philippos42

Hey, dreamwidthers, are you still here?

This is an odd thing to come back with, but it's bugging me, and this seemed like a better place to say it than some other places.

I am about the same age as Anthony Rapp. I was seeing a lot of people, younger people I think, freak out at Kevin Spacey for "sexually assaulting" Rapp back in the 1980's. But from what I was first hearing, I wasn't seeing it the way other people were.

Well, I actually read People's excerpt of Rapp's description here, and it does sound pretty bad:

Rapp alleged that then-26-year-old Spacey invited him to his Manhattan apartment for a party in 1986. (They were both starring in hit Broadway plays at the time.) Rapp says he was the only teen at the party and spent most of the evening in a bedroom watching television when he realized everyone had left and he was alone with Spacey.

“My memory was that I thought, ‘Oh, everybody’s gone. Well, yeah, I should probably go home,’” Rapp told BuzzFeed. Spacey, he said, “sort of stood in the doorway, kind of swaying. My impression when he came in the room was that he was drunk … He picked me up like a groom picks up the bride over the threshold. But I don’t, like, squirm away initially, because I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then he lays down on top of me.”

“He was trying to seduce me,” Rapp said. “I don’t know if I would have used that language. But I was aware that he was trying to get with me sexually.”

OK, I'd better check out that Buzzfeed article.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/adambvary/anthony-rapp-kevin-spacey-made-sexual-advance-when-i-was-14

Wow. This has been eating Anthony Rapp for decades. Bigger than what I first thought.

OK, that sort of knocks the legs out from under what I was feeling. Anyway....

Back when it was new, I read Tom Junod's profle of Spacey in the 1997 Esquire, and I have some ideas about Spacey's sexuality. I also had the impression that he's been out for a few years. While it's nice to have a clear admission of his bisexuality, making this about Spacey outing himself seems strange. Because earlier today, if you asked me, I probably would have said, "Yeah, he seems to be vaguely bisexual, and was kind of opportunistic about macking on women and probably men when he was younger, and is out as gay now."

And the first bits of this I heard, I kind of took the image I already had thanks to Tom Junod, and the context, and yeah, drunken inappropriate behavior from a twenty-something...I've been somewhere like there? My sympathies were with Spacey.

But reading Rapp's account, yeah, that was a bit much.