and a little more than a few other things about life,
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what makes us who we are ...

Last Update of this page ...... Monday, March 18th, 2002 at 11:11 p.m.

"No man who feels how tender & vulnerable he was as a child
could miss seeing how tender & in need of protection other children are!"
from the AOL Member Profile of JeepBoy616
 

THE   PAST

When I was - like - 11 or so, I stayed overnight at the house
of some relatives. During the wee hours of the morning - at about 2 or 3 a.m., the father of the family - in his 50's at that time - came into the front parlor where I was sleeping on the couch, undid my pants, and blew me as I slept. I woke up at the end of this, but I'd thought I'd had a bad nightmare or something - that it couldn't possibly have happened. When I woke up for real in the morning, my pants were still all undone - then I knew it had really happened.
My life totally fucking changed from that event forward.
For a long, long time - for the worst.

Whenever he had any chance, he'd try to corner me. He used to always try to kiss me - and I mean KISS me - and I fuckin' HATED that - I think maybe even worse than him making me let him do other things. Circumstances sometimes - if not often - made it so that I couldn't avoid him. Actually, it was even like others conspired with him to make the opportunities exist. I know that it sounds crazy - like paranoid delusion - but, believe me - it isn't. Just like they all conspired to relieve me of other sanctuaries later in life.
We buried this fucker a few summers ago. I thought that things might change - way in the back of my subconscious mind - once realizing that this scumbag child molester was dead in the ground - and therefore could NEVER present a threat to me, nor to any other kid again. Boy, was I wrong. The haunting memories are STILL there. Nothing EVER changes, I guess - as far as that is concerned.

I couldn't bring myself to tell anyone that this had happened - not even my parents - not for a long time. When I finally did, at about age 16, all that I heard was that they "knew he was like this," and that if they said or did anything about it (or if I did) that it would destroy his wife. Perhaps it would. But what did they think it did to their own son? Obviously, after this reaction from my parents, I had little respect for them at all. Worse still, they started an ongoing
campaign - which lasts to this day - of having no respect FOR ME. Like it was ME who had done something wrong. I never forgave them for that - and I never will. It's inexcusable.

Now it should be mentioned that, at this time, beatings were an almost daily occurrance around our house. Verbal abuse was
customary - we were constantly called everything from "stupid" to "an accident..." Even when my parents slapped you, you knew about it - and it would resoundingly crack all through the house. If one of us was "getting it" downstairs - you'd hear it all the way upstairs. When we'd cry after being beaten, we were forced to stop with the threat "you'd better shut up, or I'll really give you something to cry about."

My parents had a leather barber's strap - buckle and all - with the white part removed (which, I guess - is used to sharpen a straightrazor, normally) which hung on the wall by the stove in our kitchen. They had even cut "rattails" into the end of it - I guess to make its sting even more effective. All of their "friends" - or whoever would come over - would see it there and know its exact purpose. Oftentimes, we'd "get it" with that. I remember being afraid to get undressed in gym class in the 8th grade, and when I did, the kids asking me where I got the welts from. Sometimes we "got it" with the buckle end of the strap - as well as with the other end.
Punishment of the emotional sort was frequent and was the standard practice, as well. Add an endless list of after school and off-day work and "chores" to this, and believe me - life was no picnic in that house. I vividly recall - sometimes even now while driving by certain properties - that I used to daydream about what it would be like living in various houses which we would pass by, riding along as kids. I also remember wondering what it would be like to live with the parents of other kids who I knew.
I often wished my parents dead during this period - particularly my then stepmother - after they degraded me, beat me, shirked their responsiblity of protecting me as a child, worked us for hours on end - often in the freezing cold, in the rain, in the sweltering sun.
God, how I hated them ...
In addition to this, I never was a really healthy kid. I had weak kidneys (huh - maybe from the beatings) and wet the bed right up until 9 or 10 years old. I'd get a beating for doing that, too - in my sleep, mind you. I guess that emanating from this, my stepmother got the notion to randomly and extremely frequently "check my pants." She would do this no matter WHO was there - right in front of her friends or whoever. Specifically I remember that she would do this in the presence of specific "friends." There's NO QUESTION in my mind today that this "practice" of hers was psychologically damaging to me.

