I don’t remember the name of the colleague who almost strangled me. Not his first name. Not his last. I remember he had a wrestler’s body and that he could vault over the couch on the set of the play we were in like a gymnast. I remember that he had me pinned to the front seat of my car before I knew what hit me.
I don’t remember the name of the person who had the cast party. Or the name of the street that it was on. Only that the house was severed from the street and the street from its neighborhood by the Hollywood Freeway. It was a no-man’s land. A dead-ended cluster of marooned houses, reachable only by a dark broken-up path.
I don’t remember what year it was. 1975 or ’76. Or ’77. I don’t remember the name of the play. I could tell you the name of the theatre though, and so with some investigation these lost details could be reconstructed. What I remember is how terrifying it was to feel his thumbs pressing hard into my windpipe. Come with me to my place. You have to come with me to my place now, he said. I couldn’t muster enough breath to dissent.
I watched Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony. I watched Bret Kavanaugh’s. That night when I’d had enough, I took myself out to dinner and to the Fathom Events’ “King Lear” with Ian McKellan — a film of the play from London, captured live. “Lear” is a typical Shakespeare tragedy, by which I…
