There was a small back room in Grandma’s house that I remember playing in when I was a little boy. I remember it being very stark and cold most of the time. I would sneak into that small dark room and play for hours by myself. It was in that room that my entire outlook on life was shaped.

I was four years old the first time I ever felt a grown man lay on top of me. Of course, I couldn’t comprehend in my child’s mind what was happening to me. I remember the sour whiskey smell on his breath and the rough scratch of his unshaven face on my skin and the heaviness of his rhythmic movements. I remember the garbled slurs of “You’re such a pretty little thing” and “You’re my special little love.”

I liked being Uncle Jack’s special little love. I felt an unidentifiable and inexplicable hunger and need to be Uncle Jack’s favorite little love. I wanted to please Uncle Jack so much that I would stand quietly by the bed waiting for him to finish laying on top of my little cousin, who was just a year older than me. She didn’t like it when he played with us in the back room. Sometimes she would cry and then it would be my turn to be Uncle Jack’s favorite little love again.

This wasn’t the first time I was sexually abused. That was when I was two and a half. We lived in a rundown trailer in a little slum of a trailer park just off Ball Camp Pike in Knox County, TN. I was playing in the front yard with my little green army men and matchbox cars when my 14-year-old cousin Martin called to me from the front door of the trailer across the gravel driveway and told me to come play in his room with him.

I liked playing in Martin’s room because he was one of the big boys. He told me that he was a big boy because he had hair on his privates, and that if I promised not to tell anyone he would show me. I guess I have blocked a lot of what happened, but I do remember the choking and not being able to breathe when my face was pressed hard against him. When I would start crying or gagging he would say that we should play a different game. If I would take off my clothes and bend over the edge of his bed then I would get a peanut butter and cinnamon sugared toast after we played the game.

I don’t remember what happened to me while I did what he wanted though I can remember getting the peanut butter toast before being sent home. He told me that I could come back on days his parents were at work and we could play the games again. I think that would be the first time I ever blocked out a traumatic memory.

I know that I did so regularly growing up because of a totally separate event that happened when I was around 5 years old. My Uncle Gene decided to confront his wife and his brother about an alleged affair during a Thanksgiving dinner in the mid to late 1970s. Apparently, when the gun went off and all the blood and brains of my uncle’s brother were sprayed all over me and the other family members, I blacked out. I remember everything up until just before the loud bang and then I don’t remember anything until a few hours later when the ambulances and the police lights were flashing in the driveway. I even remember going to see my beloved aunt in the hospital following her nervous breakdown over the event. I kept asking her what was wrong and why wouldn’t she come home to me.

I have asked questions over the years about what happened that evening and no one would ever talk about it with me. Not even as an adult. My closest relatives would just shake their heads and say that I was right there in the middle of all of it! Then they ask why I would even want to remember something like that.

I am haunted by something I can’t even call from my memory. To this day I cannot handle loud noises. I just get nauseous and feel a heart racing panic and shut down when caught off guard by booms and bangs.

It wasn’t long after that event that Uncle Jack would take me to the back room with one and sometimes two other grown men who would take turns laying on top of me like Uncle Jack did. I don’t remember clearly who the other two men were, so I cannot make accusations that I don’t know to be completely true. But I do remember them taking turns putting their penises in my mouth while my Uncle Jack took Polaroid pictures. I remember them saying over and over that I looked just like a pretty little girl and that I was supposed to have been a girl.

Incidentally, I have had many much-loved family members and close family friends that also told me without malice or judgement in their voices that I was supposed to have been a little girl. Maybe that explains why I have always believed that I am both male and female? I know without a doubt however that I learned falsely and very early in life that my only value in life was to be a sexual plaything for men for their happiness. It led to me being hypersexualized and promiscuous, wanting to please all men that were interested because I didn’t think I had anything to offer but providing them sexual thrills or making them feel good. This also led to self-loathing and low self-esteem issues that have plagued me my entire life.

Even now at 51 years of age, my first instinct when I meet a man is to think of how I can please him sexually. It is so hard to deprogram myself from all of the destructive and degrading things that I was taught as a child. It led to me being sexually victimized by people in prison when I felt like I couldn’t say no. I had to let them treat me horribly and do degrading things to me because in my mind I am still a four-year-old/girl that must do whatever the big boys with pubic hair say. I am finding my voice though and starting to share my WHOLE story.

What happened to me is not my fault. I can tell people my most painful and shameful secrets. I can get them out in the open where I can deal with them with the help of others who have suffered similar circumstances. Finally, it is my choice. I choose not to feel shame and embarrassment.