There's still a question in my mind as to if the sexual abuse which occurred - because some of it WAS very rough - caused two testicular (or whatever they're called - inguinal, actually, I believe) hernias which I had to have surgically repaired at ages 14 and 15. This is a condition in which the wall between the abdomen and the scrotum splits/ tears, thus allowing the testicles to slip up between the inner abdominal muscle wall and the outer layer of skin. It's extremely painful, and I suppose perhaps moreso for a devceloping teenaged boy. Being out in the cold used to intensify this. Think my father gave a fuck when I told him this? It was insisted that I "be a man" and work out in the cold for hours and hours on end anyway. Yeah - guess that kind of shit "toughens you up," huh? Just like the "exam" he gave me after the doctor said that I needed the surgery. Upstairs - in front of a window that faces the next door neighbor's house.
Think I wanted ANYONE AT ALL touching me ANYWHERE EVEN NEAR THERE - except for maybe someone my own age - after what had been happening to me since about age 11?
When I went into the local hospital for one of those surgical sessions, they sent in an older guy to shave me down there. I was 14. He stroked me off to a climax while he was doing that. Right there - with the curtain around the bed closed and someone in the hospital bed right next to mine. And I was afraid to say or do anything about it. He got my address from the hospital records (presumably, because I sure as shit didn't GIVE IT to him) and I saw him drive by my house MANY times after that. I used to be afraid that he was going to do something else to me ...
Now, the stepmother bears quite a bit of mentioning - but I'll give you just a little foreshadowing here to let you know that this was my father's 2nd wife - and that there's MUCH MORE to come - because his 3rd wife, of the last 20 years is a REAL FUCKING "BEAUTY..."
Knowing somthing of psychology, as I now understand it, they were BOTH psychotic. And SHE was a fucking piece of work, let me tell you ... "Let me 'check your pants' ..."  What the FUCK ???!!!
Another time - when I was, I guess about 8 or 9, she called me into her bedroom and wanted me to come over to the bed - where she was all fucking naked with her tits and ass out, sprawled out there. Christ - at that age, I didn't even know what masturbation was yet. She told me that she was going to get out of the bed and give me a beating if I didn't comply. I forgot all about this incident, until my grandmother reminded me of it years later, whereupon I recalled it VIVIDLY. I remembered that I ran next door to the neighbors' house and stayed there until I saw my father come home. She never said a fucking word about any of that, though.
Anything other than an "A" on a report card was grounds for verbal lashing and punishment. A "C" grade or lower merited a beating. I'll never forget when I brought home a report card in the 1st grade and it contained the comment "does not respect adult authority" on it. I heard about that comment for the next ten years that I lived with my parents - and even beyond. I'll never forget getting a beating and being sent to bed with no dinner because I came home and told my grandmother that I "drew a big ship" while in the 1st grade one day, and my stepmother insisted that I had said "I did a big shit." She's the one - her and her fucking kid - who brought that filthy talk to our family. It's nothing that emanated from me, my grandparents, nor even from my father before his meeting and marrying HER.

Another "gem" of hers - and you'll never even BELIEVE THIS ONE, people - is that she called a printed "A" on a report card (yes, you younger folks - report cards used to be hand written by the teachers) was a "straight A" and that a written (cursive writing) "A" was not as good as a so-called "straight A." How fucking ignorant can you get? Of course, my teacher was the one who wrote her letters, her fucking kid is the one who had a teacher which printed. Stupid shit like that. But, as you know, a lot of little things add up. And this is just one more memory I have of how she was allowed to abuse me - without merit whatsoever. Her fucking kid's "A" was "better than" mine. And my father bought it - and enforced punishment for it. At this time, I am specifically remembering both me and her kid getting A's in conduct - but her insitence that HIS was a "higher grade."
Fucking sick, huh?

Ah...  But there's more ...  MUCH more ...

Things only became progressively worse, because people began to see me as being "different." My family, my friends, everyone ...
Even teachers and my guidance counselor in high school. After a little session with her one day (the "guidance counselor"), she decided to phone my house and tell my parents that she thought I might be using drugs. Just my luck she talked to my stepmother, but I suppose it couldn't have been much different if she actually had talked to my own father. The only thing I had done at this point was that I had tried marijuana. Maybe once or twice. Nothing else - oh, except maybe I had snuck a beer or two at home while my parents were out. And why the hell not? My stepmother was going out every night and coming home shitfaced - once she was so fucked up that she drove off the road and into a snowy ditch and called, of ALL people, the fucking child molester to come and pull her car out. Plus, they'd given us beer plenty of times WAY BEFORE my then age of 15 ...
I had never touched a cigarette. Both of my parents, as well as most of their "friends," smoked while I was growing up - or maybe I should say, for the 10 years that I was held prisoner in that house. Because despite several rare happy memories, most of that entire decade of my life - probably the most important decade - was a literal journey through Hell. I fukkin' HATED IT there. And I couldn't stand their fucking cigarette smoke, either. Nope - I never TOUCHED a cigarette. Yet, they were accusing me of smoking cigarettes. And pot - like I was doing it all of the time, so that it'd even BE detectable to them. So, do you see a further pattern developing here - it's the pattern of "blaming the victim." It's common and well-known in today's world - a standard practice of inflictors of "child abuse" and other forms of "domestic violence ..."
Furthermore, within a short time after this, the ever-present stepbrother went into the military. Once he did, things began to change again. More "efforts" were concentrated on me - namely, I was blamed for everything that happened. Before I'd been blamed for probably a greater percentage of THEIR problems than he was, but now it was 100% my fault - no matter what went wrong. They even went so far as to accuse me for the breakup of their marriage a couple of years later - at age 17 or so. Yeah, sure - they did nothing but fight for the entire time they WERE married, but by all means BLAME ME for your fucking divorce. The real killer is that I wasn't even living in the house by the time they did divorce.

