CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - THE NURSE'S SON

Trauma isn’t always black and white.

Dearest Nurse,

Back in the early spring, I was scrolling through my Facebook feed when a saw a post by one of my schoolmates from New York City. Apparently, our old school nurse had passed away.

I remembered her well. Her raspy voice as she greeted me outside school in the mornings, a cigarette dangling from her wrinkled mouth. (This was the 90's, remember. A school nurse could get away with that kind of shit.)

When I was in lower school I figured out how to make my nose bleed. Whenever I was in a class I absolutely hated - usually math - I would tap on the tip of my nose until the vessles burst and blood trickled down my lip.

“I have to go to the nurse!” I would say, my hand high in the air. And that’s where the teacher sent me. She would shove a tissue up there, give me some saltines, and I’d get to lay on the bed in the back room of her office long enough to miss the rest of class.

Later, in high school, I passed a kidney stone. My boyfriend at the time found me slumped by the lockers, in so much pain that I was green and couldn’t move. That same school nurse thought I had appendicitis, but rather than call an ambulance and draw attention to the high-profile private school I attended, I had to wait for a car service to take me to the hospital. I was so annoyed with her for that. I thought I was going to die it hurt so badly.

But it wasn't the kidney stone incident or the smoking that made me despise her. It was the fact that she raised a monster.

My father taught technical theater at the school I went to for almost forty years. Because it was a working theater, he was always there, regardless of whether he was actively teaching a class or not. As such, there was a small group of kids who would come by during free periods and help out with whatever needed doing. Painting, carpentry, hanging lights, you get the idea. It was a haven for theater geeks, and Lord Capulet was their king.

Back in 1992, that crew included a thirteen-year-old I’ll refer to as DH, the nurse’s son.

I was a scrawny, boy-crazy nine-year-old who longed for approval. I mean, what nine-year-old doesn’t? I loved hanging out in my dad’s theater. Not only was there always something fun going on, but I loved working with my father, and the gang of grungy older kids who hung around. From sixth graders all the way to high school seniors, they were there, and they were the coolest creatures in the whole wide world.

DH wasn’t the cutest. He was round-faced, pudgy, and had a doughy nose. I didn’t notice this at the time, but he didn’t seem to have many friends, either. What I did notice, however, was that he really liked hanging out with me. Whenever my dad needed something done that was my speed, he would volunteer to do it with me. We’d talk and laugh, while hammering away, base painting, or just picking up loose screws, all while singing along to whatever station my dad had the radio on that day. That was when Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You was all the rage, and we sang it over and over. That song still nauseates me a little to this day.

At the time, I couldn’t believe this older kid wanted to hang out with me. He seemed to genuinely enjoy my company, and it made my little pre-pubescent heart flutter. Every time I walked into my dad’s theater, I hoped he’d be there. And every time he was, I wanted to get closer. I wanted him to like me.

The private school I attended allowed kids to do what they wanted during free periods, so one day, he invited me out to lunch, off campus. I remember walking down the stairs with him past a group of kids in his grade.

“Hey, [DH]! That your new girlfriend?”

They all laughed. I should have sensed something was up then. I knew I was too young for him, but a part of me was proud in that moment. Proud they even thought that could be a possibility for someone like me. (I was a late bloomer, and didn’t have a whole lot of confidence in myself.)

As our relationship progressed, he began telling me things. About other girls my age he had “dated”. Two in the year above me. About how they did things, sexual things. He wasn’t explicit - yet - but he hinted. Back then, I thought we were just getting closer. That he trusted me, and I was honored to have that trust. I realize now, as young as he was, he was grooming me.

One afternoon I found myself alone with him in my father’s upstairs office, which was also the control room for the theater below. I was seated across from him. The distance seems strange now in retrospect, almost clinical… but the conversation was not.

He began by asking me if I knew what “the bases” were.

“No…” I giggled, both nervous and excited.

Starting with first base, he went through them all in gross detail, including “sloppy bases” and variations. Suddenly, my nervousness turned to discomfort, but I inwardly chastised myself. He was an older kid. This was what older kids talked about. If I couldn’t handle this, how was I going to handle growing up? And so I sat there and listened, trying to take in the education he was so kind for offering.

