♪ Memories, like the corners of my mind ♪

I suppose, after a around foot of snow over the past few weeks, its safe to say that Winter has officially arrived in Vermont. And, because everything here is equal parts irritating and beautiful, one has to prepare for the onslaught of the snow and cold - you can’t just wing that shit. For Vermonters, this means switching over from their regular summer tires (used for all of a 4 months per year) to the more durable, and, very expensive, “Winters”. Preferably studded. One must also make sure their heating supplies are stocked. In my case, its ensuring that the giant, seemingly wildly dangerous, tank of heating oil that lives in my basement, is filled to the brim. Which is also so, so expensive. And, then there’s the whole pulling out of the heavy jackets, and the snow boots, and making sure your shovel is by the door, etc etc etc. All of those things are imperative to surviving a New England Winter. One that has, apparently, decided to make its entrance a month early. So, with Mother Nature a’knocking, I begrudgingly did all of the things mentioned above. Only I took my preparation one step further - I made an emergency appointment in order to get my rescue inhaler refilled. I did this before I would be forced to shovel my driveway, which would cause me to start wheezing, and inevitably, almost like drop dead like Annabella Sciorra in “THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE”. And lest you think I’m being dramatic, I’ve had some experiences that have caused me to keep an inhaler with me at all times.

I’ve mentioned my hellish bosses before, and alluded to one in particular, who has recently been in the news. It probably won’t surprise anyone to know that the person I was referring to is Harvey Weinstein. There’s a bit of a gray area around what we, former employees and assistants, can discuss. Our NDAs were revoked in order to allow those who needed to discuss certain aspects of the job and situations, to be able to do so without his team throwing lawsuits our direction. My lawyer seems to think we’re safe from his lashing out, but who the hell knows at this point? He suffers from, amongst other things, what I call: “Goblin Logic”. This logic causes him to care about and behave in ways that don’t make sense to normal, fully functioning, humans. And so, while I don’t think this specific story is going to come back to bite me, I also can’t be sure. Strap in for this nightmare coaster, pals.

I worked directly for Harvey as his personal assistant, and Harvey is, without a doubt, an asshole, misogynist, sociopath, and a vitriolic bully. Also a complete pile of fetid shit. Everyone in his orbit knew/knows that he was/is a dick. And I absolutely admit to taking the job knowing about his reputation of being a bully (the other allegations I absolutely did not know about). I naively thought that, given my long history as an A-List executive and personal assistant, if I took this job with Harvey, a man who was the pinnacle of filmmaking, I could suck up a year or two, get promoted, and never have to assist EVER. AGAIN. That’s how strong his pedigree was. And, like most things in my life, I was absolutely fucking wrong. So wrong. So, so wrong. Not only did I not get promoted, I left my fucking job with Harvey only to go on and work for other another narcissists, who not only broke my spirit but also crushed me into a million little pieces. Score! Editor’s note: never, ever follow my career trajectory, kids. Its a train wreck of epic proportions. Anyways, what I’m saying is, I knew, to a degree, what sort of person Harvey was capable of being. And, because I’m a mess, I also knew that my greatest skillset up to that point, had been dealing with difficult people. I’ve worked for some nice folks, sure, but I’ve mostly worked for really, really tough dudes. Grade-A assholes. Shitbricks. Fuckfaces. And those dudes, maybe didn’t care for me on the whole, but they tended to respect the fuck out of the fact I could always get the fucking job done. Even while being loathed by them and belittled at every turn. Which is why I was offered the job with Harvey, and why, despite all the red flags, I accepted said job and immediately relocated to New York from L.A. I can honestly say that the only upside I can find from my experience with Harvey and The Weinstein Company, is that the folks I worked with - the other assistants and low level execs - were super, super kind, intelligent, and good people. Those people, like me, just wanted to help make amazing films, the kind we grew up with. And I’m sure they, like me, never imagined that their career trajectory, that was part of their dream to make films and content that matter, would have them peripherally connected to a predator and monster. It’s an awful chapter in my career. But I will defend the goodness of those folks, my fellow assistants, until the end. I consider my former coworkers friends, and, despite it all, I’m glad I know them and that I shared some of the lighter experiences of that hell-hole with them. Even if some shared experiences now include depositions and lawyers.

