A Kiss, and Kauai

My story about my first kiss was written for a college writing course in 2008, and published in The Los Angeles Review the following spring.  Since the publication of this story, and my subsequent "A Thousand Words," I have been approached by others, in real life and online, who said I must've been lying about my childhood abuse, because I wrote that my first kiss didn't happen until I was eleven.  I guess this is a good thing, to have this be an assumption some people make, because it means they aren't aware of what activities tend to occur in the kind of child porn my stepmother was involved in creating.   While there may be some specific subgroups in pedophilia who insanely think they feel some sort of sick definition of "love" for age specific children, which may include kissing of mouths, I never once experienced any kind of mouth-to mouth type kissing during any of the abuse I went thru as a child.  This meant my experience, during that summer of '77, was the only "first" in my whole childhood where I was involved in choosing to participate.  That moment is probably the closest I ever came to experiencing feelings that should be a part of every child's development, my one and only "first time" that did not involve adult exploitation of my child body. 

I have had people say I should try to find Curtis, now, and see what might come from that.  Please dear lord, do not let such a thing ever happen.  At 11, I was still somehow capable of trusting someone else.  Thanks to the sda principal,  and every other "helping" person who has re-exploited me since, not to mention all of the cheating spouses I have witnessed or been involved with, I am not capable of feeling any trust at all.  None.  Me saying this is not some challenge-type statement meant to draw in somebody to try and prove me wrong.  If, by some fucking miracle, a truly trustworthy human drifted into my life, my inability to trust would destroy such a person. Do not feel any kind of pity or sadness for me.  It's perfectly okay.  I have no desire to ever want the kind of relationship that requires such trust.  I am quite content with one-time hookups.  "Hit it and quit it" is my personal motto, and please, for the love of god, do not imagine me saying that as some sort of "cry for help."  I am quite serious.  I am 57, and I finally keep myself as safe as I can be, without practicing celibacy.  This decision, to live my life this way, is the only time since my birth, where I am in control of my decisions regarding sex.  I am finally making informed choices.  I guess this is what the beginning of me developing self-agency looks like.

So, my first kiss was where I usually landed, when anyone asked me if I had ever experienced real romantic "love" (whatever the fuck that means).  Of course, there is nothing about 11 yr-old children kissing that comes close to whatever it is two committed adults in a decent relationship are feeling.  But I do think Curtis and I shared some of the infinitesimal seeds of the kinds of stuff that must later be happening for real love to begin to exist.  We worked well together to figure out problem solving.  We weren't mean to each other.  We didn't argue or yell at each other.  The only time I ever heard Curtis raise his voice at all was when he defended me by telling a kid to shut up as we tried to save those puppies in my story.  The brief time we shared together was good.  Our first kiss was mutual, and awkward, and sweet.  And absolutely non-predatory.  Yeah, some decent seeds were there, that summer.  

In early 1985, I, my boyfriend, and a friend of his set out for Hawaii.  To live.  We were all nineteen.  I was escaping my father and my church.  My boyfriend, Stan, was escaping his own family dysfunction and pain.  Brett, who was Stan's best friend and became a good friend of mine, as well, was trying to create a future for himself, as he was the only member of our trio with any forward thinking abilities at that age.  We ended up settling on the North Shore of Kauai, and there, each of us experienced some amazing and adventurous moments, as well as some deeply learned lessons that would serve us all for years to come, and remain strong memories for us ever since.  

When Stan and I returned to the mainland, we had my oldest son, and went our separate ways.

Yesterday, my oldest son landed on Kauai, for his first visit to a place he has heard me tell stories about since he was little.  The Garden Island is not that much different than it was 38 years ago, unlike Waikiki, on Oahu, which is unrecognizable to me now.  My firstborn is on soil where his father and I shared a beautiful, slower-paced, intense, amazing time together.  Before my son left on this trip, I was telling him some of the stories about his father and myself that I hadn't ever spoken of before.  The time his father spread his arms toward the plumeria blossoms and said, "You can't say I never got you flowers.  I gave you a whole damn island of 'em," and I shot back, "It was my car got sold to buy our fuckin tickets here."  We laughed a lot on Kauai.  We fought, too.  Once, Stan was so frustrated by me, he went outside our shack and yanked up a young banana tree, tossing it aside, where it promptly re-rooted.  The next time we argued, Stan tore that plant up again, and threw it in another direction.   It became a running joke.  I'm sure that banana tree is big, now, and strong as shit.  Kinda like our son.  I was never gonna be capable of any long-term commitment, but Stan was the only relationship I ever had that was not based in predatory behavior by some older man similar to my father.  My time with my oldest son's dad was the only such relationship I experienced not marred by abusive predatory control and manipulation. 

I have no idea what intimate "love" feels like.  But Curtis and Stan are the two people whose memories for me are not filled with lies, gaslighting, fear, exploitation, and abuse.  My father's abuse, compounded by my stepmother's added sexual exploitation, set me up for some difficulties.  But the adventist principal could have set me on a much different path.  Kids who live relatively acceptable lives after childhoods like mine, always have that one person who steps in and stops the re-exploitation cycle.  This does not happen often. In fact, it's the exception.   Men like Maron keep re-exploiting sexually exploited children, and they never find their way out of that awful cycle.  In order for this re-exploitation to stop happening, it is going to take knowledgeable adults calling out predatory behavior, and protecting sexually exploited children.  And that takes me right back to the whole "magical thinking" bullshit I wrote about in an earlier post.  I would like to believe sexually abused children might someday be protected from re-exploitation.  But believing in it now, after 57 years of living, would mean I was choosing to be insane.