“Do you know what sex is?” He asked me with a kind smile.

“When two people get naked and roll around.” I said with one hundred percent certainty. That one I knew!

He laughed out loud. Too loud.

“You see those plugs behind you?” He asked.

I turned to my father’s circuit board, an entire wall of metal sockets into which large cables were plugged, and then routed to the lighting board.

“Yeah.”

“This,” He said, holding up one of the enormous, two-pronged plugs, “is the male.”

I looked at it as he held it in his hands, smirking.

“And those are female.”

I looked back to the circuit board, and a flash of red hot shame went through me. Omigod, that’s what sex is? How did I not know that? He must think I’m so stupid. I am so stupid.

I only had a moment to gather myself before the conversation got dark.

He began telling me about two girls he had babysat for. Young girls. How he had touched them. Kissed them. Had they had touch him. Both of them. When they were supposed to be watching a movie together. How they told their parents what happened, and how he wasn’t permitted to babysit for them anymore. For them...

My heart began to race. I knew something wrong was going on here. We weren’t talking about ideas and sexual acts anymore, we were talking about actual people. Girls. Girls who were younger than me, and even at nine, I knew what he had done was awful.

“And you know what, [Juliet]?” He said, leaning forward, “Those are all the things I want to do to you.”

I am so fucking grateful to my mother. Some might say I was too young for the education she insisted on giving me, but if this story proves anything, it’s that no girl is too young to be abused. From the time I was five, she told me some men were predators. That they could seem nice, but given the chance, they would hurt me and never even give it a second thought. And that in most cases, there would be nothing you could do about it.

This was the 90s, remember? When women were told, if a guy's a creep, avoid him. Don’t tell on him, that would make you look weak. Don’t confront him, because then you’re a bitch. Just don’t get yourself in a situation where you’re alone with him, and you’ll be fine. But fucked if you do get in a room alone with him, because you were warned.

So at nine, sitting in my father’s office that afternoon, I suddenly found myself having two inner battles. One was the shame of having allowed myself to be in a room alone with this person. This person I liked. Wanted them to like me. Someone I thought was my friend, and all he wanted to do was abuse me. And the other battle was, how do I get the fuck out of here?

He could see that I was uncomfortable. Trying to regroup and take a step back, he offered to get us something to eat. He stood, opened the door for me, and I grabbed the chance.

I ran, dearest Nurse. I ran as fast as I could, hearing his voice calling out after me. Asking me what was wrong. But I didn’t stop, I just kept running.

I found out later that the two girls in the grade above me he claimed to have dated, were actually girls he had molested. One of them spoke out, the other didn’t. She’s dead now. She was brilliant and beautiful. Heroine overdose at 24. Makes you wonder who someone could have been if someone else didn’t decide to violate them when they were a child.

I didn’t tell anyone about what happened for a very long time. I had heard about sexual abuse, of course, but that wasn’t what happened to me. He never touched me, never defiled me. And besides, he was just a kid, too. All he had done was say some things. Regardless of the incredible amount of shame and guilt I felt over what had happened, I thought I must be overreacting. Words can’t hurt a person. Sticks and stones, right?

Wrong.

“Oh my god…” I said out loud as I scrolled down on the Facebook post about the school nurse’s passing. Her older son had posted a comment I just couldn’t believe.

She will be buried on Friday at XXX cemetery, next to my brother.

What?

I’m so sorry for your loss. Did [DH] pass away? I thumbed under his comment, and then immediately deleted it. What was I dong? Did I really want to know? And picking at this family’s scabs...

But I had to know. Suddenly, everything in me had to know if he was actually gone. Because, Dearest Nurse, though I can’t say I’ve thought about DH a ton over the years, the specter of him and what he did haunted me for a long time.

The summer after the incident in my father’s office, my dad and I went to visit his sister in Rochester. A little boy who lived next door had a crush on me. He came over to her house, my Aunt poured us a bowl of chips, and we sat on the couch, watching a movie and holding hands. It was sweet, and even though I knew in my head nothing wrong or untoward was going on, I was riotously ill. The nausea involuntary, but try as I might, I couldn’t shake it. The shame at merely sitting there. Touching his hand. Wanting to be wanted. It was all too much.

