REGINA: Wow. Like a drumbeat.
MARIANNE: And on and on and on until you feel like your only worth, your only power is to attract men...to sleep with men. The irony is that you’ve just fallen into their trap and been used and once you’re used, you will be discarded.
REGINA: Did you experience sexual abuse?
MARIANNE: Yes, but mostly outside of the office. In the office, I experienced the usual sexual jokes, comments and innuendo, etc. Some of the experiences I remember most clearly:
• The head of one company I worked for asked for my phone number to allegedly keep in touch and hire me after I graduated. When I asked my boss if he thought the company head would offer me a job there, he responded, “only if you sleep with him.”
• One agent I worked for would have me connect him on conference calls during lunch, which meant I had to eat at my desk. I was supposed to listen in on these calls to learn the business, but a lot of it was hearing my boss make crude sexual comments about the girls he passed while cruising Melrose.
• Men would grab at me and demand that I show them my breasts because they wanted to know if they were real, or not.
• When I was 20 years old, my boss asked me to go on a “work” date with a studio executive which included dinner and a live show to ostensibly check out new talent. After the show, the studio executive refused to take me home, telling me that my boss had told him all about me and I had to sleep with him. I was so scared that I jumped out of his car at a red light and ran home.
• A television actor I thought I knew well enough asked me to run to his place with him to pick up some wine for a party we were both attending. Once we got to his place, he tried to rape me.
• An A-list studio executive with whom I was friends would often call me on the phone to talk about something innocuous and then announce to me that he was “jerking off and did I mind?”
• I had several Hollywood men, in different social situations, pull their penises out of their pants to show me and announce, “look what you do to me,” as if somehow their behavior was my fault.
• A movie producer I was in love with confessed to me that he “kept” several women as “call girls.” He also gave me the names of several other Hollywood executives who did the same, including the company boss who had once offered to hire me after I graduated.
• A movie producer once bragged to me that he had used modeling agencies as his own personal brothels. He had gone through the books and slept with every single model, no matter whether they were 15 years old or 25.
REGINA | 34