Vignette 5: “Uncle says: I am beautiful"
To sort truth from fiction, but how? And what if fiction is a way to find truth, at least as it exists for human beings? To speak of incest as I have done here is to say something unspeakable: the fact that I am still turned on by it all, and yet it damaged me deeply. You, dear reader, don’t want to hear that. You want a story with clear moral codes: speak of the damage, not the desire. To say, as I do here, that my sexual desire was indelibly formed for life by someone who never asked for my consent is to run the risk of condoning his action by associating it with my want and need. It is hard to hear about the ongoing entanglement of adult desire with a girl's pain but also her pleasure. Perhaps you are seeking to avoid ethical questions altogether. Based on what I have seen in this section, most readers are looking for a clear account of right and wrong that avoids just that, or else they want some purely fictional tale about, say, the sexy uncle who comes onto you. What they don't want is to hear about the deep ambivalence. I wish I could just hate him, what he did, and never feel turned on by it all. But I can't, I don’t.
This story, like the others I write, is about how it feels to be used by another human being. The adult who used and in this case abused me did love me in his own way. No, I'm not an ass, and I'm not forgiving him. But unless you try to understand the love and care, you can't understand the abuse. You have to try to see how he made me feel special, and how that feeling kept me wanting him and led me to keep a secret that was killing me. It also made it difficult for me to open myself to anyone else, to trust anyone else. There are no clear answers, only questions. To achieve an ethical perspective on incest—and that is what I seek here--one has to be open to the questions, the ambiguity. It is easy to see such things in black and white, to condemn the perpetrators and honor the victims. That is what conventional moral codes give us: a grid according to which we can sort the good from the bad and be done with it all. Much harder is the attempt to understand and struggle with the grey zone we inhabit as human beings and in which we try to live ethically, try, that is to say, to take account of that which is irreducibly strange in another human being, radically unassimilable.
* * * * *
The first time wasn't something I registered as being anything. It was only in hindsight that I saw as it as something.
I'm 18, on his lap at a Thanksgiving dinner with a lot of relatives, all drinking and eating, happy. We are sitting at the table. As they talk, he talks, laughs, I feel his hand run up my smooth leg. It doesn't stop at the point where most of them stop, but goes further, rubbing the inside of my thigh. That was all. I just remember feeling like something was not right, and somehow it was my fault.
We are at his house. My parents are in the living room watching a hockey game. He takes me downstairs to show me his billiard table. I laugh as he tries to teach me to play. I'm leaning over the table and I feel his hand on my ass. He slips it gently under my panties. Then he stops. I'm confused.
I'm at his house. It is Xmas I think. I remember the lights. Once again I'm sitting at the table next to him and he takes me on his lap. The rest follows.
He is at our apartment. My parents are going out for the night. We watch television and play and have fun. Then he tells my sister to go to bed. My brother is already sleeping. We are sitting on the couch. He places his hand under my dress and rubs my panties. I remember that feeling well. He tells me I am his favorite niece. Do I know that? "My, you have grown," he says. He strokes my hair and tells me he loves me. I'm beautiful.
I'm laying on the couch at his house, reading. He comes up behind me and rubs my ass through my dress. I don't move. He tells me I'm his favorite niece. I'm beautiful.
He is at our apartment. We are in my room, talking. Time to sleep. He closes the door and says goodnight. I feel someone breathing heavy next to me. I think I'm having a nightmare. He is rubbing my ass and my pussy, placing his finger in both. I can't move. My parents are out. He tells me I'm his favorite niece and says he wants me to see something special. He puts my hand on his cock and tells me how happy I make him. He tells me to touch him. I don't know what he wants from me. He moves my hand how he wants. I just do what he says. He breathes hard. He tells me I'm his favorite niece and he loves me.
We are in my room. He does the same. But he takes my head and places it in his lap. He tells me he loves me.
His finger is in me. I'm in my bed. He is stroking my ass. He is laying behind me, stroking me. He loves me.
He has his hands in my hair tightly. He presses me in his lap. He tells me I make him really happy and he loves me.
He makes me take him in my mouth but I can't. It is ok. He loves me.
We are at his house, downstairs. I'm pressed up against the wall with my dress hiked up. That was the first time he fucked me. I didn't move. This was repeated many times, always downstairs with the others upstairs, laughing and drinking.
I lay in my bed alone, with my hands between my legs, wet, thinking of him. I'm worthless.
I think about him a lot. Then I bury myself in my pillows where I'm safe.
