Settling the Past

The Jakarta Post   |  Tue, 03/11/2008 10:16 AM  |  Said & Done

Much of my life – my behavior, decisions and fears – has been influenced by what happened to me many years ago when I was only six. For if the child makes the man, so does the abuser.

I usually am able to put together an article in a couple of hours. I have my formula down pat, and once the first few sentences are in place, it writes itself.

But it has not been true about facing up to an incident that happened almost 35 years ago. I have stared in vain at the computer, searching for words to describe the feelings that I stubbornly refused to release for years and years. Until now.

I was sexually abused when I was a young boy. I do not know the exact dates when it happened, but I know it was when I was about six years old. And while I have forgotten other aspects of my childhood over time, I still remember the very fine details of my abuse: what was done to me, my sister’s small front bedroom where it happened and the name of my abuser.

I was a very effeminate boy from as far back as I can remember. I played with my three sisters’ dolls, pottered around the house in my mother’s high heels and adamantly refused to sleep anywhere but my parents’ bed until the age of seven.

My seeming gender confusion was a source of curious amusement to visitors to the house. My father had been in the navy and when his friends came round they would laugh and joke with this strange little boy who acted so much like a girl.

My mother decided it might do some good to have another male influence in my life. Her best friend had a teenage son, “FF”. He became my babysitter when my mother went out with my sisters and did not want to leave me alone with the servants.

And so it started. FF would take me into my second sister’s room and the “games” would begin. He would make it role play, the doctor-and-patient game, and I, knowing no better, went along with his commands.  It didn’t hurt; in fact, in what has been a source of shame and confusion to me for many years, I “enjoyed” the sessions.   

How long did it go on for? I don’t know for sure, but it happened at a time when my parents were distracted by the grave illness of one of my sisters.  When my sister eventually died, my mother could no longer bear to live in the same city and we moved away.

I never saw FF again but I have always remembered his face -- we had similar features and could have been taken for brothers. While it may be hard to believe, his name remained in my memory all through the years long after other names and incidents were forgotten.

His influence remained. I became closed, introverted, very shy and scared but also very sexually aware, because he sexualized me before my time. At 11, I hit puberty, one of only a couple of boys in my grade dealing with the nuisances of pubic hair and zits. I was even more confused about myself than ever – I knew I was gay but was deathly afraid that others would find out about me, especially my parents. I developed anorexia nervosa, an unusual disorder for a boy, but perhaps my way to try to control at least something in my otherwise disordered life.  

In my teenage years, I became a diligent overachiever, which masked my deep feelings of insecurity and fears of being “found out”. I sometimes would think about my childhood experience but I didn't want to acknowledge it was abuse.

For one, I felt that I had “enjoyed” it; it was just kids being kids, right. I also believed that I had been born gay, so what he did was of no importance to my sexual orientation.

Perhaps most importantly, I had read that people who are sexually abused as children become abusers. However, I knew I had no sexual feelings toward children.  

In fact, my early sexual initiation became a regular source of amusement when I came out in university and new partners asked about my “first time”. “Six years old? You really started early!”  Everybody laughed.

It is only within the last year that I finally faced up to the fact that what he did was wrong. I was watching a TV program about a little girl from Russia who was adopted by an American pedophile and raped every day. I started crying. Because I knew that man should not have done that to the little girl, and FF should not have done that to me.

I also know now that it’s not true that all abused boys become abusers; in fact the percentage is very small. It didn't make me gay, but abusers pick "soft targets" -- the good, quiet boys and girls who won't tell their parents, who will be scared of getting into trouble. For if I really thought it was OK, why did I know that it was something that I should keep to myself and never tell anybody.

I wanted to find him, to know what he is doing today, where he is and what his life is like. The last I heard, about 20 years ago, he was working in the hotel business, and had moved to the U.S. I googled with the information that I had.

On a job-networking website, I found him: the same name, the same place of birth, the same line of work. It had his most recent work address, so I jotted down the number and called. But I called at mid-afternoon here, knowing that I would get an answering machine in the early morning at his office. My voice was strangled from nerves. I felt like the shy little boy again.

He called me back, returning the call of someone he had not seen for 34 years; that is the enduring, unrelenting connection of the abuser and the abused. Again, his words were measured, unemotional, very much in the way of somebody who works in the service industry. I'll send you an e-mail, he said.

He didn't send the e-mail the next day, or the next, but I didn't care. I felt a great relief in my life, like a burden had been lifted. Despite my people-pleasing ways, I have been very angry. But suddenly I did not struggle with the the compulsive need to either starve or gorge myself that has affected me for 30 years. There was nothing to fear from him.

It also allowed me to connect the dots of different things that happened to me in my childhood – what he did to me, my eating disorders, the constant desire for approval – and realize how they were interlinked.

Two weeks later he sent the e-mail. It was long, and every word seemed to have been chosen with utmost care. It was good to hear from you, he said, recounting various experiences from our childhood that I had no recollection of. Remember when we were young and HAD NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT WE DID.  Interesting choice of words.

I haven't written back. It was enough to reconnect briefly and on my own terms with my abuser. Sure, he was only 14 but that is no excuse. He shouldn't have done what he did -- it was wrong. Now, hopefully, I can move on.

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