I was texting with an old friend, one of the first people I ever really bonded with over stand-up comedy. “Do you think Louis CK will ever come back?” he asked.

“I don’t know maybe in, like, twenty years?”

I picked that number arbitrarily but I figured it’s almost long enough to reach into “Never say never territory.” In 1998, Donald Trump was still an innocuous buffoon who didn’t even have a reality show yet, Monica Lewinsky was still a joke, and the twin towers still stood. You never know.

“What’s your take on the whole thing?” he asked.

I hadn’t thought about the whole Louis CK thing for a while. But I remember when it started to build to a crescendo with Tig Notaro saying he needed to address the rumor. Then everything broke with the cancellation of his appearance on The Late Show, the cancellation of the I Love You, Daddy (my God, that title…) premiere, and the story in the Times.

It turned my stomach. Because I loved that guy. I really did. Sometimes I’m reminded of the glowing posts I wrote about him in this blog. I loved every special he ever did. I loved Louie. I loved Pootie Tang. I even watched that steaming garbage pile Horace and Pete all the way to the end.

I treated the rumors about CK as rumors. In retrospect, I didn’t believe them because I didn’t want to. I’m not proud of it but there it is. When I had confirmation that it was true and it happened on multiple occasions, I just felt a little nauseated. I’m not equipped to talk about his transgressions or what they mean or how they affected his victims. I’m sure you can find articles about that in multiple places.

There’s one lingering question that I have, though. I can’t seem to find an answer anywhere. Who silenced Jen Kirkman?

In answering my friend’s question, I thought beyond CK’s actual acts to the fact that it was able to exist as a rumor for so long. How is that?

I’m not a big conspiracy theory guy but it seems like he was protected and I’d like to know specifically how. When people would talk about his two victims at the Aspen Comedy Festival, there was always the threat of repercussions. From whom? Lawyers? Agents? Managers? Anyone who could ever hire them for anything?

CK himself lied. He maintained that it’s just a rumor and he doesn’t talk about rumors. He lied to his one time best friend Marc Maron and said it’s just a rumor. It was a good politician defense and there’s something really sinister about it. I mean, it worked on me. I was able to stick my head in the sand about it, except for one glaring piece of evidence: comedian Jen Kirkman’s comments on her podcast.

You can find the comments here in this Jezebel article. She all but confirmed that the Louis CK rumors were true and, for me, it was hard to ignore. Whenever I thought to myself, “It’s a rumor,” there was a thought right after it saying, “Yeah, but Jen Kirkman…”

Click on that Jezebel article because it’s talking about how that podcast that featured those comments was taken down. She also recanted her comments later and said that she wasn’t referring to CK.

But she did that before everyone found out that the rumors were true. Now we know that they are. So, why did she take the podcast down? On who’s behest? Her own agents and managers? CK’s?

She was an early whistleblower and she was silenced. She didn’t even say his name and she had to recant.

The dust has settled on this scandal but that question still plagues me.

I said maybe he’d be back in twenty years. The more I think about it, the more I think that sometimes you should say never.