"A Reverie"
Once when I was small,
I stumbled home broken and bruised and weeping.
It was not the first time nor the last.
At a moment, perfectly balanced between him and home,
I stopped and began to laugh.
At that moment, perfectly balanced,
I perceived with my six-year-old mind that I could think.
A space big enough for me, but too small for him,
opened in my body and I crawled in.
I stayed there for twenty years
until I was sure he was gone.
--For a girl I once knew
by Katie Mulligan
I am a man. Sometimes I feel shame for that, even though I don’t know Katie, and have never raped any woman. But Jimmie Carter and I and billions of other men have thought about it. It seems to be an integral part of masculinity. Even though I try to put such thoughts away quickly, it’s never quick enough to not feel guilty. I’m sorry, Katie, and all the rest of you.
I was raised in a small town in central California, and went to school in a small two room church operated school. Every kid knew every other kid well, and there was no hiding in the crowd. Every Sabbath after church the youth would get together in the afternoon and go out to the shut-in old folks and the sick people and sing hymns in our best choir arrangements, led by the music director of the church. When we were done, we would meet back at the church for parents to come take us home.
One afternoon one of the young teen girls was left alone because her parents had not come to pick her up. Since I had my car we offered her a ride home. My little brother was with me in front, so she got in the back seat and we drove away.
When we arrived at her house, her father came running out screaming at us, accusing us of things we hadn’t thought of, and dragged the girl into the house by her arm, threatening us and her all the way.
My brother and I left shaken and confused. After all, she was in the back seat alone in broad daylight! Only later, when more details of the incestuous situation began to be whispered around the school did we recognize the sexual jealousy being displayed that day.
Her mother sometimes came to church with bruises that were hard to explain, and twice she missed a few weeks of church for a “nervous breakdown” in the hospital. I remember her singing “His Eye is On the Sparrow” in church in her high quavering soprano voice, and it brings tears to my eyes still.
Nobody in the church asked any questions or tried to intervene. Everyone averted their eyes and pretended they had seen nothing. By everyone I include myself. I’m so sorry!
Soon after, two of the most straight arrow kids in our little church got married, in the grandest formal wedding any of us had seen in a long time. We all knew that if ever two virgins got wed, these were them! Because all of the mothers were good friends, my mother found out from the girl’s mother that the honeymoon night had been a disaster--the guy knew nothing about a woman, and she knew even less about a man. She described a multiple serial rape that lasted all night, leaving the new bride terrified and in agony.
My mother, who was raising us three brothers alone after my father ran off with another woman, tried her best to impart to us that a woman needs tenderness and consideration, but in spite of her best efforts, there was a lot left to be learned. If all you’ve been taught is the mechanics of penetration and impregnation, what is consideration? Do you politely ask “Please” first and then plunge in? It is impossible to teach about sexual matters adequately if the whole subject is either too filthy or too sacred or too embarrassing to discuss in detail aloud.
One of my classmates in my freshman year had to drop out of school suddenly two weeks before the end of the school year. She had accidently gotten pregnant, and “had to get married” to her lover in a quick trip to Reno. I slowly became aware that many more of the girls believed in the Virgin Birth than in virgin marriage. Even though I was very bright and intelligent in school, I was very slow when it came to sexual matters. I hurried to catch up.
I became close friends with a girl in high school who confided in me that she had been raped by her stepbrothers several times, and when her father and stepmother discovered what was happening, they called her a whore and a slut and banished her from the family, to be raised by a great aunt. They kept the boys, of course--“Boys will be boys!” To my knowledge she never saw her father again.
This girl had been raised in a strict Catholic household, and she had no idea that what the boys were forcing her to do (fellatio) was wrong, and didn’t even know what sex was at fourteen, as no mention of such topics was allowed in her family. We both talked to our respective clergy about sexual matters, with different and inadequate answers from both. We both searched for answers, reading and studying everything we could find to find the facts.
I read the research of Alfred Kinsey, finding out that normal human sexual behavior includes many varieties of activity. I subscribed to Playboy magazine, and closely followed Hugh Hefner’s Philosophy series, which he was writing then. I found it very liberating and I was especially attracted to the idea that men could give pleasure to women, and they would actually like sex, which had never been the subject of any education in my church, school, or family.
