Walking barefoot on a tropical beach in 2012, I felt something enter the heel of my foot. Little did I know that three days later it would nearly stop me from seeing Bill Cosby at Denver’s Buell Theater.
A ticket to Cosby’s show was a birthday gift purchased for me by my wife months before a family cruise, and consequently a flight home would arrive merely a few hours prior to the Cosby show. I was determined to do it.
Throughout my life, I’d grown to appreciate Cosby more and more. I loved his stand-up comedy and his appearances on late-night TV.
But my foot was a problem. To my detriment, I’d ignored the growing bump and eschewed the cruise ship doctor, only to find a marble-sized infection on my heel the morning of disembarking. The flight home, with its air pressure changes, caused such pain that when I landed in Denver I drove straight to the ER at Porter hospital and practically begged the doctor there to dig the obstruction out of my foot. He did so marvelously, bandaged me up, and sent me on my way with my foot in a medical boot.
I went straight to the Buell and hobbled into my seat, an hour late. I found Cosby’s storytelling marvelous, as I’d expected.
But today my efforts to see this entertainer, so obviously a storyteller in a far more pernicious way, conjure only regret and the sad realization that I was used. These are emotions that I would guess are shared by many, most importantly the women who have accused Cosby of sexual assault.
The stories of women who report being sexually assaulted — along with the relentless cacophony of doubt, accusation and blame that inevitably follows them when they have the courage to speak up — are nothing short of horror.
As a psychologist, I met my first survivor of sexual violence 22 years ago at what was then called the Mental Health Corporation of Denver. She was 6 years old and had been raped by a family member. I was a very green therapist who could do little more than support, encourage, and offer a corrective experience with a caring male — as well as wonder at the immense vacancy in the girl’s eyes.
Unfortunately, it’s a vacancy I’ve seen many times since. People often ask me if I have experience treating victims of sexual assault and my answer is always the same: The problem is so ubiquitous and rampant that it would be impossible for me to be a psychologist and not have gained immense experience helping such people. And sexual assault delivers the most unique of pains, with the ability to destroy a person from within unlike any other human phenomenon.
Not long after treating that young girl, I found myself in my first year of graduate training, visiting fraternities at the University of Oregon with other male clinicians to talk with the young men about abiding to the university’s new guidelines around seeking consent for sexual activity with a partner. The men illustrated wide ranges of responses, from deep understanding and sensitivity to indignation and rage. As far as I can tell, they all surpassed Cosby in their emotional maturity, their willingness to self-examine, and their courage to practice important conversations with sexual partners to promote clarity, respect and safety.
Cosby, who may go down in history as a serial rapist, has saddened and used us all.
Some things are so poisonous to a system that they warrant painful extraction, even if their origins were once as pleasurable as a simple walk on the beach.
And oh, how Cosby was a walk on the beach.
But we will all feel much relieved, and healthier, when we instead understand him as a cautionary tale.
Rick Ginsberg of Denver is a psychologist and former Colorado Voices panelist.
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