I Am My Own Sex Object

Is a sex-obsessed kid entitled to be the victim when he makes the first move?
It's during a run of "To Kill a Mockingbird" at a community theatre in Austin when I meet the crossover guy; my first actual adult. I'm acting in a string of shows playing a child, since at eleven, that is what I appear to be. In "Mockingbird" I must boyishly throw a football as if I am an actual boy.

During rehearsals I scope out the crossover guy and I make the first move. It is most emphatically not the other way around. I am absolutely the aggressor. Surrounded by adults, I am very anxious to appear as grown up as possible. I take up smoking with zeal, and learn to laugh hollowly at the bitter ironies of life; just like I do when my grandmother complains about her sex life with my grandfather.

That I have far more ironies to laugh about than most of the grown-ups I am appearing in these shows with is not immediately apparent to them or to me. The desperate seriousness of the artiste destined to be famous has its hooks in me - which I still think of as a kind of virus, far more hazardous to my long-term emotional well-being than a little childhood sex play.

The crossover guy isn't very attractive, but he is kind of funny, and once I make my move he starts doing all the things pedophiles are supposed to do, like buying me liquor, trying lamely to boost my confidence, things like that - all for no reason whatsoever since I am completely certain I'm going to fuck him before I even walk over, and he can save time and money by skipping the cheesy gestures and just getting us to a motel room.

It's with him in a motel when I learned about actual ejaculation, which catches me off guard. I don't ever like revealing that I don't know something and I am afraid my alarmed reaction to the sticky white mess pumping itself out of his penis will reveal my lack of knowledge.

He looks up at me then and says, "I like little boys."

This totally blows my mind. Whatever I look like on the outside, I totally believe he's with me because he sees through my eleven year-old physical self and recognizes the incredibly mature adult inside.

What he says makes it obvious that I am like this thing to him, this child. I don't like children, and I am horrified that he should think me one of them.

It doesn't put me off sex though. I start riding the bus, going to the University of Texas, cruising public bathrooms. I am still eleven. The thrill of discovering glory holes helps me forget how much of a pain in the ass sixth grade is turning out to be. Other people remember the torments of high school, but for me, sixth grade is the nadir of my existence. It is my first year of attending any school anywhere for a whole year without moving. But now I am with my mother. Now we no longer move on.

That there is a probable if totally indirect correlation between my finally being allowed to live with my mother and my sex play with adults doesn't occur to me until about five minutes ago.

Having sex is easier than confronting the differences between the fantasy of wanting her and the reality of getting her. I have new people to fantasize about, grown men, college students, occasionally even people my own age.

What I spend my childhood thinking will be my defining moment, being allowed to be with my mom, comes and goes without my actually being there.

But a stranger might love me completely. Rescue me. Take me to New York. Make me famous. I still crave rescue even as I am supposedly already rescued. My self-awareness only extends to what I want and how to get it. I never think to question what I am doing or who I am.

My mom's boyfriend, soon to be my step-father, David, and I are close still. When I am a child he is playful, loving, and a little more sexy than he imagines I might notice or think about. This is before he becomes so fatherly, back when he is still just Mom's hunky boyfriend, tearing around in an MG, smoking pot while he drives, bounding around the house naked. He is much bigger than my father, Adam. Simple justice.

Years later when I am an adult I finally tell him about all that pre-teen sex with grown-ups. He starts crying, ashamed that he and my mother never knew how needy I was, how troubled and lonely. He says I must have been lonely if I went out looking for that. I don't know. I hid myself from them and from myself. "But you were so good," he keeps saying, "Never any trouble, always good grades, we never thought you had any problems."

Having sex with adults in public restrooms takes no courage at all. Admitting loneliness is next to impossible.