The Geek
The summer I turned fifteen I was a nanny for my Aunt Bev. She’d just had a baby, her second boy and she wanted my help. I cleaned the house, ironed, helped to fix meals, and other things as they came up. My favorite was driving her new car to run errands. I had my permit and it was a good time to practice before taking my driver’s license test. Two months later I took the test and passed which was the best thing that happened in that awful summer.
That was the summer the James Bond novels appeared. For me, it was a second indoctrination to pornography, the first was when I had a summer babysitting job for three little boys. As a teenager, I was naturally curious about sex, but reading those books gave me an unrealistic picture of sex and the exploits of a sexual man.
My cousin Josh showed me a picture hidden in his stepdad’s desk drawer. His stepdad was a pilot and the picture was of a topless woman leaning against his airplane, it was gross to look at.
In the eighth grade, a girl in my art class told dirty jokes, of course, the teacher didn’t hear. I repeated them to my cousin even though I didn’t really understand them. I didn’t know the trouble they’d cause. He assumed I was loose, I wasn’t I was a virgin.
He introduced me to a guy a few days later whom I named the Geek. He was staying at his psychiatrist's house, that’s how rich his family was. The Geek invited me to come to the house for dinner. I accepted. While we were eating the doctor asked what my Dad did for work. I said, “He works for the school district.” I omitted that it was as a janitor and he knew I was evading his question. I believe that was his way of putting me down, because I came from a humble home.
I’d absorbed my family’s value, that rich people are powerful. I knew the kid was rich but he was far worse, he was also devious, cunning, manipulative and entitled. He was bad news, really bad news.
On my birthday he invited me to go for dinner in Salem, twenty miles east of Sublimity. He came to pick me up in his green sports car, the rag top down, he was wearing a driver’s hat, scarf, and leather gloves. Typical rich kid attire, I wasn’t impressed.
When we got back from Salem he parked his car beside the Grange Hall, just up the road from my Aunt and Uncle’s house. We got out of the car and he was getting far too close but I didn’t know how to speak up or refuse his advances. It was dark and he raped me, body and soul. It's important to know recovery is possible and the damage did not last forever.
The next night he took me out, I didn’t know it was to go skinny dipping. I was naïve enough to think he wouldn’t force me to have sex with him again but I was very, very wrong. The pond was dark, the water murky. I was scared, no place to run, no way to get away. He raped me again; something in me died after those two awful nights.
The next day he came to the house and knocked on the door so I stepped out. What he said shocked me, he had bloodwork done to see if I’d given him an STD, and the result was he was clean. I was a virgin but I stood silent before my accuser.
Another time he took me to his church youth group swimming party, I was his trophy girl. I’m sure he bragged about his sexual exploits, he was a real jerk. Years later when my cousin Josh died, the hilltop cemetery was close to his stepdad and mom’s property. To get there, my husband Dave and I drove past the pond, to the gravesite, and looped back to the Grange Hall for a potluck. Those two places held very bad memories for me. Oddly enough, I was manic at that time and I failed to realize I was not at fault for the rapes but clearly, the Geek was.
Later in that awful summer after Barry had broken up with me, he sent me card after card. They weren’t flowery but brief and funny. He was wowing me back, hoping a re-connect could happen slowly.
When I got back home he drove up from Grants Pass to see me, we sat side by side on our living room couch. I sang, almost whispered, a song of lost love.
Last summer beneath the tree
My true love said he’d come back to me before the leaves
Of autumn touch the ground
Just one leaf that’s all there is now.
It took a while before I could start trusting him. But his gentleness won me over he convinced me that he cared and even loved me. But would it last?
Comments