By Jenna Orkin
Meanwhile up north, FTW was
wandering in the wilderness.
Mike's account of the unraveling of the
company may be found in By
the Light of a Burning Bridge. A key figure is an unnamed "female
employee." In the article, he presents a
scenario in which he played along with her sexual
provocations in order to make her "show her hand."
We won't stoop to any glib jokes about what else he
might have wanted her to show. He claimed to have
been secretly taping her all the while. Later, he
would say that the tape was destroyed in the
burglary.
When he got to New York and talked about the case,
he told me that there had, in fact, been no tape. I
don't know if he also revealed this to other
people. If the case was still on his mind, he might
have, because he needed, as we all do, to be free,
natural and honest with the people close to him.
The "missing tape" meme, he believed, would help him
win the lawsuit for sexual harassment which the female employee
brought against him. Why this case meant so much is
a matter for conjecture which is an otious waste of
time. For the case was marred from the get-go by
her own "unclean hands" as legal lingo has
it. She was no pure, young thing who was
traumatized by Mike's antics, however
"inappropriate" for an office setting. If this was
not, technically, an example of entrapment - since
Mike was so easily drawn in - it certainly was
entrapment in some more ideal forum in a more just
world.
She did show him porn sites, as he was quick to tell
me in his phone-call afterwards. He responded with
the enthusiasm of the protagonist in The Devil and
Daniel Webster. He did appear in the doorway of her
office in his underwear. When he showed me and his
lawyer, Ray Kohlman, his stance - in profile - and
added, "No erection," we decided it would be best to
leave out that detail, if possible.
All this was more recklessness, to the point of
self-destructiveness, on his part, given the context
of a boss/employee relationship. But the female employee,
whether honeypot or not, gave him good reason to
believe she wouldn't mind.
In my experience, Mike respected lack of interest on
the part of a woman. (Of course, I wasn't
twenty-five.) Once or twice when I was at the
computer and he was getting undressed for a shower,
he appeared in the doorway naked, with his fists
clenched at his sides like a wrestler striking a
tough pose. This was during a period when he was
recovering from his depression. Probably
he'd been looking at himself in the mirror and
thinking, "Not bad!" His naked posturing wasn't an
invitation; psychologically at least, it revealed
nothing beyond the wish to be admired.
I believe that after Mike got his inheritance from
his father, approximately $200,000, and paid the FTW
staff and everyone else whom he or FTW owed, (as
well as sending $1000 to an activist in need,
remarking, "It felt so good to do that,") he spent
$35,000 fighting the sexual harassment lawsuit. It
was a matter of honor which is odd, because the sort
of behavior he'd been accused of was the sort he
continued to engage in without guilt, since it was
not uncommon for men of his generation and
upbringing. Though there's
no question that he went too far in his response
to the female employee's overtures, it's absurd to think his
honor is affected by this case; it's a farce.
This account will probably offend some people who are of
the, "Don't speak ill of the dead, and particularly, of
Mike," school of thought. While it's true that historians
bear a special burden because history is written by the
winners, or at least, the survivors, in Mike's case, it's
especially important to tell the whole truth, to the
extent that one knows it.
First of all, if we don't do it, the enemy will. To relay
this story in context, as is the intent here, can serve as
an inoculation against the sort of outlandish accusations
which have been leveled against Mike in the past.
This is a flesh and blood, warts-and-all portrait written
in the belief that in the end, Mike and his transcendent
work and critically important ideas will prevail.
He lost the lawsuit and everyone finally forgot about it.
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1 comment:
I very much appreciate your day by day account, Jenna. I greatly admired MCR but hadn't known a lot of his most interesting life.
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