GETTING AWAY SCOT-FREE - But Not From the Church
Continued from:
THOSE SUMMER NIGHTS - Sneaking Around with Badboys at Dusk
July 1986
13 years old
…terrified I’ll hear the too-familiar whirrrr of a pursuing bicycle looming behind me, I cut the shortest diagonal across the road. The crickets chirp. My hard breaths are louder. My tennis shoes pound out the steady, driving drum in time with my sledgehammer heart. The jank! of my keys hits every other note.
I don’t stop running until my feet fly over the outside steps of my house and slam onto the concrete patio. Flinging open the screen door, I try the handle—locked. My blessed key rams home, turns—click—and I’m inside. I slam the door. Another click and it’s locked again. My back falls against it. I let it hold me up as I pant and shudder. My legs are like rubber. My lungs are on fire.
I want to take a scouring shower, in particular my right hand and forearm. The feel of his biting vice-grip still burns into my wrist. And the constricting heat of his jeans, the wiriness of his pubic hair, the nauseating sponginess of his—
The house is dark and silent.
There’s a note on the table. My dad’s familiar blocky hand:
Went down to the Hill’s. Be back later. Will you please do the dishes? Thanks hon. Love, Dad & Mom
I huff in relief.
I'm going to get away with it!
All I have to do is whip off this jacket and my shoes, get those dishes done as fast as I can, zip into my room with a book, and they will never know the difference.
But before I can get the sink filled with water, Dad walks through the door.
I shrink down to the smallest speck that I can make myself. With a shaky breath, I chance a glance up at him. His eyes blaze with fury and he looks about three times his normal size. I try to grin. It is little more than a cringe.
I am sooooo dead.
As it turns out, I didn’t get away with jack squat.
When my parents had called the house looking for me and gotten no answer, my dad and his best friend, Gary Hillcrest, had gotten into Gary’s Bronco to search for me. They knew I’d gone out before they left. Ahem...on a "walk." Even though our town was not very big, they always made sure to check up on me.
I might not have liked that fact in the moment, but it didn’t take long for me to appreciate that, if I hadn’t gotten away from Trent myself, they would have eventually found me.
Instead, they found some strange “hoodlum from out of town” pedaling down the highway on his bike. Mr. Hillcrest knew everybody in our town, even the countryside. He was the football coach and our gym teacher, so this long-haired, biker-boot-wearing teenager stuck out like a sore thumb when they rolled up to question if he’d seen a missing daughter.
I hear Trent tried to take off on his bike at that point, and I really kind of enjoy envisioning the look of terror that must have crossed his face in the split second beforehand. I know what my ex-military father looks like when he’s on alert, scared something might happen to his baby girl, and pissed off. That Wrath of Thunder face was a thousand times more fearsome than any threat my bullies could have made against me, which is why I always preferred to take what they would dish out rather than face him after getting in trouble.
Gary Hillcrest wasn’t any more of a peach when he was on the rampage, and I may as well have been one of his daughters, just like his girls may as well have been my little sisters. I’d been babysitting them since I was eleven and our families did everything together in the summers, so when I went missing, I’m sure the burly, thunder-voiced Hillcrest probably put on his “you guys are mouthy slackers and there is no place for that around here—GIMME FIFTY” pants.
It’s my understanding that Trent possibly filled his.
I’m sure he’d been hoping, just like I was, to get away with everything scot-free. But right there in the glow of the Killer Bronco headlights on the asphalt of Hwy 23, he spilled half his beans, admitting that he had left me at the playground, “safe and sound.” They let him split, and I never heard of him again.
Punk.
Now don’t get me wrong. Do I feel badly for Trent’s sixteen-year-old blue balls and especially his confusion and feeling played? Of course. That had been the opposite of my intention when I spent all those hours on the phone with him and when I went to meet him.
But I had turned out to be the Princess of Accidental False Advertising. Even my age couldn’t provide an infallible “well, whadya expect from a girl that young” slap upside his head. I’m sure he had encountered plenty of thirteen-year-olds who would have been well equipped and thrilled to let him stand tall in his clompy boots, counting just how many licks she took to get to his warm, gooey center.
I could name several myself, and his hometown was much bigger.
How was he to know that when he had said his favorite flavor was also cherry, I thought he meant that literally.
Like…cherry.
Like…the fruit.
Yeahhhh… That’s how innocent I was.
And I wouldn’t have been caught dead admitting that. I tried my darnedest to fake worldliness and sensuality. I mean, come on! I had gotten the lead in almost every show I auditioned for, so apparently I was good at portraying people I was not, especially when I desperately thought I wanted to be those people.
Like sexy cheerleaders who dated badboys.
The trope was already old when I was young, and is still going strong to this day. You know: Sandra-Dee & Danny Zuko. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and…her vampires. Jessica Davis & Justin Foley.
Of course, there’s the dreamy-eyed fantasy of this pairing of opposites who make it work. Some don’t. For many…it’s complicated.
