half a century has passed since carol st started in the hollywood film production of the bronx and saturday the author of once aspiring actors is set to read the play inspired by was in hollywood strolling down hollywood and vine when he turned and said to me hey do you want to be in the movies do you want to be do you want to be in them ov then common follow me like a fool i followed i was only twenty three i was stupid in the evil eye i just went innocently when i entered his office oh everything looked like shit propping his feet up on his desk he just pulls out a cigar which he lit and he smiled and said to me you know who  remind me of i shook my head no to which he replied marilyn monroe next thing i knew i had no time to move suddenly he was on top of me as we both landed on the couch and and as he was tearing at my clothes i was fighting match resumed and with my one free arm i just reached up and i gave him my smack in the face turned red as he tried to hit me back and i lifted one knee up and come in the growing as he rolled over on to the floor he held himself down there it was obvious he was hurting and i didn't even care in a mad rush i grabbed my purse and i ran out of his den but before i did i had to ask the almighty question why why pick on me and then as he squirmed and tried to rise this was his reply because you're young blonde and pretty and this is hollywood and if so this comparison to monroe had to go as i fled out into the street i recall how the sun was shining so bright kind of fi wasn't safe in the day how could i be at night and then as i watched the palm trees swaying in the breeze i wondered how i had become such an t provoke this man to attack me like that or was this tense still towns way of a welcoming mat a land of dreams and streets paved with gold where are you the american dream and are you really really what you seem show me your real stuff on a dare or are you just everyone's worst nightmare far from the glamour of hollywood or even before girlish dreams of showbiz my uncle did a show for me my uncle jerked off in front of me in the sink in my father's workshop in the basement of our family home when i was maybe five or six my dad had gone upstairs for a moment leaving me alone with him he unsub his pants and started rubbing himself i didn't know much back then but i knew it didn't seem right when he was done he beckoned to me and whispered don't tell anyone this is our little secret later on when i learned about penises and sex and all that i fully understood what he had been doing so you say sexual harassment does nothing no and that doesn't just happen  would be going on longer than i care to count in my momma's time my grandma's time and her mama's time before the generations and generations way back when it's here and now to it's in my life it's in the my life sometimes men harass other men or women harass man and boy and sometimes women harass other women real story about  but the truth is that the overwhelming amount of cases is of men harassing women white women watching you know women black women asian women rich w en or women women of all sizes and shapes women from all walks of life and not just young women we women have always been afraid to speak up that we must be daves or slots or whores that has been deeply ingrained in us because we fear humiliation and retaliation some of us have clung to us silence more than forty years  go or meet run to our fear and shane to find our voices we are here to break our son we are here to be sexual harassment in all of their permutations and disguises at what age it begins and that what they just stops if it does stop this friend of mine is well into or eighties and she told me she was farmed on the cross town bus on the way home from church soon as she said down this gentleman took the seat next door and slyly slid his hair and masked by his coat over her lap and started massaging her thought i pulled away bra player would you change seats to get away from him here change seats to sat down next to or and started in again when she asked him to stop he just smiled and laughed indicating thought her protest rather amusing and that just goes to show that sexual harassment has no upper or lower age limit if memory serves me i was four years old i was staying with my aunt at her dairy farm in the catskill mountains while my mother was in brooklyn awaiting the birth of my brother she asked me to wake up my cousin my cousin bill so when i went into his room he beckoned me he said come over here feel this i reached down where his hand was and i felt his erect penis i got very scared a shock ran through me and i pulled away he said what's the matter i said i'm going i'm going and i ran out of the room and i ran down the stairs and told my aunt what had happened and shift she of course said oh that never happened you're making it up i said no i'm not lying it really did happen and she said you're a li admit you lied and i said i'm not going to admit anything like that so i ran out of the house and set on the poor church rocking back and forth and thinking no one's going to make me call myself a liar i also have a story about being sexually abused and controlled by a relative i was older than you mary but incredibly naive i was almost seventeen when my mother died and it kind of came to a head it was mother's day and we were going to the hospital it was the last day and i stayed home to eat breakfast my father was rushing mean we got to the hospital she was dead and he turns to me and said so your fault  we weren't there in time but that was kind of the beginning of no relationship with him at all and i was raised an only child and a mama's girl so when my twenty eight year old cousin came and said i was a young woman now and i grade i was so so mature mature and he gave me tension and time and talk to me nobody else was so when he said he'd show me what adult women nowhere to go so i went with him and he couldn't work because he was so specialized and so perfect that really i had to work two jobs because he just couldn't stay in a job they didn't respect him properly so i worked a dental assisting day and bartending at night and i was miserable and exhausted and it didn't seem right but he kept telling me everybody does this this is normal this is what life is like and i was nineteen and thinking it is what life is like it was pretty i didn't like it so i was miserable and i musta spoke up about something and he thought me in the face and that did it that was the key the wife swapping in the hunger another matter but the slap in the face did it so i began planning to get out and i used his girlfriend who was sitting at the bar with me while i was working and he helped me get out i rented a truck took the squirrel monkey because i couldn't leave him behind to suffer with the jerk and i drove up to new jersey where i come from got a job and in two weeks i had a new apartment and life looked up i'm sure we've all had disturbed stories to share those of us in show business no oh no doubt the casting couch i mean the casting crotch that certainly is a big part of this but it's more than the casting couch as a young actor new to new york in the early th sixty's i was eager to get representation when i felt lucky to get an appointment with a well known agent when we were alone he asked me if i were straight or gay he insisted on knowing well i paused and i gave him the answer i thought he wanted never heard from him again i left hollywood in the sixty's because of the casting couch this story is about the time i had an audition at universal studios i was thrilled to be going there but when i arrived to see the casting agent on the studio lot i was  into this it's office this famous agent's quinta that me with his beady little eyes and and he asked me to change into what bikini and that he casually just tossed at me saying