some days a meme asks a harmless question

what did your parents make you eat 

that you still don't eat now? 

soap, my friend said

and I wondered what 

had issued forth

from his mouth 

to cause that lesson

Then I thought

my dad's penis

and it got dead silent inside

as i recalled the taste of urine

put it back in your mouth, he said

i don't want to, i protested

embarrassed, ashamed 

then don't ask your sister to do it

his daughter, he didn't say

but that's when i should've known i'm not his son

i hadn't known what blow me meant

and then i still didn't

some days crashing come the memories 

smashing me to pieces

trashing my happy facade

way worse was yet to come

after he ate the bullet

and the next one took me under his wing

some days I think it'd've been better

if my single mom 

hadn't been pro-life

What haunts me

It isn't the boarded-over windows in the front door, nor the fogged up enclosure in what used to be our open-air side porch, both of which provide a creepy feeling that I suspect is really more about the personal stuff that haunts me.

It's the house where my dad continued his desperate efforts to remake me in his own image, always trying to make me more athletic.

It's the house where he spent countless drunken nights stumbling around and swearing at his personal ghosts, for whom mom and Karen and I were sometimes stand-ins.

It's the house where he and mom fought over his drinking.

It's the house where I once accidentally landed on my sister's head in the swimming pool when I was trying to jump over her and slipped. (Thank God she wasn't hurt.)

It's the house where I overheard him arguing with my grandmom over whether my mom had ever given him "plenty of sex."

It's the house where I first remember being sexually abused by someone: my dad. I've been told that it had happened once before, when I was younger, but I don't remember that.

It's the house where I chose my side, rooting with mom for Notre Dame over dad's Alabama preference in the 1973 Sugar Bowl, even though I didn't know squat. 

It's the house where we stayed with my aunt while mom tended to dad in the hospital after his accident in PA.

It's the house where he finally shot himself while the rest of us were off on vacation. Mom told us he died of a "cerebral hemorrhage."

It's the house where my uncle told me, "You're the man of the house, now."

It's the house where mom finally told me, maybe as much as two years later, that he'd killed himself, and how. 

It's the house where she also finally told me he wasn't my biological father.

It's the house where mom first introduced us to the man who would become (far and away) my worst sexual abuser and, much later, due to the silence about that into which he manipulated me for so long, my stepfather.

It's the house where my wife and I first made love.

It's just a house. But what a freak show my childhood in it was.

Yes, I believe her

Everyone acknowledges she was sexually assaulted.

If they think it's reasonable that she might not accurately remember who her assailant was, they should get on their knees and thank God that they don't know shit about sexual assault/abuse.

F* ptsd

YOU PROBABLY DON'T WANT TO READ THIS.



in my nightmare, i am my current age. my stepfather is here, in my house. i am alone with him, but i know he is now too old and senile to be a threat anymore. i am showering downstairs when he shockingly pulls open the shower curtain and starts to climb in with me. how did i not hear him open the bathroom door? he isn't nearly his current physical age, and he reacts to my shock and my insistence that he leave by brandishing his tiny erection and clear intentions, cackling his fucking abusive amused cackle. i somehow flee the bathroom and run upstairs while he continues showering and calling out to me to come back. i consider calling 911, knowing now as i didn't then that this is how to respond to his abusive actions. but i imagine them dismissing the threat, chalking the incident up to his senility and advanced age. still naked, i grab the chef's knife and go back down the stairs, where he is still showering in the closed bathroom, but decide that probably won't go well. "why hadn't i locked the door?" i excoriate myself, again piling guilt on myself that has always rightly belonged to him, just as he'd always taught me to do.

i know, i think, i'll just leave and figure it out from a safe place. i rush back into my bedroom and grab my jeans to pull onto my not-quite dry body. (how did it get that way? i hadn't toweled off. dream weirdness.) i have them not quite secured when i hear him approaching down the hallway. oh shit! i left the door open again! wtf was i thinking? (more self blaming). i rush to close and lock it, but before i can turn the lock he is turning the knob and pushing against the door, and i am still not as physically strong as him. i never was. he is overpowering me again, forcing the door open. i know what is coming next, no matter how much i resist.

this is when i woke up, bolting upright but not shouting out loud, somehow not waking my wife.

and it wasn't until i left my bedroom, awake, with no hope of returning back to sleep until my racing heart calms back down, that i realized my granddaughters are here. and it wasn't until just now that I realized it isn't a work day.



he can't hurt me anymore. this is just a dream. i am safe.

again i choose to forgive him, even though it isn't what i want to do and even though he doesn't deserve it for what he did to me over and over again. i pray that he will be well, and heal from his own brokenness, and live in God's love. it is still true that he doesn't understand his sin. and i will not pay the price that hating him will cost me. that isn't self-love, and i will not give up the freedom Jesus has won for me over him. yes, i hate what he did to me. but i refuse to hate him.