I reside in that some-to-many category.
That still gave Trent no right to coerce sexual contact I wasn’t ready for.
It especially gave him no right to force it on me.
Which brings me back to this being soooo dead thing. When my dad began the interrogation as I tried to finish the dishes, he called me a liar, because he and Gary had driven past the playground multiple times. I did not tell him why I didn’t notice the Bronco—because I was a little busy trying to extricate my arm and keys from the bottomless pit of the fucker’s too-tight pants. When I did own up to kissing him back there in the shadows where they couldn’t see us—that must have been why I was too distracted, yeah, that’s it!—Dad accused me of purposely ducking back there, hiding out.
Nope. Woulda loved to have had your big, booming, “What in the HELL is going on back there!” right then.
Okay, maybe not.
I still have mixed feelings about whether it would have been best in the long run if they'd caught us or I’d told my parents the truth about what had happened to me. On the one hand, I wouldn’t have had to harbor that festering wound alone for the fifteen years I carried it. And who knows if Trent did similar things or worse to other girls after me. Odds are it’s highly likely.
On the other hand, I’m sure my parents would have demanded that criminal charges be brought up and ohhhhhh what a nightmare that would have been. Guaranteed, I would have been dragged through the ringer and branded a harlot as well as a wolf-crier, back-peddler, take-back tease who’d deserved it. And with him moving out of state...
Would it have been worth it? Ehhhhh. That little girl in me still says no way. The MeToo-Championing Martial Artist in me says I should have. The fanged, feral Tigress agrees.
As it was, when it happened, it was staunch No Way Camp for me. (2) I was absolutely convinced that it was best my parents thought I had smooched a little and was a lying, sneaking troublemaker.
🔥😇🔥 That’s all. 🔥😇🔥
The next evening, Mom sat down with me on my bed, looking pale and grave. She talked to me about how I had to be careful of strange boys and being alone with them, because they could do “bad things” to me.
I didn’t tell her that it had already happened. It could have been much worse, but it had been bad enough. Instead, I sat there, staring at my blankets and wishing I could tell her, but I was afraid she would be even more mad at me. She had already grounded me for the rest of the summer and into the school year—two months in all.
She also made me go back to catechism classes, an odious duty from which I had begged excusal the year before. No longer. She was convinced that I needed some good, sound straightening out by “coming back to the church.”
Ironically, half of our time at those classes and events was spent ogling cute boys and getting phone numbers. Church did nothing to “straighten me out.” In fact, it only frustrated me and drove a greater wedge between my mother and me. That wedge would grow into a broad, five-year gulf after I moved away for college and became a Recovering Catholic. I was angry at her for punishing me with religion, and I resisted it tooth and nail.
I did eventually finish those sessions and was Confirmed. I wore a pretty dress and stood up in the front of the church, mouthing promises I had no intention of keeping.
Inside, I had a private conversation with God. “You know I don’t mean any of this, right? Sorry to have to lie. I have never needed some old man to speak for me when I need to talk to You, and I never will. I have no interest in ever having children—much less a whole brood I can’t stop from being conceived between my legs—and raising them all in this place, but You knew that. I have to lie like this because…well…I’d rather tell this lie than be excommunicated and ousted from my family for saying what I really think about all this. You understand, right? Even though I won’t be a ‘good Catholic girl’ the moment I’m out of my parents house. We're all good, right? Yeah. Cool. Thanks. Love ya!”
Of course, I never really had been a good Catholic girl after the age of about seven. With every year that passed, my disaffection and confusion with religion grew. Mom, on the other hand, saw church as an ever-growing devotion, a solution to life’s troubles.
I began to see it as one of the main problems in life that needed to be rectified. Church had never done anything for me spiritually. I had never experienced any sort of soulful revelations there. Rather, it always seemed like a place of strict rules where blank faces mumbled a series of words, where mechanical hands made a series of gestures that no one really talked about, and then—after the all-important chit-chat-networking session over coffee and bars (in Minnesota, bars are both taverns and sweet treats) —everyone scattered to go about their business until next week. There seemed to be no place for emotion and passion and curiosity.
Everything I stood for.
Then you had the hypocrites. Those people who spouted godliness on Sunday mornings and holidays, but beat their wives and kids or cheated on their husbands. Even the kids themselves bragged about getting drunk on the communal wine and having sex on the pews during Bible Camp. And don't get me started about the Catholic Church and sexual assault on children.
My adventures as Camp Rebel started young. “Why are we here?” I asked one morning. I was going into third grade.
The answer? A lofty, hand-wafting, “To glorify God.”
That didn’t make any sense to me. “But why do we need to glorify Him?” I asked. “Isn’t He glorious already?” The hemming and hawing explanations grew more and more frustrated, more and more absurd, and I finally burst out, “I don’t get it. Who are we glorifying God to? Does he have God-Friends up there, so that He needs to show us off, or what?”