Too fucking bad - that's what I say. It was destiny.

Now my father has been remarried for the last 20 years - and she's a REAL fukkin' beauty. Yep - this one is a REAL "study..."
Seems he went lower on the evolutionary scale each time he married, and I'll bet to this day he secretly wishes he'd stayed married to my mother (his first marriage of the 3). He's a fucking idiot. And his lack of forgiveness and pomposity is what fucked him in life - all THROUGH life. But instead, he's chosen to blame me for everything that has gone wrong in his life - and then to interact with me with what HE sees as being "accordingly."

To this day, he seems to think that he has some "divine right" to control EVERY FACET OF my life. He vehemently tries to "forbid" seemingly every single thing that I like, love, or have any interest in - and to insist I'll tolerate everything he knows I detest. Sometimes (often, actually) he'll show up at my house - and, yes - that is an ordinary things, too - NO respect for my privacy, whatsoever - he'll bitch and bitch while he's here, then as he's leaving he'll say, "I love you ...?"  Huh - you LOVE me? Not by MY standards, that's for sure. I don't verbally abuse people - most especially not the people that I "love." I wouldn't want to ever see his definition of "hatred," then ... Not that this isn't what it is that I AM seeing already ...
 
 

Evidently, I never will ...

+ + + + +

Some - or all of this - may have begun my initial fascination with the "dark side." I need to think about this a bit more - and gather my thoughts together - to write more about it here. At least to write about it and to have it make sense to whoever's reading this ...  But I will ...
 
 

+ + + + +
 

The first time I voluntarily had sex with another person was when I was 15 and he (yes, HE) was - I think 16 or 17. He was the kid down the street - which was saying something, because where I grew up, there were very few "kids down the street" - at least not at that time. Now they've put a superhighway nearby - another beltway around Boston - and now there are so many fucking people and so much traffic around here that I can hardly stand it.

Anyhow, his favorite phrase seemed to be "blow me," and he was ALWAYS around my house - and me - it now seems. I seem to remember saying to him, "yeah? well, why don't you just blow me and get it over with ...?"  And he did. I couldn't believe how good it felt - when it wasn't forced on you, and when it was done non-violently. Remembering back, we fooled around quite a few times after this - although I did refuse him lots of times. I don't like anyone hovering over me, and he was ALWAYS hovering ... In any case, I'd begun high school about a year before, started meeting lots of other people, and started having other sexual relationships.

+ + + + +
There were several girlfriends over that time period - from about age 14 to 17 - some from the neighborhood, some from the nearby Raynham neighborhoods, and a couple from high school. I guess that the most memorable of these were Valerie, Elaine and Apryl. I remember one of them saying "I'm gonna get screwed if I don't get home right now," and me telling her "so, you're gonna get screwed either way ..."

Those are the three girls whom I most likely would have planned any kind of a future with. Sure, we fooled around too - a lot - but it wasn't until the eve of my 17th birthday (the last night of my being 16) that I actually got laid (full-blown intercourse). She was from Louisianna and had moved up here with her family. My friend in school had an eye on her right along - she was in the homeroom across from ours. I think that he was probably bullshit when I scored her instead of him. Then again, he was a study - in and of himself. To this day, I know that WE both wanted to do it with each other. I'm surprised, frankly, that this never came about. Most likely that's because we'd only had a couple of opportunities for that - had only done things outside of school on a couple of occassions. Once we almost did it though - but all of this is getting off track right now ...
 

I moved out of the area when I was 16, and a lot of those relationships and friendships ended when I did. I think that this was the first time in my life when I was suddenly faced with the reality that even close friendships are not necessarily forever. Although I only moved a couple of towns over, life changed SO MUCH. At the same time, I was just "entering the music scene," so to speak - so there were whole new groups of friends which this brought about.
 

Although I also hung around with the kids around my age in my new neighborhood - and, in fact, had already known several of them growing up, because I was often around here when we were, I still never felt quite "in place" or as much "one of them." Maybe part of this was because we didn't go to school together - and unlike with most of them, we weren't young children together.

Some would think that maybe it was the "bisexual element." Guess again. I had sex with most of them - regularly - as teenagers and well into our 20's. So, that wasn't a factor. But I think that what was a significant factor - and has been throughout my life, at least since being "raped," "sexually molested," or whatever you want to label it, as a kid - is that I have forever since sought deeper meaning in friendship. Deeper attachment.
I never understood the reason for this until several years ago while in college, while researching for a report which I - let's say "helped a good friend do" - about Child Abuse. In general, people who have been sexually abused as children (and this often happens to other rape victims, as well - even those raped in adulthood) the victim/ abuse survivor tends to tread one of two paths. In the first instance, they are all but totally intimidated by sex. In the second, they become promiscuous - presumably the reason being that they had such a horrifying experience with the sexual abuse, that they forever seek a favorable outcome to the sex act.

I guess - if either - I must fit into that second category. Although the first one fits to an extent, in that it takes me a long time to loosen up with someone initially - at least some of the time. I can also be shy about approaching a possible sex partner/ date. Extremely shy.

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