Five: Can You Tell a Book by the Cover?

I'll continue to edit these segments until I get them "right," whatever that may be. I continue to be hesitant about my last posting because something feels off in the chronology. It probably doesn't really matter to an idle reader, but it feels so important to me. I know the passport photo was taken--and the travel document applied for--in Kingsport. I still remember going to the photographer near the bus station in downtown Kingsport. Mom had on her best brown wool dress and silk scarf. But I'm quite sure we moved to Bristol before departing for Belgium. I also know we never celebrated Christmas in that upstairs apartment. It may well be possible that what "feels" like a protracted period of time might well have been relatively brief. What is time--or space and scale, for that matter--to a child? I never realized how small the apartments were until I returned to the complex as a teenager taking a poll in advance of the first Earth Day.




The subject for today is appearances. Take a look at the man in the photo below. Yep! That's me playing out the persona of Money Tee Hole for a Residence Life version of Let's Make A Deal. I was quite conscious of making theatre my choice as an area of study. For a brief time in college I had a stutter, except when I was playing a role. I'm a good actor. Growing up the way I did I learned to be a performer. The "good little boy" should have been nominated for an Emmy.


I belong to a web-group for male survivors of abuse called Courageous Men. Recently, one of the members asked, "Why me?" I believe it is a question that occurs to anyone who has been abused and it is usually followed with "What did I do?" Jeez, how many times in my life have I asked that question. Is there something like a pheromone that I exude that identifies me as being vulnerable, an easy target, a willing partner in victimization? I'd love to hear a professional comment on this issue because it seems as though, once I was "opened" to abuse, other "bullies" (particularly of the male gender) recognized that I "could take it."



A produce market called "The Apple House" stood next door to my father's service station. The men who worked there were older than my father. One, I recall, was obese (not that the word was in my vocabulary at the time) and always wore bib overalls. Now, in the clouded banks of my memory, I don't recall if what I'm about to mention happened once, twice, or more often than that. I do know that almost any time I visited my father's Shell station, I 'd get a little money--probably never more than a quarter--and I could run over to the Apple House. It was the typical Southern fruit stand that had probably started out as a lean-to shed on the roadside and over time it grew as necessary. The "box" off an old refrigerator truck sans tires stood next to the building and had a crudely painted "Cold Watermelons" on its rusting sides. At the counter where the cash register stood, penny candies of endless variety were available: wax lips, wax soda bottles filled with sugary-sweet syrup, candy cigarettes (looked just like dad's Winstons), Mary Janes, licorice whips, Neccos (my favorite)--in other words, a child's vision of paradise. The men who ran the place knew my name--I think--but always announced when I came through the screen door, "Here comes little Charlie!" They'd smile and laugh and ask me, "What can we do for you today?" On some days, I'd spend all the change I had. On other days, I was given some treat for free, but only after one of the men said, "Hey, little Charlie, come with me. I've got something to show you." And they (one or the other) would take me either into the back storage room or to the watermelon cooler to show me what they had in mind. I can still feel the bib overalls guy standing behind me with both hands on my shoulders telling me to look at the pretty girl on the calendar. The store room was lit by a single clear light bulb that gave off a harsh, unpleasant light and I can smell--right now!--over-ripe fruit, particularly peaches. The man kept asking me what I thought of the girl's "titties" and then he'd laugh, squeeze my shoulders, and rub his crotch against my head. I don't know that it went any farther. The man smelled like the fruit and was always tugging his crotch when I was around. Again, "What did I do?" for him to think it was OKAY to do this with a child. Did all men do this with boys in the Fifties? I'm serious in asking. I mean, surely not, but how am I to know for certain? Doesn't every child assume what is happening to him must be happening to every other kid he knows? Then how did I sense it wasn't alright to talk about it if I wasn't told not to? Other boys and girls in the apartment complex certainly didn't say, "Guess what daddy did to me last night?" when we were on the playground. Other men would do things to me, as well...more of that later.

The incident in the service station men's room led, later in my life, to three behavioral "oddities" (neuroses?) that I began to articulate in therapy. The first of these I originally expressed through "toilet behavior": from age four until age ten, I refused--I couldn't bring
myself--to go into anyone else's bathroom to void bladder or bowels other than the one in my own home. I tried but I was scared to death that "something bad" would happen to me. I couldn't tell anyone at the time what that bad thing was because I had already dismissed it from my mind. I was in the Sixth Grade--captain of the Safety Patrol!--and one of the perks of the post was free admission to the Saturday afternoon movies at the Paramount. That's my first recollection of going into a public restroom in the basement of Woolworth's and reading the graffiti. I understood exactly what the message was talking about. I wouldn't be surprised that a ten year old today would understand the request, but I wonder how many boys in the mid-Sixties would know.

I developed a fascination for my father's boxer shorts. Do you believe a child four years of age can give expression to a fetish? The situation was this: I loved to ride my tricycle from our building to the playground. Life had changed for me in a big way. We played house in the sandbox and performed mock operations on the teeter-tooter. For some reason (today I believe I might have thought "I'll show them a real grown-up daddy!) I decided to go into my mom and dad's bedroom and open the underwear drawer in daddy's chest. There were his boxers, all neatly pressed (yes, my mother ironed underwear!) and stacked. There was a very special pair, pale yellow in color with a little piece of satin sewn inside the crotch (!?!) and I took them. I folded them and slipped them under my shirt so I could leave the apartment without mom knowing I had taken them. Then I peddled as fast as I could. Bobby, Gino, and Suzi were already at play. I pulled the boxers out from under my shirt and, while I was pulling them on over my jeans, I shouted, "I wanna be the patient." I turned my back on the kids and reached through the fly of the boxers to unzip the fly of my jeans. I pulled out my penis. Then I ran to the "operating table" and as I climbed on, the "doctor" and "nurse" asked me what was the matter. I said, "My peter needs an operation." I'd thought the kids would be as excited as I was wit the prospect of the game. I thought the doctor might do something to my penis as I had been forced to do with my father. I now see that I was "acting out" in a big way. My friends didn't understand. I don't recall if they laughed. Instead, I have the feeling that they all wanted to leave the playground quickly. Suddenly, they all had to go home leaving me alone to take off the boxers and go home...scared. What if they tell their folks and somebody tells my dad? I remember being so scared. I'd stolen something of value to my father. If I didn't put them back in exactly the way I had found them, he'd find out. I shook as I put them back. This "put things back the way you found them" would become a skill I would practice later. Why is this important to me now? I finally made the attachment between a memory I always had--this game--and the one I recovered--the sexual act in the bathroom. One of the things I saw clearly from my vantage point pressed against the urinal, through the gaping fly of my father's uniform pants right after I'd unzipped him, were his boxer shorts. They weren't jockeys like mine. It's really the last thing I see as little Gary while he presses my hand through his fly. Then I rise up out of my body. Then I watch but I have to close my eyes before long.

I said three neuroses but, having completed the passage above, I can't clearly recall what I'd originally meant to say. Again, for today, this is enough.