My limited sexual education left the impression that women tolerated sex so that they could attract men and become wives and mothers later. Seems funny now, but that idea was not uncommon back then. Some research then showed that up to one third of all wives had no idea there was such a thing as orgasm.
My church talked a lot about love--God’s love, love for your neighbor, love for your husband or wife--but it appeared that love was more about respect than anything else. Ecstasy, or even pleasure, did not seem to be involved in any marriages I saw in my church. Engaging in pleasure was pretty much a sin. Any pleasure that involved bodies touching, such as dancing, was a really big sin!
Of course this was in the late fifties and early sixties before the Sexual Revolution, but even then I knew something was missing. The more religious the person, the colder the person, it seemed. It wasn’t for nothing that the church leaders were described by some of the younger set as the “frozen chosen!”
I became convinced that as long as a woman’s worth is tied to her status as either “new or used”--”pure or defiled”--“virgin or whore”--she will always be the property of men, the ones setting the value. As long as sex is considered dirty or filthy, or somehow impure, men will rule over women. The dirt and filth and impurity only seems to stick to the woman. She is the one who “loses her reputation”, not the guy. His reputation is enhanced.
In many countries a marriage connotes legal ownership. The husband actually legally owns his wife and children. In this country ownership is implied and understood by too many men, who feel free to abuse their wives and children emotionally or physically, just as they would kick the car if it didn’t start some morning.
I found that in the past, many powerful women kept their power by refusing to submit to the bonds of marriage, including Britain’s Queen Elizabeth I, Catharine the Great of Russia, and even Amelia Earhart, the famous aviator.
When I became convinced that requiring chastity before marriage was just a method to subjugate women to men, I went to my pastor and requested that my name be taken off the books--that I no longer believed the church teachings, would not be following church doctrine in the future, and did not want to misrepresent the church. At the time I was a youth leader, a teacher in Sabbath School, and a pianist for church services.
That came as quite a shock to everyone, including my mother, who couldn’t bear to look at my face or speak to me for weeks. That was hard for both of us, but we worked through it over time. She eventually came to understand that my disagreement with the church was in part because of the sensitivity and sympathy she taught us as boys.
My girlfriend became my lover, and we spent many pleasant hours over the next four years learning how to find what pleased each other, and I learned to listen and feel her needs and wants, and how to be tender and considerate at last.
It could have happened much sooner, in fact, because when I was sixteen and still a good Christian boy, I was invited out for dinner by an older woman in the church, recently divorced. She was twenty or so, with a small child. My mother expressed her concern, and admonished me not to do anything I’d regret. I promised her I’d be careful.
We had a nice dinner at a local restaurant, finished off with milk shakes. She paid, of course, and when we were sitting in her car she asked if there was anything else I’d like to do before she took me home, I said “No, I’m ready to go back home now, thank you.” Yeah, Mom said not to do anything I’d regret and I’ve regretted that answer ever since, but I guess I wasn’t ready yet.
Actually, I think I was ready, but didn’t know it. I was still trying hard to be the cold, sterile, frustrated boy my church expected me to be until I got married and then I could suddenly become the wonderfully warm and caring husband I should be.
With a different answer, I could have been taught then what tenderness and consideration was all about, and all the ways a man can please a woman, and she would have felt the relief and relaxation that comes with sexual satisfaction. We both needed something important, and we both might have had our needs met, even though it was probably technically illegal, my being a minor and all.
Which brings up a troubling story I heard when I was a young man in the U.S. Army stationed on Okinawa. Several of us on a lazy weekend evening were sitting around the barracks discussing “the first time”, and one man said his first time was when he was twelve and an aunt had come to stay with his family for a few days.
Late at night after all were in bed, he woke up to find his aunt had come to his room, and cautioning him to keep quiet, she initiated him to the pleasures of oral sex at first, and then on successive nights, to the full range of sexual delights. They were never discovered, and he described how easy it was for him to please his girlfriends later, and what an advantage he had over the other boys, knowing what his aunt taught him those nights.