Anyway, back to Harvey, the King of the Hobgoblins. Surprise, surprise - Harvey was, is, and always will be a horrible, horrible person. I wish I could tell you aaaaaalllllllllll the shit that lead up to the story I’m about to share, but I truly don't have the time nor the cash to preemptively pay my lawyer in order to roll that beautiful bean footage. Let me just say that, the blessing and curse of who I am, is that I don’t back down or let myself get fearful when men scream at me. I probably should have; I would’ve had a much better career had I fucking peaced-out of those situations sooner. But here we are. Anyway, looking back, the first couple of months with Harvey were uneventful. Well, I mean uneventful much like the boat ride up to the shores of Normandy was uneventful for those soldiers. Everything is relative. Sure, things were NOT going well, and they could see death on the horizon, but it also wasn’t a beach strewn with bloody body parts and men shitting themselves from fear…yet. I was sort of buffered from some of the direct path, category 5 hurricane Harvey bullshit. Mainly because they were desperately in need of a personal assistant, and one, who was a bit older. So for that reason, I was spared a little of the insanity. Until I wasn’t. Let’s just say that if you’re a goblin, you’re probably going to have a goblin family. And specific members of said goblin family may not like you, nay, they may hate you with the passion of a thousand suns. And that hatred will bleed into everything, and before you know it, the Goblin King will hate you, too. Deeply. And you’ll go from having a fairly stable work-life, to being a dying extra in Saving Private Ryan in no time. For example, I had two weeks where I wasn’t allowed to speak in the office, at all, because my voice was a “Cancer”. I wish I were kidding. I went from Harvey saying he wanted to make sure I was able to go home early, to staying at the office until 1am on Christmas Eve and same thing on Christmas Day as punishment for being myself. And, in what becomes an ongoing theme in my employment with Harvey, I was ditched. I was ditched in Connecticut at an event and had to figure out another way home. I was ditched at events in the city. I was ditched in the Hamptons. Harvey would get irritated with my intelligence, or my face, or whatever, and just, leave me. I’m not kidding, one time he had his driver peel-out, literally leaving me in the dust at 10pm one evening trapped with his elderly mother. It was incredible. For Harvey, location or time of day or safety of me didn’t matter. Once he was done with me, he was done. And I’d have to figure that shit out. Which, and this is my own shit, most of the time I found that funny. Not funny, “ha ha” but more like, “wow, this sure will be a good story one day”. Only I’d forget that I wouldn’t be able to tell those stories one day, because of said NDA. Also, and I need to remind you, I was a grown ass woman at this point. Someone in their mid-30s. There’s just something so specific, sad, and weird about ditching a grown-ass lady who works for you on the side of the road.

So, with that jumbled mess of a back-story, please join me on a crisp Winter’s day in Tribeca. It was a Friday, not unlike any other. I was tasked with getting checks signed and messengered back before the deadline, which had always proved to be one of the biggest pains in my ass with that position. It wasn’t just finding a window of time - it was planning said time in a way that wouldn’t cause everyone in Harvey’s path to get destroyed by any anger directed towards his bank accounts/me. I had to think of the collateral damage that would be incurred by said check signing - because that was his party trick - taking out his anger on everyone in a fucking two time zone radius. In this case, the checks were wildly overdue and we were approaching zero-hour on some very important things. That meant me doing whatever was necessary to get the checks signed. In this case, after badgering him all day, he decided to scream at me as he was passing my desk, en route to the waiting SUV below which was taking him to the Berkshires, to get my shit and follow him ASAP. The thing you have to understand is, Harvey didn’t say, “come with me”, and wait for you to collect your things, maybe use the restroom, and join him. NOPE! You had to literally go with him at that exact second or you’d be left behind/destroyed. And in this case, I had to get those checks signed, so in my mad dash to leave, I grabbed the checks which were in my laptop bag and nothing else. No jacket. No purse. Just my blackberry and computer bag. I ran to catch up with him in the elevator and could immediately tell that there was a mood a-brewing. This was confirmed when one of my male coworkers also wedged himself in the elevator with us at the last minute. This guy, who is just a doll, is also someone who I referred to as our “canary in the coal mine”. I’m not proud of this, but, it was my experience that IF Harvey seemed to be in a mood, you could always confirm or deny this based on how much he screamed at this specific assistant. Want to see if Harvey’s anger management session stuck? Send in the office Canary. Didn’t get those Oscar noms you thought were a given, and think Harvey is about to implode? Send in the Canary. So having this dude with us - who was dragged from his desk still wearing his headset for the phones - meant that we were basically sitting on a powder keg. He had panic in his eyes, and I realized that we were about to embark on an incredibly awful journey. I was not looking forward to being trapped in a stuffy SUV with a farting, screaming Harvey and us, his human punching bags, but I assumed it would be a quick trip. I knew I’d be eventually be ditched somewhere in the city, hence me not being too worried about a lack of a jacket or purse, what with Uber and all. What would normally happen is that you’d jump in the car starting at 365 Greenwich in Tribeca, and somewhere on the West Side Highway, between Tribeca and West 80th, after Harvey had signed whatever he needed to sign, he’d have the driver pull over and dump ya. From there, you were one Uber ride back to the office. Irritating, but fairly painless. And normally, having Harvey as a captive audience was a quick-ish way to get shit done and be on your way. This would not be the case.

