OK, kids, so it’s storytime with Uncle Robust.

First, check this: Mark Foley, a Republican from Florida – not just any ol’ Republican, but the chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus, who introduced bills earlier this year designed specifically to punish online predation of children by adults – resigned today because the media got hold of some emails he’d sent to a Congressional page and some instant messaging logs that included such winning lines as “Do I make you a little horny?” and “You in your boxers, too? … Well, strip down and get naked.”

I just hope we all realize how much classier it is when we get our sleaze from a “values conservative” like this. No well liquor here, ladies and gentlemen, this is top shelf, Grade A+ pervy hornball behavior. This cradle-robber wears a tux to dinner at the golf club, and don’t you forget it.

So, there’s the setup. My reaction: this guy deserves zero pity. Closet case? Too fucking bad. Step into the light with the rest of us and then stand there and call yourself a “values conservative,” buddy, because you know what I value? Honesty. Maybe that’s just a liberal thing, I dunno.

The other reason why he deserves zero pity is why it’s time for story time with Uncle Robust. Oh, damn, now that sounds really, really creepy. OK, nobody has to sit on my knee. If The Boyf wants to sit on my knee, hey, no problem, but the rest of you can shove off.

Anyway, here’s the story: when I was 18, I spent my Winter Break from UNC working in my hometown. The job was a short-term gig working for a company that produces criss-cross directories for municipalities. If you’re unfamiliar with the criss-cross directory, it’s a reverse phonebook. They’re used by emergency services and other first-responders, and often by journalists, to look up the identifying information attached to a given phone number. Sometimes you can find them in your public library; they’re very expensive to purchase, in part because they’re expensive to produce and in part to try to keep them out of the hands of the general public given that they contain a great deal of personal information (is the home to which a number registered owned or rented, is the resident employed full or part time, where, etc.). Back when I had this job, the company hired by my hometown to produce the updated criss-cross directory was required by make the new volumes for sale to the public, if I remember correctly, but the price for private purchase was absurd. I can’t actually remember those details because this was, what, 15 years ago? The job I had was to go door to door in my hometown, verifying or updating the information from the previous edition, produced several years before. It was a pretty standard survey job, but once we got to the nitty-gritty details (do you work business hours or another shift, how can you be reached at work in an emergency, if your house is owned do you still have a mortgage payment – very personal information) then we got a lot of doors slammed in our faces. It was demoralizing, but it was easy, I spent all day walking around, I got a lot of fresh air and I made $5/hr which was a damned sight better than going back to the research farm for a few weeks if they even had any work for me in December.

My boss – a full-time management employee of the company hired by my town – ran the show, and he hired exclusively teens for the job. His job was to go from town to town, spending a few weeks at a time in each one, assembling and training the local temps and then closing up shop when the project was concluded. I would guess he was in his 50′s at the time, though to be honest I’m not sure I’d recognize him if I saw him on the street.

His son, who was in his late 20′s, was his assistant manager. He handled a lot of the office stuff, taking calls from the people who would call to verify that our questions were legit, or to complain that we were bothersome and nosy; he also took applications from walk-ins for the few weeks they’d be hiring in a given town.

They both, I shit you not, hit on me.

It started with the father, who had come out and picked me up on my assigned route and on the way back went out of his way to graze my knee with his hand, then put his hand on my knee for a second while he apologized, then asked me what I liked to do on Friday nights. I was shocked, because as naive as I was I knew exactly what was happening. You don’t have to watch many episodes of Perry Mason to solve that mystery, y’know? So there I am, grossed out and glad I only have a few days left, and glad to get the fuck out of the car when we get back. He’d spent the entire time making increasingly uncomfortable conversation – filled with pregnant pauses and hesitations in all the right places – and I wanted out of his sight.

I had something to do at the office that afternoon – maybe that’s why he picked me up? I honestly can’t remember – and ended up sitting up there alone with his son, the assistant manager. His son asks a very similar question – what did I like to do on the weekend? Then he stands up from the banquet table “desk” he’s using, unzips his pants, lets them drop halfway to his knees and proceeds to “tuck his shirt in,” very slowly. Just standing there in his underwear with his jeans shoved down, pointing his junk at me as he talks, asking questions that are innocent enough on their own, I guess, but still – dude’s junk is eye level and six feet away and he’s pointing it at me, standing there tucking the back of his shirt into his pants as though his pants are anywhere in reach.

I’ll be the first to tell you that this was not, actually, very traumatic. In part I think that’s because I’m a guy and as such I had a false sense that sexual harassment would never happen to me, and was kind of naively immune to it when it did. In part I think it’s because I was too dumb to think about it very much. Mainly I was just really squicked by them and stunned at how pathetic they were – they’re running a crap show like this, and the highlight of their week is to wave their dicks at a chunky hick like me, in this town? Please, gods, these guys needed to get out more. Just sad.

When I was done with the reports I was doing – I think I remember now, we used to have to go through at the end of the day every two or three days and mark any information from the old data that was now outright false, numbers or addresses that simply didn’t exist, for example, because they seeded the data with bad entries to make sure we were actually doing our job – I handed it all to the assistant and said, “I can’t come back tomorrow. Today was my last day,” or something like that. Now that I think about it I might have done one more day. I remember telling them I was done, but I don’t remember whether it was immediate. Like I said, it’s been a few years. At any rate, whatever I said, it wasn’t eloquent or witty or smart or in any way indicated why I was quitting, but I sure as shit was quitting because of these two jokers.

I don’t even think they knew they were both doing shit like that, and I don’t think for even one second that I was the only one to whom they did it. In fact, I would expect I was one of the last on the list – we were nearly done anyway, and we’d had a pretty high turnover rate of employees, so they had probably trotted those tricks out for everyone else already.

And that, my friends, is why I hope Mark Foley has a long, quiet break from public life. I’d like him to spend some time coming to terms with who he is and where he’s gotten himself, and I’d like him to spend just a little time, at least, sweating over what other skeletons are about to spill out of his closet.

Update:  My favorite part of MSNBC’s story?  Hastert knew but didn’t do shit to Foley about it:

The page worked for Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., who said Friday that when he learned of the e-mail exchanges 10 to 11 months ago, he called the teen’s parents. Alexander told the Ruston Daily Leader, “We also notified the House leadership that there might be a potential problem,” a reference to the House’s Republican leaders.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Friday he had asked the chairman of the House’s page board, Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., to investigate the page system. “We want to make sure that all our pages are safe and the page system is safe,” Hastert said.