What I found fascinating, considering the illegality of it, was that all the other men were envious of his “luck”, and wished they had had an aunt like that. There was not one voice of condemnation, and if he ever had any qualms about it, they were washed away in the wave of positive feedback he received after telling his story.
No, I’m not advocating for incest here, far from it, but I strongly believe there is a crying need for a way for boys (and girls) to be educated in the intimate details of loving another person.
Once long ago my wife Carolyn and I lived in a tiny town in Colorado. We were close friends with a couple who were raising two daughters--one their own and a younger adopted one. As most adoptive parents do, they tried hard not to treat one differently than the other and to love each the same. Although non-denominational, they were Christians with a strong set of values and beliefs.
Their oldest daughter fulfilled their fondest wishes, going on to college, meeting a nice boy, falling in love, getting married and going on to raise a fine family of children. They live happily in Colorado even now.
The adopted one was always far more rebellious, no matter how hard her parents tried to understand her. I have noticed that although some adopted kids do okay, an unusually high percentage seem to get into more trouble and have a harder time in general growing up gracefully. I wonder if it has anything to do with the deep angst of knowing your own mother didn’t love you enough to keep you, but instead gave you away.
At first it was sneaking out with friends and getting royally drunk when she was in her early teens. Once when she was sick drunk and afraid to go home and face her parents, she asked to stay overnight at our house. We called her parents, not to tell them she was drunk, but that she wanted to stay the night with us, and we would bring her home the next day.
The next day she was still badly hung over, but we took her home and she had a bad case of the flu for a couple more days.
Soon thereafter she let my wife Carolyn know that she intended to lose her virginity as soon as she could find a suitable man, by which she meant one married already, so she wouldn’t have any emotional ties with him. I don’t think she ever read any of Erica Jong’s books, but for sure she wanted a “zipless fuck” to get rid of that hated hymen.
Carolyn had already had a heart to heart talk with her about coming over to the house and flaunting her booty in mini skirts and short shorts around me to try to get a reaction. I had been amused, not aroused, and I made her furious one day by having her blink her eyes a few times so I could check out her shiny green eyeshadow. I told her she looked very much like a lizard I had once seen. She didn’t appreciate my attempt at humor.
Being unable to talk her into a better plan, and knowing her determination, we were left with two choices, both bad. We could watch her go out with no protection and possibly get pregnant, or we could try to prevent the pregnancy by providing her with birth control and STD protection.
The very idea of using pregnancy as punishment or deterrence is appalling to me. Not only does it not work as deterrence--open your eyes and look around--but it punishes someone else worse than the girl--the unwanted child. Why would anyone intentionally cause another unwanted child to be brought into this world, to either be given away for adoption, or even worse, raised by a mother who thinks and maybe says, “I wish you had never been born!”
So Carolyn went to the local county health nurse for advice and help. She gave us a box of condoms and spermicidal jelly, with no questions asked. Later we found she worked with the school and knew exactly who we were dealing with and had not been able to get the girl into her office for help herself. She approved of our actions and hoped to keep the girl out of trouble, too.
(In small towns, everybody knows and everybody cares. That can be good, or it can be bad!)
No, we did not give her permission. We got her protection. She did not ask for our permission, she didn’t want our permission, and we were just happy she took what we offered.
She found her man, she got laid, and she didn’t get pregnant. She later fell in love with a young man in the Army, ran away from home to Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, to marry him and have two children. We began to have hope it would all work out for her.
But her demons were still there, eventually breaking up the marriage. Her children are estranged from her, and were raised by their father and his family.
We have since lost touch with the girl--woman now--and even her parents are unsure where she lives. We still think of her and wish we could have helped more. We’re sorry we couldn’t.
There was the sad case of the daughter of the librarian in the same little town in Colorado. She was “simple”, as we used to say, and in special ed. She was found in an advanced stage of pregnancy, and when asked who the boy was, she gave them names of boys she had kissed. She had been warned about the dangers of letting boys kiss her, but nobody had mentioned there were more dangerous deeds to be done. She was about sixteen, and raised very Catholic and very ignorant. The baby was put up for adoption.
A few years ago a teen couple here in Winnemucca had a baby in the bathroom of her parents house and the boyfriend put the baby in a box and buried it in a nearby canyon, trying to cover up their situation.
