Читать книгу I Am Nobody - Greg Gilhooly - Страница 10

THREE

ATTACKED

THERE WAS NEVER a clear start to what he was doing, never a moment to look back on where I could say to myself, “There, it’s so obvious what he was doing, I should have never let it happen.” But then again, when I look back on all of this, all I can see now is that every single interaction with him was just such a moment, when “Of course, it’s all so clear what he was doing. How could I have been so weak, so stupid, to let this all happen?” is the only possible response.

In a sense, our relationship just evolved from our initial meetings. I devoured Graham’s progressive theories about hockey systems and his love of fast-skating defensemen and speedy forwards who went deep into their own end to win back possession of the puck. I craved the attention he gave me in our meetings, being treated as a peer, as an adult, as somebody more than I was at home. I felt fortunate that he was willing to help me progress with my hockey and my academics, that he was willing to mentor me and bring out the best in me. So, when he suggested that we meet not at a restaurant but at a school field for a training session, I was ecstatic.

Graham started setting up training sessions where he would show me various stretching exercises and body-positioning techniques to incorporate into my own off-ice workouts. This was in addition to the reading material he brought to our meetings which confirmed my belief that Graham was indeed a most different type of hockey coach. I was already completely captivated by his detailed analysis of the shortcomings of North American hockey and the benefits of learning Swedish and Soviet systems. Those systems were known for their focus on off-ice learning, so it was only natural for him to move on to dryland (off-ice) training, something they focused on and which at the time was still seen as somewhat revolutionary.

I was the perfect willing subject. Beyond wanting to excel at hockey and take advantage of what Graham had to offer me, I was still, deep inside, the insecure, overweight young boy who in my own mind needed to work extra hard on my physical conditioning. No matter how tall, strong, and athletic I had become by age fourteen, in my mind I was still the uncoordinated, pudgy boy who hadn’t yet grown into his body.

Graham had picked up on that, and he was very good at taking the stories of my past and using them to home in on my insecurities to convince me that I needed his training methods.

“You know, a guy like you with big legs has to work hard to keep up with the play.”

“You know, a guy like you has to fight for everything you’ll ever get, because nobody’s ever going to help you like I will.”

“You know, coaches hate smart players, because they fear they can’t control them, they can’t teach them.”

“You know, just because you’re smart and you know what to do doesn’t mean your body is going to do it all on its own.”

I was hearing the echoes of “book smart, worldly stupid.” I was once again seeing myself as an uncoordinated, overweight young man. Neither could have been further from the truth, yet both were the reality I inhabited.

Graham would never participate in any of the physical exercises or drills, blaming his asthma (or a hernia or an arm in a sling or some other excuse). I have no idea why it never dawned on me back then that these ailments would in no way have prevented him from, say, at least doing some of the stretching with me. I guess I was just so caught up in the moment and what I was doing that I never even noticed that he preferred to just lean back and stare at me. I would stretch, I would do squats, I would do push-ups and sit-ups, all under his watchful eye. I would mimic a goaltender’s stance and shuffle side to side and lunge laterally back and forth and back and forth until my thighs ached. I was always a model student for him. I viewed this as my opportunity to learn from an expert and impress a leading figure in the hockey community, one who could give me everything I had ever dreamed of.

It must have been a very difficult time for him. Having identified me, having taken steps to bring me under his wing and groom me to be receptive to his thoughts and desires, and having isolated me from my family, coaches, and friends, and having made himself the most important force in my life, he now had to test my boundaries and assess whether the time was right for him to make his move on me. Would I be compliant? When could he safely take tentative steps to find out? How could he move forward without fear of getting it wrong and potentially opening himself up to being found out?

Because he did not have constant exclusive contact with me, he would have to be very careful in making his next move, for while he had won my trust, there was no natural setting for him in which he could physically take advantage of me since I was still living at home with my parents. He only had our meetings and these workouts.

But Graham was brilliant in his own way, the Rhodes Scholar of sexual predators.

