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| See what happens when you grab the wrong luggage? |
One such bag is what happened to me
when I was six. So I think maybe, I'll just talk about it a little.
Not sure that is the same as unpacking, but at least I'll have pulled
the suitcase out and opened up the zipper. I am, by the way, always
open to suggestions as to how to sort this stuff out. I'm flying
blind here, sorting as I go... so perhaps you know a better way to do
this, and you can tell me. Thanks.
Apparently I saw and heard a lot of
pretty bad stuff as a toddler... stuff like my mother's boyfriend
kicking the crap out of my dad, my alcoholic dad's out-of-control
temper, watching my mom's boyfriend abuse her (Wait. That's not my
bag. I'll shut up about that) But I have never recalled any of that.
It's not to say that I wasn't in some way affected by it, but my
first encounter with hate really happened when I was 6 years old...
and frankly, I blocked most of it too. But here's what I know, in
bits and pieces:
At the time, my mother was working
night shifts in ICU at Kaiser Hospital in San Diego and I was sent to
hang out at a new baby sitter's whose name I believe was Anita. Anita
had two children; a daughter about my age and a son who I believe was
16 or 17. I don't know how long I'd stayed with Anita, but one
afternoon, she left me with the son, who promptly called half a dozen
of his friends over to hang out.
I decided to walk toward the playroom
to play with the little girl that was my age.
That's when the trouble began.
“Oh no,” one of the oldest of the
guys said “You can't be playing with her.”
“Why?” I asked, confused.
Over the next while they explained to
me that I was a white boy and that white boys were not allowed to
play with black boys and girls. It was then, and remains today, one
of the most absurd notions I'd ever heard. They disparaged me, and
said horrible things about my mother who was at that point dating a
black man. I won't repeat those things I remember here, but they were
awful. I was, as is my nature, utterly defiant, and was forced to go
outside, “Because” they said, “while people were not good
enough to be inside of a black man's house.
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| This guy's got NOTHING on REAL Bogey Men |
It began to get dark and I began to
fear I'd be left outside, with something awful they called “the
Bogey Man.” This too, was a new concept for me, but I didn't
realize how absurd the notion was, or that the real Bogey Men were
tormenting me that evening. Finally, it was decided that if I would
agree to suck their big toes, that perhaps I would be given reprieve
to come inside the house, but only just inside the door. I was six. I
had no idea what the connotation of that might be. I just wanted to
be safe from the bogey man...that is until such point as they decided
that I should suck other parts of their anatomy. I didn't understand
that sucking cock was sexual, but at 6, I did know that I had no
interest in putting my mouth on anyone's pee hole, no less a room
full of them. So they put me outside and locked the door. Unbeknownst
to me, they had decided to exit through the front door, which they
locked on their way out, and that's when they started to torment me,
pretending to be the bogey man...terrifying, even for a smart
6-year-old. I ran out of the back gate into a canyon area, in fear
for my life...literally, only to be caught.
This is where it gets a little fuzzy...
just snap shots. I don't remember a lot, but I do know for a fact
that I was orally raped... and then left again by myself in the
night. Not sure how I managed, but eventually I did force my way back
into the house, at which point, terrified, I called my mother and
demanded (not requested) that she come home from work immediately to
get me. To her credit, that's exactly what she did. She and I
discussed that night a little bit a few years ago and she told me
that when she came into the living room of that home, she had never
been more scared for her safety before or since. She scooped me up
and we left and never went back. “not even to pay the woman,” my
mother said. (Sometimes we say absurd things when we are recounting
crazy memories.)
She knew nothing at the time of what
happened after the toe sucking. I was too embarrassed to tell. And
she said something that's stuck with me. “It didn't seem like it
affected you. So we just moved forward.” I have to stop for a
moment and defend my mother. There will be plenty of room for dealing
with her in other bags, but in this case, she was a 26 year old
single mother in 1977 before society had any clue what to look for
when kids were acting out after being sexually abused. She had no way
of knowing how it truly affected me... but I can tell you this for
sure: It did. It wasn't very long before other predators began to
take advantage of our family situation and of me. I didn't just agree
to suck their cocks for them when those creeps suggested it. I agreed
eagerly. I'm a fast learner, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to
sort out that being praised for being “so good at that” was
better than being orally gang-raped in a canyon.
And it continued that way for a long
time... longer than I care to discuss in this post, and beyond the
molestation. We all have our ways of coping with the emotions and
aftermath of sexual abuse. Some men turn violently homophobic. Other
men, a lot of whom, like me prefer women, tend toward what amounts to
some sort of down-low equivalence of Stockholm syndrome. Both are
equally destructive.
35 years later, I still struggle with
the affects of that awful night when, a half a dozen men, likely
angry because of the racial tensions so prevalent still in 1977
after the tumult of the 60's, took it upon themselves to introduce a
little boy to hate, bigotry and rape, and sexual molestation.
That shit happened. It happened to me.
It hurt me. It was wrong, and evil, and it hurt me then, and has hurt
me ever since. That's where the hurt started...at least so far as I
know. I probably over-shared here. And If I did, I'm sorry. I said
from the start that I was intent on unpacking all of my baggage. At
any cost, I meant it.
I am not writing this stuff out to make
people pity me or feel sorry for me. I'm writing it out to claim it
and to unload it. I need that. Maybe someone reading needs it too. I
don't know. I just know that I feel a little lighter for writing
it... and while I fear the repercussions of posting it a little in a
few moments, I know that's part of the process.
A typical visit to a shrink costs $95.
Who do I make the check out to? I hope you will come back tomorrow. I
promise it will be a little lighter. We can't open big bags every day.