The shame from that couch incident chased me the rest of the summer. I just couldn’t shake it.

I had my first kiss when I was twelve. I was dating the boy, and even though he was a bit of a disaster child, he was so sweet. Not bad to look at either. And I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to kiss him badly. But the minute his tongue hit mine, I was completely revolted. There was that nausea again, but stronger this time. It was physically debilitating, and I had to call my mother to pick me up. Talk about humiliating.

Then, at fourteen, my father took a friend and I to a production of Cloud 9 at The New School. I didn’t know until we were walking through the glass front doors that not only did DH attend The New School, but that he was running lights for this very show.

My knees trembled and my mouth went dry. But what could I do? We were there, and the house was open…

Ten minutes into the play, I remember turning to my father with my mouth wide open. The fuck was this? For those of you who don’t know, Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill is described by Wikipedia as using “controversial portraits of sexuality and obscene language to create a parallel between colonial and sexual oppression.” Whatever the message was, for a couple twelve-year-olds like my poor friend and I, all that came across was the “obscene” part. The actors mimed oral sex, humped one another, and omigosh, the sounds they made! I was horrified. My father, who had no idea what the play was about before this very moment, was mortified. And the friend I had brought with me didn’t know what to make of any of it. Thank goodness her mother was German and had a good sense of humor.

So, here I was, being prematurely exposed to yet another aggressive, lewd portrayal of sex, all the time knowing that the boy who had scarred me, the one who I had liked and who wanted to hurt me, was right behind me, bringing up and down the lights on every revolting moment. I could almost feel his hot breath on the back of my neck, laughing at me the whole time.

When I lost my virginity, the reaction was similar, but less strong. Again, I had been dating the guy for a while, and we had planned the entire evening. It was very nice, actually, and loving. Two sixteen-year-olds who cared about one another, losing their virginities at the same time. Afterwards, however, I felt restless and vulnerable. His parents were out of town, so the plan had been for us to watch a movie together, and for me to stay over. But I couldn’t. For whatever reason, I had to leave. When I walked to the train that night, I imagined that I was trailing trash behind me as I jogged down the subway stairs. That I was somehow less than now. Sullied and dirty. Part of me was thrilled that I had lost my virginity, but another part just wouldn’t let me be. A part that told me what I had done was bad, and that I should feel guilty and ashamed for having had sex. For allowing someone to put their oversized lighting plug into my wall socket.

And DH’s ghost was there later in life, too. In the guys I chose to date in college. Nice guys. Guys who weren’t too good looking or too confident. Guys I knew wouldn’t hurt me. Guys I knew I could dominate both sexually and in personality.

I remember one night, staring up at the ceiling of my friend’s dorm room while we were having a sleepover, and thinking, Fuck me. Whatever that was with [DH] fucked me up. But why? I just couldn’t understand it. Again, he never touched me. What right did I have - still, after all this time - to feel the sting of shame whenever he came to mind? Others had dealt with so much worse. Clearly the problem lay with me.

I wasn’t able to find DH’s obituary online, but what I did find immediately was that he had been arrested. The charge? Molesting two of his daughters ten-year-old friends while they were over for a sleepover.

I was stunned. I sat there with the computer in my lap, frozen. And then, without warning, my eyes filled with tears of rage.

Back when all of this happened - and in the years that followed - another reason why I delegitimized the incident, was because he was so young. Thirteen-years-old. He was just a horny kid, right? A stupid, hormonal, pre-teen who wasn’t a bad person, he just didn’t realize the damage he was doing. I convinced myself of that. I’m pretty sure others did too. Maybe even the nurse herself.

But serial abusers don’t come out of nowhere. I’ve done a lot of research on rapists and murderers. Not necessarily for fun, but for various jobs and projects. And because, like most American women, I’m seduced by true crime. So, I know now that the behavioral patterns of life-long, sociopathic, child molesters show themselves early on. DH had been abusing little girls since he was twelve. I knew it. Those two girls in the grade above me knew it. And I found out later, my school knew about it, too. They expelled him, and though they never said it, I know it had everything to do with the one girl who actually did speak out.