One night during a training session, he pushed me until I was exhausted. I had worked my legs so hard that I could already feel them stiffening as I sat down, leaned back, and gulped for air. I was sweating hard, my shirt was soaked, and stopping felt so good. The intense exertion gave way to the usual post-workout euphoria that I craved so much and that felt so good, so intoxicating. I loved to give my all to the task at hand and work to the point of utter exhaustion. That had always been my reputation in everything I did. I was the guy who worked the hardest in all the drills, the one who never stopped short in the skating drills but went all the way to the end of the rink and slammed the boards with my stick, who always stopped on the line, never before it. That’s just who I am. Or rather, who I was before him.

Graham started going on about the physiology of a hockey player. He noted that a hockey player was required to perform everything on skates, two small edges of steel.

“A hockey player looks with the eyes, which starts everything. Power to move where needed comes from the core and torso, and this power must be transferred to the hips and down to the legs. From there, all of that power has to be carried by the feet in the skates, which each sit on top of the ice on thin edges of steel, which transfer all of that power to the ice. A hockey player requires very strong feet, very special type of feet that can withstand the enormous forces. Can I take a look at your feet?”

Not a demand. Not a command. A request. A simple request that at the time made enormous sense to me.

“Sure.”

I reached down and took off my socks. I leaned back and put my feet in the air for inspection. He took one foot and cradled it, stroked it. He squeezed it, twisted it slightly, ran his palm from heel to toes. He pressed into the arch. He released the first foot and grabbed the other. Same thing, an inspection, a slow, deep analysis of my foot. He stared at each foot for what seemed like a long time. It all seemed so scientific, so analytical.

“You’ve got good feet. Big, strong feet. They’re perfect. Perfect.”

The physical barrier was broken.

From then on, post-workout foot massages became part of the routine. It didn’t seem strange to me but instead made perfect sense after what he’d told me about the physical mechanics of hockey. My feet felt so good after his massages, and I’d thank him for making me feel better and helping me recover from the pain of the drills.

Said another way, I thanked him for touching me.

The pattern was repeated. He made it the new reality as my training continued, despite any injury he might at the time have—a bandaged hand, an arm in a sling, whatever might have otherwise stopped a less persistent and less needy connoisseur of feet. So now, in addition to being my mentor and my friend, he was my massage therapist. He had already broken me down intellectually and emotionally. Now, finally, he had made his first physical move.

This new pattern of foot massages continued for several months. Some foot massages lasted longer than others, some involved wedging a foot against his chest when he could use only one arm because of injury, some seemed a little different from the rest, but nothing, absolutely nothing, seemed to me to be at all inappropriate or anything other than a foot massage.

But of course, Graham wanted more, and eventually “more” happened.

“MORE” STARTED OUT as a training session just like the rest. Only this time he wanted to show me a book about hockey theory, Tarasov’s Hockey Technique. We talked a bit about it, nothing out of the ordinary.

“How do you feel? Tired? Sore?”

“Of course.”

“Here, why don’t you lie down and I’ll work the pain out of your feet.”

A foot massage, but this time, it wasn’t like the others. I sensed something was different even as he started normally, with my feet. He seemed different, a bit aloof, not completely present. He had shown me the book, but we hadn’t spent much time looking at it, and I sensed it had been a pretense for something else. Maybe these thoughts are something that I’ve created to make myself seem smarter about what eventually happened, or maybe I always knew that this was going to happen. I don’t know.

He started to move beyond my feet and slowly work his way up my legs. I froze. I did nothing but lie there, my eyes closed, wondering what was going on. I was afraid. I was confused. I opened my eyes, trying to get my bearings and understand what was happening. But all I caught was a glimpse of him, his face, his eyes.

It’s his eyes that I remember the most. His dark, dead eyes, the kind of eyes that show absolutely no emotion at all, that seem to look right through you as if you aren’t there—the eyes a shark has, cold, searching eyes that see without engaging, eyes that are always on the hunt for prey. I will never forget those eyes. I can never forget those eyes.

