part 75

*****TRIGGER ALERT*****

I remember so much about the first time my dad pimped me out. Well, I remember so much about the first time I remember my dad pimping me out. I remember being in a canoe out on a pond with my dad and the man, them smoking a joint, me sitting between them wondering what the hell was going on.

It's been more than thirty years since then.

There were a lot of lily pads on the pond. I had never seen real lily pads before, and I was surprised to find that they looked just like cartoon lily pads.

I remember getting to the dock and almost falling into the water when I exited the canoe. My dad thought that look of fear on my face at the moment when I felt myself falling was hysterical. I felt like an idiot.

The man had on a baseball cap. He seemed really dirty to me. In my memories, his face is a shadow under that hat. He was skinny and he smelled bad, and when we got back to his cabin on the pond and my dad said to go with that man, every fiber of my being screamed, "no!" I guess my voice was not a part of the fibers of my being, because I only screamed in my head.

I did tell my dad that I wanted to stay with him. He was sitting on a couch or something, and he was still taller then me standing up right next to him. I leaned into his leg and tried to stick to him like glue.

But the man kept standing there outside the door of this room, and my dad gave me the look that meant he would have no qualms beating the shit out me if I didn't do what he said. So I did what he said.

The man ushered me into the room, closed the door, and then did things to me, and he posed me, and he took pictures, and he smoked cigarettes, and I don't remember him ever taking that ball cap off.

Just now I was thinking about how my dad used to scare me so badly when he wanted me to do something I didn't want to do. I felt like I had to do it, or get killed by my dad. I experienced that look so many times with him throughout the years, but at that time in that cabin it was unfamiliar to me and newly terrifying.

When I would get angry at my dad about things, he would either give me the death-look to shut me up, or he would make me feel sorry for him, and convince/remind me that the things he made me do were part of our greatness.

And he would remind me how lonely it was to have greatness, to feel separate from those around us who were just "normal," and at those moments I was feeling lonelier than anything in the world, and so how could I not agree with him?

He had a way of taking what was real and sliding it away from me and then twisting and turning it into the shape he wanted and then telling me that's how it was all along. It is a scary feeling to not know what is real and what is not real. Yeah, my brains and perceptions of reality got pretty scrambled in the days my dad ruled my world.

It is easy for me to remember vividly what it felt like to be under his power. I really am so glad he's dead now, because I was always afraid that if he came back into my life he would be able to convince me to go with him again. That's where the idea of killing him took shape - I didn't want revenge, I didn't want him to suffer, I didn't really want anything except for him to be dead.

It was much easier to focus on how I was going to kill him than to even consider the idea that he might come back here and take me away with him.

But now I remind myself that he IS dead, and feel grateful that I was not the thing that made his heart finally explode inside his body.

I feel much safer remembering that right now, because it has been really frightening to remember this shit and to type it out.

I also know the man who lived in that cabin is dead (I didn't kill him either). I don't know if I ever came across him as I got older - it seems like somehow I did, but that is pretty fuzzy.

I remember enough from the original incident to have pieced together who the man was, how he knew my dad, which pond that was, and where that cabin still sits today. Actually, I don't know if the cabin actually still sits there, or if there was something else built in its place. The only visual reference I have is via Google Earth, and that only gives me an aerial view.

But the docks are still there and the lily pads are still there, I can see that clearly with the images Google Earth has so considerately supplied me with.

I spent a lot of time and energy and life trying to figure out exactly who this guy was, and to gather the facts necessary to corroborate that this man did exist and did know my dad at this particular time, and that he did own a cabin on this pond at this particular time, and which particular cabin it was and who owns it now.

It is not very far from here. It's actually only a few miles. The land around the pond is guarded with gates and thick woods, and the public road to gain access to it has been officially cut off.

I could go to the edge of the neighborhood across the pond and try to see the cabin from there.

It has been so important to me to find out if all of these things were real, and to know where that man did those things to me, and if I would be able to go there or not.

I actually could most likely arrange with one of the owners of that land to meet me and allow me access to the pond. I actually could go to that neighborhood across from it, and instead of trying to see between the trees and vegetation while sitting in my car not even completely stopped on the street alongside it, and ask the people who live there if I could go in their back yard and look across the pond.

But now that I know that it is real, I somehow don't want to have anything at all to do with it. I don't want to look at it, I don't want to visit it, I don't want to learn anything else about this person. I guess I learned what I needed to know, and now I don't want to know any more.