Don't Touch

I Promise Not to Tell
by Brenda M Weber

(Page 2 of 5)

I didn't feel the cold barrel of the gun when it was placed to my head, but suddenly from out of nowhere, freak paranoia crept into my existence. I couldn't fend off the overwhelming urge to bolt from the car. My breathing began to respond to the claustrophobic veil that was being drawn across my face in a feathery motion. As I started gasping for air, my heart was ferociously trying to pound its way out of my chest. My skin was crawling with tainted obscenities.

This was the first date with Luke. We were sitting in his car in front of my house. I had been infatuated with Luke from the first time I saw him, and was ecstatic when he asked me out. When Luke leaned over to kiss me, I thought my heart would melt. When things began to heat up, I knew I had to resist letting his caresses persuade me into doing something I didn't want to do. I was not a virgin, but I did not want Luke to know, I wanted him to like me for myself, and not because he might be able to have sex with me. I felt special with Luke, and my need to feel loved might be the only reason why I might give in to his desirable kisses.

Luke was several years older than me, and at sixteen, I was not one of the popular girls in school. What made others popular were the cliques they bonded with, and some were party sluts or jock jumpers. I was not pretty, just plain. My brown hair hung fine and stringy past my shoulders, my crooked smile hid my less than perfect teeth. I was thin, but my breasts were tantalizing and noticeable. My deep brown eyes were hidden behind glasses, bedroom eyes I had been told more than once. Enjoying the passionate kiss, Luke caught me off guard when he impulsively grabbed my hand, drawing it with a spontaneous jerk, placing it on the front of his jeans where his hardness was evident. His penis was as hard as the barrel of the gun, and the cold feeling of terror momentarily dazed me. I had never touched a man's penis before, what was he doing? The words were screaming inside my head, bouncing off the interior of the car, "Don't make me do this, please don't make me do this!"

In reality - there was no gun - but at that moment, a trigger went off in my head, playing a game of Russian roulette that sent a whirl of pictures flashing before me. A repressed memory bolted into my head with the deafening roar of a crashing wave that was intent on drowning me under its immense power.

I felt weak and under total control of Luke, whom I thought was a gentleman, until now. I struggled to get away from his icy grip and wipe the violated feeling from the palm of my hand. I didn't know if the screams burning my throat were actually escaping into the darkness, or if they were trapped within the closet of my memory. As I groped around in a state of frenzy for a door handle that didn't seem to be a part of the door, I realized my screams were an audible part of the fear that held me like a corpse. I could hear Luke pleading, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, what the hell is wrong with you!?" A black fog was beginning to close in on me as the door handle finally gave in to my desperate clawing. The door flew open and the cold night air hit my nostrils, giving me life again. I was free. Run.

As I scrambled from the car, I felt like everything was going in slow motion. I was running through a pressure chamber that was deformed by searing tears streaming down my face. I felt curdles of vomit at the back of my throat being forced up by screams hidden away from my childhood. What the hell was going on?

As I struggled to answer my own question, pictures continued flashing before me in color bursts. I could see the layout of a house I had been in as a little girl. I could never remember what the inside of the house looked like, until now. I felt like I was there again, and trapped inside the house that had burned down many years before.

By the time I reached my front door, the full recollection of being molested in that house all came back to me, all because of Luke trying to force me to touch him in a place that threatened me. The aggressive way he had gripped my hand and guided it to his penis in one quick movement, was enough to stimulate the trigger of my memory.

I began to understand the snag in the thread that had run prevalent throughout my adolescence. Years filled with incest, lesbianism, dirty games with boys, and a persistent man's pursuit in trying to initiate me sexually by popping my cherry. A thread that would continue on throughout my adult relationships, and eventually become the tangled mess that is me, and now I am driven to unravel it.

The clarity of my memory is as if I were actually floating above the scene and being a silent witness to it, instead of the victim, the victim of a very cruel plot to invade my innocence at the age of four.

On one of my weekend visits to my aunt and uncles, I was lured into a bedroom by my sister and a girl cousin. Another cousin, Kevin, was waiting in a closet. Pillows and blankets had been arranged on the closet floor, and Kevin was lying there waiting for the girls to bring me to him. They wanted me to get in the closet and lay beside Kevin. They said they would not let me out of the bedroom until I did. I was afraid of the older boy, but I did as I was told. I was terrified when they closed the door and I was in the dark. I started to cry, but Kevin kept telling me I couldn't go until I pulled down my panties. I did.

Kevin pulled down his pants and wanted me to touch him. I didn't want to do it. I was crying, and wanted out of the closet. The darkness was smothering the very breath out of me. I didn't want to touch Kevin. He finally grabbed my tiny hand and made me touch his penis. I closed my eyes and hoped someone would come and rescue me. I could hear the two girls giggling on the other side of the door. I didn't like the feeling of Kevin's thing in my hand. It was hard, and he was moving my hand with his, rubbing and stroking himself. Kevin was touching my private parts, his fingers moving over the soft folds of skin where no one should be touching, while I was holding his penis, crying, and stifling screams for help.

The closet door finally opened, and they let me get out and pull up my panties. Before they let me out of the bedroom, they made me promise not to tell. I had promised, and because of whatever mechanism in my brain that shut it out, I had no memory of it until Luke came close to duplicating the episode. I don't remember ever telling anyone, and although I must have been, I can't remember ever being in that house either before, or after that one time. By asking questions, I learned that it was not long after that the house burned to the ground, and the memory of what happened lay amidst the black timbers and waterlogged ashes, as well as buried deep in the recesses of my mind.

As the scene was played out in my mind like a giant screen television with instant replay, I felt sick with the thought of people I should have been able to trust as a child, having played such a part in the betrayal of my trust as an adult. Was it just kid's play? Why was this done to me? Who started this mess? I couldn't understand how it was possible not to know until so much later in my life. I did begin to understand the animosity I had always felt toward my sister. We were never close throughout my adolescent and teen years, and only became close in the most recent adult years.

What I remembered was just the beginning of a warped silhouette of me. I had unlocked the lid to Pandora's Box, and out of it came the bits and pieces of a tattered life, floating up in a mildewy mist. Over several years, more and more of my memory returned, usually triggered by a conversation with a sibling, or sometimes a dream, peculiar things I had done that started to make other things make sense. I may never be able to complete the jigsaw puzzle for the lack of one elusive piece. It was the beginning to the understanding of the reasons why that one event had led to the bizarre behavior that followed, and continued throughout my early life. Behavior that would only be viewed as strange to people who have a genuine knowledge of what normal is, because normal to me was a symmetrical perversion of innocence.

About the Author

Brenda has been writing since the age of fifteen. She has compiled several booklets of poetry and written many short stories. This is her first book, a dream come true. She has written a fictional account of a lumberjack in Michigan which will soon be released. Brenda is working on a sequel to her autobiography as well as another work of fiction. She plans to write a series of children's books too. With four adult sons and a daughter, her children are her life.