He moved slowly up my legs, never saying a word. I kept my own eyes shut as much as I could after seeing those eyes. They scared me. But it was too late. I had seen his eyes, the dead eyes, and they would be with me for the rest of my life.

I had no idea what was happening. I mean, I knew exactly what was happening, but I had no idea what was happening.

Where is this coming from? Why am I not pushing him away? What should I do? What could I do? Why is my body responding? I must want this. I must like this. This must be who I am. I have to get out of here. But what will he do? What will he say? What will I do? Who will believe me? How do I explain why I was with him? How do I explain all of the meetings I’ve had with him for months? Who can I speak to who will understand? How do I make this go away? Why am I responding? Why is my body responding? Why can’t I stop responding? Why can’t I say anything? Why can’t I stop him? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?

It all happened in utter silence. There was a radio on, no doubt to muffle sounds, but I could no longer hear a thing. All I could hear was the blood pumping through my temples, pounding in my ears, the sensation of being removed from the world around me and locked in my own space. At least, that’s how I remember it. Or maybe that memory came from the hundreds, if not thousands, of nightmares I’ve had ever since. What I know with absolute certainty is that I couldn’t hear a thing.

He rubbed my legs. He fondled me. He masturbated me. He exposed himself. He rubbed himself on my face and inserted his penis in my mouth. He returned his focus to my feet. He masturbated and ejaculated over my feet and shins.

I did nothing. Well, I guess that’s not completely true, as I did respond in a small way, with a kick, but it was, at most, a halfhearted one, more a straightening of a leg than anything else, something you do when you’re pretending to wake up with a jolt rather than hit somebody deliberately. Whatever you’d call what I did, it certainly did not prevent him from accomplishing whatever goals he had set out to achieve.

He groaned. He turned away, turned his back to me, and walked away, leaving me by myself for several minutes. And when it was over, once he had finished with my body—well, how could I make sense of what had just happened? How could I explain that I didn’t attack him, that I didn’t lash out and stand up to him and stop him right then and there? And today, how can I reconcile what I wish I had done back then to avoid this, to stop it, with what I didn’t do then?

I covered myself back up as quickly as I could. But I didn’t run. I didn’t know what to do. I sat there until he came back in. And then we talked. Rather, he talked, I listened. He talked for a long time. He calmed me. He comforted me.

“You’re progressing so well. You have so much talent, your legs are so strong, you have limitless potential. You know, people like us have to support each other. We’re not like others. They would never understand who we are. They don’t see things the way we do. I know you’re a bit lost right now, but I understand you. I see who you are and what you can be. People like us have to look out for each other. We have to support each other. But people like us, working together, can make anything happen.”

That expression again: “people like us.”

Graham had just shown me he was different. Now, with those words, he was telling me. Maybe he had been telling me all along and I just hadn’t understood. I thought “people like us” had referred to the talented jock as geek, geek as jock. Now, with what had just happened, I was pretty sure he was telling me that I was gay.

And then he confirmed it: “If our secret ever gets out, everyone will think you’re gay. Nobody will want you on their team or in their program. It would be the end of everything for you because nobody wants to deal with people like us.”

I don’t know if he meant it as a threat. I mean, of course he did. But back then I saw it as something he feared would happen to me if “the secret” ever got out, something he didn’t want to happen to me because it would cause me pain and suffering and he was there to look out for me.

The things a goalie doesn’t see when he’s screened.

I should have run away from him forever. I didn’t. I could have stopped him right there. I didn’t. If I had stopped him, nothing would ever have happened to Sheldon, to Todd, to Theo, to all of his other victims who came after me. Except that I didn’t. I didn’t stop him from anything, and that is my shame. I’m not ashamed of what happened to me. My shame is that I didn’t stop him and that others after me had to suffer as a result. Their suffering is all my fault. I could have prevented it all.

