You step out of the shower, feeling clean, warm, and relaxed. As you reach for your towel, you notice a tiny spy camera sitting in the far top corner of your bathroom. Your heart starts hammering. You're angry, embarrassed, and ashamed.

You quickly grab the towel, trying not to reveal too much, and wrap it around yourself, hiding your breasts and vagina. You give the camera a quick finger, then you open the bathroom door, blocking the camera's view.

You quickly search your bathroom for more cameras, not finding any; then you dash through your living room to your bedroom, hoping no cameras are recording you. You look for cameras in your bedroom, still not finding any, then quickly dress.

You walk back to your bathroom, kneel on your counter, reach up, and rip the camera off the wall. You wrap your hands around it, so whoever is watching you can't see a thing, and then carry it to the kitchen. You set it lens-up on your cutting board, then grab the hammer you bought for breaking cameras.

SMASH!

That's the third camera you've found in your apartment. You hope they're expensive.

You sink into a chair at your kitchen table, and you're shaking. This is too creepy, too intrusive, too much. Finding one camera was horrifying. Finding a third is crushing, because it means the cameras aren't going to stop. Being spied on is now your life.

Halfway through calling the police you hang up. You really do not want to deal with the police again.

After you reported finding the first camera, two cops came. First you showed them where you found the camera in your bedroom. They seemed more interested in seeing what was in your bedroom than where the camera was.

Then you brought them back to your kitchen and showed them the camera on your table. They grunted, acknowledging that it was a camera. Then they all sat down at your table, and the white cop, about 50, started asking questions. His partner, a so-called brother about 25, leered at you half the time. First they asked you about past boyfriends. Then they asked you to list everyone you had sex with in the past year.

When you saw that first camera in your bedroom, you felt so violated. You had dressed in front of that camera, so it had spied on your naked body. You don't know how many times you had undressed in front of it before noticing. Maybe the number doesn't matter.

Plus that camera didn't magically appear in your bedroom. Someone had entered your apartment when you weren't here, without permission, violating your private space.

And now someone had pictures of your naked body. Some creepy jerk somewhere was looking at naked pictures of you while yanking on his cock and masturbating. Ugh.

You were scared and furious. And trying not to cry or break down. You called the police to put the asshole in prison where hopefully he would be gang-raped – so he can feel his privacy being violated. Or you called them because you wanted to feel protected.

But these cops were violating you too. Forcing you to tell them the names of each man you had sex with? At that moment, you wanted to tell them – and every male on the planet – to go fuck themselves. But you needed their help. So you had to answer their questions. You felt so ashamed.

Then they started asking if you might have encouraged any of the men, or if you might have encouraged other men, like at work. And all the time they were both looking at your cleavage, and you realized you were wearing a low cut sweater, and you certainly looked like a black girl who encourages men.

They acted like this was your fault.

And then you felt yourself giving up, and you were completely helpless. In a small defeated voice, you told them you hadn't encouraged anyone. And they said "uh huh," like they were pretending to believe you, but didn't.

Of course you encourage men, that's kind of the point. That doesn't mean they can put cameras in your bedroom.

And then they stood up and started to leave, saying they would do what they could.

"Don't you want to take the camera?"

The white cop scowled at you. "Miss Logan, we can't trace that camera. We have mandatory gun registration, and half the time we can't even trace the guns we find."

You turned to the brother, hoping for a more helpful response, and asked him, "What about fingerprints?" He shrugged, he didn't know.

The white cop answered. "There's a 3-week delay now on fingerprints. That's for serious crimes. We can't clog up the system with prints from petty misdemeanors. Anyway, he probably wiped the camera, and his prints probably wouldn't be on file."

"Or her prints," the brother added, being politically correct. He smiled at you. You scowled at him and turned back to the white cop. "What about DNA?"

"There's a month and a half delay on DNA results, if we're lucky. And we're going to find DNA from every man who's been in your apartment." He shook his head. "Miss Logan, we'll do the best we can."

You never heard back.

Your life changed that day. It wasn't that you felt invulnerable before; you just took it for granted. You. Were. Wrong. Because you're a woman, you're vulnerable – a man got pictures of your naked body, just because he wanted to.

When you found a second spy camera in your kitchen, you just stared. It was like being struck by lightning twice – what were the chances?

Then you realized it was the same guy. El Creepo had seen you eat, and he had seen you reading at the table or working on your laptop. So no nudity, but you must have done something embarrassing, foolishly thinking that you were alone in your kitchen and safe from prying eyes.

So it was another violation, though not as invasive. But happening twice was definitely bad. You felt obligated to call the police again, though this time not as naively.

