"The Father-In-Law"

As the Title Indicates, this is a blog about my experiences as a Step-Mom.

However, as the step kids are grown, having their own lives on the other side of the continent, I have more time to muse on other subjects.

Being a Step-Mom is many things but, one thing is constant, you are forever defining and redefining your role as a woman in a non-traditional space. This is happening on a broader scale for most American women as we find our voice in the era of #MeToo

I have hestitated sharing my own #MeToo stories. I hate to give the predation that much energy but whether I like it or not, those experiences have helped me shape my sense of self, my beingness. I have many, many tales of predation.  Being a strong, outspoken woman makes you a bigger target, they can hear you and See you - and they don't like it.  Some of my other stories include:  "The Grown Up", "The Boss", "The Big Kid", "The Lawyer."  Many more...

This one is titled:  "The Father-In-Law. " Or Simply:

"Daddy"

This was not the first time, nor the last, that I was molested by a man whom I trusted as family.  I have only ever been attacked once by a man I didn't know. All the rest have been friends or family of friends.

I am going to write it down. I don't know if it will be useful to anyone or if telling it will help.  I feel these things are remembered in my body. According to Peter Levine in "Waking the Tiger," all trauma is carried in the body, regardless of cognitive memory.

I fell in love the day I graduated from college. Let's call him "Joe." Joe was from a very catholic country in Europe and was living in NYC illegally. His brother, "Matt" had come to America on a student visa and then come out to his family as gay. In reaction, the very catholic parents sent Joe to fetch and bring home little brother, Matt. Theirs was a very tight family of five children and a big extended family.

When Joe first arrived to NYC and saw how happy Matt was and how free he was in NYC to explore a bigger life, he chose to live with Matt instead of fetching him home. About 6 months after this was when we met.  We fell in love rather quickly and made plans to move in together. He couldn't keep sleeping on his brother's couch and I was newly out of college and on my own financially - it made sense. I had an internship in London for a month that first summer and when I came back we would have a flat where we could start our life together.

At the end of my internship, I decided to make a trip to Joe's home country, to meet his family. We were SERIOUS and we would be living together so this seemed respectful.  Arrangements were made that Joe's father (my future Father-In-Law, perhaps) was to pick me up and take me to Joe's sister's flat in the capitol city before I went down to meet the Mother, Mary.

The sister, Beatrice, who was a bit of a local celebrity, planned to take me out to a three day music festival she was covering in another city, so we could get to know one another. I was excited to go to a new country, meet my new family, and keep building the foundation for the life I wanted, with the man I loved.  The plane got in around 8pm.  It had been a short flight, and I had eaten before I left London. Over the phone, long distance, Joe had said this: "I can't wait for you to meet Daddy! He's a great laugh. Everyone loves Daddy."  

Beatrice had also assured me that “Daddy" would pick me up, no problem, and get me to her house.  As arranged, daddy met me at the airport.  I called him Mr. ___, but he insisted I call him, “Daddy.” That felt odd to me, especially because I was very close with my own father.  I offered to call him "Joe," as he shares his first-born son’s name. 

Daddy was a teetotaller but had a very jittery nature and spoke very fast.  I asked him how far away was Beatrice's house, he said, "Not more than 20 minutes."  We got in Daddy's vehicle but just after we left the airport, not five minutes out, he stopped almost immediately, at a roadside bar saying, "You must be hungry, we will  stop here and get you a bite to eat." I explained that I had already eaten and I didn't need to stop. He pressed the issue so I thought I might want to use the bathroom, anyway. 

We got out and just outside the door into the bar, he stopped me and hugged me and then grabbed my head and kissed me.  He kissed me with his tongue jabbing into my mouth.  I froze. I didn't understand. Was this European kissing?  It was violent and penetrating and my head hurt later from how hard it hit the wall with his tongue propelling my skull.

Taking my frozen body as consent, and pushing me harder against the wall, he stuck his hand in my pants and tried to finger me while trying to kiss me again.  This was awkward even for him, because it was a cold night and, luckily, I was bundled up under heavy clothing. 

With that pause, I regained my senses enough to push him off and say, "Stop that. I don't want that. Please don't. "  He pushed harder and pushed my head into the wall.  He said, "I just want to give you a warm welcome to the family." 

I pushed him away eventually, from what I recall. (I repressed this memory for years), and he asked me if I wanted to go in and get a drink. I told him I did not.

I told him I wanted to go to Beatrice's house. He took me there.  We drove in silence. I was stunned, a piece of me frozen. No small talk. Just get me there...

We arrive at Beatrice's flat. Her two roommates, a pair of sisters, are awaiting my arrival. They had been about to go out and I was so grateful they were still there, rather than off getting a drink on a cold night.

Daddy was speaking very quickly, like a junkie on a high. The sisters showed me the little room I would stay in.  They jokingly called it "The Coffin" and told me my Joe had lived in the Coffin when he had been a roommate there, just a year or two before.

I wanted to shut the door and crawl in the coffin and cry. I didn't have a friend in this country. I didn't know where I was, even. Why was I here?  What I was doing? Who would I tell?

