The Beginning of the Darkest Years of My Life
last updated on Tuesday, June 14, 2005 at 4:59:53 AM CST

regarding events somewhere about 1 April, 1984

WARNING!  Before I start to share this portion of my life, and before you read any further, I want to warn you that what you are about to read is not pleasant.  I pull no punches, and while I won't go into overly graphic detail below, there are points in which I have little choice to say what it was that happened.  I am not providing graphic sexual descriptions as a means to shock anyone, or because I think it's fun.  However, in order to tell you what happened effectively, to convey to you not only what occurred, but also to show you how it affected me, I do have to be fairly blunt at times.  I will try, not only in this article, but in future ones on the same subject matter, to avoid being overly graphic, but I cannot avoid it entirely.

What you are about to read is the beginning of seven years of sexual abuse by my stepfather, my mother's third husband, that occurred from age 10 through to age 17.  Again, I wanted to give advance notice of the graphic detail.  If you do not wish to read any further, I certainly won't blame you for turning back now.  This is the entire purpose of this warning.  However, I share this part of my life not only to provide further insight into who I am, what obstacles I have overcome in my life, and to reflect upon myself as I walk through these memories, but also to share with anyone who might have experienced similar events.  I hope that perhaps in some small way, my story might reach out to someone else and show them that there is hope.

Also, I share this because I know that sexual abuse is not the societal norm.  That there are perfectly normal families that nurture children.  That my experiences as a child were not what other children were typically experiencing.  It is due to this that I hope those who have not experienced this in their lives, and who can deal with some graphic detail, will continue to read, because while we can all understand that sexual abuse and pedophilia are horrible, devastating things, I don't think that people who have never had such pass through their lives in one form or another completely understand the effects it has on the victims.  As you will later learn as I continue to add entries to my journal about this subject, my eventual cry for help went ignored &0151; perhaps it wouldn't be the same if it had happened today, but perhaps by putting these parts of my life out on the internet, someone else might not brush aside a cry for help as the ramblings of a child begging for attention.

I can still remember it like it was yesterday.  I was 10 years old.  It was April or May, 1984, well into spring, nearing the end of the school year.  I was in fifth grade.  We were living in Mendota, Illinois in the very same house my Aunt Edie, Uncle Butch, and my cousins Pam, Diane, and Carrie lived a couple of years prior.  My "Uncle Ken," a friend of my parents' who worked with my step-father, Brian, had taken his dog, Rabid, out to go camping.  My mother was at work, working the late shift at a "massage parlor" in the Lasalle/Peru area just off the highway.  My sister was off visiting her father.  I was at home with Brian, watching television.  The hour was sometime after 9:00 PM.

And little did I know that my life was about to change.  Forever.

Brian turns to me and asks if I'd like to play poker.  Well, now, I'd never played poker before, but I had heard about the game.  I'd even watched my parents and their friends sit around and play together before.  So I told him I didn't know how, and he offered to teach me.  About seven to ten hands into the game, I've started to catch on, and next thing I know, he turns and asks, "Do you want to play strip poker?"

I thought about it for a moment.  Keep in mind, I was only 10 years old.  Puberty was still a year off (not that I was aware of this at the time, and not that it really should have been either).  I hadn't had sex with a girl, and really, had no idea what sex was.  I had already been introduced by a family friend how to "french kiss," but that was the real extent of my knowledge.  However, I had heard about strip poker before.  I knew the point was to win, and be the last one with clothes on.  In fact, a friend of mine (Paul, I think his name was... I don't exactly remember) and I had been watching the Playboy channel one night after my mom and Brian were in bed, and they were playing on there.  So, while I didn't exactly put it all together, something in the back of my mind said, "Strip poker's supposed to be fun."

"Sure," I said, finally, a bit nervous.  I know now what that strange nagging in the back of my mind was.  It was something subconscious screaming out at me, telling me that what was about to happen was wrong.  That strip poker wasn't something you played with your stepfather.  But, you know, I'd been raised around sex.  My mother had let me watch her and her second husband have sex so she could teach me the "birds and the bees."  I knew that she'd slept with contractors working on Al's house.  I knew this because she had bumped into them in Mendota, and she told me that she'd have to tell them she "couldn't do for them now what" she "had done for them then" because she was now married to Brian.  Suffice to say, by age 10, I already had some sort of twisted understanding of sex, but no experience, and no real reason to know what anything meant.

Well, we're playing, and playing and playing.  Piece by piece, our clothing is coming off.  Seeing Brian without a shirt wasn't anything new, as he used to sit around the house like that all the time.  But when his jeans came off, and his red bikini briefs were there in front of me, I kept staring.  See, I never really paid attention to my mom having sex with Al the couple of times she was giving lessons.  Sure, I remember them being naked, but I never really watched.  So I hadn't really seen another naked man before.  Well, Brian was fairly well endowed, and, as I later discovered, into what was going on, and so my staring was trying to figure out, partially, why that particular area seemed so large.

