March 8, 2021 by Emma Lewis Evans · Arts & Culture

I Lived a Nightmare Straight out of Manhattan, with Woody Allen Normalizing the Abnormal

In her teens, she dated a much older family friend who had raped her and considered Manhattan "their" movie. Today—long after she left him—she still feels the consequences.

For our big New York City weekend in the late '80s, my boyfriend Peter, a Washington D.C. stockbroker, took me to a fancy hotel on Central Park West and bought tickets for Cats. After the show, we met his friends for a late dinner at Elaine’s. Like Peter, these friends were 30-something Wall Street guys who tossed their ties over their shoulders before tucking in; the gesture, which I had never seen on the Virginia farms where I grew up, struck me as tribal.

Over dinner, someone’s wife turned to me and asked, “Emma, what do you do?” I answered as I always did, just like Woody Allen’s 17-year-old girlfriend Tracy in his movie Manhattan: “I go to high school.”

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