who, when I was 15, would tell me that if he'd known what I looked like without a shirt on he would have put something in my drink to make me comfortable, bought the pills for her and she passed them to me. They made my head feel light and buzzy, and made my pants hang low on my hips, and made me feel like I was hurting myself, which felt like the thing everyone was doing. I felt tough and smart because I was hurting myself alone, instead of inviting someone else to do it for me.
3. When I was 14 and taking diet pills I went to the mall with a boy that I kind of liked because I thought he liked me.
By the end of the day we were holding hands and I was drunk on the way he looked at me, as if I mesmerized him, and in the parking lot stairwell, against the wall, he whispered in my ear, "I bet you like it rough." I coughed out a laugh. Was I supposed to know what I liked? Was he about to spank me or slap me? I smiled at him, afraid and thrilled, and said, in a voice that I'd heard on cable TV, "Only one way to find out."
Just then my mom pulled up (shout out, Dodge Grand Caravan!) and she honked. So we never really found out. I was so happy that my mom was there; no way was I ever going to be cooler than the time I said, "Only one way to find out."
4. When I was 14 and quoting cable TV in mall parking lots, I fell in love with an older guy.
He rarely looked at me and barely spoke to me but every time I passed him in the hall I felt a wave rise up in my belly.
He was 16. He didn't even see me. He never uncovered me. I loved that about him.
Besides, I felt certain there was nothing to me but early boobs and a tendency to go out-of-body. I told my friends, "I don't have a personality. I don't think I'm anyone."
5. When I was 14 and in love with an older (16-year-old) guy, I went for a run in shorts and a tank top.
From my neighborhood to my high school and back was 3 miles. I wanted to be honked at. I was honked at.
Do you understand why, Roy? I need you to understand why.
Do you understand that I wanted to be honked at not because it was good for me, but because it was bad for me? It doesn't make sense, does it? How I was drawn to hunger? How young women submerge themselves in harm, inch by inch? The thing is, you don't see the crowd around the pool, everyone nudging us closer to the edge, the water full of bodies who scream that they're in ecstasy. The water feels too cold or too hot and we scream too. Everyone says good, it's supposed to be that way. We go in another inch.
This is what I want you to understand, Roy.
You might not be able to tell if she's 14 or 18. You might not care. But even if Mary the mother of Christ was 14 when she birthed the savior in a fucking barn in Bethlehem, when I was 14 I was a bag in the merciless wind, praying for something to stop my careening flight. Even though I was round in pleasing ways and might have known how to talk like a woman, I was a child.
It's fucking science.
The difference between a young teenage girl and a middle-aged man (you were fucking middle-aged, dude, and so am I now, so I can totally say that) is more than the number of candles on your cake.
A girl on the cusp is trying to understand how to leverage her value in such a way that she can remain both socially valuable and physically safe.
Her value is in the pleasure she can provide; how much can she provide without getting hurt? The only way to find out is to go too far.
I was honked at.
And then I was followed.
And that's where you came in, Roy.
I'm sure these girls were curious and maybe even excited to get your attention. I would have been.
An older man? A judge? I must be something. I might even be something more than a caterer who serves sex without ever tasting it, who comes home with it on her hands and clothes but never in her belly.
I would have been interested, scared, excited, tearful... I would have been fucking 14 about it.
Young girls are trying to figure out how much they are worth in a world that tells them they are worth exactly how many men want to fuck them and how badly, and in the next breath tells them that only whores fuck in currency.
I don't know you, Roy, but I fucking know you. You're the guy who followed me on my run. You're the guy who blew me a kiss at the gas station when my mom wasn't looking. You weren't scared, which makes you the monster here.
You aren't the guy who meets me at the mall, whose hands shake as he wipes away my tears while we watch a romantic comedy whose soundtrack we decide is "ours" from that day forward. We weren't perfect together but at least we were both scared and excited and lost and in love together. You were just an old man looking for a little girl.
Why is it that old men always feel certain they belong with little girls? Do you think that the list of things little girls like is:
- Ponies
- Lip gloss
- Old balls
Have you already gone blind, you baggy-eyed weasel?
Do you think you're, like, Mark Harmon with greying temples and whiff of bangability?
i
mean
"In 1996, Harmon saved a teenage boy involved in a car accident outside his Brentwood home.
Harmon used a sledgehammer from his garage to break the window of his burning car, then pulled the boy from the flames."
- Wikipedia
i
mean
"During the Senate race, claims surfaced that while in his 30s, Moore had pursued numerous teenage girls and sexually assaulted some of them , including one girl who was 14.
Moore denied the initial allegations of sexual assault, but did not deny approaching or dating teenagers.
Independent witnesses confirmed that Moore had a reputation for coming on to teenage girls."
- Wikipedia
Sorry, Roy, but the Earth's only big enough for one Mark motherfucking Harmon, and Season 73 of NCIS has been keeping his calender pretty fucking tight. Too tight to fuck little girls, that's for damn sure.
So just to be clear, that makes you NOT Mark Harmon. You're just a fucking rat-eyed scumbag who uses his position of power and a presumption of wisdom to manipulate women into thinking you're not just another fucking dick under all those robes.
Oh, sorry. I forgot to introduce myself. Hi. I'm Katie. I'm the grown-ass version of the girls whose tender personhood you used to get off.
And just to bring this moment of sharing full circle, when I was 32, the age you were when you couldn't help but ask a 14-year-old girl to touch your penis?
Yeah, when I was 32 I was a decent-looking lady.
When I was 32 I was experienced in sex and knew how to enjoy sex.
When I was 32 I knew what a fucking child looked like.
And when I was 32, the Venn diagram of "Me Enjoying Sex" and "Me Spending Time with Children," was TWO FUCKING UNBROKEN CIRCLES ABOUT A MILE AND A HALF APART.
Withdraw from the race, the world, the mall, cheerleading practice, and the lives of all the girls on Earth, you sad pervy fuck.
We don't know you, but we fucking know you.