Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

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Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

I thought it meant that I was special. I didn't know it would turn sex into an act of shame.

Published May 16, 2001 7:17PM (EDT)

My first lover was my father.

It’s ugly and, even now, more than 25 years later, difficult for me to say. With my father, in his bed, I first experienced the bump and grind of sexual relations. It was his genitals I first explored; he was the first to touch my body sexually, and those hands have left an indelible imprint. I have no memories that predate his abuse — his rubbing and touching, his forcing me to touch him.

I was 4; it was 1972. At night, while my mother worked, he took me into their bed and made me believe he was doing me a favor, giving me a special privilege. It took me a long, long time to really believe there wasn’t anything special about it, that it was all just sick. For many years I held onto the notion that in some way, his attention and his obsession with me made me special.

In bed he would watch TV, snapping the edge of the sheet between his fingers and the mattress while I pretended to fall asleep. Knowing what was ahead, of course I could not sleep. After a while, the snapping of the sheet stopped and I knew it was time. He would grope me, run his giant hands under my nightgown and into my flowered panties — the kind that little girls wear, with yellow and pink daisies on them — and he’d talk to me. He was always talking to me, whispering things, telling me he loved me. He’d tell me how nice I made Daddy feel. He never penetrated me with his penis, but his fingers would routinely enter my tiny vagina. It was terrifying. At times I fought with him, begging him not to touch me, and he responded by scaring me further, pressing his hands too firmly against my neck, ordering me to be quiet, to behave. He spoke in the harshest voice I knew from him, as if I had started screaming in church. Sometimes he would leave me alone in the closet until I begged to come out, but when he let me out it was more of the same. I learned to be quiet. I learned to “behave.”

Other times, the routine was different. He would work up to things slowly. We’d be wrestling, rough-housing playfully, maybe in the living room, and........

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