My Aaron Johnson/Lawn Gnome story
I was initially hesitant to attach my story to all these allegations when Aaron has done so much worse to others, but I think my experience is an important case study in understanding why it's so easy to be complicit in abuse and how enablers of abuse can also become victims of it.
I think when we talk about abuse, it's important to note that it's not always overtly violent or in your face. Oftentimes. it comes to you with a smile and with kind words you want to hear. That doesn't make it any less sinister though. Aaron Johnson started grooming me when I was 18 years old. At 20, we dated for a couple months then broke it off in July 2016.
I started working at Lawn Gnome in 2014 during the spring semester of my freshman year at Arizona State University. My best friend helped me get the job and I was just so stoked to not only be working with her, but also be part of something that was bigger than me. At Lawn Gnome, I felt like I belonged somewhere. No other place has ever made me feel the way Lawn Gnome made me feel. To this day, I’ve never had a job that felt more fulfilling.
For me, Aaron Johnson was a boss, a mentor and later on, a friend. He was someone I looked up to for guidance. He used to help me out a lot when I was in a crisis. Whenever my car broke down, he’d do basic repairs on it for free. He also offered me quite a bit of helpful advice while I was navigating my early adult years. But he had another side to him. I remember him making inappropriate and flirtatious comments toward me that a 30-something married dude with a kid should never say to an 18-year-old who worked for him. He would offer me beer while I was still underage and working at the store. This didn’t bother me at the time though. I was welcome to anything that made me feel more grown up and cool. But he would also ask me about my sex life, if I had hooked up with any coworkers, and even remarked on the fact that I was a Jew and that he liked that. I blew these comments off though and convinced myself that he was just awkward and didn’t know how to interact with young people. Most of the time, he would also make me feel good about myself and that what I did for the store and the community mattered. So when I started to see him mistreat my friends and others around me, I was rather ambivalent about it.
I thought, "he's always good to me and treats me fairly, maybe those other people just bring out the worst in him." This continued to happen and I would often see him lash out at people I cared about. He insulted them, undermined them and treated them like absolute garbage. This was all going on while we were all being paid under the table, below minimum wage. Even after we filled out employee documentation, we were never paid a fair wage, myself included. I rationalized these abusive practices though because I viewed him as a close, personal friend who made mistakes, just like the rest of us. And I won’t lie, he went out of his way to inflate my ego. He told me I was different from my friends and coworkers. That I was smart and had a good work ethic. He was really quite gifted at telling me all the things I wanted to hear. I think, like most young young people, I wanted to feel special and that I mattered. Having someone much older than me constantly remark on “how mature” I was for my age meant everything at that time.
In Summer 2015, Aaron began a relationship with one of my friends/coworkers while he was still married. She and I were both 19 at the time. I found this deeply troubling in the beginning but I was so close with both of them that I just accepted it. I used to even go on double dates with them and my then-boyfriend, who also worked at Lawn Gnome. She lived with Aaron during this time as well and I remember spending late nights with them drinking and playing cards. A few months in, their relationship went sour. She told me he was emotionally abusive to her and often gaslighted her. I’m ashamed to admit this but I was once again ambivalent about the whole situation. I loved them both so dearly and didn’t want to believe he was capable of being a bad person. She left him in early 2016 and moved across the country. I also broke up with my boyfriend around this time. Aaron called me when he heard we broke up and left a voice message about how much he cared about me. I remember appreciating the sentiment, but still felt uncomfortable, given the context of where all our lives were at that point.
In Spring 2016, when I was 20, I tried to distance myself from him and Lawn Gnome so I quit my job. As I said, I had just split up from my boyfriend who was still working there and I didn’t like the way Aaron was treating some of my other friends. It was a difficult thing to reconcile with because I still cared deeply for Aaron and wanted to believe he was a good person. My friend and I had also grown apart at this point and I started to feel extremely isolated and depressed. I wanted to feel connected to the arts scene again, so I contacted Aaron to see if he needed help with any community projects. He immediately responded and said he had a lot of projects in mind, most of which involved me spending a lot of time at his house, making soap for the store and promo videos from kickstarters. I still wasn’t talking to my friend (his ex) at the time, so I heard his unfiltered side of the story where she was actually the abusive partner and was dangerous around his child. He also told me that she and my ex were having an affair and that he even caught them having sex in his house. He would later admit to me months later that this was all a lie. At the time however, I believed him and my resentment toward both of our exes grew as Aaron and I grew closer. We started a romantic relationship around mid-April.
Our relationship didn't last long -- around three months. I specifically remember it lasted through the sixth season of Game of Thrones. It was intense though. We played house and I spent a lot of time with him and his two-year-old child. I knew his child since they were born and would often look after them during the time when Aaron and I were still plutonic. But during the course of our romantic relationship, I developed an even closer bond with his child in a way that I now realize was not appropriate. I loved them like they were my own and that was not healthy, especially when the status of my relationship with Aaron was never really defined. I'm embarrassed to admit how much I loved this kid, especially when they already had a great mother and I know my friend had a similar relationship with this child. I felt like an interloper. But Aaron fully endorsed our bond. One moment he would say I was the perfect role model for his child and that he saw a great future with me, and the next he would say we weren’t actually anything serious. One moment he would ask me to move in with him, the next he would say he still wasn’t over his ex/my friend. I know for a fact now that he used me to hurt her. I would eventually learn that he was talking to her the whole time we were together, trying to get her to move back to Arizona. To him, I was just the babysitter who’d do favors and have sex with him. In addition, I also worked at the store for free and invested a lot of my own time, money and labor in projects for the store. I was never reimbursed for this work.
This continued even after our "relationship" ended. I still cared about him and I wanted him and Lawn Gnome to succeed. I thought I was being a friend, doing all these favors for him. One night, after babysitting for him (for free) he came home with another woman. That's when I finally decided to cut all contact with him. I later found out about all the things he lied about to get me into bed with me (i.e. turning me against my friends, saying my ex cheated on me with my friend, etc.) I also started to notice a pattern when talking to others who had been in relationships with him. He has a technique, a calculated strategy in getting people to fall for him. It worked on all of us.
He never really apologized to me for what he did. He would try to contact me even after I deleted him on social media. He would also tell colleagues of mine that we were still friends and I'd hear from friends of mine that he still talked about me in public settings. It really bothered me that he still felt the need to attach himself to me after I quite literally told him to fuck off.
I was lucky because I got out sooner than some others did. I also avoided a lot of his direct abuse. Basically, I was just someone he used to deeply hurt his ex-girlfriend. He turned us against each other but jokes on him because we are friends again and closer than ever.
Regardless, this seriously affected my equilibrium and I'm still dealing with a lot of guilt and shame for ever being involved with him. I wanted so badly to believe the narrative he was spinning about himself, that finding out the truth made me momentarily lose sight of who I was. Now that it has been demonstrated that Aaron routinely uses, exploits, and abuses young people, particularly femmes, I feel compelled to do anything in my power to prevent him from hurting anyone else again.
Comments
Post a Comment