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The Haunting Tale
25 October 2022 21:17A long long time ago, I met the first girl that I ever fell in love with, my Priceless Pearl, and she had an uncle who was a pretty horrible person.
I held space for her on the phone for many nights, as she processed the things he did to her and her cousin (his daughter) before they both "aged out" of his preferred demographic. Before my first kiss, I was taught, in pretty particular detail, exactly how a man can be horrible to a girl.....
Even to this day, it's hard for me to talk about this without getting lost in the things he did to her. The things he made her watch him do to his own daughter.
My entire sexual adolescence, I felt like I was banging against this wall made of time, wishing I could go back and stop him. And because she was so fucked up by him, because she had trusted me with these awful truths, we never dated. Oh, sure, there were moments of intimacy, of exploration, but I was never Hers. She was never Mine. But we were very good friends.
We were such good friends that both of our first spouses were intimidated by, and jealous of, our connection. When I told my ex-wife that I was done trying to save our relationship, the first thing she said to me was, "She's never going to date you." And when my best friend had the same marriage-ending fight, he said to Pearl, "Well, I guess now you can go date [amul] now, that's what you've always wanted, anyway."
-- This is kind of a tangent from what's on my mind, but at some point in high school, I went to one of my teachers to ask for advice, and he basically told me that there was nothing I could do, because I lived so far away, because it was all hearsay from her.
Two years ago, that man, the one I asked for advice from, that childhood mentor of mine, was accused by over 40 men of grooming and sexually assaulting them over the last 50 years.
I'm still processing that. --
But anyway, about a decade ago, her uncle died, and she called me to and asked me to hold space for her, as I had done long ago, so she could process her feelings about the death. I'd been there, after all. I wouldn't interrupt her with questions trying to follow the plot, the players, the tangled sordid mess of violence.
And as Pearl was talking, she..... She talked like an adult talks about the sexual gratification of others. What he was doing, not just what she remembered feeling. In even more specific detail. Shit that haunts her even to this day.
Shit that, perhaps predictably, formed a lot of the basis of my kinks. So much of my sexuality has been about proving that I'm not him.
And then she told me that he had not stopped, as she had previously maintained, when she turned 12. That he'd been doing it until she moved out.
That he'd been raping her all throughout high school.
I've spent a lot of the last decade kind of scrawling notes in the margins of my autobiography. Those last minute cancellations. Those phone calls when she was "inexplicably" recalling traumas from her grade school years.
And it was hard, because she lied to me, and it was hard because I had spent so much of that time wishing I could stop him and I could have stopped him but I didn't know.
She didn't tell me.
We stopped talking for a while after that. Pretty much most of the last decade. But then another one of the monsters from her childhood died last year, and she called, and I held space for her. I opened the book inside my mind that I had shut away, and once again I remembered names and habits and terrors that I had let myself forget.
Pearl spent so much of that call trying to apologize for putting that burden on me, and I kept telling her that she wasn't the one who put that burden on me.
But here's the thing. The thing I realized that night. The perspective shift she blessed me with.
See, I called her all the time, back in high school. Pretty much every night, right after dinner. 8pm.
And when I was on the phone with her, she wasn't alone.
She wasn't anywhere that she could be trapped.
All this time, all the decades that I've spent wishing I could go back in time and stop him, wishing I had known it was still going on so I could stop it. That entire time.
I was protecting her, after all.
-----
My last romantic partner, when we broke up, described my interest in power exchange and consent, in dd/lg stuff, she called all of that "disgusting patriarchal bullshit," and that my desire to save the women I sleeping with was "toxically masculine."
I can't get a handle on that bit, because I do have this deep unfilled hunger to feel like I'm protecting the people I love. I just don't think it's "toxically male," because it's a trauma response, not some certainty of innate superiority. Because there WAS someone who needed saving, and I loved her.
Don't get me wrong, my savior complex was out of control in my 20s, but I feel like I've got it under control now, and I have fashioned that pain into opportunities for vulnerability.
I think we're all formed by our traumas, and what should matter is how effectively we turn those traumas into tools.
But during the conversation that led to me end that relationship, she told me that she'd always seen this part of me, always found it disgusting, and the reason she'd kept things casual between us, it wasn't the politics like I had thought, it was because she didn't want to show me any part of herself that I might want to save.
That this is why, when she found herself dating an abuser, she didn't tell me until after the relationship was "over." Why, when she invited her "ex" to move in with her, and that turned out to be exactly as disastrous as I worried, she never reached out to me for any kind of support.
It isn't that there's some little kid inside me whose upset that he couldn't relive that haunting tale, it's that Iwas AM a man who has studied and fought against sexual and domestic violence for thirty years, and this woman whom I cared about ignored avoided my experience and academic knowledge, because I lived through trauma.
