When I was sixteen, and a grown up, just like Ariel, so mature, so adult, I really, really, REALLY wanted to fuck an adult male friend of mine.

I didn't want to make love to him; I didn't know what that meant, not really. I didn't want to have sex with him; that implied a degree of experience I didn't have. I wanted to fuck him.

I wanted him to do all sorts of vile things to me. Things I didn't really understand, but had encountered in books, and things I sadly did understand.

And I was pretty hot at sixteen. I had legs for days, I had that hollow-cheeked look that comes from malnutrition and the fashion magazines try to pawn off as desirable, I had boobs that defied the touch of gravity.

My tits were Elphaba in a black lace shell with no bra, and they wanted to destroy all of Oz.

So I threw myself at this guy--this man, this adult man with a job and a car and money and food in his kitchen, none of which were things I possessed--like I was a penis-seeking missile, and you know what he did?

He did not fuck me.

He looked at this hot, desperate, lonely sixteen year old who wasn't as adult as she thought she was, and he said "I have all the power and she has none," and he gave me a sandwich and talked me through what I thought I wanted.

He was honest with me about why this was a terrible idea, and why I could think I wanted something and not understand how wrong I was. He told me that if I still wanted this when I was twenty-one, he'd unlock his bedroom. He sent me home with twenty dollars and a candy bar.

It should not be remarkable that an adult man, offered a free and clear fuck from a teenage girl, turned it down. But it is.

Now: any of us who is in a position of power in our industry has the capacity to be that adult man.

If an aspiring author comes to me just panting for it, like I was, just dying for it, it may seem easier to go "well, I wanted it too, and they started it, why not?"

And the "why not" is a power imbalance so big that there is no possible way to encompass it in a tweet thread. The "why not" is that even if she thinks she wants it (like I did) it would be abusive. The "why not" is also self-protection.

Come back in five years. You'll either be established in your career or have given up. I can fuck you in five years, if I'm still your white whale. But right now, no. Just like he said to me.

I'm a long way from sixteen now. But he turned what could have been trauma into teaching, and I will always be grateful.

I wish all acts of saving me from myself had come with twenty dollars, a candy bar, and a ride home.