personally, I like men
in which I better not run into Brigitte at the grocery store
content warning:
this post contains details about sexual assault & may be distressing to some readers.
“Gérard Depardieu has been found guilty of sexually assaulting two women during a film shoot in 2021 and given an 18-month suspended prison sentence, in a turning point for the #MeToo movement in France.” — The Guardian, May 13, 2025
“Speaking outside the Paris court, prosecuting lawyer Carine Durrieu-Diebolt celebrated the ruling and its implications. 'It’s a victory for two women on a film set,’ she said. ‘But it is also a victory for all the women behind this case and I’m thinking of all Depardieu’s other victims.’ To date, more than 20 women have accused the 76-year-actor of sexual misconduct. — The Guardian, May 14, 2025
“In a rare interview with French television, Brigitte Bardot, 90, deplored how ‘talented people who touch the buttocks of a girl are consigned to the deepest dungeon.’
‘Feminism isn't my thing,’ Bardot said. ‘Personally, I like men.’” — BBC, “Gérard Depardieu found guilty in sexual assault trial” May 13, 2025
personally, I like men
for Brigitte Bardot
I saw him one last time, in Kroger, while I was in the produce section. I was alone, picking out bananas, my shopping cart in front of me, and he walked in with that friend of his, who was his roommate when it happened. They were laughing, I remember. Laughing, like how I’d heard they had when they wrote on her naked body with markers when she was passed out, after. Laughing, like they had on speaker phone when we walked out of the movie theater after seeing Inside Man, where he had scolded me for scratching a bug bite on my shoulder: that makes you look dirty, never scratch yourself around me. I didn’t say I thought it was more disgusting the way he ate his popcorn with his mouth open, the way he felt it was OK to scold me, the way he not only answered his phone before we had even left the theater, but he put his friend on speaker phone, and they laughed, and talked so loud, like I didn’t even exist, like I wasn’t right beside him.
It didn’t happen that night, and anyway I don’t remember exactly when it happened, I don’t remember if I heard the marker story before or after it happened, but I remember I had agreed to come over, I had agreed even after that terrible date at the movies, even after the first time that left me with bruises all up my neck and chest. I drove my Neon Sport over there on a random evening because he had asked if I wanted to hang out, and I was in my black flared stretchy pants, the ones that rolled over in the waist, with my favorite black baby tee, and I was confident, and I was fine, and the roommate wasn’t even home that night anyway as far as I could tell. The thing was, I didn’t even like him, not really, not anymore, not after the bruises and the movie, and especially not as soon as he opened the door and I walked inside, and he took us right back to his room, and shut the door, and locked it.
So there I was a year later with the bananas in my hand when he saw me seeing him, but his friend wasn’t paying attention, he was still laughing, so they turned the other way, and this time I didn’t wait for something else to happen, I just put the bananas down, I left my shopping cart right there and I walked straight outside, I ran to my Neon Sport in the parking lot, I drove up the hill back to my apartment building, I ran up those stairs and I slammed the door behind me, locked it, and sank to the floor. I was still sitting there, sweating, back pressed to the locked door, when my phone buzzed.
so rude of u to act scared of me, y would u run away? i didn’t do what u said i did. remember that. u slut.
I hadn’t heard from him in over a year, not since that last phone call, when he wasn’t laughing, and neither was I, but all I said was that I didn’t want to see him again, and that I didn’t like what had happened, that I had gone to Planned Parenthood, that I had taken Plan B in case he was worried. In case he was worried! I had never said he did anything, not exactly, not really, because I had told one person, and she had looked at me and said, maybe you shouldn’t have slept with him so fast. Maybe you shouldn’t have slept with him so fast! When I was at the clinic, though, the nurse practitioner looked at the bruises on my thighs and then she looked right in my eyes and softly asked are you okay, is there anything else you want to tell me, are you safe, but I shook my head, no, no, it’s not what you think.
I didn’t know he still had my number, I didn’t think he was still in the state, and now I didn’t have my groceries, and worse yet I was going to have to find a different grocery store altogether, when Kroger was right down the street.
Sometimes I can still hear them laughing.
Sometimes I can still hear myself saying,
no, no, it’s not what you think
Proud of you for speaking the truth.