But by expelling him, they just moved him elsewhere. To another place filled with young girls who didn't know about his past, where he could start fresh. It was almost as if they handed them over on a silver platter. His mother, the nurse, had to know. She had to. But did she do anything? Fuck no. He just kept on molesting God knows how many girls, until finally, in his mid-thirties, fucker got caught. And now his poor daughter would carry that shame. I pray he never touched her. Christ... I can’t even imagine.

And I was furious at myself for my silence. Sure, I was nine, but I knew enough to run. I knew enough to run because I knew what was happening was wrong. But I was embarrassed and ashamed, so I kept my mouth shut. Who knows what could have happened if I had spoken up? The girls I could have saved. The acceptance I could have come to so much earlier. The jail cell he could have been rotting away in for even longer, rather than fucking up innocent lives.

I knew I needed to be working, but I couldn’t stop digging through the bowels of the internet. I needed to find out how this fucker died. I wanted it to be horrendous. Painful. I wanted to know he had been violated. Not just for me. Fuck me at this point. I got away. But for them. For what I can only assume had to be well over fifty girls whose sexual and mental wellbeing he had stolen. And you know what? I think I got my wish.

I finally managed to find prison records for the Pennsylvania jail where he had been sentenced to for only two years. Just two years for pleading guilty to groping two fucking ten-year olds. And there it was, [DH’s] only excuse for an obit was one sentence stating that he was found dead in his jail cell.

Also due to lengthy project research, I know that prisons have a culture all their own. A pecking order, and just like in free society, a moral code that does not go quietly unbroken. Child sex abusers don’t last long in jail. Knife your own brother over stolen heroine, fine, but if you fucking touched a kid, you’re toast. My best guess is that DH’s fellow inmates found out what he had done, and decided to make quick work of him. From what I gathered, he had only been there a month or so.

I sat there, staring at my computer, and cried. Not because I felt bad for him in the least, but because I was glad. I was glad he was dead, and that was both a horrible and wonderful feeling.

I am not the kind of person who revels in other’s pain, even “bad” people. Generally, I feel like most people can be redeemed, and I'm a huge believer in the purity of the human spirit. We’re all born sacred and perfect, remember? I maintain the validity of that. But monsters are different. And DH was a monster.

In the weeks that followed the discovery of DH’s probable prison murder, I couldn’t shake him. He was there again, as present as he was in the years after I ran from him and my father’s office. But why? Why wouldn’t he leave me alone? He was dead now for fuck’s sake. The case should be closed.

But it wasn’t, and all I could think about was how long I had carried shame and guilt with me, into my sex life, into all my early relationships. How it tainted them, and how that pollution had effected my thoughts and beliefs about sex. And don’t even get me started on masturbation. Like I told you, dearest Nurse, whether it was shame, fear, or ignorance, I’ve hardly ever touched myself in my entire life.

There’s another thing weed is really great for, aside from putting me to sleep, and that’s walks down memory lane. When I’m high, just before I fall asleep, I go on the most fantastic journeys into my past. I remember things I had completely forgotten. Dig into my mental recesses, and relive moments from the essential to the banal, from the joyous to the downright troubling. Because DH had been on my mind, on this night, I traveled through my sexual history. What should have been the big moments - my firsts - and realized - as I relayed to you - that every one of them had turned sour somehow.

And that’s when I sat bolt upright. Between DH’s death, the weed, and the increased knowledge of self that comes with age, I suddenly realized why - despite the fact that he never touched me - that incident had sunk its talons so deeply into my life. It was because he had been my teacher.

I knew absolutely nothing before that day. Of course I knew what kissing was, but beyond that - boob grabbing, fingering, oral sex, intercourse - I had no concept of any of these things. Zero. By listing the bases, DH described every single sex act you can imagine. He had even ordered it for me, a list I could check off to mark my eventual sexual progress. In doing so, he had become my own private usher into the world of sex. My introduction, and my lasting impression. I mean, you remember when you first found out what sex was, right? Or a blow job? A rim job? Anal? You probably remember where you were, and who told you. I just hope for your sake it was a friend or a parent.

