A kiss is still a kiss

For decades I have avoided reliving my first sexual experience, at the hands of someone we would now recognize as a pedophile, an elderly man who boarded his equally elderly horse on our small farm. But as I get older, instead of getting further away from these traumatic memories, I find myself bumping into them at inopportune moments. They have sometimes been triggered by innocent bystanders, like whomever I was dating, including the man who would later become my husband.

The first time, I am eleven or twelve years old and totally unprepared for when he grabs me by my shoulders, bends down to my level and shoves his tongue into my mouth, running it over my teeth, over the outside of my lips, and around my tongue, which is struggling uselessly to escape. I nearly gag from the slimy feeling and the stale scent of tobacco wafting from his breath and old-man clothing. He wears shiny rayon pants with stiff, greasy pleats and a threadbare, mouse-colored sweater with cigarette burn marks here and there, reeking of another era. I am disgusted by the act and by the odor that fills my nostrils. I understand that something is wrong here, but I am paralyzed, too shocked to protest. I’ve allowed myself to be trapped in a dusty corner of my favorite hangout, the old barn, whose loft was my childish playground only moments before. I had climbed down the ladder, not noticing him there, and by the time I stepped off the bottom rung and turned around, it was too late, and as they say, “you can’t unsee” a thing like that.

When he bends down to me, my eyes are even with his leather and silver bolo tie with two crossed horseshoes on it, framing a large, veiny turquoise. Those lines give the stone the appearance of being alive. The metal ends of the bolo are cold as they jangle against my neck just above where my t-shirt ends.

When he stops, I just back away, saying nothing (because what do you say when something like this happens?). As soon as he goes out the front barn door, I run to an empty stall where I spit and huck until my mouth is dry, trying to rid myself of his traces, but it seems that it is impossible to erase him completely. I vomit up what is left of the afternoon snack my mother offered me earlier – I remember it clearly even today – salty Ritz crackers with peanut butter and jelly, then cover my vomit with shavings.

With the exception of my sisters, who had similar run-ins with this man, I don’t tell anyone until I am a grown woman, a mother myself – and later I wonder exactly why it didn’t occur to me to tell. But even at that age, I knew what shame was, and it succeeded in stopping me. Guilt and self-loathing start early, at least for many girls of my generation.

He smiles paternally at me before it happens (and yes, it will happen again), as if he is doing me a kindness. His deeply lined face wears a hard tan and I have never seen him take off his dusty, grey Stetson hat, not even when he enters our house. After that first time, he tries to touch me whenever he manages to catch me off guard. I have bad dreams about wet mouths that wake me up, sweating inside the pink baby blanket I wrap tightly around me every night. My father asks me why I do this and I can’t explain. I am now permanently repulsed by saliva and mouth noises and will still do almost anything to avoid being kissed directly on the mouth, which is clearly problematic when in an intimate relationship.

Every Christmas, the man gives each of us kids a two-dollar bill, along with tiny blue bottles of “eau de toilette”, wishfully labeled “Midnight in Paris”. A creepy old man offering little girls sexualized beauty products. Our unsuspecting mother encourages us to kiss him on the cheek and say thank you. Once, when I am walking home from a friend’s house down the street, he pulls up in his car, offering me a lift. I at least have the good sense to decline this invitation, but I feel guilty. When I mention his offer to my mother, she says that of course I can accept a ride from him since we know him. She truly has no idea, and even then I can’t bring myself to tell, because somewhere deep down I know that it would make her feel bad. I am a child who can’t bear to end to their own mother’s naïveté and belief in the goodness of mankind.

As time goes on, I become more adept at avoiding him and even have the brilliant idea of keeping a friend around as a sort of protection, although this eventually backfires when he finally does the same thing to my friend, who never tells anyone either. I am still young enough to climb trees and like to swing on the rubber tire hanging from a big maple in the backyard. One day, in an attempt to escape before he can get his hands on me, I shinny up the rope above the swing and in doing so, make a startling discovery. Just before I reach the top, something happens between my scissoring legs. I have been squirming my way upward as fast as possible, in a panic to get out of his reach. An unfamiliar sensation begins, growing more intense by the moment. It feels as if something (but what?) is about to happen and I wonder anxiously if I am going to pee my pants. The feeling spreads through me as I reach the branch overhead, but I hang on tight because he is watching me from below. I don’t now what has just happened, or that this (pleasurable) feeling will now be forever associated with adrenalin-driven escape. It is also the beginning of my need to be in complete control of my body.

As I get older and smarter (and bigger), his advances became less frequent. One day, just like that, it is all over. He has decided to move his horse to another barn down the street, attaching himself to a neighbor family with younger children who haven’t yet learned to avoid him, and whose only parent – an exhausted mother holding down two jobs – isn’t around to offer protection (not that having a mother around has ever stopped him). He plays them like a savvy fisherman, granting horse-riding privileges that reel them to within his reach. I know about it, but never intervene, for which I later on feel further guilt. I am just so relieved to be out of danger myself, and I want desperately to forget about it all.

A few years go by, and I hear via the grapevine that he has died, which evokes a sharp mix of relief and guilt. But those first, tiny seeds of my lifelong anger have been sown and now they begin to germinate in earnest. I want to believe that people are good and mean no harm, but this person fooled all of us, including the grownups who are supposed to protect us, and put an abrupt end to my feckless innocence. His actions have given birth to a nagging, secret belief that I am not who you think I am – that deep down I am an undeserving person and that this may be made public at any moment, a perspective that defies all the logic I fruitlessly throw at it. It is because of him that I feel trapped when someone holds my hand too tight, or casually throws their leg over mine when we are lying side by side – and you don’t want to surprise me from behind. We know a lot more now about the ongoing effects of these experiences – PTSD, anxiety, depression, addiction. My symptoms are fairly subtle reminders compared to what lots of other victims suffer.

The only thing I don’t consciously block out from that early abuse is my surprising discovery on the way up the tire swing rope. Eventually, I graduate to other mechanisms for achieving that fleeting sensation, yet despite my distinctly non-religious upbringing, a lingering shame sticks permanently to this harmless pleasure, as well. I’m dismayed to discover that these threads of sex, love, guilt, submission, aggression, self-esteem and anger, seemingly as unbreakable as fishing line, are tightly woven into my soul. To forever be trying to convince myself that I must remember this – a kiss is still a kiss.