But Not For Me   First Chapter in part

By   W I L L I A M   G U A R R A I A GLB Publishers E-Book

T H E    C H I L D M O L E S T E R

       At fourteen I was too ignorant to understand. First I thought I was being punished; next, that Leroy needed
his ashes hauled. Like Ma, my sister was fussy about sex. Besides, at the time she was knocked up and
unavailable. That he thought I was, that he could haul them on me and handle me like a girl, it was worse than
being punished.
     That year I was staying with him and my sister because Leroy needed help. He was a farmer,
and my sister hadn't been raised for a farmer's wife. Though we had a cow we pastured all over town and had
a garden big enough to feed the whole town, we weren't, strictly speaking, farmers, and Dad and Ma hadn't
wanted Mae to do work like thatthey weren't aiming her for cows. Though they liked him well enough, they
were disappointed when she married Leroy.
     Still she wasn't much good on the farm, and once there were two kids and another in the oven, no good at all.
In late May after school was out, there came a letter from her to Dad. The moment he finished reading it, he
looked at the clock. "Ma," he said, "pack some things for Tom. He's goin' over'n help out Leroy."
     To me he said, "Jerry ain't big enough." (Jerry was my younger brother; he was only eleven.) "Anyhow, Leroy'll
do you good. If he keeps you that long, you can go to school there next year."
     In two hours the bus arrived. Ma had to hurry like blazes and she missed some things. Which was all right
the more she missed the better. Once I got off the bus, I had myself a five-mile walk to the farm. There wasn't no
telephone at Mae and Leroy's.
      But it wasn't because Leroy needed me that minute or Jerry wasn't big enough that I got hurried away so soon.
Dad approved of Jerry. Me? He hoped Leroy would rub off. I don't mean the farm work. I'd had experience and he
knew I worked hard. That was the one thing about me he wasn't unhappy with. Everything else about me made him
unhappy.
     Like the baseball. Leroy had been a good player in high school; I didn't even attempt the team. Which earned me
one of my many strappings soon as Dad found out. In front of Jerry he had me pull down my trousers and bend over
a kitchen chair. "You're turnin' into a real sissy," he said; and, when I made a noise like a complaint, "You whine
anymore, I'll let Jerry take over." Which stopped the complaints, and after awhile, though by this time there wasn't
a lick of skin hardly left on my ass, the strapping stopped too.
     Another thing that dissatisfied was the hunting. While Leroy was a good hunter, even better than Dad, I always
got lost. Which aggravated Dad so that more than once he threatened to shoot me if I didn't mind my business.
He wasn't worried I wouldn't be able to guess my way back through the woods; he knew he had taught me enough.
It was that I messed up the hunting so, and sometimes we were both late for supper with him watching and waiting
for me to come out.
     Once, when I came out extra-late, he didn't hold off till home. In front of two men who had driven up behind, he
spreadeagled me over te hood of the car and really went at it. Afterwards they all got friendly talking deer, so friendly
one man handed me a bottle of pop. I handed it back. He was feeling sorry for me and he'd seed me with my trousers
pulled down.  I always had to pull them down! Them and my shorts! Dad wouldn't beat me through my clothes the way
he did Jerry. I shook my head and handed it right back.
     There was plenty of other times, over the saw horse or the car bumper or the cellar stoop. Thanksgiving, when Mae
and Leroy visited, it was over the oat bin in the barn. My fault the cow got into the oats and swelled all up. If Leroy
hadn't been therehe was almost as good as a veterinarianit might of died.
     "He can't learn nothing," Dad said. He'd stopped the beating a minute to catch his breath, his hand meanwhile
holding down my head, the strap resting across my ass. "He can't even fight. Jesus, Leroy, a girl can beat'm in a fight."
     "He don't bawl," Leroy said.
     "Bawl!" Dad snorted. "Tom! He don't never bawl!"
     Then you would of thought Leroy had paid him a compliment; for, though I expected a beating of a least twice normal
length for nearly killing the cow and trying to shift the blame to JerryJerry was to blamehe let me straighten myself.
"You can pull up your things," he said.
     I pulled them up, never once glancing towards Leroy.
