Chapter 6. “I Made the Decision to Let Him Do It”

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In this chapter, we’ll try to consider only the statements that can’t be disproved, by either documents or common logic. As an experiment, we'll be taking Geimer's words for granted.We’ll see where it brings us.

Remember: it’s only what she said herself. 

And keep this important point in mind: nothing she said could have been used against her if there ever had been a rape. A rape victim can’t be blamed for the rape, whatever her previous behavior (see this chapter). No. We are going to show you, as Geimer did herself in her book, that there never was any rape, because her behavior was consistent throughout.

So, first we learn that she accepted the offer to be photographed and was fascinated by the pictures of other girls, including Kinski, Polanski showed to her and Susan. So far so good. Then that first photo shoot, on the hill.

When he asked me to take my top off altogether, I felt I had to rise to the challenge. … This was my break.

…Then I got my blouse back on as quickly as I could. (…) The next thing I knew, I was topless again.

The last sentence is regrettably vague. Did he took it off her by force, or did she just stripped absent-mindedly without noticing it? Something is insinuated here, but the only bare fact is that she took off her shirt more than once, without anything resembling coercion.

A dirt biker zipped by, and Roman looked from the biker to me. “Is that bothering you?” he asked. “No,” I said. I was a professional. Besides, breasts are beautiful; that’s what The Joy of Sex said, and I thought so.

This part agrees completely with Polanski’s memoirs. He supposed she wouldn’t want to be seen half-naked by strangers, but she reassured him. Summing up: she strips without any objections, and has no problem flashing her breasts to whoever passes by.

Now for the next session, the fatal one.

Back in the car, we talked a little.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.

I looked out the window. “Yes,” I said.

That was a lie. I had had a boyfriend, sort of. He had just broken up with me. Steve was my first serious boyfriend; we had dated for a few months.

…“Have you ever had sex?”

That was an odd question. I replied yes. It was true, and I did not want him to think of me as a child.

Posing topless, displaying no problems with showing her breasts to strangers, and now confirming her sexual experience; the reason given is “did not want him to think of me as a child”; although he didn’t think of her as one – nobody did, as we know from the documents, where every single witness emphasizes heroutstanding maturity – she still makes additional conscious efforts to seem older and more experienced.

“How many times?”

“Twice,” I said. That too was a lie. There had been one time. It hadn’t been particularly memorable; for me, at thirteen, it had been more like – well, one of those things you check off your to-do list.

Well, Polanski gives a different version… and Dalton insists that she had had “partners”, in the plural, but I have no documents about those others yet, so it’s only Dalton’s word against hers, a lawyer’s against a liar’s… sorry, sorry, I’ll keep my doubts to myself till later! Even though we remember than in an interview she says that she had been sexually active “for a long time”, let it be as she says. Let it be once; let it be that she said “twice”. But why, why did she?

I didn’t want to appear naïve. If you tell someone you’ve had sex only once, you sound prudish and ridiculous. Twice was so much better.

So much better for what? For a photo shoot? While her mother insists she was sure he wanted to photograph “children”? Why would one lie this way about one’s sexual experience when alone with a man? Why would one answer this question at all? Why wouldn’t one lie the other way, saying ‘you crazy, I’m thirteen!’ No, twice was much better.

The conversation turned to other things (…)I told him about a Playboy cover I’d seen. [girl in a wetsuit, “unzipped very low”] (…) See, if he knew I had seen Playboy before, he’d understand that I was quite mature.

Same question. Why, why? The “other things” the conversation turned to after they’d discussed her sex life is now Playboy. What she is saying is she was falling over herself to appear even more mature and experienced than she was.

 Then they are at Nicholson’s, she drinks champagne and poses.

I’m perched on the kitchen counter, licking an ice cube, my tongue sticking out (…)

I can be a sex kitten like the girls in Cosmo too.

…He suggests I take my blouse off. Ummm, okay.

She also drinks champagne from his glass (as per her GJ testimony), but forgets to mention it now.

He asks me, “Is this a Quaalude?” and I say, “Yes.”

…He asks me if I’ve ever had one. I say I have. This is a lie. But I think, If I say I have, then I’m someone who knows what she’s saying no to. I’ve tried them, don’t like them – that’s cool, right?

To the GJ she will too say that she’d taken them before. But in this chapter we believe what’s in the book, not what’s under oath. And the reason she gives for saying “yes” is all the more preposterous because she takes that part of the pill immediately after this, explaining it, as we remember, by “how could I say no?”, just as I quote it, in italics.

“Let’s take some photos in the Jacuzzi,” Roman says.

Whatever! That sounds fine to me.

…He asks me to get in the Jacuzzi and I’m in just my panties and he says, “You should take your panties off.”

Oh no. But well, okay, fine. There must be a reason. The panties are dark, kind of rust-colored, maybe they’ll show through the water and mess up the shot.

But then again, I want to be Marilyn Monroe. What would she do? She’d be beautiful and free in the bubbles. So let’s climb that hill, and who cares about the dirt-biker guy, and you want my shirt? Here, and I had sex twice, hasn’t everybody, so yeah, champagne and ‘lude, that’s how it’s done, take my panties, too.

I get in. I’ve got nothing on.

OK. Let’s forget that in an interview she said that she got there in her underwear – we know that she always says what seems appropriate at the moment. Let’s sum up one more time.

Posing topless, displaying no problems with showing her breasts to strangers, talking about her sexual experience and Playboy photos, drinking champagne and confessing to being acquainted with the Quaaludes, playing with her tongue, being a “sex kitten”, taking off her panties without a word of objection, falling over herself to appear as mature, experienced and sophisticated as possible… All that according to herself.

