John - yogi and rape survivor
I grew up in New York: Bronx boy, Manhattan boy, Harlem boy. I was about nine or ten years old, and I was with my brother. We were horsing around a bit, and then I laid down. I remember this crazy dream where I was trying to get away and the devil grabbed me and entered me from the rear. When I woke up, my pajama bottoms were folded neatly at the corner of the bed.
He said, “Well, you said you wanted to know what that felt like, so I just wanted to show you.” Later on I came to find out a friend of the family was molesting him. I went through a whole lot of, “He was my big brother, how could he do this to me?” And “Why would he hurt me?” And if it happened to him, “Why would he do it to me?” His saying for years and years would always be, “I just love you too much.” Those became mixed messages -- maybe I don’t want anybody to love me that much, or maybe I shouldn’t love anybody that much.
My father said that he saw the rape, didn’t stop it. My father talked about throwing him out the fifteenth story window -- but mind you it was actually a fourteenth floor, because back in those days they didn’t count the number thirteen as a floor. I knew my dad, he was a hustler on the street, and he had a pretty violent temper and a pretty violent reputation. So I protected my abuser.
Part of me was like, “I don’t want to see him get killed, and I don’t want to see my dad go to jail for killing him - then I’m triply screwed.” Instead my father shipped him on the next thing going to Virginia. So I protected him, which later on in life, made me feel really crappy.
From the moment of that happening, it took me through a whole lot of gender confusion. I thought it was my fault, because we were horsing around like boys do. But he victimized me because I was young, and he was bigger than me. I was asleep. I was vulnerable. I trusted him. Years after that, my dad used to call me faggot. There’s nothing wrong with being gay, but I’m not gay. I was confused, protective and part of me died that day.
I went through a battle of alcoholism and was on a really good binge for many, many years. Then I realized that I had to start dealing with my feelings and facing what had happened to me. After my fourth suicide attempt, I realized that life’s not over until God says it’s over. I was going to be a survivor if I wanted to or not, so I’d better get on with the business of living.
Once I was willing to face it, and I said, “I’m going to go through this,” I was okay. I was in my early thirties and I went to a YWCA - that was a big turnaround for me. It was sitting down and having people that were willing to listen and not judge and just go, “It’s not your fault - you can’t help it if someone’s bigger and more powerful, you survived, you’re alive.”
There’s life after it; I’m more than what happens to my body. Now yoga is my thing: the looking into yourself, finding a home in your own soul, feeling at home with who you are.
Nobody asks for rape. It happens a lot more than it’s reported, I know that for a fact. There are so many stories and there are so many people. We all have our pain, and we all have what we think are our secrets. And sometimes if we dig a little deeper, and connect somehow, we find out that somebody else has our pain or somebody else has something similar to us. You’re never alone.
