My earliest memories are of my Father. I had some sort of rash, and needed A&D Ointment applied to it. I had been left in his care and he was changing me, and was to this point in the process. He began exploring my genitalia with his fingers. Of this moment I retain few memories: my Father towers over me, the smell of A&D, my helplessness, his excitement and smile—and PAIN. I wrestled for years with whether or not this could truly have been the beginning of my twenty-year journey through sexual abuse/abuse/rape and incest. Could a grown man really do something so hideous to a child less than a year old? (I say less than one year because my Mother swears she had me potty trained by one.)
And then something horrifying happened. My daughter got a diaper rash. After surviving horrors I could verify, and “escaping,” I found myself on the floor, with a tube of A &D in my hand, staring at the angry red ass end of my own daughter. I’d never changed any other child in my entire life; I’d been too afraid to. What if I had inherited the “sick” from him? I couldn’t risk hurting any other innocent child the way I had been. I wasn’t even going to have kids, but then I met this guy…and then there was sex … and ... well, you know. And this poor unfortunate mewling girl was born, and I was sworn now to protect her from everything with a dick. But first, her diaper rash! Bravely, I unscrewed the top, emptied some onto my fingers and … almost blacked out! The smell solidified that memory in my mind and brought everything into a crystalline focus. He had done that to a child, his baby, me.
And there are other memories, him laughing at jokes I couldn’t understand, usually on the Smothers Brothers, Sonny and Cher or Laugh In, or as it got later in the week, (or at night!) Love, American Style and Saturday night Live! Some times I loved sharing these grown-up times with him, all the “dirty” jokes, sometimes I felt so important, so grown up. Other times, all I felt were his hands all over me under my mother’s favorite afghan. Sitting there at six, seven on up I often wondered, why didn’t she ever see? Didn’t she ever wonder why I sat so close? I never wanted to; he made me. Later on, as I got older, she and my little brother would come to hate me, despise me for what they thought was me being spoiled. What they didn’t see was how everything was paid for in flesh. It was established early in my life and reinforced throughout: All women are whores; the only difference is the price.
My Father’s favorite joke to tell me: Man goes up to a woman he knows is saving herself for marriage and asks her, “Will you sleep with me for a million dollars?” “No” she says. “Two million?” he asks. “No.” she replies. “A wedding ring worth $15,000 and a marriage license? He queries, “But only for three years.” She thinks about it, and then answers him, “Yes.” “Ok, just the ring and the ceremony, no license.” He counters. She’s taken aback, but in the end, “Yes.” ”Only the diamond.” In shock, she nods yes. Finally he looks at her slyly and says “$100.” Enraged, she says in a low voice, “What do you take me for, a whore?” He chuckles and whispers, “We’ve already established what you are, and now we’re just negotiating a price.” And that was most of my childhood.
I remember the smell that used to emanate from his bathroom when he would rush there right after work to take a load off his mind. Sometimes he would use the McDonald’s Grimace tray before he went in; other times he’d use it on the throne and roll his own cocktails. His Generation despised their father’s dependence on booze to unwind, and none more than my Dad. After all, he’d grown up with an Alcoholic Father, and his mom used to drive him around the main drag in town, where all the local watering holes were, sending him into Bars before he was ten years old to pry his Pop out of some barfly’s boobies so she could bring him home. Where Grandpa could beat him for his sass, (coming in a bar like that!) beat her (having his boy embarrass him like that!) and then go talk to his oldest, his girl, about what kind of woman she ought not better ever grow up to be! (Talks my Father said he witnessed, and a conversation my own Uncle had with me on my eighteenth Birthday, when he went to a local Bar, scored some crystal meth and a whore, brought her back to my parents home, both high and drunk as hell, and proceed to tell me how she was a better woman than me).