You were downgraded to visiting the police station to file your complaint – they didn't care about the scene of the crime, probably because they weren't going to catch him. They weren't worried about you being traumatized, that was your problem.

You filled out a crime report, you waited forever, you finally got to see a cop, an older black man with graying hair and glasses. He projected friendly grandfather. He read what you wrote, and then he asked you the same questions. In the dress you were wearing for that trip, you could have walked into church and helped give communion, but he was also talking about the ways this was your fault.

He looked at the list of names. "Is there any of these men we should especially focus on?"

You understood what he was asking – there were too many men to check out each one. Could you target one man for them to investigate?

Not really. "Lennix Dobson." Might as well make that two-timer's life a little miserable.

He gave you a great smile and said they would catch whoever was doing this.

You weren't believing. "Just exactly how are you going to catch him?"

He gave you that same encouraging smile. "Guys like this, they aren't smart. If he keeps doing this, sooner or later he'll make a mistake."

You shook your head, still not believing. Plus he was telling you what you were trying not to tell yourself – the creep was going to do it again and again.

"Miss Logan?"

"Yes?"

"Change your locks."

"Yes, Officer."

That's was his effort to protect you.

You had learned an unwanted lesson in the ways of the world. It wasn't a kind world, with everyone being good and the police trying to protect you from the occasional bad person. There were more selfish people than the police could handle, and no one cared about your problems. You became more cynical. You felt a little more helpless.

And your body didn't belong to just you any more.

So you bought an expensive new lock. And yet now there was a third camera in your apartment.

You sweep the pieces of the camera into the garbage, then start searching your apartment to see if he's made some mistake. You have no idea what you're looking for. Did that cop think, like, the creep might drop his driver's license?

There's no sign of him except probably tons of fingerprints and DNA, but the cops don't want to deal with that. This is a nice neighborhood, but it's a big city and they have real crimes to worry about. You get it. You're not dead, or stabbed. Or bruised. You don't even have a broken fingernail. No one stole your weekly paycheck, or your wallet, or even your salt shaker. You weren't raped or groped.

Just violated. In a way a men don't understand.

That third camera made you paranoid. You were always obsessively checking for cameras. You started dressing and undressing quickly, in case he was watching. You never felt like you were alone in your apartment. Maybe you sometimes were, but you couldn't feel it, and you never knew for sure.

You weren't as assertive at work. It was just a small loss of confidence, but you sometimes deferred to other people when you would have kept arguing before. You weren't as outgoing or flirty with guys on dates; they did more to you before the night was over.

You found the fourth camera hidden between two teeth of a large comb in the back of your comb jar in your bathroom. You didn't know how long it had been there.

Now you knew he could put cameras in your apartment where you couldn't quickly find them.

You found a fifth camera in your car. First he violated your home and body, and now he was violating your life. You realized he could be putting cameras on you at work.

On your drive to work the next day, you started to happily sing along with your music, when you realized he could be listening. So you stopped singing. But you didn't want to let him control your life, so you made yourself sing out loud anyway. But you didn't enjoy singing. Now you don't sing, whistle, or hum.

You treasure being in an elevator, where he can't be spying on you. When you go out to eat, it's heaven. You always go to a different restaurant.

You're the layout manager with a staff of one, for one the best-selling computer magazines. Maybe you first got the job because you're their demographic nirvana, but you're damn good at what you do. You've pointed that out to the head manager enough times that you think he finally understands.

You could have let yourself be isolated at work, that was the natural situation. But it wasn't that hard to intrude yourself into whatever the guys there were doing, from going out for drinks after work to ordering Thai as everyone worked into the night just before the issue deadline.

But now you started looking at each guy and wondering, is this your camera-stalker? You didn't know. Probably not. But they police thought someone from work was a possibility.

So it was a little harder to invite yourself into their group, and eventually you got isolated. Everyone was still friendly and nice, you just didn't have as many interactions with the men at work.

You were cleaning your couch and found a listening bug. At first you wondered why anyone would put a camera behind a pillow. But there was no lens. So he listens to you too. How are you supposed to find listening bugs? You spent three hours searching your apartment and found one other listening bug. You didn't even try searching your car, that seemed hopeless.

Church should have been a relaxing respite from cameras, but instead you felt guilty, like you were somehow a part of that sin. You told yourself it wasn't your fault a hundred times. But you could see through that camera's eye, before you smashed it to pieces, your naked body exciting some man somewhere. Tempting him to evil. Walking in public looking attractive, making him want to see more.

