I’ve known men like you, Donald Trump

Several nights ago, I sat with a growing pit in my stomach as Donald Trump’s voice filled my ears.

“I just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.

“Grab them by the p***y. You can do anything.”

When I listened to the Republican presidential candidate’s 11-year-old conversation about grabbing women after it was uncovered several days ago, my mind wasn’t on the bus Trump was sharing with “Access Hollywood’s” Billy Bush more than a decade ago as they leered at a woman out the window.

My mind was in a dark room at night several years ago as I sat alone, crying and trying to come to terms with the fact that, in the space of a week, two separate men had grabbed me, in a sexual manner, without my consent.

They didn’t wait. They didn’t ask. They just grabbed.

I don’t even wait.
Grab them.
You can do anything.

Then, days later, that same voice, responding without any real remorse as CNN’s Anderson Cooper grilled Trump at the second presidential debate.

“You called, what you said, locker room banter — kissing women without consent, grabbing their genitals,” Cooper said. “That is sexual assault.

“You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?”

Wrong, Trump said. It’s everyone else who doesn’t understand.

He respects women.

No apology to the woman — her name is Arianne Zucker, by the way — who was a target of his comments, parried back and forth with Bush in 2005.

No apology to the woman who, moments after Trump voiced these thoughts and added that he should use breath mints, “just in case I start kissing her,” was urged by Bush in an uncomfortable scene to hug them both — and who was pressed to share whom she would choose, if she had to pick between the two men for a date.

No apology to the many other women who felt physically ill after hearing Trump’s voice talking about grabbing women, because they know what it’s like.

“I have great respect for women,” Trump said during the debate. “Nobody has more respect for women.”

He’s sorry if anyone was offended.

Let me tell you what it’s like being a woman in Donald Trump’s world.

It’s second-guessing the cute new outfit you bought, because you can already hear the remarks. From strangers. From peers.

It’s biting back the instinctive reaction of fear when a strange man calls out to you on the street.

It’s walking at night — or even during the day — with your keys clenched between sweaty fingers, and your entire focus splintered between the men near you and those keys.

I don’t even remember when I learned the key trick. It seems as though I’ve always known it.

Most women do.

And for the women who have come across, who have been touched by, who have been assaulted by, the men who “don’t wait” and who “just grab”?

It’s flinching at a simple touch, from anyone.

It’s always having a part of your mind stay alert and aware of your safety when you’re with a guy — even when you’re choosing it, you’ve said yes and you want to be there.

It’s feeling physically ill when you hear men talk like this.

You say I’m overreacting? You say, as Trump said, that I shouldn’t be offended?

You don’t get to make that call.

As comedian and actor Louis C.K. said a while back, “I’m telling you that it hurt and you don’t get to deny that. When a person tells you that you hurt them, you don’t get to decide that you didn’t.”

All over the country, and beyond, women are telling Trump that he hurt them. That he hurt us.

And at the end of the day, it seems, the answer we’re getting back from him — as well as those who are defending him — is that he doesn’t care. That they don’t care.

This isn’t just about me.

I know women who have been raped.

I know women who have been touched, grabbed against their will — assaulted.

I know many, many women who have heard men talk about them as a thing to be grabbed.

I know men who don’t see the problem with comments like this. With attitudes like this. With actions like this.

I’ve met them.

They are the problem.

This is the world we’re living in.

This is what you can expect from locker room talk? Then we have a problem that’s much larger than Trump.

And that won’t change as long as there are men who think it’s manly to brag about assaulting women. It won’t change as long as the presidential candidate they’re continuing to defend brushes aside his comments as a “distraction,” with condescending pats on the head “if anyone was offended.”

Offended? I’m far from the only woman who’s come out with her story since Friday, and my story is far from the worst.

What Trump doesn’t seem to understand is the fear, the shame, the negative effects that linger for years after a man puts his hands on a woman who isn’t willing.

And the men who fill these so-called locker rooms apparently don’t get it, either.

It took four tries during the debate Sunday night before Trump answered the question of whether he’s ever assaulted a woman.

No, he said.

Just locker room talk.

And he’s got bigger things to deal with.

So, in the meantime, women will continue to live in a world where men not only joke about sexual assault but make excuses for it as well.

We’ll keep carrying our keys at night, pulling our coats a little tighter around us when strangers catcall us on the street and keeping an eagle eye on even the men we choose to let into our lives.

We’ll keep feeling sick when we hear those words.

I don’t even wait.
Grab them by the p***y.
You can do anything.

Just locker room banter.
Don’t be offended.