I lived through trauma.
When he did those things to those girls, he traumatized me too.
That's a hard thing to acknowledge, because I never met him. Because they "really" happened to her. Because I'm a boy.
I held space for her on the phone for many nights, as she processed the things he did to her and her cousin (his daughter) before they both "aged out" of his preferred demographic. Before my first kiss, I was taught, in pretty particular detail, exactly how a man can be horrible to a girl.....
Even to this day, it's hard for me to talk about this without getting lost in the things he did to her. The things he made her watch him do to his own daughter.
My entire sexual adolescence, I felt like I was banging against this wall made of time, wishing I could go back and stop him. And because she was so fucked up by him, because she had trusted me with these awful truths, we never dated. Oh, sure, there were moments of intimacy, of exploration, but I was never Hers. She was never Mine. But we were very good friends.
We were such good friends that both of our first spouses were intimidated by, and jealous of, our connection. When I told my ex-wife that I was done trying to save our relationship, the first thing she said to me was, "She's never going to date you." And when my best friend had the same marriage-ending fight, he said to Pearl, "Well, I guess now you can go date [amul] now, that's what you've always wanted, anyway."
-- This is kind of a tangent from what's on my mind, but at some point in high school, I went to one of my teachers to ask for advice, and he basically told me that there was nothing I could do, because I lived so far away, because it was all hearsay from her.
Two years ago, that man, the one I asked for advice from, that childhood mentor of mine, was accused by over 40 men of grooming and sexually assaulting them over the last 50 years.
I'm still processing that. --
But anyway, about a decade ago, her uncle died, and she called me to and asked me to hold space for her, as I had done long ago, so she could process her feelings about the death. I'd been there, after all. I wouldn't interrupt her with questions trying to follow the plot, the players, the tangled sordid mess of violence.
And as Pearl was talking, she..... She talked like an adult talks about the sexual gratification of others. What he was doing, not just what she remembered feeling. In even more specific detail. Shit that haunts her even to this day.
Shit that, perhaps predictably, formed a lot of the basis of my kinks. So much of my sexuality has been about proving that I'm not him.
And then she told me that he had not stopped, as she had previously maintained, when she turned 12. That he'd been doing it until she moved out.
That he'd been raping her all throughout high school.
I've spent a lot of the last decade kind of scrawling notes in the margins of my autobiography. Those last minute cancellations. Those phone calls when she was "inexplicably" recalling traumas from her grade school years.
And it was hard, because she lied to me, and it was hard because I had spent so much of that time wishing I could stop him and I could have stopped him but I didn't know.
She didn't tell me.
We stopped talking for a while after that. Pretty much most of the last decade. But then another one of the monsters from her childhood died last year, and she called, and I held space for her. I opened the book inside my mind that I had shut away, and once again I remembered names and habits and terrors that I had let myself forget.
Pearl spent so much of that call trying to apologize for putting that burden on me, and I kept telling her that she wasn't the one who put that burden on me.
But here's the thing. The thing I realized that night. The perspective shift she blessed me with.
See, I called her all the time, back in high school. Pretty much every night, right after dinner. 8pm.
And when I was on the phone with her, she wasn't alone.
She wasn't anywhere that she could be trapped.
All this time, all the decades that I've spent wishing I could go back in time and stop him, wishing I had known it was still going on so I could stop it. That entire time.
I was protecting her, after all.
-----
My last romantic partner, when we broke up, described my interest in power exchange and consent, in dd/lg stuff, she called all of that "disgusting patriarchal bullshit," and that my desire to save the women I sleeping with was "toxically masculine."
I can't get a handle on that bit, because I do have this deep unfilled hunger to feel like I'm protecting the people I love. I just don't think it's "toxically male," because it's a trauma response, not some certainty of innate superiority. Because there WAS someone who needed saving, and I loved her.
Don't get me wrong, my savior complex was out of control in my 20s, but I feel like I've got it under control now, and I have fashioned that pain into opportunities for vulnerability.
I think we're all formed by our traumas, and what should matter is how effectively we turn those traumas into tools.
But during the conversation that led to me end that relationship, she told me that she'd always seen this part of me, always found it disgusting, and the reason she'd kept things casual between us, it wasn't the politics like I had thought, it was because she didn't want to show me any part of herself that I might want to save.
That this is why, when she found herself dating an abuser, she didn't tell me until after the relationship was "over." Why, when she invited her "ex" to move in with her, and that turned out to be exactly as disastrous as I worried, she never reached out to me for any kind of support.
It isn't that there's some little kid inside me whose upset that he couldn't relive that haunting tale, it's that I
I lived through trauma.
When he did those things to those girls, he traumatized me too.
That's a hard thing to acknowledge, because I never met him. Because they "really" happened to her. Because I'm a boy.
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