You couldn't wear overly sexy clothes any more either. If you showed cleavage, you felt like you were encouraging men to violate you. You could look down at your bare leg and feel guilty.

You bought your silverware at Bed, Bath, & Beyond. It's cheap, but it does the job. One day you opened your drawer, and all of the spoons were a different pattern.

You just stared, uncomprehendingly. It didn't seem real.

Then it did seem real – he had entered your apartment and switched spoons.

He had escalated an inch, but that crossed a line. Maybe his invasion was always about power. His power to enter your apartment. He could see your naked body whenever he wanted. And now he was showing you he could take whatever he wanted, change your life any way he chose.

You couldn't call the police to report someone switching spoons. You searched your apartment for cameras or bugs, finding nothing, and for the third time you bought and installed a new, heavy-duty lock on your door.

A few days later, you realized your cheese grater was gone. You thought about reporting a stolen cheese grater just to hear the police laughing at you. Now your apartment wasn't completely yours either.

Three days later, when you were quickly getting dressed in the morning, you found a bra that you had never seen before. It was in with your other bras. You tried to see if any were missing, but that was too hard to remember. He had escalated from nonsexual to sexual. You checked your apartment for anything else missing, but all you found was a different cheese grater in your kitchen.

You felt even more vulnerable and helpless.

You throw the day's mail on top of your previous mail, making the pile topple onto your kitchen table.

In the middle of the pile, now poking out, is a picture of you naked. You pull it out from the pile and study it. You're reaching in your panty drawer, and it's a side shot, so it came from by your bed. Did you find a camera there? you don't remember, they've all blurred together. You check and there's no camera there now.

You walk into your bedroom and smell semen. A quick game of colder-hotter, played to the tune of icky and ickier, leads you to your dresser. When you open the top drawer,

There's semen on one of your panties.

You're so disgusted that it's making you sick. There's a camera in the back of the drawer, positioned to see your face as you open the drawer. So he saw your reaction. You should try harder to hide your emotions.

You're so angry. You just want to pummel his face until it's a bloody mess. You just want to give up, this is too much. It's all too unfair. You're a mess of emotions. You angrily yank the whole drawer out of your dresser, carry it to your garbage can in your kitchen, and dump everything in the garbage. Then you take the garbage to the dumpster in back, throw it in, and start crying.

And you can't stop. The tears are streaming down your face. You thought you were strong; he just taught you you're weak. You fumble to get your door unlocked – damn locks – and sit at your kitchen table and just cry and cry. You're so angry, and you feel so helpless, and you don't know what to do, and you can't change anything.

And you can't live your life this way. You cry so long you run out of tears, and you still can't stop crying, it's just a dry cry, sobbing heaves, pounding the table, holding your face in your hands.

And then you're done crying. You look at the clock. You think you cried for an hour. Tucked behind the clock is another spy camera.

So he saw your whole cry. You don't even own your life. Well, if this is about power, he was masturbating to that.

Or maybe he finally realizes how he's ruining your life. You say to the camera, as nicely as you can, "Can you please stop?"

And you give up. There's supposed to be a part inside you that fights for what you deserve and need. Something that fights for your survival and your rights.

It's gone. Broken. He took it from you. You take down the camera and throw it away. You check your apartment for other cameras.

And when you're done checking, you put your life in his hands. He can stop. You hope he does. If he doesn't, you give up. You're just an actor in a play he's producing. You get to be the star, but you don't want to be the star or even in his movies. You just want him to leave you alone. But the part of you that's supposed to fight him is gone.

You come home the next night. Normally the first thing you do is search for cameras. You don't look. They're there, or they're not. You usually try to feel like this is your home and you're by yourself. Now it just feels like a stage and you're in a movie.

But you don't see any cameras. Everything is in place. Maybe he really has given up on you. Maybe he was truly upset by your crying. Maybe he's finally being a nice person.

The next day you still don't notice any cameras. But you didn't really look.

You open the top drawer of your dresser. All the new panties and bras you bought are gone. They've been replaced by something he bought you.

So he's not leaving you alone. He liked seeing you cry. He likes having power over you. You can feel the rage inside yourself, but it can't get out. You're broken.

There's a camera in your drawer too, seeing your reaction. You don't care.

You pick out a bra and panties. They're cheap. He bought the cheapest thing he can find. Good, he doesn't have a lot of money.

You put them on. You open your bedroom closet, a little surprised to find all of your clothes there, wondering if that will last forever. You don't bother looking for more cameras.

You take the last pair of clean panties from your drawer. He had bought you a set of four. "I need more panties," you say. You pick up the camera from your drawer, point it at the empty spot where there are no more panties. Then you put the camera back.

