by N. K. Smith
Maybe it was because it was dark that night and she couldn’t see my scars. Maybe because I knew Megan was meaningless to me, just as I was meaningless to her. Maybe because I knew Sophie was so important and I didn’t want to mess this up.
It was hard to fight the panic when she felt my body for the first time. Her eyes opened near the end and I knew she saw. I knew that I didn’t look like all the other guys she’d been with. I had worried about what would happen when she finally saw the scars and what had been taken from me.
She acted as though it wasn’t a big deal.
Finally, I was able to let her bring me to climax. It was enjoyable, but I was constantly fighting my urge to panic. After it happened, I realized that it had gotten on her. I should have thought of that beforehand and prepared for it.
It bothered me that it was on her. I wanted her to take a shower, but thought it would be weird to ask her. Would a normal person do that?
And if she did, everyone in the house would know what we’d been up to.
It was all worrisome.
Without saying a word, I escaped to the bathroom where I stared at the spot on the mirror where she’d written her message.
Sophie loved me.
That thought brought back all the reasons I was going through this. I wanted to show her that I loved her, too.
While I’d been making a lot of progress on that front, I set a goal to actually have sex with her soon. I knew “soon” was relative, but it was better than giving myself an actual deadline. I figured it would happen before school let out.
It was all mental at this point. I knew I could do it. Not only would she let me, but I felt physically and emotionally ready.
There was nothing wrong or evil about connecting that way with someone you loved and it would help cement that I wasn’t a failure and doomed to be what I’d always been told I was.
During our last session, Dr. Emmanuel basically equated the things my father did to how political regimes go about brainwashing people. So if that was true, the things he taught me about my wickedness were wrong.
It made sense, because Sophie wouldn’t love me if I was wicked. Chris Anderson was wicked. Her mother and her mother’s boyfriend were wicked. My father was wicked.
Not me.
I had just gotten finished telling Sophie a joke about why the fiddle was different from the violin because she’d mistaken one for the other, when she moved over to me and sat down on my lap. We were on her rocking chair. The wood creaked as her body twisted so her mouth could connect with mine. One of her hands was in her lap while the other curled around my neck.
She shifted and pressed against me. The sensation took me off guard, so I stiffened for a moment. It really wasn’t an issue, but she stopped and moved to the bed again.
I hated the empty feeling.
“Sophie?”
“Sorry, I never know...”
As her voice trailed off, I realized that she thought I had just experienced a panicked reaction like I had in the past.
I hated that I was giving her a complex about all of this.
“N-no, I’m o-okay.” I gave her a small smile, but she only returned it for a second. “C-come b-back to me.”
“Why don’t you ever tell me about what he did to you?”
Sophie didn’t move as my mind struggled to figure out what it was the she was asking, but then it dawned on me. She was asking about Joseph.
I hated thinking about it. I hated that she wanted to know. I was thankful that she still wanted me, but I didn’t want to share details about it. I didn’t want to think about the details, but she deserved an answer. “B-b-because it’s n-nothing I www-wwwant you to know ab-bout.”
Her voice was quiet, making her sound like a small, mousy girl when she was nothing like that. “But I told you about...”
My body tensed at just the thought of someone hurting her the way that man had, the way Anderson had. I hated that we’d had the same experience, but it made me a little angry that she was using it as a way to get me to talk about something I obviously didn’t want to talk about.
“It’s n-n-not ‘y-you sssshow me yours, I sssshow you m-mine.’ It’s...”
“I know it’s embarrassing. It’s not something you want to broadcast. I know it’s--”
“Sssshameful,” I finished for her.
“It’s not your fault he did that to you. Not that I know what he even did, but...”
“Y-y-y-y-you w-w-w-want d-d-d-d-det-details? I-i-it’s b-b-b-b-bad en-nough you know ssssssomething lllliiiike that hhhhhhappened to m-m-m-me at all.”
“Why? You know about what happened to me.”
It was difficult to look at her. “I-i-i-it’s d-d-d-different.”
“How?”
I didn’t want to go into all of this. It wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. I wasn’t prepared for it, but I could tell this was something she would push. “That mmmmm-mmmmman fffffforced y-you. M-m-m-m-my b-b-b-b-br...” I stopped and felt the need to gasp for air. I couldn’t continue. I couldn’t say the word “brother” and I doubted I’d be able to say his name either.
She sighed deeply, her face turned away from me. Her arms were cradling her belly which made her breasts stand out and I couldn’t help but focus on them.
Her father wouldn’t be home until tomorrow morning. She would start dinner in an hour.
I didn’t want to talk about her past or mine. I didn’t want to think about all of the horrible things that were stacked so high around us that we could barely peer over the top.
I wanted to feel her body close to mine. I wanted her heat to saturate me. I wanted her hands in my hair and her lips placing light kisses across my jaw. I wanted to feel her soft touch on the cave-troll skin of my back. I wanted to feel her breath against my cheek and hear her little lusty sounds in my ear.
