My blog friends Enrico and Josh recently posted about some inappropriate sexual advances they encountered in their youth. That inspired me to share my story. It is a little different. Things went a bit farther in my case, but not as far as they have to some poor children. Even so, if you are of a sensitive disposition you may have trouble reading this post.
I had only shared this story with one person. Now I share it with the all the world.
One day when I was in kindergarten, I had to use the bathroom. I asked the teacher for permission, and she told me I could go. The bathroom was down the hall. My teacher decided that another student should go with me. I suppose the thinking was that kids would be safer with a buddy system. It must have been early in the year because I could not recall having had to use the bathroom in class before. I didn’t like the idea of another person having to go with me. It seemed silly and even so long ago, I was of an independent nature.
I believe that the kid who accompanied me volunteered rather than being chosen. He was a black boy that I didn’t know very well. We walked down the hall to the bathroom near the gymnasium. As I entered the stall he followed me. I thought that was a little odd, but really, the whole idea of going to the bathroom in pairs was odd to me. I wasn’t particularly self conscious at the time. It might have felt more awkward to ask him to wait outside, so I just ignored him. I must have assumed that’s how things were done in kindergarten.
I dropped my pants and peed. Just as I finished I heard the boy standing behind me, a kindergartner just like me, say, “I am going to fuck your white ass.” I turned around and saw he had unzipped his fly and had his dick in hand. I am certain that I didn’t know what “fuck” or probably even “ass” meant at the time, but I remembered his words. Even if I didn’t know what his words meant, I knew that he intended to violate my private personal space in some ugly way.
I felt a surge of panic induced adrenaline. My fight/flight response kicked in and I did both. I quickly pulled my pants up, and pushed him back into the stall door. Then I dove under the door to escape. He grabbed my leg. I had to kick him off of me. He pulled off one of my shoes as I broke away. I ran back to my classroom like the wind. I flung the door open, visibly distressed and disheveled. I remember my teacher asking me, “Did he touch you?”
That is where all my memories of that incident end. I know that some people block out powerful emotional traumas. Here it seems that I vividly remember the trauma, but can’t recall the aftermath. Have I blocked it out? Was it so insignificant I just don’t remember? If something like this happened now, there would have been law enforcement involvement and probably at least some counseling. I don’t even know if that happened in my case. I don’t recall ever seeing my attacker again.
I never talked to my parents about what happened, that I can remember. The first and only person I told about my experience was my best friend, about 10 years ago. I had never suppressed my memory of the attack. I always knew what happened, but just filed it away in the back of my mind as something I chose not to talk about.
Certainly a traumatic experience of sexual violence can have a profound effect on a kindergartner. I think that was my first violent confrontation with a stranger. No child should be exposed to that kind of violence at such a young age. How can a little kid believe that the world can be a safe place once he is attacked? By a peer, who is supposed to be just as innocent as himself, no less? Perhaps that is a part of why I had so much fear and anxiety in my early youth.
I mentioned that the attacker was black. Up until a few years ago all of my significant experiences with black people were negative. One tried to rape me in kindergarten, one was a manipulative acquaintance of poor character, and one tried to mug me in high school. My parents were racist. They would routinely say disparaging things about black people. I knew these weren’t politically correct notions. I knew there were bad people of all races. However I never had black friends. I think on some internal level I had trouble trusting black people based on my own bad experiences.
I was a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant from an upper middle class town; it wasn’t until I was working on my coming out journey that I became more aware of what it was like to be a minority that is discriminated against. I became acquainted with some gay black people on that journey. They treated me well, and I felt a common connection with them. I have become a more open minded and accepting person, but I had to work at that.
I referred to the other boy as the attacker. But certainly he is also a victim. How does a kindergartner learn how to rape someone? How did he learn the words he used? What kind of hell did he endure before our meeting in that bathroom stall? Is he still alive? I am sure that initially my anger was directed at the boy who attacked me. As I got older, and realized that he was probably a victim of molestation himself, I could not be angry at him anymore. He was born innocent. It was the world that molded him into a kind of monster that lashed out at me. I can only hope that the person or people who molested him were brought to justice, and that he got the therapy needed to heal and have a more normal life.
Sadly, children, even very young children, are capable of all the evils of adults. In some sense they can be even more dangerous than adults in that they lack a mature emotional and cognitive understanding of the consequences of their actions. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Our world creates many of its own monsters. This is a community problem. I believe that we, as a community, can improve things. I will be exploring this in future posts.
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