In this case, we had barely gotten onto the West Side Highway, when it became apparent that Harvey was real, real, real, pissy at, I guess everything, but specifically me. He was mad that I needed checks signed. Mad I wasn’t getting one of his kids the right gifts. Mad my voice was grating. Mad. Mad. Mad. And no matter what angle I tried, I could not get him to focus on the fucking checks. His driver careened up the road and the other assistant sat silently while Harvey alternated between taking calls and batting away the checks I was trying to place in front of him. It was as we passed the last exit on the West Side Highway, that the other assistant and I started trading frantic texts, with each mile taking us farther and farther away from safety. And to make matters worse, Harvey had somehow gotten a hold of tic tacs. Harvey does NOT do well with sugar. Any sugar. Even microscopic little fucking tic tacs. And this teeny weenie little plastic thing of tic tacs had a seemingly unending supply of hideous, rage inducing, white mint hell-snacks. Mary Poppins bag couldn’t contain more shit than that fucking little jar of tic tacs. They just kept coming, no matter how many he was pouring them into his mouth. Just shoving them down his gullet with his fat t-rex arms, while screaming and chomping at the same size. The car was too warm and smelled like our fear mixed with his farts and peppermint. Barfs welled up in my throat as Harvey’s driver darted between cars at insane speeds, and sharp, wet shards of tic tac shrapnel spewed out of Harvey’s mouth, hitting me on my cheeks and arms, as he screamed at us. On top of this, I was the one taking dictations, since I stupidly bought my laptop. So, I was typing the sugar-rush dictions of a goblin, while being doused in peppermint spit, when I got a red alert text from the assistant still in the office. All hell was breaking out there too, but, worse, Harvey’s wife was calling, mad about something I did, and they were about to connect her into Harvey and needed me to be prepared. The conversation did not go well. And the subsequent freakout was intense and not fun, given I was trapped in a fucking car inches away from him, and, at this point, and hour and a half outside of the city. All of my texts to the other assistants were variations on, “IM NOT GOING TO THE FUCKING BERKSHIRES WITH THIS ASSHOLE. DO YOU HEAR ME”. And, to my credit, I didn’t. I did not end up going to the fucking Berkshires. Because, due to my incompetence Harvey hit his “Morgan” wall, and before I knew it, he was screaming at the driver and we were barreling towards the next exit. As we pulled into a gas station parking lot, I tried to convince him that I was a better choice to take along because I had my computer. Listen, I did NOT want to continue in the car with him, but I really fucking I hated to see my coworker being driven along in what could potentially become his own personal Bataan Death March. But my attempts were futile and Harvey was DONE with me that day. And it was there, in the parking lot as he was literally pushing me out of the car that he said:

“It’s been such a pleasure spending time with you, MOR-GAAAN” and snorted. To which I dryly responded “Likewise”.