That night you check for panties. None. So you have to do laundry and sooner or later buy more.

That night you do a strip tease when you take off your clothes. You shake your booty. You flash your cunt. There has to be a camera in your bedroom somewhere.

You just don't care. You try to care, but you can't. You know you should care, but you can't make yourself. You can feel the rage inside you, but it's just leaking out and making you hate yourself. You're letting yourself be violated. You're letting him take advantage of you. You let him take as much of your life as he wants.

A new pair of pajamas is sitting on your bed, still in their package. Bright purple. How lovely. But not really you. You assume your pajamas will be missing. You'll wear these anyway, they're your wardrobe for tonight's scene.

You open the box nearby. A vibrator. It's a prop. You never wanted to use a vibrator. But you guess you will now, it's in the script.

You've started dating abusive men.

When Karl is close to cumming, you open your eyes and look at him. He's mouthing, under his breath, "Take that, nigger." So he's a white racist. You can feel the rage igniting inside me, burning hot. But it doesn't come out. You just hate yourself for letting him fuck you.

And you knew. The way Karl was happy to feel your breasts but didn't want to kiss you. And still you let him enter you.

When our sex is over, you get a quick exit out of his apartment. Now that he's orgasmed, he doesn't want you next to him, doesn't want you in his bed. He's probably changing the sheets right now.

Ah shit! You worked for hours last night on finalizing the layout for next issue, then you forgot to save it to the cloud. So it's on your computer at home.

Two months ago you would have shouted that out loud and bothered everyone in the surrounding cubicles. When you talk to yourself now, it's silently.

You stand up and tell Bill nearby that you have to run home, then you walk down to the parking garage.

Fuck, you say to yourself, not showing any emotion. A car is illegally parked, blocking you in.

The old you would have at least kicked his car and shouted curses at him. The new you assumes you're always on camera. So you're quiet, keeping your anger in. The new you is never spontaneous. You trudge back up two flights of stairs in your high heels.

"Bill, can I borrow your car for a few minutes? I have to go home and get the work I left there."

He looks up at you and smiles. "You should put it in the cloud," he offers helpfully.

"I normally do," you say, trying not to sound angry at his patronization.

"Do you want you to show you how to make that automatic?"

You could wring his geeky neck. "That would be great. Thanks. But for now, could I just borrow your car?"

"Sure." He stands, digs his keys out of his pocket, and hands them to you.

"Thanks."

You trudge back down the two flights of stairs. The car is still blocking yours, so you find Bill's car and drive it home.

You put your key in your door, turn it, and walk in, trying as always to keep your face bland for the cameras. Then you hear a clattering noise in your bathroom. You didn't request any repairs.

You walk to your bathroom, the door is open, and inside is an 18-year-old white guy, showing nervous. He looks like a computer geek except for the oily hair and cheap clothes. He doesn't look like a repairman, and you don't –

It's your stalker. You finally caught him. "Asshole."

"Your car is supposed to be at work."

So he tracks the location of your car. "Didn't play out that way, loser."

And he reaches into the pocket of his overhauls, and pulls out a gun. "Stand back," he says nervously.

Oh shit. Now you know what his face looks like, so you can report him to the police. Is he going to kill you first? "Put the gun down. We can talk this out."

"I don't think so, miss porn star."

You slowly put your hand on the top button of your blouse, and you unbutton it. He looks transfixed. "Wouldn't you like to touch what you've been staring at all these months?"

He glances back at the camera he didn't finish installing. It's not recording. Then he looks back to you, you've already undone two more buttons. He takes a sharp breath.

"I'm gonna let you touch me."

He shakes his head no, like he can't talk. Then he blurts out, "I don't touch."

"Are you sure?" You've finished unbuttoning your blouse. You take it off. So you're standing in front of him in your bra. You quickly unfasten it and take it off too, your breasts falling loose in front of him.

"Your skin is crawling with bacteria."

"I showered this morning."

"And sweat."

"Not that much sweat."

"I don't touch. You can't make me."

How do men's minds get so twisted in knots? You recognize him now. He's the guy at the grocery store who rounds up the carts from the parking lot. You remember saying hi to him once, being nice to him once. You pitied him. Maybe his life is so lonely you're the only female who talked to him in the past year.

"No one's making you, baby," you say in your sultriest voice. And you start moving your fingers across your breast.

You make slow circles around your areola.

You cup your breast up.

You slowly gliding your finger from the bottom of your breast to your nipple, then rubbing your nipple.

