No, no, no, no…. I don’t want this. I want to leave. I want to leave.
“Enjoy it, baby. Just enjoy it.” She leaves little kisses all over my mouth and face as she strokes. “You’re a strong man and strong men get as many women as they want to make them feel good.”
I don’t want…. I don’t want…
I squeeze my eyes shut and let out a groan. No, no, no…
I grabbed the soap from the dish and lathered it up, washing my chest and stomach again before soaping up my cock and getting it clean. Cleaner.
That was the first fucking time my mother ever touched me like that. The first episode of what turned into years of her on me.
My throat swelled with the vomit rising, and my shoulders slumped as I tried to turn inward, making myself as small as possible. It was an old feeling, but one I knew well. It made me hide in the fountain. In the maze. In showers and in closets, because if no one saw me, they wouldn’t see the shame.
She’s gone, I told myself. She’ll never take from me again. No one does.
But looking back over the years, I realized now it started long before that night. She took me into the shower with her long after I was able to take them on my own. She washed me and dried me and stayed in the room when I dressed and undressed.
And after months of doing everything she could with her hands and mouth, she finally came to my room one night and…
I used to brag I had my first woman at twelve, reveling in how other guys either thought I was lying or I was so lucky, because of all the whores my father kept around the house. But I always told the truth.
My father had to know what was going on. In his head, though, it made me a man.
And it wasn’t like he was against raping children, either. Considering how young my mother had been when they met.
I rinsed and shut off the water, grabbing a towel and drying off. I wrapped it around my waist and stepped out of the shower, walking to the mirror and wiping the condensation off.
I stared at my dark eyes, a little darker than hers, and the same black hair. A shadow lay on my jaw, and I picked up my straight razor, running it under the faucet to make sure it was clean.
What did Winter feel when she thought about me? Was the anger so thick that was all there was?
He asked her to dance for him.
He asked her to dance like I’d asked Winter to dance for me.
He watched my mother as I watched Winter.
Was that it then? Did I do to Winter in high school what my father did to my mother? Did I groom her?
I looked up, meeting my own black eyes in the mirror.
The secret of life that everyone knew and everyone forgot was that we weren’t alone. We thought we were unique. We thought we were the first.
No one has been through what I’ve been through.
No one else is feeling this.
No one knows what it’s like to be me.
This is the first time anyone has endured what I’ve endured, right?
They’re lies we tell ourselves, because we think we’re special. Because it would lessen the entitlement to suffer to know what we’re going through is not uncommon. It was a secret I never forgot and was able to use to keep things in perspective, so I could get through the shit in my head, but now...
Now I wished I could forget it. I wanted to be alone.
I didn’t want to know that I was like him or he was like me or that life followed patterns and history repeated itself. I wasn’t him, and Winter wasn’t my mother, and no one has been where we were.
This is special.