Daddy was still chatting with the sisters and wouldn't leave. I couldn't ask for food because I had said I wasn't hungry. I thought he might say something about me. I was rigid with terror and could barely speak to the sisters. My mouth could not make the words. Help. I am hurting. I am scared. I have no cash and don't know who to turn to, at this moment.
For those who know me, it is a HIGHLY unusual condition for me to be unable to talk. As my Mom would have said, "I didn't know whether to shit or go blind."

Finally, Daddy left. 

The sisters made some desultory small talk but I was desperate to tell someone what had happened. I needed to stay awake for the return of Beatrice.  My mind raced.  This was in the day before ATM's and ready cash internationally. Banks were not open. Where could I go?  My Joe had told me that Beatrice worshipped her father. Who could I tell?

The younger sister finally left to meet friends for a drink. Alone with the older sister, I alluded vaguely to "this country not being what I expected," and the older sister clicked her tongue. She asked me if Daddy had touched me.  I was stunned. She guessed?? 

Turns out, he had done the same thing to the younger sister many times and neither sister could tell Beatrice (who owned the house and rented them rooms) for fear of the backlash.  This serial molester, was given a pass by all of these women. Then I asked... how could I tell Joe? What will happen?

I realized that I could ruin the relationship that I felt sure would end in marriage. We had already discussed it, he had found us a flat that we were going to move into as soon as I returned to NYC.  How could I tell him this? How could I NOT tell him this and go forward with our relationship? 

The older sister cautioned me not to speak. She would not break her own silence and it had not even happen to her. She was so imbued with patriarchy, yet so wildly angry, we could only exchange our cynicism about the world. She was one of the first who taught me to swallow my voice and to delay my experience, to stuff it down and swallow my rage.

Ironically, the older sister became a very famous feminist playwright in her own country writing about female silence. Some work better in allegory, I guess. 

Over the next five days of travel, partying all around the country, I never mentioned the attack to Beatrice. We finally landed at her parents' house where her Mother, Mary - knowing who I was and what I was likely to become - had moved herself and Daddy out of their own Master Bedroom and made me sleep in their bed. Beatrice objected that it was all too much, but the weirdness never stopped.  I spent the next three days making sure that I was never alone with Daddy. At night, I locked the door of the Master Bedroom that was his, by day, I cried in any empty room I could find when those rare respites between meeting relatives occurred.

Twice, in passing, he tried to grope me - always with that fast, sweaty breathy voice.   And then on my last day, he pulled me aside in the hallway and threatened to punish me physically and any way he could if I ever spread the lie about his behavior. He knew what he had done and I was to be his accomplice. 

This is such a boring repetitive story, as I write it. It was horrifying to me and singular. However I have now read congruent stories to this one so many times in the last few weeks that even I see the mundanity in this evil.

Also, on that last day of my visit to the family at Daddy and Mary's house, a very expensive transoceanic phone call was made to NYC to Joe and Matt. The were excited that we were all together. 

Everyone had a moment on the phone with each other and Joe and I were the last two to speak, people gave us privacy and stepped away from the only phone in the house, out of the front hall.  Joe was so delighted I was there and I could hear the joy in his voice, nearly to tears.  All his beloved people were in one place! 

In response, however, I was subdued. He sensed my uncharacteristic reticence and asked if anyone had gotten drunk or weird with me.  I told him not drunk. Then he asked abruptly, "Did Daddy touch you?" 
I said, "Yes."  He guessed? He knew. He knows! It will be fine.

He knows his father is a monster and I will not be blamed.  But it was more complicated... He didn't like that I told him. He felt betrayed by Daddy and me. He had nowhere to go. You could not get divorced in their country. You could not be gay legally in their country. You could not speak of molestation or rape in their country. His father was a big man in their region.  He told me to take care and come home soon. Our new home together was waiting.

When I finally got back to NYC, I moved into our flat. We had a cold water tenement with a bathroom ceiling that regularly exploded lime, mortar, drywall from the dripping ancient pipes in the walls and floors.  In the first month I was there, I started weeping. I attributed it to being done with travel, jetlag; but as the crying continued, I thought "it must be that I don't want to be done with school, don't want to grow up... "

But the truth was, and I will write about this again, I was in shock from the time I left that airport to the time I finally arrived back in the arms of Joe. And, upon arriving back in New York City, the flat he had gotten us was through his community. And we were surrounded by ex-patriate men from his home country and all of that culture that demanded patriarchy, silence from women, submission to their frailty as it combined with the toxic masculinity that was downtown New York in the 80's. 

My (until that time still free) feminist soul was in a bind. Live by their rules, with their required silence from me, or live alone, outcast. 

Two years later, Joe had finally decided to move home to his country so he could "sober up." That was the end of our relationship. But there was never a final "moment." We remained friends even after leaving. Within 6 months of his return to his home country, he had knocked up a gal and they have been married, now, about 25 years living on the other side of the country from Mary and Daddy.

A play I wrote performed in the capitol city of their country a year or two back. I looked up Joe, Matt and Beatrice on social media to invite them to the show. I received no response except from Matt who befriended me on social media.

Matt, who when the story of Daddy's assault on me was told, said, "I'm not surprised. I know you are not the only one. I'm sorry that happened, that's a tragedy but I am not one bit surprised." 

Matt, still gay, still outspoken, lives in Paris and records his music and is a writer.

He never moved home.