     "It ain't he ain't brave. It's just he's so goddamned stupid."
     "Aw, come on, Henry. You don't meant that. You know he ain't stupid."
     "You think he ain't, uh? Well, you'd think different you had him on your hands all day." He heaved a deep sigh.
"Sometimes I wish you did have'm on your hands. You're a young fella. Maybe you'd have the patience to drive
something into that head. Jesus!it's as hard as his ass!"
     I wished so too, that somehow, anyhow, Leroy would drive it into my head I didn't have to bend over no more
and I didn't have people looking at my naked ass no more.
     You shouldn't think, though, Dad thought Leroy perfect. He didn't. Like the names Leroy gave to his kids.
Chaucer . "Who ever heard of a name like that? "Jonathan" Why the hell couldn't he just call'm John?" And the
books Leroy owned, some by writers with foreign names, some by writers with only one name, real long-ago
people, they made Dad uneasy. Them and the highballs. Why couldn't he just drink straight whiskey or whiskey
with a beer chaser 'stead of city drinks? Still, despite all this, the way Leroy handled real things more than made
up for his faults. Dad hoped he'd rub off, and he rubbed off but not the way Dad wished. He should of sent Jerry.
     At least then the prayers Jerry said every single night would of been for good reason, and it would of stopped
him blackmailing me for to have to do his chores because of Merville, the time he caught us in the woods doing
what this Merville talked me into. Jerry still admired me then, you know, but when I scrambled to my feet I couldn't
explain it was just something happened between older boys. He didn't believe me, and he wouldn't look at me,
and he never admired me again. "It ain't right; it's sinful," he kept saying. That's all he kept saying, and what could
I say? It wasn't right, and it was sinful, like jacking off but even worse, sucking another guy's cock he's pissed out of,
and I didn't stop being ashamed I hadn't knowed no better than to let it happen.
     I didn't know no better this time either, a Saturday night in August like every Saturday night since I been there
in that I got stuck with the cows while Mae and Leroy went to the movies. Cows, when you have to milk them by
hand, ain't easy work, and there was nine of them. It surprised them I never complained. It surprised them too I
didn't seem to care about the movies. Which wasn't so; I liked them well enough. It was just never before had I
had a house all alone to myself. Home there was always Ma. Here, Mae and the kids. Except Saturday night.
     Then Mae and Leroy went to the movies; and the kids, since Mae didn't trust me with them, were dropped off
at a neighbor's. Which left only the cows, and they didn't take too awful long. This time of year there wasn't no shit
to shovel or hay to pitch in, and no big hurry anyways. Mae and Leroy, first they'd shop. That's why he couldn't stay
to help; they had to go shopping. Then the movies, a full-length feature, a cartoon, a travelogue or a newsreel,
sometimes both. There was always plenty of time left for me.
     That night like any other night, when I was through with the cows, I hauled into the shed offa the kitchen the milk
cans I emptied the pail into each time it filled up. Then I took off my clothes. My mother had learned me never to
wear my work clothes in the house. The barn smell on them stunk up the place, and she simply couldn't stand it.
Not only different clothes, different shoes I didn't drag cow shit in. Mae, the same. She found me a broken-down
pair of Leroy's I used only for milking and kept in the shed with my other things.
     But Saturday night, unlike the other nights, when I took off my clothes, I also took off my underwear and socks.
That's what I waited for all week, the moment I could get myself naked. At home there was never a chance. Ma was
always around, always fussing in and out. I didn't even dare sleep barenaked. She would of noticed right away I
didn't have pajamas on.
     Here I always slept naked. Except when Mae cleaned, nobody ever came up to my room. The bed got made,
I made it myself. And when they went to the movies, I walked around the house barenaked; I even ate my supper
barenaked. And this Saturday, like every other Saturday, once my clothes were off, I climbed the stairs to the
kitchen to have it.
     Mae had left it on the table, potato salad and a piece of steak. I wolfed it down, my left hand meanwhiles fooling
between my legs. On the stove was a pail of hot water heated for my bath, but I wasn't taking a bath right away
I didn't like doing it clean. I didn't like hurrying it either; so, after putting the dish in the sink, I strolled round the kitchen
and into the parlor, even out onto the front porch one breathtaking minute. Then you-know-who got anxious, and we
went upstairs to my room.
