Part 6 - Continued

Did you see what I did in my previous post? I settled for a few vague references to my later sexual acting out rather than spell out any details. I can't do that. I do myself a disservice if I don't spend time remembering and writing out what actually happened, so here we go.

 After our abuser moved away, my other brother and I would still, at times, look at pornography together. Our abuser had left behind his personal stash, and we found a new supplier in one of our neighbor's steady supply of Hustler magazines he got from his big brother who worked for a local binding company.

 As I wrote in my last entry, my abuser moved out of my life right around the same time I was sexually coming into my own. Now, when I look back on all of this, I don't remember experiencing any sexual pleasure with my abuser. I might be blocking the pleasure out of my memory if it ever, in fact, existed...but I just can't recall ever really understanding what was so great about my oldest brother peeing sticky white cream. I'm sorry about the childish terms; but that's how I remember it. I was a kid. The only thing that came out of my penis was urine. The stuff that came out of my abuser's penis was gross.

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That changed when I entered puberty, like it does for every little boy. This is really difficult to write. Just being candid right now. Phew. Okay, I'm ready to continue.

 I have a clear separation in my mind of

• sex with my abusive brother
• me personally stopping the abuse (saying "NO! No more!")
• my abuser leaving home to join the military
• and then indulging myself in the very things which fueled my abuse

Viewing pornography and mastubating felt both good and horrible at the same time. Once I experienced the pleasure of reaching orgasm, it was difficult (no...impossible) to stop; but those few minutes of pleasure were always followed by hours, days and even weeks of shame. I know part of that ties in with my Christian faith. I was fairly certain that looking at pictures of naked ladies and ESPECIALLY masturbating about those ladies was sin. Not just a sin; but it was sinful - full of sin.

On top of that, even at that age there was in my mind a continuous thread between the earlier abuse and my current behavior. To a certain extent, I was mimicking what had already been going on for the past 6 to 7 years of my life; but now I couldn't blame my abuser because I myself was the one doing these things to myself. Too much guilt and shame. I've got to say that right now. Too much guilt and shame.

I began to masturbate to porn, followed by orgasm, followed by incredible guilt which most often resulted in me destroying my cache of magazines, only for me to call on my neighbor for another fix the next time I was jonesing.

I suppose, to most men, this part of my story doesn't sound unusual or unnatural because it's typical, raging hormone, teenage behavior; but what made it different for me was when my closest brother and I would look at the porn together, wind up getting naked and give in to our sexual desires by doing the same stuff our biggest brother did to us. I even remember both of us wearing pantyhose, which is pretty disturbing considering I didn't like that when our abuser did that. And all the while we were acting out like this, on the inside, I experienced both revulsion and compulsion to do it over again and again and again.

Can I say that this was all my abuser's fault? After all, he introduced me to this stuff long before a child is supposed to see and experience such things. He showed me pornography, and he showed me what to do with it. Should my brother and I blame ourselves for repeating what our abuser did to us?  This continues to be one of the most difficult areas to reconcile myself with my. I feel guilt because I feel complicit. I feel self-disgust because I chose to do things I hated having done to me of my own free will. I think it was free will...but how much can a child consent to? Can a child consent at all?

 As I write this, I'm realizing the main difference between the abuse we suffered and our acting out together was that our abuser never, ever expressed any guilt, shame or regret about anything that he did to us...not even to this day.  BUT, whenever my closest brother and I acted out sexually together, it was always followed by guilt on both of our parts. We would both promise to one another and to ourselves that we would never do this again. Sadly, we broke that promise repeatedly; but it's important to acknowledge that we DID feel shame and that we DID feel regret and that those feelings were mutual.

That's a pretty important difference, and right now I'm glad that I'm writing this out. Our abusive brother never expressed shame or regret. Instead, he came home from the military boasting about his sexual escapades with hookers and locals and showed off his shiny new Betamax player with a stash of hardcore movies. He didn't change. He was still the same. Everything for him was about getting his rocks off.

 My other brother and I felt shame and we still feel shame. He's not dealing with this openly yet...not like I am; but we've recently talked about it (first time in over 30 years) and I hear the same grief, shame, regret, and desire that this had never happened, either with our abuser or what the 2 of us did together. So if there is any benefit to detailing this part of my story, it's in realizing the difference between our shameless predator and his victims.

 We eventually kept our promise to stop masturbating with each other. That's how I see this now: Just as our abuser used the 2 of us as a masturbation tool, we did the same with each other. To be specific, we serviced each other the same as our abuser had done to us: oral and anal penetration, dressing up in pantyhose, lotions, oils, lots of rubbing against one another; but we weren't having sexual intercourse in any way which I understand that term. We were just getting off on one another. It was wrong. It is disgusting. I mean, man... I hate spell this out; but it was and is disgusting. It's sick. I guess I was sick. I guess we all were sick...all 3 of us.

But in the end, this was not at all about making love. It was simply mutual masturbation. It was the equivalent of prison sex. I'll be getting more into that in a future post about my struggles with gender identity; but that was a huge breakthrough for me: realizing what happened between me and my abuser was the equivalent of prison rape and what happened between me and my other brother was the equivalent of prison sex.

 I still feel guilty about what I did, of my own volition, after the formal abuse had stopped; but I can also more clearly see a distinct separation between the us victims and the one who victimized us.