I wanted her pressed against me. I wanted to rub my scar-hardened body against her softness. I wanted to touch her in her soft, warm places. I wanted her fingers to curl and dig into my flesh because of how I made her feel.
My body was tight and ready for the contact, I got up and practically crawled onto the bed and on top of her. I drove her to move back, until I was lying on her, my hips nestled between her legs. Her thighs gripped me and pulled me tighter.
Her arms wrapped around my neck and shoulders and I buried my face in her soft hair. I found the spot on her neck and ran my tongue over the four raised marks. I hated the scar, but I loved the spot.
I loved that she let me touch her. I still couldn’t believe that she did. It seemed surreal that she would want someone like me, but no matter how anxious I was, no matter how dysfunctional I’d shown myself to be, she still allowed me inside her tall, well-guarded walls.
She was moving her hips in a tight little circle. It drove most of my thoughts away.
A sound floated from somewhere deep in her throat. It was a moan, a groan, a sigh, a sob of something hopeful.
I pulled away just slightly, only enough to move a hand to her breast. She arched up into my touch.
Sophie excited me.
I wanted her hands on me. I wanted them somewhere other than my back. I wanted them in places that ached for attention.
As if she’d read my thoughts, her hand snaked between our bodies. I was still pressed against her, but she somehow managed to get her hand down there and unzip my jeans. Then her hand was touching my flesh.
My hand abandoned her breast. I had to use it to brace myself as her fingers curled and held me tightly. My instincts told me to thrust my hips, and so I did.
“Wait,” she whispered.
My hips stopped.
My mind quickly went full speed as it tried to figure out what I could have possibly done wrong.
She pulled her hand away
and I watched in equal parts fascination and disgust as she licked her hand.
I hoped it wasn’t dirty.
She moved it back between our bodies and my hips raised to make it easier. Despite some disgust about her wet hand, I found myself perfectly willing to accept it on that particular part of my body. My body began to move again.
It was satisfying.
My face was turned away from hers. I thought about looking into her eyes, but the prospect scared me. I felt like the connection might be a little too much considering what I was doing to her hand.
I could feel it happening, in my mind and in my body. Unlike when I spoke, the two worked in unison now, my body sending rapid signals to my brain. It heightened and interpreted those signals as pleasure, thus bringing my body closer to the physical release and my mind closer to the spiritual, intellectual, and mental release of orgasm.
The sensation was intense and I soon found myself grunting softly.
My body felt tired and sedated. I let my head sag, my forehead resting against her shoulder. Her hand ran gently through my hair as I panted against her.
When my brain began to function again, I started thinking about what just happened. My hips moved back and I sat back on my heels.
It was all over her hand. It was on her pants. I looked at myself. It was on me.
I shut my eyes tight.
It was okay. I was okay. This was the way it was supposed to be. This was normal.
My jaw tightened.
This was what happened when there was an orgasm. Sophie didn’t mind.
My eyes opened and I found her watching me.
She might not have minded, but I did.
I moved off the bed, adjusting everything and leaving the room quickly to find the comfort of the bathroom. I started feeling better when the warmth of the wet washcloth gently raked my skin.
I scrubbed it all off.
I also made sure to get it off of my pants.
I took her a clean washcloth, but found that she had already changed. I was thankful for that. There was nothing on her hand, but I wiped it just the same.
She was silent and let me do it. I wiped from her wrist to her fingertips. I cleaned between her fingers and even under her nails as much as I could without hurting her.
She pulled her hand back and moved away from me.
I wanted her to come back.
“Did I do something wrong?”
Her question took me off guard and I stumbled and fumbled to answer her. “W-w-w-w-what?”
She would only steal small glances at me. “When we do that, am I... do I do something you don’t like or...?”
Oh God, how she made me ache.
“N-n-nnno.” I put the washcloth in her hamper and moved to her quickly, pulling her to me.
I pushed her back into the wall and pressed against her with the entire length of my body. Her hands fisted in my shirt. She rose up on her toes and kissed my neck.
I bent down and pressed my lips to hers.
Suddenly I was holding her against the wall and her legs were wrapped around my waist. Again, my instincts told me to thrust, but after a few motions, my body froze. I couldn’t.
There was no explanation; I just couldn’t make my body move that way.
I backed away, easing her back down gently.
God, I wanted her right now, and I wanted her to know that I did, but my mouth wouldn’t cooperate. So she stood there looking rejected, hurt and confused, and I was powerless to do anything about it because my body was as frozen as my words, and I hated that I couldn’t just give her what she obviously wanted.
But my mind was frantically running, voices from the past speaking their thoughts, words of Scripture clogging it up. All the while, that small part of myself that was nothing more than a seventeen-year-old boy who was with an extremely beautiful girl ready to do anything was screaming at me to make it happen.
I was having trouble sorting it all out in my head. There were too many thoughts going in a million different directions.