I was sitting in my underwear too.  It was down to the last hand.  I won.  Off came the briefs, and suddenly there's this huge, erect penis.  I'd never really seen one of those either (because, while my mother had tried to teach me the birds and the bees, I never really watched much, and wasn't paying much attention).  They say hindsight is 20/20, so obviously, I now understand that he was really sexually into what was going on.  He was turned on playing strip poker with me.  Even though he was 17 or 18 years older than me.  Even though I was 10 years old.  Even though I hadn't hit puberty, he was turned on by me.

Now, as I write this, I'm 31.  I've spent the last four years doing some serious thinking about how in the hell that happened.  I understand I always looked older for my age (at age 8, a lifeguard at a local pool asked me why I was leaving the pool during adult swim/lifeguard break, because he thought I was at least 18), but still... he knew how old I was.  I've met 10-year-olds. 11-year-olds.  Heck, I've probably met someone of every age up through mine and beyond.  I don't understand it.  I have made the occasional, "Wow, that kid will be hot someday!" comment about a 16-year-old (yeah, I know that sounds perverted, but hey, they didn't become the subject of my fantasies, so I don't feel bad, because I certainly never considered, nor ever would consider, trying to have sex with a minor), but I have never seen an "attractive" pre-pubescent or even currently-pubescent adolescent.  I can't fathom how I was "attractive" at the age of 10.  I don't understand how looking at me produced an erection in a 27/28-year-old man.  I just don't get it.

So, anyway, I've won the strip poker game.  Brian asks, "What do you want?"  Of course, I don't understand the question.  I think I asked for cookies.  I know I didn't answer with anything sexual.  He then invites me into the master bedroom, and says he's going to do something special.  I follow him in, and he tells me to lay down.

At that moment, the front door bursts open, he dives for his robe, and quietly tells me to get dressed, tossing my pajamas at me.  He walks out, and there, soaking wet, is "Uncle Ken."  Apparently his camping trip went rather disasterously, and he needed a place to spend the night.  So we sit around for a bit talking, and then he goes over to the couch in the big bay window and lays down.  Before I know it, he's over there snoring, and Brian says, "Come on..."

We go back into the bedroom, he strips me, lays me down, and starts going down on me.  Now, yeah, I'll admit, it felt good.  Let's be realistic, that's a natural reaction to what was going on.  I didn't know anything else, hadn't assigned any value to sex at all.  As I laid there, I just knew that it felt good.  Clearly, I never had the typical "ending" a male has to such an experience because, as I've made perfectly clear thus far, I hadn't even hit puberty.  So after some unknown amount of time, he stops and is like, "How'd that feel?"

"Good," I answered honestly, still not really sure what was going on.

Then he laid down, and held his penis in his hands, and asked if I could do that to him.  I looked at it, and just still didn't quite get it.  But I knew I didn't want to do what he'd just done, so I looked at him and said, "No, I don't think I could."  He told me to suck on my thumb, and I did, and he told me it would be just like doing that.  I still didn't want to do it, and told him so.  He then masturbated until completion in front of me, asking me to watch, telling me maybe next time I could try sucking on it.  While I hate to be so graphic (and, really, I do, but there's not much other way to describe what happened), when I saw him ejaculate, I just stared in awe.  I'd never seen that happen before either.  Between that and hearing him moaning, "I'm cumming, I'm cumming," there was something terrifying about that moment.  It stuck with me.

He hadn't gotten what he wanted that night, and it would be months before anything else ever happened, but it was already too late.  I'd been scarred, and I didn't even know it.

I had no idea what these feelings I was having were.  I had no idea why any of this was going on.  Within two weeks, this kid I went to school with, Mike, was suddenly "attractive" to me.  I wanted to see him naked.  I never tried to talk to him about it, never mentioned it to anyone else, never even started to consider how to get him naked, but I did find myself playing with myself while imagining what he'd be like naked.  He was probably my first gay crush.  I also remember suddenly wanting to see my friend Paul naked too.  When he'd come over and spend the night and we'd watch Playboy, I kept hoping he'd ask me to play strip poker.  Of course, I never had the nerve to say anything myself... it was all just going on in my head.

Obviously, if I had the choice, this would never have happened.  My first "real" sexual experience wouldn't have happened at age 10.  My father-figure crossed a line that should never have been crossed.  I wouldn't even start to really put things together until I was about 16, and really come to realize how screwed up I was because of what was going on in my life until after my 21st birthday.

I also understand that some people think this may be why I'm gay today.  There's so much more to share with you about what happened over the course of the years... things you will find horrid, ghastly, and barely believable, and yet, things that happened in my life.  And even knowing all of these things, I can tell you honestly that I think I was gay before this.  When I was younger, I used to try figure out how my "Bo and Luke Duke" dolls from Dukes of Hazzard "fit" together.  If anything, I can tell you that in the later years, I had a great distrust for men, and to this day, I occasionally have authority issues with men in my life because I just have an occasional lurking feeling.  So, to me, I think that if I hadn't already been gay, this would have traumatized me even more, and, if anything, would have pushed me further and further away from men.

This was the start of what would become seven years of sexual abuse, that would turn into me getting actively involved in the "relationship," and which would ultimately culiminate in a desperate cry for help, and the threat that I was going to kill my stepfather.  This isn't going to be an easy ride to take, and not one that will bring good feelings or smiles.  It'll be devoid of my usual humor, for the most part, and it will be dark.

But I still feel the need to share...

Part Two