The Problem with Perverts

Tuesday, February 26, 2019

He asks me if I’ve had sex yet, his eyes glowing with the strange look he always got on holidays when we were alone and he drank too much.

I'm 12 this time but this is not the first time he has asked these questions of me, the memory of it going back to when I was still small and I found myself alone with him in the dead of night.

Everybody was always telling us not to take candy from strangers but what about those who we have come to trust.

“Do you know what it means to go around the world?” he asks each time and each time I tell him I don't know when I do but do not want to open that gate for him to walk through.

I know I am not the only kid my age he has asked these questions of and I have seen him come home bloody after some Latino or black father beat the crap out of him for trying what he is trying with me.

But he thinks I am safe, that having me alone makes me easy prey, when I knew at 5 he had a sickness that he could never cure, and something I wanted no part of after having already spent my early life in the grips of my mother's madness.

But the madness I see in his eyes is different more calculating like a wolf looking to feed on me.

He licks his lips as if he is thirsty like a vampire aching for blood -- only with me he's picked the wrong victim.

Even at 5 I know better than taking candy from anyone one -- even those I trust, having lived with the mad travels of my mother from here to eternity and back, recognizing the signs of danger other kids my age would not.

“Ever have sex?” he asks, his eyes glowing as he licks his lips unable to control his thirst.

I know what the next question will be and I already say no, just as I have said know before and will say again until I am old enough not to tempt him or big enough to beat him up the way the Latino and black fathers do.

I do not want his candy, yet I wonder if someone at sometime long ago offered him candy he could not refuse and now having tasted its sweetness cannot get enough.

And I wonder about those kids with no fathers to protect them will like the taste the way he does and offer some other fatherless child candy the way he does me.

I wonder why I don’t tell anybody about these moments; why I keep his secret when I know he will go and feed on someone less immune than I am with no father to stop him if anything short of killing him will.

Even at 12 or 10 or even 5 I know I should tell someone but never do and never will.

I just tell him no.