The column affords me the perfect way to superficially seek love while never exploring the more difficult questions about what true love for oneself and others really takes.
Before too long, I am writing off Brazilians on my weekly expense report. I have only one goal: Get good material. And I am determined to find all necessary, even if I put myself in danger during the process.
A HANDSOME, GREGARIOUS man approaches me at the Apple store one day when I’m taking my Mac in to be fixed. He tells me that I am charming and intriguing, and that he must get my number.
“You must see the TV show I host,” he says in his heavy French accent, beckoning me over to a giant HD screen, which he tells me he owns one of at home. “Here, I will show you.”
His name is Hugues-Denver Akassy, and he pulls up his website orbitetv.org on the screen, which features segments of him interviewing everyone from Angelina Jolie to Bill Clinton. He is a French journalist come to New York to bring his TV show to America.
When Hugues and I finally arrange our date, he meets me wearing pink gingham at what he calls his favorite “cozy little wine bar,” Shalel, on Seventieth near Columbus. He asks for a table with the curtains closed so we can have privacy.
I start to talk about work, and he reprimands me, then orders a thirty-five-dollar bottle of chardonnay and a single appetizer because “we are not hungry.” He asks me what I want most in life, but I don’t know, so he brings it back around to love.
“Most men are shit,” he tells me. “They just want to sex in your pants. And I can tell you are a woman of romance, style, complexity, and many passions. Is that true?”
“Sure,” I say, nodding distantly and scribbling notes on my reporter’s pad when he’s not looking. “That sounds good.”
We split the bottle of Hess Napa Valley, and without food in me, I’m rather smashed rather quick.
He literally grabs me and kisses me underneath the chandelier on the burgundy pillows. His tongue is all over my chin, but I’m trying to keep an open mind.
“We go for a walk in the park?” he asks afterward.
As we walk into Central Park past Strawberry Fields, he holds my hand. This is nice, I think. Sweet even. I like hand-holding. Then he begins kissing me by the water, and when he reaches down into my pants, I tell him, “No, no, too fast.”
Then he does something I’ve never had a man do before or since. He pulls out his penis and places it in my hand.
“No, no, no, no,” I say. “I don’t want to. It’s not what I’m looking for. I’m sorry.”
We walk along, and when we are hidden behind a giant rock, he says, “We kiss?”
We kiss a little more, and then he whips his dick out again. I’m pleading for him to stop, and then I finally say, “I feel uncomfortable.”
He seems to understand. I have, perhaps, hit upon the international safe word. But he is angry. He yells at me: “You are a sexy brat provocateur!”
We walk along farther, to a small stone house in the park.
“I want to show you a trick. It is nice. It is nice,” he says.
He unzips his pants and puts my hand on his dick once more. I feel outmatched. I turn around. “Jerk off on my back,” I say. “I just don’t want to touch you.”
He does, I close my eyes, and we walk away. I’m stunned and disgusted.
“Why are you so quiet?” he asks.
“It’s just confusing being a woman,” I begin.
“Let’s not get into all that,” he says, and then launches into the world’s most boring story about his cell phone provider, and as we walk across the gravel, I am counting steps, grateful for the gift of disassociation.
“What are you doing tomorrow?” he asks.
“Busy,” I say. I leave him, and walk zombie-like across the street to use the bathroom at the Sherry-Netherland to wash the come off my dress. I am so revolted with him and with myself. Why didn’t I just get out of there? Why was I so willing to dispose of my own sense of safety in order to not create a scene or make a man angry at me?
I tell the story to Mackenzie, who cannot believe it, nor the insulting texts he sends me afterward when I say I don’t want to see him ever again. He says I am a bitch, a typical American, etc. Not only that, but he’s put me on his stupid fucking email newsletter, and every day I get some new message saying that I have not confirmed my membership with a donation to help Africa or something.
I finally write him back on a whim one day. I’m sick of his fucking newsletter with the tagline “Whatever You Can Do or Dream You Can, Begin It.” I don’t want to think about this guy ever again.
“Hoping you’ve been able to keep it in your pants!” I email him back.
He responds immediately in hilariously garbled English, “Ms. Stadtmiller: This letter is to inform you that our database indicates record of your email communications and profanity comments. You are also inform that due to your insanity and unprofessional conducts, you have been deleted from our newsletter list.”
I forward it on to Mackenzie, “I’ve finally been unsubscribed—hooray!”
I write about him in one of my earliest columns and call him Mr. Whip-It-Out.
Three years later, I get a text from Mackenzie: “You know how I have this thing for remembering names . . . Wasn’t that crazy whip-it-out guy named Hugues-Denver Akassy? Because he just got arrested for rape.”
My stomach sinks. Holy shit. I
