#MeToo by Joanne de Araujo

Joanne de Araujo

When I was very young, I was walking through Manhattan. I was on my way to Marymount College for a class. I heard a screeching taxi cab behind me that pulled over. An older man jumped out and started running towards me down the street. He was telling me he wanted to make me a star, and that he was famous. He begged me to meet with him later at his apartment. He told me he had made Nastassja Kinski the famous woman that she was. He gave me his business card and I called him later that day. I told him I would meet him at a restaurant, I was afraid to meet a man alone in his apartment.

I was in my twenties, but those of you who remember me back then, I was so skinny, 5/9 and 105 lb. I looked all of about 15 years old. I called him later that day and he asked me to meet him at his building again. I told him I'd wait in the lobby. I got to the building, which was on the Upper West Side near the YMCA. His doorman told me that he had an director upstairs that he was having a meeting with, and could I please go upstairs and wait. When I entered his apartment, he escorted me quickly into a bedroom and sat me down and put on a movie. He said he was finishing the meeting. It took me a few minutes of watching the movie to realize that he had put on a porn movie. It was he, and somebody he had called to join him- a professional football player, having sex simultaneously with a woman. I quickly got up to leave when he came through the door in a robe, and dropped it on the floor. He was completely naked. I told him that I needed to use the ladies room. He showed me a bathroom near the front door of the apartment and, as I approached it, I ran out of the apartment.

Later, I found out that he had directed several famous movies like Bugsy, and the Pick Up Artist........ his name was James Toback.