Hooooo boy. That didn’t go over well, and that was the end of the philosophical questions from me. At least, until I was out on my own.
So at thirteen, I donned my Catholic good-girl mask, took my two months of grounding in silence, and pretended that no “bad things” had happened on that playground with Trent.
If I had confided in my parents--or anybody, perhaps my entire dating and marital experience would have turned out differently than it did. In which case, I would have, too.
As I write this at the edge of my ornate, comfy studio with the faerie lights glowing, about to put on the music, dance, and play with martial arts, I still wouldn’t go back and change anything if I could.
Unless it would have prevented him doing it to someone else.
CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE:
--COMING UP: One of the other longstanding funny-not-funny jokes of my family is the day that I "went to a funeral and came home with a date." Yeah. I know. My halo really is held up by the horns. But in order to understand what would drive me to commit such a faux pas, you have to understand two things about me. This is the first one:
--"SENSITIVITY" IS NOT A DIRTY WORD - Being a neurodivergent HSP in an Overstimulating World
--OR if you'd like to know more of my thoughts on religion, spirituality, compassion and the other Biggies of being a good person, I had a lot to say one night in 1997 in a Chicago Pub with four Catholics from Ireland.
--OR: I wrote more about my relationship with religion in my posts about VERONICA FRANCO and SALOME.
--THE NAVIGATION TABLE OF CONTENTS
**It should be noted that I have never known, much less been molested by anybody named Trent Nyquist, which makes this tale fiction.
Inspired by the incidents of my life that aren't.
STINKY-LINKY: Updated 2022
1) Sexual Assault & Harassment
—RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) - Including the National Sexual Assault Hotline 800-656-HOPE
--Thoughts from a guy who participated in "boys will be boys"--until he heard the MeToo experience from his female friends
— When Women Refuse - a collection of stories about violence inflicted upon women who refuse sexual advances. Even a mere scan is appalling.
—It’s no wonder men objectify us when our bodies are asking for it
—Schrodinger’s Rapist - why women assume the worst about that guy who's "just trying to be nice"
—Schrodinger’s Rapist - yes, we have to talk about this again
—Male sex entitlement is killing women
—Sexual Violence Myths & Misconceptions
--Violence against women: Where are the solutions?
--ALSO: Sexual violence committed upon males hits just as hard--and it's not only done by other males. They're just silenced and stigmatized, which heaps on more damage to male survivors, and it further perpetuates the cultural "boys will be boys" myth that “males are either sexually insatiable and aggressive or pussies; females are weak, pure damsels or conniving, manipulating whores.”
2) "Why Didn’t You Tell Someone?"
—Barriers to Reporting Sexual Assault for Women and Men
—5 Reasons why someone might not tell anyone
—Sexual Assault Reporting: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t
—False Reporting - it's actually pretty low
3) Boundaries, Instincts, Self-Defense
—Another one of the best books I’ve ever read - The Gift of Fear - Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence by Gavin DeBecker
—Why your boundaries are not welcome in an abusive relationship - the mindset that I was drowning in after escaping a violent and head-fucky relationship the year before I got engaged. And a few thoughts on how to rectify that.
—Setting healthy boundaries after an abusive relationship
—A full episode on Oprah with Gavin DeBecker
—Did you know your phone has a PANIC Emergency Button?
4) Neurodivergence, Trauma & Abuse
--Neurodivergence, Abuse & Adult Females
--Toxic/Abusive Relationships and Autism
--What Autistic Women Want You to Know - including why there is a greater risk for falling prey to abuses like sexual assault and date rape. (In the past few years, it’s also understood that this manifestation that differs from the stereotypical “Rainman” or “Sheldon” archetype is not merely limited to females.)
--Unsafe, Unheard, Misunderstood - A number of lesser known and lesser understood atypical types of trauma experienced by neurodivergent people. These constant stressors encourage masking, people pleasing, the dismissal of instincts and one’s own needs, and not standing or speaking up for one’s self.
--Fawning is not consent. It's a trauma response like Fight, Flight & Freeze.
5) #YouToo: A Few At-Risk Populations
—Rape Statistics by State 2021
—Rape Statistics by Country 2021 - and how difficult it is to get an accurate account. Anywhere. Because not everybody calls rape "rape". Remember once upon a time that wives were considered "unrapeable?" In a bunch of places, they still are, and even in spite of US laws it's still difficult to prove even here.
—Ooooh, and remember that time the United States conveniently labeled Black females "unrapeable" so they could do what they wanted to their slaves? That crap still trickles down into attitudes today:
—The legal system has failed Black girls, women, and non-binary survivors of violence.
—American Indian and Alaska Native women are still the highest at-risk group for violence and sexual trauma--96% from non-Native perpetrators because the indigenous Nations have been stripped of their authority to prosecute them.
—Another hidden atrocity: People with disabilities are more than seven times higher to experience sexual assault than people without.
—“NO” is a complete sentence. Full Stop.
—🖕Lawnmowers.🖕