As Tiffany and I waited in line outside the arena, a tour bus pulled in and drove around back. Thinking the band might be inside, we left our place in line and went to find where it was parked.
A few minutes later, we were staring at the vehicle’s dark windows, attempting to see inside, when the bus door flung open. I gasped. A man I instantly recognized as the lead singer stepped out. He smiled and walked toward us.
“Are you here to see the show?” he asked.
“Yes,” Tiffany and I replied.
After talking for a few minutes, he gestured toward the arena and indicated he needed to go inside.
“Would you like backstage passes for after the show?” he asked
Bursting with excitement, we couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “Yes!” we told him.
A surreal feeling pulsed through me as the guitar player and a roadie then led us onto the bus. It looked like a house inside with a kitchen nook, long couches lining the walls and lavishly decorated woodwork. There was a curtain that separated one area of the bus from the other.
They offered us beers and made small talk before the roadie got up and led Tiffany to an area on the other side of the curtain. Not long after, the guitar player took me to a small, dimly lit bedroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed with his hand on my leg, he slowly inched it under my skirt. Feeling afraid, I pulled away.
“Where’s Tiffany?” I asked. He kissed me, and then pushed my head toward his penis.
“She’s getting her backstage pass,” he said. “When we’re finished, I’ll give you yours.”
A half-hour later, reunited with Tiffany, we took our backstage passes and left the bus. Seated in the section of the arena reserved for friends of the band, we shared grossly similar stories. Disgusted, we promised to tell no one what happened. Perversely, we stayed at the show. We were ecstatic about our passes. We knew what those men had just done to us felt wrong, but we were so caught up in the high of being close to our idols that we pushed our disgust to the pit of our stomaches and tried to forget what had just occurred.
After the show, at the backstage party, I finally got to talk to the singer of the band. I told him I’d been a fan for years and had all their albums. A burly man with a Polaroid camera took our picture and handed me a copy. It overjoyed me when the singer signed it. I still have it today.
In fact, I have a photo album filled with pictures, backstage passes and autographs of all of the bands I met between the ages of 15 and 17. I became the envy of friends who saw photos of me partying with rock stars — but they didn’t know the dark secrets behind them. By the time I was 16, three different men from three bands had sexually assaulted me. I told no one what happened, least of all my parents, whom I feared would blame me.
Years later, I ended up in a therapist’s office. I was suffering from anxiety, had developed an eating disorder and was obsessed with how unattractive I looked. (In a decade’s time, this would be diagnosed as body dysmorphic disorder.) There was no clear identifier linking my mental health problems with the sexual assaults, but after months of therapy, deep feelings of shame rose to the surface. Eventually, I could finally admit what happened backstage and in hotel rooms with those bands.
At first, the more I revealed, the sicker I felt. But in hearing my voice purge the details, it became apparent for the first time that I had done nothing wrong. I wasn’t bad. I didn’t deserve what those men did to me . I desperately needed to tell someone everything in a safe space so that I could release the shame that was suffocating me.