I was introduced to sex at the young age of 3 years old, by my grandfather.  I had repressed most of this memory only to be rushed back to me the first time my boyfriend asked me to give him oral sex.  I was 19 years old, yes I know, I was a late bloomer on the whole oral sex thing. When most girls were giving blow jobs in high school to avoid the actual penis and vagina contact to say they were still virgins and not dirty sluts, I was like, I'm not sticking that thing in my mouth, no way dude, that is disgusting. To me I don't care where you are putting it, if a girl is putting it somewhere in her body, it's sex.

My first blow job expeience was with my boyfriend who was 5 yrs older than me; we'll call him Trusty Rusty, a real oxymoron that would eventually cheat on me and beat me senseless until my face was unrecognizable. Trusty was a waiter and drunk most of the time.  A 19 year old girl looks at this much differently than say a 35 year old woman.  The 19 year old thinks, he's just a fun guy and he will always be willing to buy me booze. A 35 year old woman looks at it this way; he is just a drunk loser who will beat my kids and pee on the floor, which he did pee on the floor, a lot.

So this guy was to be my first BJ, Go Down South, Give Head, Chrome His Dome, Get My Knees Dirty, Hummer, Lewinsky, Play the Skin Flute......... He tells me what to do, and of course he has been drinking. He is also a smoker.  I get to his underwear, pull them down and put my face near his, you know, thing.  I smell the smoke and alcohol that reeks from his pores, mixed with the slight smell of urine.  It is like I am immediately slapped in the face with of 2 x 4 of memories!  It is dark, I'm very small.  I smell the alcohol, smoke, urine and I'm under something. I can't breathe very well, it is so hot. I'm under a blanket. I can feel skin and something weird like Brillo on my face and something hard with a clammy soft coating on it next to my cheek. I don't know what it is. I hear snoring; I can tell it is my grandmother. I'm in a bed, lost in the covers. I climb up the body that I am on top of; it's my grandfather, coincidentally named Dick. He was pretending to sleep. 

My parents used to leave me at Dick and Bell's, my grandparent's house in Virginia, when they went to University of Carolina football games and on vacations. Dick and Bell had a king size bed, well really just two twin beds that were pushed together with a king size sheet thrown over it.  I used to sleep in the crack between the two beds, well not really sleep with my grandmother snoring so loudly and most of the time my grandfather snoring right along.  I hated their house, I hated being left there. They were weird. They also had their 20 something year old son living with them, who had a huge collection of bongs in his orange room. He eventually went to prison for abusing drugs in the military. My father told me he had been in control of "pushing the button" for the nuclear bombs so it was a serious offense. I pictured him in a room with a big red button that said BOMB RELEASE, snorting coke and saying I'm gonna push it, I'm gonna do it!  Very scary for a kid, thinking these were the people in charge.

Now things made sense finally!  Now I knew why I didn't like being left alone with Dick all those years, Strange how the mind works. I guess to my 3 year old mind that couldn't identify molestation, I still knew it wasn't right, felt sick, like car sick is the best way to explain it.  I also remember at that age being taken to a hospital by parents, a strange place in the middle of the night.  I don't recall feeling sick or injured. All my clothes removed and it was cold and dank, almost secretive.  I remember an elevator in the room where I was being examined.  The doors opened and 2 black girls, teenagers laughed. I felt like they were laughing at me because I was embarrassed to be naked and having someone look at my private parts and take my temperature, the bad way.  I remember it feeling rushed and no one talking to me, then I remember going out to the car in the dark, sitting in front of a 3 story hospital with big windows and a circular drive, it reminded me of a church.  I'm not sure if I was being examined for what my grandfather did to me, but it was odd and I have asked parents about it and they claim to have no knowledge about the event.  Well, it was the 70's, people didn't report sexual abuse, just let the kid deal with it, however that happened.  Why wreck the life of a an (eye roll) upstanding citizen when I'm sure the kid will just forget about it. Let's pretend it didn't happen Okay? Okay! Oh it happened again, oops sorry.

Throughout my childhood I would stay far away from Dick. I didn't really know why at the time, but I didn't want to be near him. My mother would get mad when I would run away and hide in the woods when I knew they were coming for a visit.  She would make me sit in his lap.  I have a photo of my 5th birthday that he took.  It was posed.  He gave me a bowl of cake and ice cream, a large spoon and sat me at the bar we had in the kitchen. He got out his camera and told me to fill up the spoon with ice cream and pretend I was going to eat it. Open wider, no wider, WIDER, he said. I opened so wide I felt that my mouth was going to rip.  The look in my eyes is not fun and joyous, but please takes the photo and go away.  

I protected my brother and sister from him, by keeping them near my grandmother who wasn't the warmest person, but at least he didn't try anything while she was awake. One Christmas the kids, my younger brother and sister and my two younger cousins were sent to bed while the adults stayed up. Dick stumbled into the bedroom drunk and walked into the attached bathroom. I turned on the light as I heard him flush the toilet.  He came out with a large pee stain on his plaid slacks from his crotch to his white patent leather shoes with the big gold buckle.  He put his arms out for my bother and not knowing any better because he was only 4 years old, walked over to him. I yelled to my brother to come get on the bed with me and my sister, and then yelled for my grandmother to come into the bedroom.  That made Dick leave, I guess even in his drunken state, he didn't want to deal with Bell.  He went and passed out in his pee pants on the living room couch.

Dick died of an aneurism when I was 25 years old. I had only seen him a couple of times as an adult, never mentioning what we both knew had happened. I sat through his funeral, quietly listening to the preacher talk about how Dick had been a deacon of his church and a good Christian man.  I watched my mother and her brothers cry over their father, but I didn't. I sat dry eyed and wondered if he was sitting in heaven because if he was there, I was a shoo-in.