The mother swore she didn’t know the girl was pregnant, but she had cleaned up the bathroom while the boyfriend took the girl to the hospital for medical care. The hospital found out what happened and sent the boy back to get the baby, but it was dead when he brought it back. Then they called the sheriff, but the evidence for murder was gone. The baby was found to have dirt in its lungs, so it was living when buried.
The girl’s father was a well known and respected administrator in the local school system. The boy got probation, as I remember.
Another teen couple that same year had a baby and buried it out in the desert, trying once again to hide their situation. This boy, however, had an Hispanic name and her parents were not well known.
On the day when the boy was to graduate from high school as valedictorian, his conscience overcame him, and he turned himself in to the authorities. He admitted to killing the baby by running over it with his vehicle before he buried it. This boy went to prison.
We were good friends with a family in our square dance club who were in the Mormon church, which has always seemed to me to be a little better about teaching their children about sexual matters than some other churches, even if it is directed toward strict gender roles as wife and husband.
One afternoon the father was discovered demonstrating oral sex, specifically cunnilingus, to his twelve year old daughter. Obviously, sex ed can be taken way too far. I was very surprised to hear that some women in the square dance club blamed the girl for seducing her father! Envy, maybe?
The mother and daughter left and moved to California. The father served some jail time and probation for a couple of years. Maybe he got a lesser sentence for not inflicting pain and suffering.
Once we took in a foster child, a young girl with mild developmental problems, with intentions of maybe adopting her, as her parents had dropped her off with relatives, unable to handle her. She was twelve, a couple of years older than our son, and we were thinking they each might enjoy the friendship and company out here in the Nevada wilds. She knew nothing about sex, we thought, because after finding clumps of bloody tissue paper hidden around the bedroom, my wife discovered no one had told her about menstruation.
Not many weeks later our son came to us actually afraid for himself because she was overtly pushing for a sexual relationship, and he was nowhere near that age yet, even if she had not been ostensibly a sister. She was also much bigger, and not the least bit shy.
Seeing the situation as totally untenable, we reluctantly sent her back to other family members in Oklahoma. A cousin’s family attempted to take her in as a foster child, and had the same problem with their children.
On investigation her cousin found out that the girl’s father had been using her for his sexual needs for awhile. When she tried to report the situation to the local authorities, their response was, “Her real father? No, that’s impossible! It couldn’t have been her real father! That can’t happen!”
Nothing was done to her father, and she was sent to a state institution. While there she was raped by a staff person, became pregnant, and had a child. We have since lost contact.
We all feel guilty, and we are so sorry!
On a bitterly cold day a few days before Christmas, our neighbor slid her pickup with a heavily loaded trailer into the ditch as she was driving away from her house. I went down to help, but the ground was frozen, my Toyota Land Cruiser in four-wheel drive and chained up all around couldn’t budge them, and they had to call a large tow truck to pull them out.
The mother was very agitated and upset, and it soon became apparent that she was leaving her husband. They were on their way back to her home in Kansas. They stayed overnight in town, because they refused to go back to the house that night until the tow truck could get there the next morning.
Eventually the story surfaced that the fifteen year old daughter was pregnant by her step father, there had been an improper relationship for months--maybe years--and that was the reason the mother and children were leaving in such a rush.
Sometime later in Kansas, when she was sixteen, the daughter gave birth to the baby way too early. I don’t know the stage of development, but either she thought it was dead, or she couldn’t deal with the horror and shame of it being there, so she put it away in a box out of sight and went out to see some friends without telling anyone.
When it was found decomposing in the closet days later, the state of Kansas charged the fifteen year old girl with murder, found her guilty and sentenced her to five years in the state penitentiary. I guess that’ll teach her!
Several years ago a couple here in town, who have been our close friends for many years, told us their son was being accused of having sex with his own daughter in another state. We were shocked because we knew he was a fireman in his little town, not involved with drugs or alcohol, and he just didn’t seem to fit the profile.
We learned his mother-in-law wrote novels in which incest was part of the plot, and she along with the wife and daughter had a story they were ready to tell the court.
