I was eight when it happened the first time. My mother was gone and I was alone with Asshole. He brought me down our hallway to my mom’s bedroom. I don’t remember him taking off his clothes but somehow the next time I looked at him he was naked lying on top of the maroon and red satin, silky comforter. He told me to climb on to the bed and just do everything I was told. I have now come to believe he used hypnosis to get me to succumb to his wishes. I climbed up on the bed and was surprised by the smell of something I had never smelled before, which I now know was his penis. Since I didn’t grow up with a dad I had never seen one before and I had no idea what the hell I was looking at, let alone smelling.

He told me to open my mouth and put this in it, he grabbed his penis with one hand and the back of my head with his other.  Maybe my mother has given me some sort of assignment, a secret mission. A chore she wanted me to complete, just another item on the list, like unloading the dishwasher or sweeping the floor. I had no idea this was a sexual act or an act of abuse. While I had his penis in my mouth he very carefully instructed me on his blow job preferences and being a dutiful child I asked no questions. He then warned me that something was about to happen and I should just swallow “it” again, not knowing anything I did what I was told.  I remember nothing else that year. I don’t know what school I attended, I don’t remember any of my friends or my teachers. The only thing I remember from that year was the first act of abuse and the weird smell of sex.

 I would like to profess that the abuse never happened again. I would love for this one incident to be a one and done type deal but it wasn’t. The abuse took many forms for me and my mother. I have bits and pieces of memories from the few years the abuse happened. I have memories of seeing the stunning Aurora Borealis with my best friend Lily, although I can’t tell you what city I was in. I have memories of swinging on a swing set but I have no idea what school playground the swing set belonged. Then there are memories of the abuse flashbacks as if I were there again, helpless. In my mind I knew that I had done my blow job chore wrong as I was never asked to do it again. I felt so disappointed in myself at the time because I did everything I was told.

Asshole was a police officer so there was always a lot of noise around him. There was his radio, attached to his lapel, there was his large set of keys that I always wondered about what they could open. There was his gun holster that clicked, every time he took a step and there was the sound of his polyester pants pressing his fat thighs together, that somehow echoing in the hallway to my room. These sounds were always a warning to be that I was going to get touched. Sometimes his touch would scare me and sometimes, most times his touch felt good. So good in fact that I started to believe he was my boyfriend as well as my mom’s. I lived in an alternative universe complete with mother daughter lingerie fashion shows and threesomes.  The abuse continued and I walked around in a state of disbelief, unable to tell my friends that I had a boyfriend that was also my mothers’ but also unable to believe it myself. I could never figure out what was up and what was down because the exact opposite was always true.

As many times as I tried to express to my mother that I was unsure of what was happening to me, I also knew she was willing to give me up, to serve mw on a platter to this man. I know that I had no power because the few times I tried to resist Asshole by pushing his meaty hand away or keeping an extra bloody pad attached to my underwear, his hand was never detoured and it always made it to the exact place it wasn’t supposed to be, I felt helpless and alone, trapped in an agreement that satisfied everyone but me. I turned eleven in November of 1984 and with my eleven years came some understandings about my situation. It was as if a light switch had been turned on and I found myself. This was the first of many times a light switch had been turned on. That year, 1984 I had discovered that I could leave my house for sleepovers at my friend’s houses’ thereby not having to deal with the jealousy and anger of seeing my mom’s boyfriend pay more attention to her. Plus, I was tired of being touched, it was starting to feel uncomfortable the more I was around my friends and their non-offensive fathers.