And now let’s stop and remember the important point we started this chapter with.

All of the above would have mattered nothing – just nothing! – if after this she had been actually raped. If Polanski had suddenly assaulted her and, in spite of her resistance and pleas, had forcibly had sex with her, it wouldn’t have mattered shit whether or not she had behaved as if having sex with him was everything she’d ever dreamed of. Rape is rape, and no behavior of the victim justifies it.

But the point is that everything went on just like it started! She played this part till the end, never letting him know that something was (always assuming it was) unwelcome! Let’s read on.

He takes off his tan pants and sweater. Then he removes his briefs. I look away, and I don’t look back up until I am sure he is in the water. I really don’t want to see anything. If I don’t see, I won’t remember.

In an interview she said she actually didn’t remember, and thought he was in his underwear. Silver must have helped with this bit again.

“Come here, I want you to feel something,” he says.

I knew this wasn’t right. But I don’t know what to do, so I tiptoe over.

She never "knows what to do", so she just does everything he suggests. She never mentions he ordered her about or insisted that she do something. She also says “I never felt in any physical danger” and that she knew he wasn’t going to hurt her. Why this obedience? We know that Polanski denies that he ever was in the tub; we’ll disregard his statement and just look at the Jacuzzi photos instead, as an illustration of the young lady’s curios obedience. None of these are present in the book, of course.

 He pulls me a little closer by the waist and helps hold me up a little and moves me above one of the jets so I can feel the bubbles tickling up between my legs.

“You see? Doesn’t that feel good?”

There’s nothing good about it, but I know what he’s getting at.

“Uh, yeah,” I say. Why don’t I say, “No”? Why don’t I say, “Don’t touch me”?

 Why indeed? After behaving like we’ve already seen, she also answers in the affirmative to the question whether an erotic experience feels good. She never says “no”, or “don’t touch me”. Instead, she behaves like she is totally happy to go on – or would be, if not for an asthma fit.

That’s the cunning part. Polanski in his book wonders why she invented asthma. I have to say he is too naive to understand. Well, let’s see: she invents asthma and gets out of the tub; then goes to swim in the pool, totally naked, and only after this puts on her underwear.

“How is your asthma?” he asks gently. His voice is soft, wheedling.

“I need to go home and take my medicine,” I say.(…)

He says offhandedly “Yeah, I’ll take you home soon.”

Then he tells me to go into the other room and lie down. “No, I have to go home,” I say, but he takes me by the shoulders and walks me to the bedroom, and sits me on a large red velvet couch. He asks if I’m okay. “No, I am not okay,” I say. “I better go home now.”

He assures me I’ll get better.

Now you see the point? Forget for a moment that in the testimony he didn't "take" her "by the shoulders" and "walked" her to the "bedroom", but she just "went there and lied down", we're not catching her on lies in this chapter. Look once again: she has posed topless and walked about naked, she talked about her sex life, she pulled a “sex kitten” and blew him kisses in the bathtub, she pretended to be perfectly grown up and sophisticated, she said she liked the erotic experience in the bathtub… and the only objection she ever utters to anything is that imaginary asthma! She never says “I don’t like you”, “don’t touch me”, “don’t kiss me”, she never says “let me alone” – she only says she is feeling unwell, and he understands it the way all the context has lead him to: that she should be made better the way he himself knows best. That’s why the only thing she’s been consistent throughout, in all her accounts, is that at some point she said “no”: she actually said it, but not as in “no, I don’t want to have sex with you”. It was “no, I am feeling unwell because of my asthma”. He genuinely believed her, and genuinely thought that was the only reason of her wanting to go home – which she soon stopped repeating, by the way.

What if she had actually said “leave me alone, I don’t want you”? Why, obviously: he would have left her alone. He never, not for a single moment, forced her to do anything she didn’t [appear to] want to. Here’s a bit from her testimony to prove it:

He goes, "Doesn't it feel better down here?" And he was like holding me up because it is almost over my head. And I went, "Yeah, but I better get out." So I got out.

She got out the moment she wanted to and the moment she said she would. All the time she was free to do as she wanted.

He’s kissing my face and feeling my breasts and he asks me again if I like it, does it feel good. I say nothing, but he’s a guy who makes movies, so I imagine he’s filling in the dialogue for himself.

That’s a funny take on how a filmmaker’s mind works, but anyway, she never says, “No, I don’t like it, get off me.”

He asks if it feels good, which it does – and that, in itself, is awful. I don’t want this, my mind recoils, but my body is betraying me.

Why feeling good is “in itself awful” is an interesting question, because it contradicts everything she said before about sex (how erotic experience was considered generally positive etc)i; probably added by Newman. The remaining part shows that she didn’t only pretend, but actually liked it: how else would you interpret “my body is betraying me”?

I don’t fight. Why fight?

I made the decision to just let him do it, how bad can it be, it’s just sex. He doesn’t want to hurt me. (…) We are both playing our parts.

And on that note, we’ll end this chapter. It sums up everything. She made the decision to let him do it. She behaved, throughout, from the first session on the hill, the way he couldn’t but believe that she felt like having sex with him. She never said “No” that could be interpreted as “No, I don’t want”. She did everything without a slightest objection. She never was forced or coerced (as the probation department concluded, too). She played her part.

She proceeds to tell the story of how she had wonderful sex and lead life full of drugs and sex and booze immediately after this, that is, from age 14 on. 

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