By Saviabella

I was spending some time with a friend of mine the other day and the topic turned to a good friend of hers. His name sounded familiar, some details sounded familiar, and then, the realization of who she was talking about hit me with such force, I felt as though I were struggling through a foggy haze. Nausea, dizziness, fear, anxiety. This couldn’t be happening. This is not possible. How can this be for real?

He has a last name. He has a neighborhood. He has a wife, who also has a name. He has children. He has friends who think he is a really great guy and feel sorry for him because he took it so hard when his mother died.

None of these people know that he molested a four-year-old girl 27 years ago.

I hadn’t heard that name for 15 years. I kept my tone as even as possible and forced my face into a mask of neutrality. There were a million questions I wanted to ask, but I only asked one, to make sure it really was him she was talking about. It was.

Part of me had always wondered what happened to him. If he was still in the city. If he had children. If it was only a one-time thing or if he had done it again and again and again. If he ever thought about what he had done and regretted it. If he ever looked at his own children and realized how horrible it would be if anyone did to them what he had done to me. Or even if they were his latest victims.

I’m not really sure how I made it through the rest of the morning or lunch, but I managed, and then got the chance to go to my room and be alone for awhile. But I really didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts, because they were coming at me so fast that I couldn’t make much sense of them. I didn’t know what to think or what to feel. I tried to call Schmutzie, but she wasn’t there. Then, I tried Superstar, who must have been on his phone, because the voice mail picked up right away. As soon as I put down the receiver, I got several sharp pains in my stomach and felt my insides curl up into a ball. I ran for the bathroom and was violently ill.

There was something about emptying my digestive system of its contents that made me feel a bit better. I think I finally understand why so many people who were sexually abused have eating disorders. I understood the binging and overeating aspects of it before – that made sense to me because food fills a physical and emotional void and adding layers of fat to your body can feel very comforting and safe. But I never got the purging thing until now. It feels like you’re expelling this poison from your body, like a purification, like it’s taking the anxiety with it, even for a moment.

Still dizzy and shaking, I lay down on the bed. So many thoughts, so many questions. Do I say something to my friend about it? Would she even believe me? Is it even worth it to dig up this skeleton from his past? Maybe he was just a really screwed-up 16-year-old who made a stupid mistake and then went on to become a decent person? But then again, what kind of person is he if he ever made that kind of “mistake” (I mean, I certainly would never have done that)? Did the fact that he was almost caught mean he never did it again or did the fact that he actually got away with it mean he knew he could do it again? When he told everyone I was lying about it, did he convince himself of it, too, burying it in the recesses of his unconscious mind? Why does he get to have a normal life while I’ve had to struggle with the aftermath of his actions for the past 27 years, having it affect all aspects of my life, my view of myself, my relationships with men, my self-esteem, my body image, my health, my nightmares, my burden, my secret? And the guilt and disgust that I feel every time I think about the possibility that he may have done it to someone else because maybe I should have tried harder to get people to believe me, even though I only was four years old.

And, now, 27 years later, it comes down to the same thing: my word against his. No proof, no evidence. Just everyone wanting to believe that he could never do such a thing, that it was just too horrific and absurd. That the child must be making it up. Because toddlers have such intimate and detailed knowledge about penises and what you do with them, don’t you know?

I had a quick talk with Marlena, a friend who probably knows me better than anyone else, and a long conversation with Superstar that made me feel a bit better. (Verbal purging is definitely higher on my list than physical purging, thank god.)

“Do you want to know the answers to all those questions?” Superstar asked.

(long pause)

“…yes, I do. I do want to know. But I’ll never know the answers, because even if I go and confront him, which I could do, what are the odds that he’d tell me the truth about his life or even admit to me or himself what he did? I want to believe this was a one-time thing. I want to believe he was just a horny 16-year-old who didn’t really understand what he was doing. I want to believe that me telling put enough of a scare into him that he didn’t even think of doing it again. I have to believe that, because every time I think about the other option…” The wave of nausea began to rise again.

“…it’s hard to say. He was young. Maybe he was just curious, as sick and fucked up as that sounds…”

“I had to live next door to him for years after that. He was our paper boy. I remember walking by him on the street when I was seven, looking him straight in the eye, smiling, and saying , ‘Hi, ____.’ He never said ‘hi’ back. He only glared at me. Glared at me with such hatred that I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. Because it was my fault he had almost gotten caught, because I didn’t keep our little secret.”

“Sounds like you scared the hell out of him.”
“I guess I was pretty fearless, even back then.”

Originally published at Savabella on April 25, 2007.