Touched by a Mormon, attacked by a Douchebag

TW: sexual assault, bi-phobia

A few years ago a married religious comic grabbed my genitals without invitation or permission at the comedy club. I went up later that evening and told everyone on stage, in the harsh accusatory way tinted with self depreciating sarcasm all the comics of my generation think is so clever. I wasn't as articulate as I could have been about it, but I do remember that nobody cared. I haven't brought it up again, until now.


It is easy for others to forget I am a sexual assault victim. I don't talk about it much, but it did help form many of my attitudes and feelings now seventeen years later. I am as vocal as I can be about the things I feel are important as often as I have the energy to do so. I also seem to have near infinite capacity for conflict during certain moods and take advantage of them to throw myself at the big issues whenever I can. All of this has made the explosion of the #meetoo movement interesting to watch. I haven't posted this yet since I believe my role in this has mostly been to stay as supportive as possible to the women in my life while lambasting the shitbags in the comment sections who feel the need to become a problem.

Then a few weeks ago I closed out a show at the comedy club downtown, where I essentially did a fifteen minute intersectionalist rant with incorporated recent social events. When I mentioned two local sexual predators by name, I got the reaction in the club you'd expect, including noises of recognition from the other experienced comic in the room.

And this is where I get frustrated. Several years ago I worked with a man named Jade Jesser. Jade was a bartender and a brewpub I worked at, did a lot of coke, and spent a lot of time trying to have sex with the other employees and the more attractive customers. There are a thousand dudes exactly like him in every city, most of them with the same workout routines and haircuts, and just charming and attractive enough to get away with it. The biggest difference is Jade was also doing comedy in the valley, and we worked together. I didn't notice his worse habits right away and we became workplace friends, I even gave him an old Conan comic book I found.

Then he finally talked me into joining him for a drink. As we sat the bar he talked about how close he was to some gay people in his life, how open-minded it had made him, and how offended he was I wasn't more open to him about it since we were friends. Despite the ridiculousness of expecting any person you're not in a relationship with to be open with you about their sexuality, I tend to enjoy talking about myself and we had a few conversations. A lot of straight dudes over the years have been curious about what it means to also be attracted to men and I typically don't mind sharing my experiences. The rest of the night passed without memory, other than his comments on the bodies of the women around us, which were frequent and annoying.

Unfortunately, we were out with a few coworkers together not long after, where the conversation turned to women and the pursuit of them (men are boring). During which he conspiratorially leaned in and accused me of lying about my sexuality in order to trick women into sleeping with me. As if we were sharing our cons and how effective they were. I was stunned and played it off as a joke, not trusting the drinks in my heads to have heard him correctly.

Our close work proximity kept me civil and I started paying more attention, eventually noticing his toxic patterns and communicating those things to many of the new women who started working with us. Eventually this got back to him and he challenged me on it, changing our relationship. I worked for a small, slowly failing company. Jade was head bartender and old friends/coke buddy with the manager. I could probably have done more, but I didn't feel at the time like I had many options that would work out for me. I frequently get labeled as a problem for talking about problems caused by other people and I've learned I can only do so much.

Fast forward a few months and Jade and I are both booked to do a local Chive fundraiser. The booker was our store manager and decided having Jade close out the show was a better choice, which is fine by me, your show can suck if you want it to and I wasn't getting paid anyway. My set went decently well (humblebrag: a local media person originally from out of state came up afterwards and heaped drunken praise on me, which made me feel pretty good), then Jade went up next. He almost immediately went into several bi-phobic jokes about me, attacking both me and my sexuality in general. I left during most of his set.

At least one of them made a meme about me, so it wasn't a total loss

This resulted in me breaking off my relationship with the Chive group immediately, benefit shows or no, and outing the entire thing onto Facebook. I am nothing if not a petty bitch. In the comments of that post, buried somewhere in Facebook memories, several woman came out directly relating their own bad experiences with Jade. The manager, currently the store manager of Even Stevens in downtown Boise, handled this by responding to every story and allegation with a all caps “FUCK YOU!”. There are times when I realize why that brewpub closed so quickly. He later defended those comments by saying Facebook isn't the “real world”.

And I guess this is why I'm writing this. Despite the fact all of this was public, despite us publicly telling stories about how Jade would have sex with his employees and then abuse them at work to try to get then to quit, many of the people in my life stayed friends with him, including people I thought were close to me.

I am struggling to find the right way to feel about this, like when after a longtime partner cheated on me and all of our friends decided the middle ground was to stay friends with both of us. The people who are most likely to support my actions in these arenas are the people who barely know me, women comics from other states who might not even recognize me in person, or random Facebook friends/fans who I definitely would not recognize in person.

I can't say I have been without success. After our first ever Boise's Funniest Person event, I took my observations about how some of the men coaches were taking advantage of some of the women contestants to the producer and the rule was changed the next season so coaches and their contestants couldn't be alone anymore. I still believe that only worked because the producer was a woman.

Yesterday I saw a post on social media where that married religious comic who always preaches clean only comedy and also grabbed my dick that one time was preaching against porn. Her and I are friends, life is comedy, and I am not mad at her. I don't honestly know all of her story and maybe being sexually aggressive was a survival tactic for a woman in comedy or just a way she allowed herself to be when she was without the confines of her Mormon lifestyle. And maybe porn is toxic, maybe that's why everyone is single these days, but I do know that her actions did not hurt me and I do not need an apology or anything from her. Maybe an apology all the comics who thought it was funny when I mentioned being groped on stage all those years ago, maybe from all those people who stayed friends with Jade after his bi-phobia and sexually predatory behavior became public, definitely from the manager who thought it was okay to attack women for allegations against his friend.

The guy who made the meme about me is okay though, I can take a joke.