Starting is hard. Staring at that blank page while you sort through the dark past that you tried to bury so unsuccessfully for years. You can never keep the past covered because it creeps out of its hiding place and into your daily life. It darkens; it tinctures; it tints. There's no way to say it in nice people terms; to say it in a way that makes it more palatable to the mainstream. Even though I know I was taken advantage of, it still feels like I was a willing participant, because I was a willing participant on more than one occassion.
I don't remember exactly when the molestation started, but I remember the older male relative fooling around with the kids in our family at a young age. He would babysit myself and my 2 sisters and my brother while our parents were out. I remember the play wrestling where he would roughhouse and grab me by the genitals, claiming to have stolen my dick by sticking his hand down my underwear (as pants had to be removed for wrestling) sticking his thumb between his index and middle finger, simulating a penis, then making me prove he didn't have it by showing my penis to him.
Did he do it to the other kids? I know for sure he did to my sister who is 18 months older than me. I'm not sure of the rest because it's never been discussed. He warned me not to tell. He rewarded me with candy and money: sent me to the store with extra money to buy him things, telling me the extra money was mine for doing what he told me, and never talking about what we did. Because it wasn't just show and not tell; and not just on my side; there was full-on oral and anal sex play. I have memories of blow jobs and fingers in my ass, but it's like old pictures and freeze frames from an old movie. I remember him kneeling across my thighs to keep me still, having my arms held down while he was above me. I don't remember crying or struggling at all. It seemed like this was part of playtime with him. Just something you did and forgot about. No big deal. the important part was not to tell anyone. You see, he was a big believer in corporal punishment. Go cut a switch? Done it. Hold out your hand? Been there. Pull down your pants? Yup. Tell your parents? Never, cause if he said you misbehaved while mom and dad were gone, you'd get another beating when they came back.
And the religious culture was one that supported molestation. Sex was dirty and disgusting, to never be discussed in public. Keep those kinks to yourself and stay repressed and become perverted with your thoughts until they spill out and are played out on the helpless and the innocent. Rape the ones that lack power, exert dominance over them, threaten them with punishment, give them a lick or two to show them who's the boss, threaten them with more if you tell anyone, reward them not telling. It's so easy...so easy it made me ask my friends growing up about their experiences, but nobody else ever confessed to me, so I never confessed to them. I wondered about my cousins, but lacked the fortitude to bring it up.
I do recall that there was quite a bit of sexual play between myself, my cousins and friends. There were long discussions about sex and what we would do to girls when we hit puberty and began actively seeking sex, and even some mutual masturbation, but I honestly lack a guideline to know if what we did is normal or as a result of exposure to sex play at a young age. I technically lost my virginity to the older relative at least by age six, and had sex with an older female relative at around age eight. I remember her coming into my room to climb into bed with me, removing all our clothes and feeling her naked body on mine. I don't hate her or blame her for it. It was all very gentle and loving. I honestly loved the attention, the comfort that I received from it. She stimulated me until I was hard, then showed me where i should put it. She climbed on me as well, in the all too familiar cowgirl pose that I still can't tolerate today. And that was that. Of course I didn't come; I was eight-years old, we just did it until she decided that was enough. She didn't have to explain to me not to tell anyone. I was a seasoned player by this time - at age eight, and the times with her were as beautiful as they were ugly, both of us searching for comfort in the thing that caused all the hurt.
He died around the time I was thirteen. I remember being pulled out of school and coming home for the day and not really feeling anything - happy? sad? ambivalent? I remember feeling numb, like I couldn't process it. I just remember the day of the funeral sneaking off and going fishing instead of going to the funeral. I went to a spot on the river that has a great view and recall it was a bright sunny late spring day just past Easter, and just feeling free. Just knowing that that part of my life was over and done. Except it wasn't, because we practise what we learn.
I, in turn, lured my younger friends into playing with my penis; getting hand jobs at age twelve to fourteen from two of them that were about 4 years younger, rewarding with praise and attention, allowing them to hang out with me, providing treats. I guess His legacy lived on in me for those two years, until I was raped again, by a future girlfriend who was two years older than me, and her boyfriend who was four years older. There's a pattern of abuse here: the older preying on the younger. It was always there in our culture growing up. More than one time, I witnessed a group of boys hold down a girl and open her pants to see if she "had any hair down there yet.", or cop a feel on her way off the bus. Happened so often, it seemed like normal behaviour, and you joined in.
Getting a girlfriend at age sixteen was when my sex life finally took on a more normal tone. It was a school camping trip to qualify for a medal that required a 10 km hike and an overnight stay, in big tents provided by the army cadets. All the boys in one tent, all the girls in a different one, the two male chaperones in a third. She was two years older than me, and fresh out of a relationship with a controlling boyfriend.
We chatted side by side at the back of the group the whole way in about her previous relationship and what we liked, buoyed on by a nervous confidence in finding shared things we liked. When we got to the campsite we all went off to get firewood. except we ended up at the edge of the lake. "Dare you to go in." followed by "Double dare you." was all it took to strip down to our underwear and go in. It was an ice cold lake in early June in our underwear, and I will never forget the hardened small nipples that were barely visible through that white bra. We took off our wet clothes back-to-back in the woods and returned to camp. After our campfire, everyone drifted back to their tent to sleep.
Not her though; she pulled me into her tent for some strip poker with the girls.
The level of excitement for a sixteen-year old boy to be playing strip poker with six other girls ages fifteen to eighteen was off the charts. However, when push came to shove, and it was time to show the goodies, everyone was bashful, and the final clothes came off inside the sleeping bag...except for her. she proudly flaunted it, and when I lost my final hand, so did I, as I remember being hard at that point anyway, and excited to show it off. When lights out came, I felt her hand take mine. She lead me back down the trail and put down a blanket for me to lie on. After some quick Oral by her to make sure I was hard, she mounted me and ground into me until she climaxed, and asked me if I had as well. I was terrified as I couldn't come in that position, not with her on me, with her legs touching my thighs, so I grunted and said I had. Just another lie about sex for me. No big deal. Besides, this was the same girl who had raped me with the help of her boyfriend two years previously. I think this was her way of trying to make up for it. But that's for another time.
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