Harvey got flustered, popped some more tic tacs, and screamed in my face, “I was being facetious!!!!!” and slammed the door. And in one of the few moments of real chutzpah, I ran along side the SUV, opened the door, and screeched back at him: “I WAS, TOO!!!!!!”. And before I knew it they sped away. And for a moment, I was really fucking glad to be out of that car. Until I realized what the fuck was happening. And what was happening was that Harvey had dropped me in the middle of a fucking snowscape in upstate New York, hours from our office, sans coat. I was wearing a long sleeved shirt, skirt, tights and boots - jacket was on the back of my chair at my desk, along wth my purse, phone charger, inhaler, etc. And I was cold and standing in a parking lot on the side of the highway trying to figure out where the fuck I was. After frantically attempting to order an Uber/Lyft/Coast Guard helicopter extraction/Car service, to no avail, I took the next step and called the office to enlist their help - only to be hung up on. Not once. Not twice. But three times. At this point, I was cold and very, very angry. What I didn’t realize was, the person hanging up on me, the only coworker stuck in the office rolling all the calls and keeping that shit on track, was being fired. Literally at that exact moment. Because only TWC would have an HR person who decided that mid-day, while the boss had abducted 2/4 of the office while the other assistant is en route to advance a trip, that it would be the best time to fire the only person there. So that person was, rightfully, losing their shit. So, with no options, I spotted what looked to be a train platform across a skybridge, that went across whatever freeway ran below. It looked to be about a 5 minute walk. In what felt like 20 degree weather. And at this point, anxiety, anger and the cold are setting in, so I start walking, then I stop, because the office calls back, apologizes and despite their situation, they’re working to get me a car. So I walk back to the parking lot. A few minutes later, as hypothermia begins setting in, I get another call saying despite their best efforts, there are no cars close, and the hour and a half on the train back to the city would be the best option. So I start walking again. And at this point, I’ve walked back and forth a few times, in the cold weather, sans jacket, and the last walk up the skywalk stairs starts to trigger my asthma. And that’s when it hits me, aside from not having a jacket, I also don’t have a wallet or my fucking inhaler. How am I going to get back to the city if I can’t pay for the train?! PANIC. I try to call the office again, but apparently Harvey has called the person who just got fired, and is now dictating to them and giving them tasks. Even though he just had someone fire them. It’s pure chaos, and I’m on my own. PANIC. I keep walking towards the platform, and at this point, I’m gasping for air. PANIC. Fun fact about asthma: something that can make it exponentially worse, and hit faster, is to panic. You know what causes panic? Being alone on an unknown train platform, sans money, or inhaler, and with a dying phone, all while trying to figure out how the fucking hell to get a train ticket back to the city. At this point, I start crying. I try and scream for help, but there is not a single person in any direction on this abandoned platform and nothing but a wheeze comes out anyway. I am pathetic. I thought I remembered seeing a pay phone, but it was back up the stair case and across the skywalk where I had just come from. There’s no way my busted-ass, garbage lungs would get me that far. And it was at this point that I inexplicably start getting hot and sweaty. Like, noticeably sweaty. Mind you, its 20 degrees outside and I’m in skirt and shirt with no jacket. So now I reeeeeeally panic, as I’m pretty sure my body is shutting down. And in my panic, I violently dump everything in my bag onto the platform AND strip off my long-sleeved top, so that the white camisole, which should never see the light of day, is the only thing I’ve got up top. Said camisole on Kate Moss in a CK One AD would be provocative, this camisole on my pudgy, sweaty, wheezing frame, with the bonus of all of my mascara running down my face in streams, made me look insane in ways that are hard to describe. l was like some sort of dying, feral, monster - clawing through the garbage dumped from my bag, scratching at the ground in search of something.

