tazgore's Journal

Darlington, Louisiana, that’s where it happened. We lived in Amite, but my parents were making plans to move to Darlington. Granny owned the house and property. She wanted us to move there, so on weekends we would go to Darlington and work on fixing the house up. I had a lot of good memories about that place. My older brother and I would go exploring through the woods. We would find all sorts of interesting things to keep us busy all day long. Sometimes we would walk the pipeline for a bout a mile to this small creek. There was a very wide and reasonably deep area that we would swim in. The road we lived on only had three houses on it. Ours was the last house. I don’t remember much about the family that live in the first house except to say that they loved to get rides on our mini bike. The second house, there was a family that had one teenaged son. He would come over sometimes and hang out. I cannot remember his name but we knew him, and he was the one.

            All of this happened when I was about six years old, and he was about 16. One day my brother and I were playing outside on the monkey bars. I seem to remember other kids there as well. I remember that they weren’t paying me enough attention, so I was getting board. That is when “he” arrived to see what was going on. After a while we decided to go exploring through the woods. He had lived there a long time and knew the woods well. He took me further in the woods than my brother and I had ever gone.  We eventually "found" a pig farm. There were a lot of pigs walking around, and I remember being amazed at how big they were. He told me that they were very dangerous, especially to someone as small as me. He pointed to one sow who was huge and told me that a pig that big sometimes ate people. I suddenly just wanted to go home. I was lost though, and very scared. I cant really remember exacly what he did to get me in the water, but i do remember having to swim through it. The pig pond was about 30 yards in diameter. It was fairly shallow and filthy. Basically this is where the pigs urinated and defecated and stomped around. It all mixed with the water and there was a “film” across the top of the water. I stepped into the water and swam across. He walked around. I asked him to please show me how to go home. He told me there was one more thing that I had to do before he would show me how to go home. He unzipped his pants, and pulled it down. He then basically told me to give him a BJ. My memory in some places are a bit spotty, but what happend next, the memories are burned into my head. I just wanted to go home, and he said that if I did this thing that he would let me go, so I did. After it was over, he just pointed in a direction and said go that way and you’ll be home soon. Apparently we had walked in a big circle, because we were not but a hundred yards or so from the road that my house was on. If I had only known, mabey I would have been able to get away. I ran home. When I got there my brother was still playing outside with the other kids. Mom was planting some plats outside. Everybody seemed like nothing had happened. Everybody seemed happy. I just went inside and pretended like nothing bad had happened. I havent told anyone what had happend  for 33 years. My wife was the first person that I had told my story to. It wasn’t long after that abuse that my parents got a divorce, for unrelated reasons, and our plans for moving there were changed. Thank God for that small piece of grace. My brother and I ended up with our mother, and we all ended up living with Granny for a while in Baton Rouge.

            I think that the worst thing that he did to me was to give me a choice. He did not hit me. He did not tie me up. He did not pull out a knife or a gun. He scared me and then gave me a choice. Do these things or I won’t show you how to go home. I understand the logic that this was not my fault, but my whole life I’ve felt that I could have chosen differently, that maybe in a way it was a little my fault. Sometimes I think that it would be easier to deal with this if I had been beaten. At least then I would have no blame.

06/09/08

Instead of deleting the last paragraph i am going to leave it to remind myself where i "was" when i wrote that. Sombody just gave me some insight as to what it was like to actually have been beaten and have a gun pointed at your head. Instead of making up possible senarios, expecially worse ones, i have decided to simply face what did happen, and try not to play the what if game. I am still having a hard time forgiving myself, but mabey if stop thinking of what could have happend, I'll start dealing with what did.