In my case, it was a boy who wanted to hurt me. A boy who wanted to sexually abuse me for his own gratification. And, I have to be honest with you, I was probably a little bit aroused at the time he was explaining these things to me in graphic detail. I liked him. I wanted him to like me. But once I discovered his true motivations, that arousal turned to shame, and a great, big, fucked up, emotional link was created in my young, impressionable brain.

Voila.

From that moment on, every first, every base I reached - every check off my list - was accompanied by nausea and deep shame. My first blow job was the same. The first time someone went down on me. And it wasn’t just firsts either. Rather than a beautiful expression of love and affection, sex became dirty, taboo, and wrong. And so, many times, I forced myself to embrace feeling bad in order to do it.

I am so grateful to weed for the revelation that night. I only wish I had it sooner.

I’m not going to sit here and claim I had it bad. I wasn’t touched, I wasn’t raped, and that kind of physical violation is beyond traumatizing. But I will say that you do not have to be touched to be a sexual abuse survivor. And I know how hard that is to wrap your brain around. Especially for those of us who grew up with the great controversy of what constitutes sexual harassment in the 90s. We don’t want to believe it. We want to push it away. But I won’t anymore.

What happened to me was wrong, and DH was a disgusting creature who deserved what he got. But what is also wrong is the culture of silence around juvenile sex offenders. Once again, these behaviors don’t come out of nowhere. Even though I didn’t speak up, other girls did. Several of them. Someone should have been monitoring that fucker, rather than allowing him to act out his perverted fantasies on hoards of young children, and then sentencing him to only two fucking years in jail.

But until there is some sort of system in place to track these individuals, what do we do?

I think about this all the time when I look at Big. She is so beautiful. Way prettier than I ever was. Boys already stare at her in class, and she’s only in second grade. I wrack my brain thinking of how I can protect her. How I can make sure no sick fuck ever touches her, violates her, or says the kind of damaging things to her that were said to me. And every time, I hit the same brick wall.

I can’t ensure that nothing ever happens to her. It breaks my heart as a mother to say that, but I can’t. She is a person outside of myself, and as such, she has to face moments in this world without me. She has to, or she’ll never become an independent, well-adjusted young woman. All I can do is tell her. I can tell her what happened to me. I can tell her what has happened to other women. And I can tell her that it doesn’t matter what anyone says. If something makes her uncomfortable, that matters. She doesn’t have to know why at that moment, she just needs to get out, and she needs to tell someone. Hopefully she’ll tell me, but we all know how kids are.

My mother prepared me the best she could, and she did a damn good job. I ran, and every time I think of that day, I am so fucking proud of my mother and I. See, mom? I do listen.

But what I didn’t realize then, was that children can be dangerous too. That any time one person violates another, whether it be unwanted staring in class, an unsolicited sexual education, a touch, or more, regardless of age, it matters.

I talk to Big about it now. She’s only 7, but it’s important. I can wish all day long that nothing will ever happen to her, but the truth of the matter is, most people in this world have endured some kind of sexual abuse. Not just women. Everyone. So wishing isn’t going to do shit. But I can prepare her. Let her know what can happen, and that if something does, it’s not her fault for being in the room alone with them. It’s not her fault she didn’t see it coming, and that no matter what, I will always be there.

I can’t stop bad things from happening to my babies, but I can do my damnedest to make sure they don’t carry the shame of those moments around with them like I did. Shame that separated me from my own body, and stole beautiful firsts that should have been sacred. I can do my best to make sure of that.

But knowledge brings recovery. Now that I understand the impact of that day, I am quickly moving past it. His memory dims all the time, and I can think of him now without that pinch, that shudder of nausea and guilt. He is truly dying now, and I kick more dirt on him every day. But it doesn’t make what happened any less important. DH is a big part of my story, and I am grateful for the opportunity to tell it today.

So, thank you for reading it, Dearest Nurse. Truly. Thank you.

Sincerely yours,

Juliet