I’m just going to pause right here - because I want to note that, I’ve heard it said that many people have near death experiences and its in those times that everything becomes clear. It all just makes sense. An experience that is both life changing and life affirming. FUUCUUCK THAT. This was not that sort of experience. As I was digging through the loose change, tampons, pens, tubes of lip balm , hair ties, pay stubs, etc - mascara streaking my face, while wearing a fucking undershirt like an insane raccoon, the only thing affirmed was that I wanted to die very quickly. To be put out of my misery. I did have an out of body experience, though. I levitated above myself and saw that pathetic scene and said, “OH HELL NO!”. And then, in all that carnage, the assistant who happened to be en route to the airport (not the one still trapped on a Highway to Hell with Harvey and not the one who was fired) called me about something unrelated, realized I couldn’t talk, and tried to track my phone so he could call an ambulance. Now, calling an ambulance would have been the absolute correct thing to do. However, I had taken a wild-ass pay-cut to move to New York. Which, folks, never, ever take a PAY CUT if you’re moving to New York!! But, as you’ve noticed, I’m an idiot who makes bad decisions. And I really thought I could leverage the Weinstein gig into not ever assisting again(ha), and therefore living in abject poverty would be worth it in the long run. Wrong. And even in the midst of my impending death via asthma on a train platform, I had a bottom line, and by my calculations, it would’ve been cheaper for me to die right there on the platform, rather than paying for an ambulance and ER experience. I just couldn’t afford it. So I did what the other assistant did to me. I hung up. I hung up and threw my phone down. Lips blue. Scrambling for something in that garbage pile - when I found it!! A wad of cash! Enough for a train ticket, I figured. Only I couldn’t climb the stairs to where the ticket kiosk was located. And I really didn’t think anything could be worse than it was at that moment, but SURPRISE! First, my phone started ringing again nonstop. It wasn’t the assistant, it was Harvey’s wife. And she she was VERY mad at me and called and called and called, and even when I finally tried to answer but couldn’t talk because, impending death, she didn't give a shit and called again once I hung up. Death is bad enough, but death with a soundtrack of an angry goblin wife’s nonstop phone calls in the background is too much to bear. And then, it got so much worse. With the wife calling and calling and calling, and me wheezing into my pile of bag garbage, I saw movement coming down the stairs. I turned to face the coming evil and knew in my heart of hearts what it would be before I even saw it - Jesus Christ it was a gaggle of teens!!! Some real shitty, Gossip Girl looking fuckers! Teens are mean and judgmental and terrifying while in packs. And they were coming up on me like I was a wounded yak and they the pack of hyenas ready to laugh at my decrepit, sad body before snarfing me whole. It was all too much. I wanted to just hurry up and die, but it was obvious God had other plans. For some horrible reason, my survival instincts kicked in and I gestured at the teens with the wad of money - pitifully pointing to the ticket kiosk. One kid inched forward, grabbed the wad from my hand like I had a disease and went and bought me a ticket. All the teens snickered under their breath and eyed me with a mix of pity and disgust. Honestly, I felt the same way. If I had any sort of lung capacity I would’ve happily told them how embarrassed and pathetic I felt, and how chasing your dreams sometimes leads you to working for a monster and being in your mid-30s and wanting to die because this is where your life has taken you - to this exact moment - and whooo boy, ain’t that a bitch! But I didn’t say anything. I accepted the ticket and tried to catch my breath enough to function. And I did, eventually. I think having a group of people around, even if said group looked like the cast of Heathers, helped me to know I would be ok. And with the sound of the train in the distance, I scooped up all the garbage I spilled on the tracks and attempted to pull myself together. I put my shirt back on (to everyones joy) and picked up my phone. The wife still wouldn’t stop calling, so I text her assistant letting her know what was happening, and to please handle her until I was able to, ya know, breath. By the time the train pulled up, I was able to function enough that I could get myself onto the train and into a seat. I leaned my head on the window and just started sobbing. Well, it was more of a wheeze-sob, but you get the picture. Holy shit, I was so tired and mortified and over it all. But I had made these choices - the choice to work for a monster in return for the chance to never, ever be stuck doing this shit again. And as I sat on that train, slowly moving back towards civilization and my life, I knew that wasn’t true. I knew that I would continue to be put in situations like the one I was in, over and over and over again. I would never get that promotion. Never truly earn their respect. I was Sisyphus with busted-ass lungs.

I remember the train pulling back into the city, it was Friday night, and there’s nothing more electric than New York on a Friday night. The air pulses with promise. But, what I felt was an overwhelming sense of dread. I spent the entire two hours of the train ride vacillating between anger over Harvey’s actions and minimizing them. I also spent the train ride straght-up ignoring Harvey’s wife and her incessant calls. And I knew there would be hell to pay for both of those actions, just in different ways. So, I braved the throngs, grabbed an uber, and headed back towards 375 Greenwich. I stopped at the liquor store up the street first - bought a couple bottles of wine - and then went back to the office. The rest of the Weinstein Company had left for the night - the only glow of lights were coming from behind the door that lead to Harvey’s wing and our bullpen. My story of woe was just one of three that night. The male assistant had made it back to the city around the same time I did, he happened to have been ditched in an area a little further up the road, but closer to a car service. He had been through some shit the day. The fired assistant was still there, expected to work for another few weeks, despite it all. They had been though some shit that day. And then there was me. And I tried to make them laugh. And poured glass of wine after glass of wine. And minimized my own anger and fear and disappointment over how my day had gone. Because, I was 10 years older than them, and I was mortified that I had the sort of day I had. So we vented and some cried, but we all tried to laugh about the insanity of it all. Laugh and say, “boy won’t this be a wild story to tell”. And then I did my duty, wine drunk and numbed to my own anger, and called Harvey’s wife back and allowed her to scream at me. And I took a cab home at midnight, and picked up the phone when Harvey called to bitch about something else I had done, not bothering to stand up for myself, because what was the point? And the next morning, after a trip to the minor emergency clinic for a breathing treatment, I went into the office to catch up on the work I missed the day before, while being trapped in a car and sprayed with spit and tic-tac shrapnel.

It’s taken me another horrible boss, a move to Vermont, lots of self help books and introspection to even try and process what I put up with and subjected myself to while working in a deeply flawed and problematic industry. One that I desperately wanted to succeeded in, and I see now, I allowed myself to deal with more than I should’ve in order to make that happen. And it never happened, by the way. So now I’m here, in Vermont, living in a Hallmark Channel fever dream, and I still don’t have answers or feel totally at peace, but I do know one thing now. One thing that I’ll never forget: ALWAYS, ALWAYS CARRY A FUCKING INHALER ON YOUR PERSON!!!