This Is How I Disappear

I'm stealing an idea from my friend Shannon and using song/literature/etc references for the titles of my posts. This one is the title of a My Chemical Romance song, and it's very fitting for what I'm about to write.

This is the house where the original version of me died, disappeared forever. I cringe every time I see this house, which is about 3 miles from where my dad lives. I have wished many times over the past 26 years that it would just burn to the ground.

In 1989, when I was 14, a freshman in high school, my best friend at the time lived in this house. I was over his house more than I was at my own for the first three months of the school year. His step dad tried to buy his affection, so he had a 4-wheeler, a 3-wheeler (before they were outlawed), BB guns, video games, a swimming pool, and countless other items that I didn't have. Plus, he was two years older than I was, and able to drive, which was extremely valuable growing up in the country, where the closest store (a department store called Big Wheel) was almost 10 miles away, and the cows outnumbered the humans 6 to 1. Those first three months of freshman year were fucking heaven.

In October my friend and I, along with a few other kids from school, plus his neighbors, created a "haunted forest" in the woods behind his house. We set up different scenes and "traps" along a path that wound about a mile through the woods, starting and finishing on opposite sides of his back yard. Over the three weeks we prepared and operated our little attraction, I became very familiar with the trail and the little offshoot trails that radiated out from the main one. When we finally opened our haunted forest to the public, we actually had a somewhat steady stream of visitors. We had no permits so we couldn't charge anyone, but in the two weekends we had people coming through we earned almost $500 in tips. Not horrible for a bunch of idiot kids.

While we had several monsters in our haunted forest, the real monster was dwelling inside the house, watching, waiting, planning his every move and carefully choosing his victim. Me.

In November 1989 I was, as usual, at my friend's house, playing video games and listening to a Dead Milkmen cassette. His step dad, Mark, came down to the basement and asked if I'd like to go driving the 4-wheeler, so naturally I jumped at the chance. It was an extremely cold night, snowing, with a very steady wind, and I almost said never mind and went back in the house. But the pull of the wonderful machine was too strong, and I hopped on before talking myself into going back in the house.

We drove around the back yard for a while, Mark driving, me in back. After about fifteen minutes he pulled over so we could switch, and I could drive. I circled the house a few times then he told me to drive into the woods, which we normally weren't allowed to do after sunset. Eagerly I turned into the darkness.

As I drove along the path Mark had me pull onto a side path that I knew ended after about twenty yards. When it did end, I started to turn around but he urged me to go further into the woods instead. As I drove he told me his hands were cold and asked if he could put them in my coat pockets. I said sure, so he did. After a few minutes he said they were still cold and moved them inside my coat. Finally he slid them into my pants. He started rubbing me, and had me stop near a dead tree. He proceeded to talk me out of my pants and gave me the first blowjob of my life.

As I walked the three miles home that night, the only two things I remember were that the extreme cold was making my outsides as numb as my insides, and that about half way home someone flicked a cigarette butt out the window of a passing car, and it hit me next to my eye leaving a scar I still have to this day.

In nearly 26 years the events of that night have not gotten any less vivid in my memory than they were in the following weeks. Unfortunately, I ended up not only keeping it a secret, but letting the abuse continue for four more years. This was without question the night that changed me forever.

Until very recently there were only three people I ever told about being molested, all of them girlfriends, including my wife, before we even met in person. Nobody in my family knows any of this happened. Nor do they know about the suicide attempt, the severe depression, or any other issues that stemmed from this. Hopefully they never will.

There is so much more I want to say about this, but I simply can't right now. It's wrecking me too much to think about it. I need to disappear.

Thanks for reading this, if anyone did.