You move your finger to the side of your breast, and just barely graze your skin as you slowly move it back to your nipple. You hold your nipple between two fingers and lightly pinching it.

Two fingers, pretending to be feet, walk down the inside of one breast to your other breast. They climb the heights there to your other nipple. You start to –

Suddenly he looks down at his crotch. You can see it too, his pants are starting to darken. He came in his pants. Then his gun slips out of his hand, he forgot about holding it. It clanks against the rim of the toilet bowl then splashes into the water.

You take two strides to him and slug him in the face as hard as you can. He screams and puts his hands to his face, so you kick him in the crotch, toe-first, with your high heel. He moans, and you throw another hard punch to his hands and face. He takes a hand away to hit you, and his face is such a bloody mess he can hardly see, and you put another fist through his nose.

The pain is too much for him, and he's starting to lose consciousness. You try to break his cheek, but you're not strong enough to do that and don't hear anything breaking, so you pound your fist into his lips, trying to crush them against his teeth. You see a lot of blood.

Then he falls to your bathroom floor. You just look at him disgustedly. "I've been wanting to do that for a looong time." You calmly take out your phone and call 911.

"I have an intruder in your house."

"Don't try to approach him, he could be armed and –"

"No, he's unconscious. I'm safe." Finally. You look. He's still unconscious. You give him another hard kick in the face. "I just want to press charges. He's been harassing me for months."

"We'll send police out right away."

There's a buzz, and you buzz them in, and the same two cops as first time come in.

The white cop says, "You reported an unconscious man in your apartment?"

"Yep. Caught the creep putting up a camera in my bathroom. He's been doing that for months."

"You should have reported this sooner. Can I ask, why he was targeting you?"

Blaming you. You're too angry to answer that. You whirl on your heels and walk to your bathroom, them following.

"Holy shit!" the black cop says when he sees the guy. "What happened to him?"

"He fell from the counter and hit his face."

"It looks like someone –" The white cop puts his arm across his partner's chest and says, "Mm hmm. He hit it pretty badly." Black cop gives him googly eyes, then gets it. He turns to me, "You were very lucky he fell, Miss Logan." He says that with too much sincerity to be real.

You sigh. "I was."

You can't believe this is over.

The white cop explains, "You might have to testify in court. But we'll get a search warrant for wherever he lives. That should be more than enough evidence to convict him; it's unlikely this will ever make this to trial."

"Can you have a woman be the one to look at his stuff of me?"

"It'll probably be a few men, but we'll be professional."

"I'll sue."

He writes that down.

You look at the black cop. Officer Jansen. Not the brightest bulb on the planet, but he's got a good build, a nice face, and a real job. And no ring. This is the first time in months you've looked at a man and not wondered if he was your stalker. You look at the two of them, calling the ambulance to haul him away, looking at the creep's license, deciding how to find his car, and you realize they're helping you.

They're not violating you. Any man can, and their minds can be even more twisted up than you thought. But Officer Jansen is protecting you right now. He would be nice to you on a date. You have to stop hating yourself. You reach out and touch his forearm. "Thanks for coming, Officer." And you give him your most winning smile.

He startles at your touch, smiles back at you, then we hear the ambulance coming and Officer Jansen runs to open the outside door for the ambulance.

You look at the white cop, he looks at you, and you point to the guy on the floor. "I spoke to him once. Once. I said hi in a nice way. I asked how his day was. He said it was hard, and I sympathized." He nods. "Just once." He shakes his head. "Okay."

He should just keep his mouth shut, but he tries to explain. "You're an attractive woman, Miss Logan."

"Is that your pickup line?"

He looks at his hefty stomach. You both know he's got no game on you. "It's the truth."

"And that's my fault?"

"It's just . . ." You both can work this out. You dress attractively. It is your fault, if someone really wants to blame you. But that's how the world works. You should be allowed to dress attractively and not have that be an excuse to harass you.

He does his best to stay on safe ground: "If we could just get rid of sex and money, it would make our job a lot easier."

"Not mine. I help produce magazines. If an ad doesn't have sex or money, I fix it."

He smiles wryly. "Why didn't you tell 911 he needed medical attention?" He doesn't sound angry at you.

"I forgot."

Bloody Stalker choose this moment to regain enough consciousness to moan and roll on the floor. You shift your weight away from your right foot.

"Don't kick him, Miss Logan."

"Yes, officer." You shift your weight back to being on both feet.

You'll never be the same as you were. That girl is gone, and you're damaged. But if you work hard, you can put yourself back together again.

You spin and leave, him no doubt studying your ass – because you're attractive and he's a male. But his stare is okay, because you decided he could. Totally different.