     Nothing much. Downstairs, there was only two bedrooms, one for Mae and Leroy, the other for the kids. They'd
had to open the upstairs to find me a place. Hardly no furniture. A brass four-poster that had belonged to Leroy's
grandpa. A kitchen chair as a stand for the kerosene lamp. Them and a mirror. Nothing else, not even a chest of
drawers. Mae kept my things down below and laid out fresh stuff for me every Saturday night. A room for a hired
boy it was, and it made me feel like a hired boy. On the other hand, the first room in my life that was private.
     The mirror the biggest attraction up there, I stood before it admiring myself. No, no, not really admiring; I understood
there wasn't nothing to admire. Ma always said, "Anyone with feet like you, Tom, they're gonna be big." (My feet didn't
match the rest of me; I was too awful skinny and short.) "Stop worryin' about your looks. The right time comes, you'll find
yourself a girl friend." But I hadn't got big or gained any looks, and I didn't have no girl friend. There was only the mirror.
     So I stood before it, not admiring, likingthat's all. Liking how my eyes were half-closed and my mouth hanging open.
Liking how my cock looked out at me through my fist and how my free hand was feeling me all up. Jacking off slow at first;
then, when I couldn't stand it no more, pounding away like mad. And, while I was, all of a sudden, right there in the mirror,
there was Leroy.
     I nearly passed out, blinking my eyes shut, then blinking them open in hopes I was seeing things. I wasn't; it was
Leroy all right, his face cold and stiff, his gaze directed into the mirror below my waist till, without saying a word, he
turned on his heels and left the room.
     I was red from top to bottom. All the boys my age jacked off, but you were supposed to be ashamed of it. And you
were ashamed of it; you never mentioned it in front of older people. MeI was specially ashamed. Till I was twelve
or thirteen and had hair round my cock, I never had to show Dad my pajamas in the morning or pull down my
trousers and underwear for the beatings. And when there were beatings and they went on too long, Ma sometimes
would say, "Ain't that enough, Henry?" even though she knew you don't step between a dad and his kid. After thirteen
I suffered by myself.
      Leroy must be getting the strap. That I didn't bawl wouldn't help me this time. Not after what he had seed.
Jacking off bad enough, but jacking off while looking at yourself in a mirror, while feeling yourself all up like you
was a girl, it was real disgusting. Maybe tooI don't know; I couldn't remembermaybe I been smelling my
fingers. Once in awhile I did that. While feeling myself up, I'd feel up my asshole, then hold my fingers to my nose.
Maybe I had even had them in my mouth. Sometimes I did that too, first rubbing them on my cock where everything
was getting moist and jazzy. Maybe Leroy had seed and was gonna teach me a real hard lesson, to keep my fingers
offa my asshole and outta my mouth, not to mention my eyes off myself in the mirror.
     While I stood there and fretted, something else came weasling into my head. You see, I'd been reading this book
called "The Black Arrow." The leper in the story had to carry a bell around his neck so people would be warned he
didn't give them no disease. I got it into my head and I couldn't get it out Leroy might make me wear a bell. When I
heard his footsteps on the stairs, I thought I heard it too. Racing to the bed, I flung myself belly-downwards on it and,
squeezing my eyes tight-closed, pulled the sheet all the way up over me.
     The next minute he pulled it straight offwith a grunt of satisfaction I'd positioned myself right. After that, what he
was doing I couldn't make out, only there was noises beside the bed of things hitting the floor. One, I figured he must
of dropped the strap. Another with a metal soundwell, I don't knowI didn't want to know! Anyhow there wasn't
time to fret; for, getting on the bed behind me, he seized hold my knees, forcing them forward underneath my belly
my ass came up into the air. He really meant business, this far worse than with Dad. Dad's way, one hand on the back
of my neck I wouldn't be bowled over when he struck, meant he couldn't swing hard as he liked. Leroy didn't have to
brace me. My knees and forehead and elbows digging into the sheet, he could swing every bit as hard he liked, he
could swing two-handed if he liked!