it was so necessary for the role so i went into the other room and changed no questions asked i figured it was legit it's universal because he said it was for a big party flick which was all the rage back then when i emerged he looked at me obviously very pleased at what he saw he held the script in his hand and then he asked me to sit on his lap saying all we needed to read to go over the lines together so i did pretty dumb but i was young and i was eager to get the job just as we were about to read there was a very loud knock on the door hit north it as his hand began to creep up on my knee that knocking continued but he shouted for her to go away his secretary finally hollered that it was an important call he had to take it just as she opened the door he quietly jerked to his feet and i fell on the floor the secretary looked at me with pity me and her eyes it was obvious she had witnesses seeing many times before i read to the other room i changed into my clothes and i raced out of there i was disappointed  after all there are also many tales of sexual harassment in colleges corporations and families and didn't all walks of life all across america and what about harassment in grade school and high school we want to explore those stories along with more tales from the casting couch time to share stories from the pages of our lives  my st experience with sexual harassment occurred on a new york subway i must have been about ten years old it was rush hour i was on my way to school i was standing holding onto a po behind me was pressed up a little too tightly it was very busy and down but i was afraid to say anything i didn't look around to see if someone would notice but no one no one seemed to notice and we were surrounded by a sea of people i looked pleadingly at a well dressed business man thinking he might help no when i got to school i was a mess and had to run to the water and cream myself when i told my mother about it later she said why didn't you scream then a couple of days later she said to me  matter scream someone else who did just that got stabbed in the subway the same thing happened several times actually on the way to school on the very same train and the question was never on faired and remained how do you react in a situation like this in broad daylight surrounded by people about eight years later i was at the same dairy farm that belonged to my aunt this was at the end of world war two my cousin had been in the army and he came back and he brought along a buddy of his to stay for the weekend i was spending the summer there with my aunt helping her work the farm this but he seemed like a very nice guy a little shy and i thought well why don't i take him around and show him the farm and show him what i was doing i used to get the eggs from the chickens which wasn't very easy and then i would weigh them and i would put them in various cartons so i showed him where i worked and then as we got down to where the chickens were grazing outside  we stopped and looked at them and i noticed that he uns ips his fly and took out his penis i got a little nervous but i didn't really show it too much and i said well see over there that's where the cows are but we can do that another day let's go back to the house and when we got back to the house i didn't say anything to anyone i didn't mention it to my cousin to my and and i kind of just avoided his buddy for that weekend when i was about twelve i remember walking home from my friend joni's late one afternoon i had already started to develop and was wearing a two piece petal pusher outfit in brown and gold pineapple for it i had to walk past an abandoned nursery to get to my house suddenly a man in a convertible pulled up to the curb next to me i thought he wanted direction so i walked up to the window he had no pants on and was holding his penis he said do you see this i said i don't see anything of course i did i kept walking and he followed holding the curb again asked do you see this again i insisted i saw nothing he seemed disappointed abandoned lot was all those years ago story about something that happened when i was about nine i was coming home from school on my own we lived in a dorm and building fell my mother thought it was all right and one day as i came home from school a man followed me into my building and into the elevator it was most unusual that my doorman must not have posts that day i didn't pay attention and as soon as the elevator doors closed the man was all over me when the elevator opened again we had gone back to the ground floor and the man pulled me towards the front door and the street i was so stunned i didn't say anything as he was about to leave the building with me in tow out of the blue me and scurried away and the doorman shepherded me into the building i shudder to think what might have happened if he had not appeared in sixty nine i went on my st european area where i felt i'm of the pinch this time i whirled around quickly to come face to face with the guard who smiled mischievously and then i realized he was a culprit because of his age and physical problems i decided not to complain and instead laughed hysterically going no leg he wouldn't have gotten away with that with me i went to italy i kind of look forward to being in just that kind of thinking just encourages bad behavior culture and no culture maybe that's a part of the problem what we've let things go try to see what they can get away with judging by what's been in the news lately oh they have gotten away with plenty well the obvious story is somewhat amusing but it's much more serious when men come after us in the workplace so after my mother died i was hungry literally the only food my father bought back in the house was restaurant food for himself at night need to sit there and ate it and not offer me any so i was determined i was not going to die the way my mother did all aggravated and abused him i went out and got myself a job so i got a job at a deli i figured great food and a salary i thought i was really slick but he didn't know it also came with harassment so after the owner of the place backed me up into the oven a few times all grabby i just ran and wound up not getting the food or the salary it's great when we are able to fend men off but sometimes we're not able to back in the sixty's and seventy's many men thought that if they treated you to an expensive night out that they were entitled to sex one of my friends said i'd rather have the money but of course none of us were really what we call a one hundred dollar girls back in the day not all men are monsters i support respect and appreciate women you buy about that were men were like you the world would be a better place that being said sex when is shared in a loving kind atmosphere can be very fulfilling and nourishing however when it's just done for the sake of sex one can feel very alienated and isolated scooped out and left to high and dry periods and that's something that i never want to experience again it all seems to be about the misuse of power privilege and position doesn't it power corrupts privilege and titles position enables and well do you when arches let's give power to the people yes if that means power to the people who need to use it for the greater good job is an outrage most of us have had broken dreams or at least an assault of our sense of propriety and dign some roughed up some great some harassed over and over though we come to expect it until we begin to believe it's normal but it's not normal if we can make it our own merit not how wide or how often we open our legs or survival we don't want to punish others we just want to live with dignity and with respect some people may think we're long have kept these secrets for so long we seniors have held onto our silence for far too long believed to speak out and empowered once and for all we have found