repost of what I originally put in the affected thread, Nov 14, 2006:
Brad, Vincent, Chuck, Glenn, Catia you are... I don't know what. While reading your posts I had to get out of my chair, fiddl with my email and finally say screw this BS, just tell them how you feel without using a dictionary.
Here you are, one after the other baring your souls--all of you-- speaking about things we are NOT supposed to speak about. We are supposed to whisper these things; we are supposed to bury these things as it appears to 'be the best way to handle it'. We are supposed to just get over it. We are supposed to get on with life.
' To bury it would be best for whom, exactly? People who won't hear the dirty little secret?'
I asked that question many years ago, directly to the face of a "friend" I'd decided to share a few things with. I was sick of his attitude towards anyone who seemed to have a problem of any sort and shared a few very specific details about being repeatedly raped right after my 12th birthday, how they had manipulated me into silence by promising the same for my kid brother; that nobody would believe me; how they would make sure my parents thought I'd done it willingly; that I was queer anyway so what's the problem: " If you weren't a homo nobody would have bothered you. You DO understand that don't you?"
It certainly would make someone like the jerk I told feel better! We are supposed to 'get over it' and 'tough it out' and 'live life'. He never managed to actually tell me how to DO that however...and didn't really want to. He just didn't want to deal with 'stuff like that.' Exit one unnecessary friend <g>.
When one of the guys who raped me told me/asked me that rhetorical question I denied it was true and just stared back, probably in that way boys have of just looking at you when you perpetrate an injustice which they can do nothing about.... But part of me figured it must be true or it would never have happened to me in the first place. I was one of the most clueless and sheltered urban kids around, from a very loving and protective family [ How ironic.]--no debate about that whatsoever, I didn't even realise women were built differently from me until I was almost 12. From that instant, with that ONE STATEMENT what was left of my personality fell apart. Children are more resiliant then people realise, they have enormous capacities for self preservation....but that one statement did me in. It tore away ME from myself. Out of everything which was done to me that was the worse, that one line which took away who I was and might have been.
Why? Because it made everything my own fault. From that moment on I was guilty of my own abuse. I deserved it. To compound it in my traumatised head, I'd ignored what I call my inner warning system when it could have been avoided--sensing extreme danger, I blew the feeling off because they seemed cool. The result was weeks of being bent over with freaks violating everything I was and had while I told absolutely no one and showed up when told to out of fea and manipulation so incredible I still want to vomit when I think about it. " What i did on my summer vacation."
One rhetorical question from a freak on a powertrip completely destroyed me. For years. It was the straw which broke my back, the ultimate rape. A rape of someone's future.
"Afterwards" I had hard thinking to do. I knew I wasn't queer even though inside I knew I had to be or none of those things would have happened to me. I knew I wasn't straight.The confusion was complete... the sex had sometimes felt good, so long as it wasn't anal. THAT I hated hated hated. I had hidden bloody underwear, washed it myself so my mother wouldn't know. Once I couldn't, so i used a shaving razor to cut inside my nose, and stanched the blood with my shorts. My appalled mother didn't have a clue that the blood wasn't all from my nose, which was fine with me, just what i intended [ years later, when she found everything out I thought she would have a nervous breakdown. I had written it down as it happened, and she found and read it]. But sexually i had enjoyed other things...sometimes: If it wasn't meant to be I wouldn't have liked it. In such ways do traumatised boys think.
I found myself looking at both sexes: she has great boobs, he has a nice butt, she has a face, he is tall & has cool hair... I don't know how I got through it. I wasn't the most popular kid around to begin with, but now there really WAS nobody to talk with. And if you were adult, male and NOT related to me I had no trust for you whatsoever. I was scared of all girls, simply knew that if they got close to me they would KNOW. I acted as if everything was OK, and turned into this passive aggressive little brat who never opened his mouth. When asked why, always the same answer: nothing to say, better to listen. Safer, too.
The confusion would have been there anyway, I understand i was just born bisexual.. Looking back at my boyhood I liked to play with good looking friends AND pretty girls. But the abuse changed the process radically...I was this strange unqueer bisexual 12 year old fantasizing about muscles & breasts who had acquired a penile vocabulary whores would have respected. And no innocence left whatsoever, I was 12 going on 20 with nastier secrets then the CIA.
On my 13th birthday i coldly sat down and decided that if what looked to be true was the real deal, it had to be compartmentalised. There was no way i could sleep with a boy if I slept with a girl. A few weeks later it hit me that if this was true, the reverse had to be just as true: if I had a boyfriend, no sleeping with girls. It was all academic because i didn't have either but it was something I never ever forgot even when I ended up finding the crutch of beer at 17.
Everything was warped. Everything. Attempts to talk about it with buds in HS had been a complete catastrophe, caused me years of misery. To gain--won't say regain-- a sense of who I was took years of time, thousands of hours of work and more self inflicted punishment in every area of my life then a war criminal should endure but the bottom line is that it ended up with me being what i like to think is a pretty nice person. I went through hell before it became OK, before i learned to love myself, but it happened.
It looks like it happened and is happening with all of you as well. I want to apologise for writing all of this when intending to say things to you who posted. But maybe I have, in a way. I'm one of you and love you. There are a lot of us out there, more guys then anybody would believe, and more women. Thank you all, thank you for your love, thank you for who you are, thank you for your guts.