Aphorism No. 87; One of a Series; Collect the Whole Set

Life is not in chronological order.

Aphorism Number 86; One of a Series; Collect the Whole Set!

Let's not invade any place we can't pronounce.

Me too

I choose, and very actively, to avoid Twitter like the Black Fuckin' Plague.  Like the leper colony of Molokai, or that gnarly one in Cecil B. Demille's Ben Hur.

And, after all, I'm a pretty notoriously bad-ass, a dude, a guy, a tough guy, and probably easily accused of being macho, a knucklehead, a man.

That said:  Me too.

In an editorial context, a woman taking advantage of a terribly fraught moment in my life, acting out of power and privilege, in the classic sense.  And as, in a moment of tremendous challenge, as I struggled to keep a family shattered by suicide together, functional, economically viable, sane, I spoke frankly to another female co-worker, whom I trusted, about the inappropriate behavior.  As it turned out, that was foolish.

How shocking is that?  To me, still gathering my undersanding of what took place, after long years of once and former co-workers coming to me and asking "What the hell happened?   You were on fire!  Everybody knew you were doing state-of-the-art work!  You were killing it — what do you think happened?"

Well, in this moment, I think it's actually a moment to discuss what happened.  I think, as Susan Brownmiller suggested early on, that it's damn near always a case of power.  Sex factors in, of course, and inevitably, and sex is the wild card.  But power is the the factor.  Power is the determining factor.