He was strongly urged by his own lawyer to plead guilty, and threatened with a long sentence by the prosecutor if he didn’t. So even though he continued to protest his innocence, he took the deal, pled guilty to avoid the un-winnable trial, and got five years in the state pen. He continues to swear his innocence. I worry that will make it harder for him to get paroled.
His ex-wife has bragged to others about how she got everything he owned or will own. Her joy at acquiring everything he owned along with the divorce decree makes us wonder if she found a way to divorce him without sharing the property.
At the same time we were keeping a local girl who had lost her parents when her father came home drunk, beat her mother to death and then skipped town to avoid the warrant. We knew the girl was sneaking out and using alcohol and drugs, and was very prone to anger and lashing out at those around her. I was now aware of my danger if she claimed rape on my part.
Carolyn and I agreed that if she left the house, she had to take me or the girl with her. I could never take the girl anywhere without taking my wife along. The only defense I could ever have would be that at no time was the opportunity ever presented. Never, ever could I be alone with that girl.
The girl eventually became so sullen and uncooperative that Carolyn had to tell her to leave. She went to live with her grandmother in town.
What a sorry world we live in!
What are the chances of a girl growing up in this country without being raped by either family or strangers?
What are her chances now in this new religious climate of not having to live with the spawn of her rapist for the next nine months?
How many wives have to try to blot out horrific memories all the rest of their lives every time their husband tries to love them?
How many thousands of unwanted, abused, institutionalized virtual orphan children are there in this country? Of those, how many actually make it to adulthood without being raped?
How many children, boys and girls, are actually taught how to love one another, and not just what sex is? Which begs the question, how many are ever taught what sex is?
Why do we continue to refuse to teach children when they are young, and then teach them in prison when they are old?
How many fathers are taught to expect the temptations of raising children, as well as ways of dealing with it, and not succumbing to it?
How many people have ever internalized a moral code that is part of their soul, not just an external law of conduct enforced by fear of jail or hell?
I don’t work in the field of sociology, or work for the child welfare agencies. I have been a power plant mechanic/machinist for thirty five years.
And yet if what I see around me is representative of the nation as a whole, we live in an infernal hellhole. Most of our religions seem bent on making it worse. All of their effort is predicated on judgement and punishment for sinners now, in direct opposition to Jesus’ teachings. Where is the love and forgiveness Jesus taught?
The very idea of two virgins getting married is honored only in the breach today. Everybody says they believe it, but the percentage of Christians who actually do it is in single digit percentages, I’m sure. It’s not physically normal, and everybody knows it.
Too many churches still look the other way, and keep on preaching that someday, some where in the sky, we will live in a better place. Excuse me, but that is pure bullshit! My Bible says if you’re not working now to make this present world better, you won’t be going to that other place anyway!
Too many religious leaders are found molesting children, having affairs with church members male and female, and otherwise flouting their core church tenets to convince me they really believe in eternal reward or punishment, or that God is watching what they are doing.
As long as the offering plate is full, they behave as they have for centuries. Only when people leave in disgust do they repent and ask for forgiveness.
Too many religious leaders spend all their authority and energy advocating for punishing women and girls for circumstances that men put them in. They are not reticent about keeping women in their place, and that is not an equal place at all!
Too many religious leaders fight hard to maintain ignorance about sex. All depictions of sexual activity are banned as pornography, and deemed inappropriate for children to see. Any attempt to teach comprehensive sex education in schools will spark hoards of outraged Christian parents demanding that their children be kept ignorant of sexual knowledge.
The picture book I used to teach my son and daughter about sex, “Show Me!” is now considered by some to be child porn. The artful black and white pictures inspired many curious questions from my children, and I answered them all as truthfully as I knew how at the time.
I believe curiosity should be satisfied with truth, because that leads to knowledge and wisdom. Curiosity stifled leads to obsession and perversion, however you choose to define it. I define celibacy as perversion, perhaps the most dangerous kind.
I search in vain for a good ending to this story. I don’t think there will be one any time soon. As long as people in power in the government and the churches conspire to promote ignorance for our children, this land will continue to descend toward the perfect dystopia that is the dream of Fred Phelps, Pat Robertson and the Pope.
Don Rogers
!/20/2011
