I’m about to admit something that, honestly, is years too late in the admission. I’d like to attribute it to hubris or shame or something profoundly human. I really just forgot. It had been on my mind now and again but for a different reason completely, and even that reason faded. Huh, that’s too big of a build up.
Several years ago Sunny had a wild hair up her ass about being molested by her step brothers. That sounds cold, I just mean the timing was all Sunny drama, it was a wild hair twenty years too late and provoked by god knows what. So she wanted to confront her dad and step mother. Her and I drove up to White Salmon, her sister her husband drove down to white salmon and we had dinner and drinks in this horribly cliché bar restaurant with an elks head above the pool table called something like The ElksHead.
We met for strategy planning and a bit of liquid courage. Dad and step mom lived walking distance for the bar. Sunny sort of had this script in mind and did a kind of couch at half time of the big game down three points kind of pep talk of anger and confrontation. Then we went up to the house.
It did not go well, sunny overextended, sister backed up, her husband went mute and Dad was angry. Then the ball was passed to me. Everything went quiet. Ok, it was my dramatic pause. The rational thing would be to say “How the hell would I know? I wasn’t there and I didn’t know any of y’all until at least fifteen years later and I still haven’t met the pedophile.” I also could have gone into my training and the stats I knew by heart — the kid almost never lies and even if it were possible you have to ask the question, how do they have that kind of knowledge of those kind of acts; the exposure alone is criminal.
But I didn’t do any of that. It was obvious by the defensive and angry posturing of Dad, step mom and Sunny that something really bad was happening. In retrospect that family did and does do that all the fucking time. I guess what I mean is that the events likely occurred and no one felt right about it nor was anyone going to give an inch. So I did something, something I conceived during my dramatic pause. I made up a parable. Sort of. The events of my parable actually did almost happen and I had run through how I would have dealt with if they had.
I was sixteen with a new drivers license on a dark country road and this fucking dog run in front of car. I was doing seventy five, maybe eighty. I pumped the brakes, fish tailed, went into a spin. I missed the dog and nothing happened to the car. It had scared me enough to remember so many years later. The story I told, in much greater detail, was that I hit the dog, found the owner, a farm kid living in the nearest farm, explained what happened. They called the police, I repeated the story and went to trial where I repeated it once more. Throughout telling this part, I peppered my monologue with emotional language about how bad I felt that I had caused this dogs death and that the kid was broken up, like permanently altered by unbearable sorrow. I also mentioned how even before the warning from my attorney I knew not to admit any guilt or even remorse (something that innocent people, in a court of law, shouldn’t have). I said it was ruled an accident and I wanted to hug the kid and tell him how sorry I was his dog was gone, but I didn’t, I just left the court-room.
Seeing how everyone was looking at me like I was retarded I told the moral (honestly it was glaring and resented having to explain a perfectly well designed parable) — Even though I had no legal fault I felt guilty and ashamed that I was the cause of this kids grief and the death of a dog and that I regretted not being able to express that guilt. Um, I thought dad should have been upset that his daughter was so upset and not bickering about the events, which he categorically denied and I was in no position to refute as I didn’t witness. Still silence, so I said something like “If my daughter came to me that upset my only thought would be to comfort her not defend the perp.
Everyone acted like I was speaking in Latin, then, later, on the car ride home Sunny was just straight up pissed at me, said I made the dad feel foolish for speaking over his head and let her down for not defending her. She got even madder when I said “So, I’m in the wrong for not lying and for having more respect for dads intelligence than you?” The irony is that I did lie and am just now admitting it, though not to her.
There were lots of fights where I did nothing wrong, that was one where I did nothing wrong as far as she knew. The thing is if the step kids were there I could have exposed the truth with a few easy questions. I did that shit for a living. What I had never done for a living is lie about molestation. I honestly didn’t know what Sunny meant by my support was to make accusations — I don’t know.
Now I want to make excuses or Where Are They Now type endings for this. All I wanted this entry to do was admit to something I had forgotten about; both the step mother and father are now deceased.
EDIT
I know, often editing implies cleaning up word choice, poor structure, proof reading for missing — well, you get the point. I’ve obviously given up on that. Not only don’t I tie my hair back, I quit washing it or cutting it. Shut up it’s a metaphor, hmmm, maybe an analogy or simile, one of those things.
This edit is more of a Yikes! Or perhaps Zounds or Gazooks! The entry wasn’t supposed to sound quite so cold or flip. I forget sometimes that most people aren’t actually desensitized to molestation. I’m not either, I just don’t approach it like a detective, I mean I take it for granted that the crime occurred. I’m glad most people are only effected by one or two molestations in their lifetime, it should be shocking. I did not intend to make any sort of statement to the contrary.
I certainly didn’t mean to suggest my telling a tale out of school that missed the audience by a mile was more important. The majority of the six odd billion human beings on the planet have made it or are making it to adulthood without my help or interference. Even the ones I helped years ago I helped in a limited way and, at the time, given a choice, would have preferred I hadn’t.
What I’d like to add to the entry is not warmth, I don’t think that’s a good stance either. I don’t want to defend my stance on my metaphor either. I just want to say there is nothing I’ve ever been able to do to help an adult who was molested as a child. There are people with that skill, either learned or through some particular accident of empathy; I’m not one of them.
In my experience, which by the standard of six odd billion is limited, but compared to the other six odd billion is extensive, the kid is never making the shit up no matter how much you’re sure that your uncle, pastor, grandmother, spouse, whatever is an innocent moral and upright person and the kid is a dirty filthy liar. In general the more people who think the, let’s just say, pastor is a “good Guy” the fishier he is. Pedophiles go way out of their way to appear super normal. Truth is no is “normal” and so when I see someone who on the surface is very fucking normal I start wondering why.
Hmmm, off-track again. I think Sunny was molested by her step brothers when she was a kid. If the entry didn’t make that clear hopefully this unedited edit does. Despite any other ill will towards Sunny that I might bear, despite the numerous lies she has told me through our long association, I don’t believe that was one.
I was watching some TV show and a minor character who had accidentally run over and killed one of the leads was trying to explain how being acquitted by the court because it was an accident didn’t clear his conscience at all and being cut off by one of the other lead characters … I just realized the only time I could recall that notion being expressed was from me in the events of the above entry.
It’s possible that the concept is used often but is too subtle or that it gets edited out because the emotion is difficult to express. I mean over explaining sounds like trying too hard and under-explaining … I don’t know, in scripts people prefer innocent or guilty, not innocent of the crime but guilty in the heart.
Loading comments...