     Worried as this made me, it worried me even more he started rubbing something on my asshole, something moist
and slippery and cold. Nobody had touched me there since I was a little kid. My head was already swimming with
shame and with confusion. It made me more ashamed he touched me there and more confused I couldn't think what it
meant 'less it was he meant to hurt me there.
     Which is what he meant and it hurt. You don't know how bad it was it hurt, the pain so terrible he shoved this big
thing in, a gasp howled outta my mouth.
     "Shut up. You asked for this," he said and thrust the thing back and forth, with every thrust forth bare skin slapping
against my ass till finally it dawned on me he didn't have on no clothes, and what else dawned! The shame rolled over me like a river.
     "No!" I gasped. "No!"
     "Shut up," he repeated. His left hand, which had been gripping my shoulder, changed now it gripped the back of my
neck instead and made me shut up. All the rights were on his side; it would of been criminal to complain. And I didn't
bawl neither, and I wasn't about to. But cornholed! Tears filled up my throat.
     You heard of it happening in lumber camps where there wasn't no women. The fellow it happened to was always
someone who couldn't take care of himself. A wise guy growed too big for his britches or a weak-spined sissy.
You always treated him like shit. You looked down on him before he got cornholed and you looked down on him after.
I didn't need to guess what my future in this house was.
     On a forward lunge the thrusting halted. His breath blowing hard through his mouth, his fingers trembling on the
back of my neck, he reached down under for my cock. What he found didn't disappoint him.
     "You wanna try it yourself?" he whispered, mocking me.
     Try it myself! In the position I was in! And without no hard-on! Salt it was he was rubbing into the wound.
     "Come on. Try. You been doin' it every Saturday night, ain't ya?"
     I shook my forehead back and forth across the sheet. "Can't," I whispered. "Can't." Which after a little while he
accepted, for he took out his cock and got off the bed.
     "Don't move! Stay just how ya are!"
     Course. Exactly like I might of guessed, the cornholing was only the preview. It could never be enough just by itself.
     "Here."
     A damp cloth dropped onto my hand. Here? What the heck was the "here" supposed to mean?
     "Come on, goddamn't! You get the bed dirty, how you gonna explain't to your sister?"
     The shamelike a river! Like a wild raging flood! Frantically I grabbed the rag and dabbed back at myself.
It fitted! It fitted like everything fitted! Like the bell he might as well have fitted round my neck!
     "Doncha say nothing to'r. Ya hear me, Tom?"
     Say nothing to her! Was he stark raving outta his mind! What was I supposed to tell herI got shit on my ass?
Or was I supposed to say I jacked off in front of a mirror so Dad could travel day and night to lay hands on me?
     "Shit, I don't need to tell ya." He giggled. "You would of had some fast talking to do, though, she came home.
She saw those socks'n underwear on the shed floor she would of wondered what you was up to."
      Another thing that fitted, the fool I'd been. To emphasize the point, another boyish giggle which halfway through
soured out into rough impatient why's: Why was I keeping my eyes closed? Why was I staying that way, for Christ's
sake? Cause I still expected the strap, that was the why; but, when his hand returned to my neck, it was to pull my
whole body forward till once again I was flattened out on my belly.
     "Rest awhile, uh, then take your bathyou don't smell good. I'll bet you anything you skipped it last week.
You hear me? I gotta go get Mae make sure'n take't."
     I heard him, but I didn't answer. I listened, listened to what I should of heard before, his footsteps on the stairs,
the sound of the screen door slamming in the shed, the engine of the car. A fool, yes! A goddamn stupid fool!
Unlike Mae who you couldn't drag away from the movies with a team of wild horses, Leroy often got bored.
After watching awhile, he'd go outside and talk to the fellas on the street. There was always the chance he might
come home. And my socks and underwear down there like a message to him! Dad was gonna kill me! Absolutely
stark-raving insane kill me! Not for one minute did I believe Leroy would keep this to himself. Though he had
warned me not to say nothing, that meant the cornholing. How I got punished didn't concern Mae. Why I did, did.
He had an obligation to hint it to her, and she an even bigger obligation.

....... and more to come.

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