Lord, heal my mind, and please heal my step-father, too.

40 years ago right now

We were driving back home to MD. He had done his damage control, talking about how "weird" the previous night had been, making sure that I wasn't going to tell anyone what "we" had done, especially my mom.

Over time, I came to understand the periodic extracurricular activity as the cost of his patronage, his interest in me. I didn't tell mom for nearly 20 years, when I was in therapy. It was nearly a decade before I told anyone at all, and then with an ulterior, if unconscious, motive. And also, until therapy, with the mistaken notion that it was something from my past that hadn't affected me much.

I have come to realize that even my complicit participation, including that first night, is on him.  If a much younger person offered themselves sexually to me today, (I sincerely hope and anticipate that) I would graciously decline, and insist that God has a far better plan for us, for them. I wouldn't take advantage of their vulnerability and naivete.

This weekend of remembering has been very hard.  There have been times when I have wanted to physically hurt myself. I've also been tempted to pursue aspects of desire that are not God's will for me. I have thus far managed to turn away from these temptations, and to trust that God's plan is better. But I don't therefore imagine that the battle for my mind and heart - and to determine where my trust truly lies - is over.

40 years ago right now

I was making the mistake that he'd use to keep abusing me for the next 20 months.

I woke up aroused.

And I stupidly got into his bed.

It's the thing from that weekend I still can't forgive myself for.

40 years ago. Right now.

This is adult material. I'll try not to be too explicit. There are plenty of details I am remembering beyond these. 

He was standing in front of me. Between me and the door. He'd gotten out of the shower, and stood there in his skivvies. Within a minute or two he pulled them down and started masturbating. And he begged me to take mine out and "just let him see it." I stood there, mostly mute. I'd said no, but I didn't go anywhere. Where was I going to go? He kept at it, kept asking me. I didn't know what to do. I was somehow repulsed and yet aroused at the same time. He pointed out my arousal. He insisted that I did this myself, right? And then he said that he just wanted to watch me do what i already did. Then he'd stop for a while. He didn't want to finish by himself, I guess. I must've stood there for over a half hour, resisting his repeated entreaties. 

Before I gave in.

And he didn't just watch.

 After, I felt so. Very. FILTHY.

40 years ago right now

He was buying me my first leather jacket. I still naively thought it was cool that he had taken me under his wing, was acting in some ways like the dad I'd never really had, even though I'm pretty sure neither of us really considered him a father figure. Still, it was nice that he seemed to really enjoy my company and appreciate me.

40 years ago right now

I was in Central Park for the first time.

40 years ago right now

I heard gunshots outside through the window as i was trying to sleep. I'd forgotten that.

40 years ago right now

We were finishing dinner. Probably a burger in a gay bar. He said "I just love watching people. Especially the weirdos."

40 years ago right now

We were checking into the YMCA.

I still leave the room whenever they start playing that song.

40 years ago right now

We were on the New Jersey Turnpike, and I was thinking of Simon and Garfunkel.

40 years ago right now

So I'm advance posting this one  to publish at the proper time because I'll be busy when it actually happened. 

We were sitting in the diner. It seems to me that the sun was shining while he nervously approached his subject. He was afraid that I must not be having a very good time. Why don't we head up to New York, where the drinking age was only 18 and I would be able to pass for old enough? He'd already cleared it with mom. 

I was having a fine time. The concert had been a blast, though I'd done that by myself. Still, he wanted this to be a really great weekend for me, and he was sure I'd have a much better time in New York. 

I finally relented, and we soon headed back to the hotel to pack our stuff. 

The two breakfasts in Philadelphia are basically all I remember of the daytime hours in that city. 

40 years ago right now

I was walking through Philadelphia to get back to our hotel room, because the bus wasn't running this late on Thanksgiving night.  It was cold, but not excessively so. I was more uncomfortable walking through a strange city alone than from the temperature.

It was a very good concert. I don't know what I'd expected, but I was disappointed that they back-tracked the choral section of Bohemian Rhapsody.

40 years ago right now

I was enjoying Queen at The Spectrum. I think I took the bus there, but am not sure; perhaps my future stepfather dropped me off.  If I wasn't buzzed yet, i would be soon, when a fellow attendee shared. No, this is not a fond memory. I hate that I have drug use in my past.

40 years ago right now

I was finishing my only thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant.

40 years ago right now

He was giving me grief for putting cream and sugar in my coffee.

40 years ago right now

I was asleep in a hotel room in Philadelphia, while sleeping in the next bed was a horror waiting to spring upon me.

I know I'm not supposed to still feel destroyed, but I do.

40 years ago right now

We were figuring out that there was no way I was getting served beer in Pennsylvania. That was not a big deal to me; I was still having fun.