The Life of an Abused Child [FICTION]

[JosephDaftPunk]

My first memory is of my father yelling, "Get out of my way you worthless piece of shit!" and backhanding me so hard I bounced off of the refrigerator door. I was three years old at the time. That's actually better than my second memory which is when my mother heard this and came running to deflect his attention away from me and ended up with a split lip and multiple bruises for her trouble. Unfortunately this was the first of many such events. The story of my early life is pretty depressing, but I hope you'll stick around for the happy ending. I can't tell you how glad I am that I did!

Dad had seduced Mom when she was barely fifteen and been pressured by his parents into marrying her when she got pregnant with me. He was twenty-four years old and there was a good chance he might have done time on a jail bait rap if he hadn't. Apparently it was OK to exploit a young girl in those days if you "made an honest woman of her." When her new husband turned out to be a mean drunk, Mom had few resources to get away. Her education had stopped her sophomore year in high school and her parents turned their backs on her because of her pregnancy. She was resigned to her fate until Dad started slapping me around. Then she vowed to do whatever it took to get us out.

Mom worked all day and secretly went to school at night to better herself. A nice old lady in our apartment building felt so sorry for us that she looked after me for free. Dad was too drunk to notice how much Mom was gone and too busy with all the young girls he was still chasing. By the time I was six she had earned a college degree and gotten a job in a town at the other end of our state. We left without a backward glance. We heard several years later that Dad had died in a drunken fall down a staircase. Neither of us wasted any tears over him.

In our new town Mom tried hard to make up to me for the past. Her job, when she first started, gave us a decent place to live and plenty of food on the table, but not a whole lot extra. One luxury she insisted on paying for, though, was music lessons for me. I fell in love with the first guitar I ever saw. She found me a wonderful teacher who could introduce me to the basics of several styles of music. Like any kid I saw myself playing rock and roll, but to my surprise I was drawn to classical guitar music. Miss Dobbs, my teacher, made sure I was well grounded in all sorts of styles, but she started teaching me the great classical pieces when I was still very young. Women are usually underrepresented in the pantheon of great guitar players, but Miss Dobbs was damn good, especially as a blues player. Right from the beginning music was the central joy of my life.

Mom was worried about me not having any male role models so she also enrolled me in several activities at the local community center which were led by male volunteers. One guy in particular, whom I'll call Mr. X because he doesn't deserve the dignity of a real name, taught judo and woodworking classes and made a point of being nice to me. From the start, when I was only eight years old, he singled me out from the other kids and invited me to do special things with him, like go out for ice cream after class. In this day and age most parents would be suspicious of his interest, but Mom had no inkling he was being anything but kind to a fatherless young boy. After all, he was a well thought of married man who claimed that he taught kids because he'd always wanted to be a father, but his wife couldn't get pregnant. In Mom's mind it was a perfect situation: a child needing fathering and a man anxious to give it.

Mr. X gained my confidence and then betrayed me in the worst possible way. Of course he told me it was all about love. I started to mature early and by the age of eleven I looked much older. I began lifting weights at the center and was developing a young man's body. Mr. X started to lose interest in me and I didn't know how to take it. I was totally confused by that time about what love and sex were all about. Being a smart kid, I started reading about it and came across the word "pedophile." Suddenly it became clear that Mr. X's interest had waned because I was no longer a child. What he did to me had nothing to do with love, but was about some twisted sexual appetite.