“I have never thrust this on someone unexpectedly.  Never.”
– Armie Hammer in his recent Air Mail interview.  Makes you wanna read on, doesn’t it?

While I was hunkered down during this arctic blast, I warmed up by reading an interview Armie Hammer gave to Air Mail.  In explaining his bizarre behavior, Armie broke his silence by trotting out that old chestnut – he was sexually abused as a child.  I am not questioning the abuse.  But it’s such a familiar story – the abused becomes an abuser.  He was 13 years old, and his abuser was his youth pastor.  It continued for about a year.  He doesn’t go into detail, but says, “What that did for me was it introduced sexuality into my life in a way that it was completely out of my control.  I was powerless in the situation.  I had no agency in the situation.  My interests then went to: I want to have control in the situation, sexually.”  Whenever I hear the word “agency”, I feel like a lawyer was consulted.

One of the sexual abuse accusations against him is shot down with documentation that Armie had torn his pectoral muscle lifting weights, which left him in a sling – and not the good kind!  In general, he doesn’t deny most of the acts, but goes to great lengths to say they were consensual.  Regarding an alleged rape, he says, “She planned all of the details out, all the way down to what Starbucks I would see her at, how I would follow her home, how her front door would be open and unlocked and I would come in, and we would engage in what is called a ‘consensual non-consent scene’.”  This reminds me of that scene in For Pete’s Sake when Barbra plays “Take a Nap”.  “Bed, sleep, touch, struggle, not too hard.”  My God, to think Barbra could have been having sex with Armie Hammer!!

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the account of a Colombian man named Daniel, who says he was sexually violated by Hammer.  He claims that Armie told him, “Guys could endure more pain.”  Allegedly, Hammer “cut him with paper and glass and then sucked his blood”; he also “inserted a condom wrapper into him” – none of which sounds appealing to me.  One of Hammer’s female paramours claims that he “stuck objects into male victims”.  Armie denies having met Daniel, and also says he has never had sex with a man.