I wished I was normal for her, but my body and mind worked in unison to let me know that I couldn’t do what she wanted me to. There was no way to tell her that it had nothing to do with her. It was all inside my head, keeping me from being what she wanted, what she expected.
“You’ve said before that sex outside of marriage is a sin, and yet you seem fairly fixated on engaging in it with your girlfriend. I have to wonder why you have that as a goal if it’s so clearly uncomfortable for you.”
Speaking was uncomfortable, but it was still a goal of mine to be less hindered by my impediment. I looked at Dr. Emmanuel, and the way he was looking at me, but not really looking at me. I wished he and the others around me, like Sophie and Stephen, would just understand that I knew my thoughts were contradictory. I just couldn’t do anything about it.
“Mmmmmy d-d, fffffather taught me that.”
He tapped his pen against the yellow legal pad resting in his lap. “Yet you had sex when you were fourteen.”
“I d-don’t always b-believe wwwhat mmmmmy d-d, ffffather taught me.” Besides, I was told a long time ago that no matter what I did, God didn’t love me anyway.
“Every time we speak you try to say the word ‘dad,’ but always replace it with ‘father’ when you’re unable. Why do you keep trying?”
Joseph called him Dad and it was habit for me to try. I shrugged.
“So when do you choose to believe him? When do you choose not to?”
It was hard to think for myself when my mind was murky and muddled with my father’s teachings
When I didn’t answer, he switched the topic, his tone shifting as well. “I’d like to talk about Joseph.”
My breathing caught and he held out the pad of paper and pen that had been resting on the table next to him. I took it slowly.
“What you aren’t comfortable saying, you can write.” He paused for a moment, giving me time to feel comfortable. “Did Joseph take your punishments often?”
I nodded. “I w-w-wwas in t-t-t-t-trouble a-a-a-a-a lot.”
“Why?”
“Hhhhhe ssssaid it w-was b-b-because I asked ssssstupid qu-questions.”
“You looked up to him?”
He asked that before, so I didn’t respond.
“When your mother died...”
Before the question was out, my fingers tightened on the chair and the room shrunk down around me.
“Remember, Elliott, you control your reactions, not the other way around.”
That was easy for him to say. He didn’t have panic-inducing chemicals flooding his brain right now; but I tried to control them. I focused on breathing slowly. I willed my hands to relax.
“Good. When your mother died, that began the shift of his expectations from you?”
That was an interesting way of putting it.
“What were Joseph’s other reactions to her death?”
I tried very hard to monitor my breathing. Heavy in, slow out. Deeply in, measured out. “Hhhhhe hhhhelped mmme clean up.”
“Clean up?”
I stared at my left hand. It twitched and for a second I could have sworn that I brought it to my mouth, but it remained on the arm of the chair. “She d-did it in my r-r-r-room.”
Although I wasn’t looking directly at him, I could see from the corner of my eye when the realization hit. “Oh.”
Oh.
It must be a completely different experience to hear it from someone’s mouth rather than just reading it in a file.
“You and your brother had to clean up after it happened?”
“I-I-I-I did. J-J-J-JJJJ...he d-decided to hhhelp me.”
“He helped you a lot?”
I nodded.
“So you trusted Joseph?”
I wished Dr. Emmanuel wouldn’t call him by his name so much. He could have said “him” and “he”. I would’ve known who he meant.
I nodded slowly.
“So that night after cleaning up, I presume, you went to his room because you felt it was safe?”
My mind slowed down until it felt as if it was trudging through mud. “There wwwwere nnnno d-d-demons in his room. O-o-only angels.”
“What happened that night in his room?”
Again, my breath caught. I’d already told him vaguely about what happened. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
I shook my head.
“Remember, you may write it down.”
I shook my head again.
“Did he use your trust in him against you?”
My toes curled in my shoes and I crossed my legs at the ankles.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
I glanced up at him. He was regarding me cautiously.
“Does it help to know that he was a child as well, and probably had very little idea of what he was asking of you?”
My breathing was heavy now. My eyelids, too. I wanted to sleep.
“He was twelve when your mother died.”
Technically he was still eleven for a few hours after she died, but I didn’t think that mattered to Dr. Emmanuel.
“That is right about the age when most boys become curious about their bodies, and you were both experiencing a great deal of emotional trauma.”
My hands were fists now and my arms jerked, pushing the pad of paper to the floor. I looked at it at my feet.
“Many times perpetrators of sexual abuse are victims themselves. Do you think Joseph suffered something similar to what he did to you?”
There was pain in my hand and blood in my mouth.
I was really very tired.
After long, painful minutes, I managed to pull my hand from my mouth. I would need to clean it. I didn’t want to get an infection.
“I hhhhhhave t-t-t-to ggggo t-t-to mmmmy r-r-room nnnow.”
“Elliott,” he said as I moved to stand, “your brother helped you with your stuttering. He tried to lessen the impact of your father’s treatment of you. He took some of your punishments, but then he betrayed your trust. It’s okay to feel confused. It’s perfectly rational to have very complex emotions about what happened.”