Instead of running, I felt sorry for him. Oh, I was full of rage and fear, but at the same time he had somehow made himself come across as a victim in all of this, presenting his homosexuality as something that caused him pain. He showed a vulnerability and needed support. I felt sorry for him. I actually felt sorry for him.

I walked home, a zombie detached from the world around me. I cried like I’d never cried before in my life. It was a long walk, a route I usually jogged at a leisurely pace, but I couldn’t breathe properly. It was very cool outside, that I remember, but that’s about all. I couldn’t feel anything. I was off in my own world, far removed from this one. Lights were blurry, and once again I couldn’t really hear anything. Was I in shock? Probably. I cried in solitude during my walk home. There is so much that I don’t remember, that I don’t want to remember, that I have actively tried to forget over all of these years. But there is also so much I will never, ever be able to forget.

When I got home it must have been late, but there were several lights still on.

“Where were you?”

“Out.”

It was the normal reply of a normal teenager. I, the supposed golden child, had never had a curfew. I had my own room in the basement all by myself, and I could pretty much come and go as I pleased, often without anybody even noticing that I was away. With that one word I went down the stairs, taking the twelve quick steps down to the low-ceilinged basement I had to duck to enter, and stumbled into my dark bedroom with the one small window up at ground level, the room that flooded whenever it rained.

Alone in my own home, I had no one to turn to, and I certainly wasn’t about to start talking to anybody about what had just happened anyway. I was supposed to be perfect, and what had just happened was not perfect. I had no perspective that night, no ability to take a step back and process what had happened, what was happening. I was caught up in the middle of something I did not understand, something so horrible that it was beyond anything I could remotely consider. Who do you turn to when the only person you have to turn to is the person who has just done something horrific to you?

His words haunted me: “People like us have to stick together.” I thought I knew him, that I had understood him. I hadn’t. Who was he?

More importantly, who was I?

That’s a question we all ponder at some point in an attempt to find the meaning of life. But that night it was just something that kept echoing in my head as I lay in bed unable to sleep, quietly crying through the night until the darkness was broken by the early morning light straining to make its way through our back windows and downstairs into my room, the only place where I would ever again feel safe.

Even though Graham’s homosexuality was something I couldn’t really understand, it didn’t scare me. The way he had constructed things, positioning himself as a lonely and misunderstood victim, made me sympathetic toward him. In fact, it made me think he was even better than the rest. He, a lonely man, an outcast in society (remember, this was nearly four decades ago), was still engaged in the most manly of Canadian sports and at a level where he was seen as more progressive, more intelligent, simply superior to others. I liked his story and its appeal of an underdog triumphing against all odds over the know-nothing Neanderthals. His story got to me at both an emotional and an intellectual level.

The reality, of course, was that he was no underdog. He was just a sociopath, a serial sexual offender. He was the powerful one. I was his victim and the true underdog. But I couldn’t see that, for he had groomed me to see the world his way.

Graham had been very clever. After physically assaulting me, he didn’t come out and tell me he was gay. He simply referred to “people like us,” leaving it to me to connect the dots (a disgusting metaphor given what he had just done to, or rather on, me). He left me to process what had happened and reach my own conclusions. He hadn’t presented me with something I could reject out of hand. Rather, he positioned his own desire for a sexual relationship as an inevitable conclusion for me to reach myself, for me to conclude that I wanted what he wanted.

His implications that I too was gay, that people like us needed to stick together and support one another, that we needed to keep our secret, and that I needed to come back to him for his support all fit into the narrative that he had constructed from the information I had given him over the past months. Graham had slowly made his world my world, and my world was now being further defined by him as he wanted me to see it. In this construct, his physical actions toward me made perfect sense. He was bringing me out of my shell and showing me my true self. He was liberating me.

To me, Graham’s interest and support were the actions of someone who cared about me. They were actions that respected who I was and what I needed to do to become the best me that I could be. The furthest thing from my mind was that I was being groomed by a sexual predator so that he could abuse me. No, to me he was the one delivering to me all that I needed, all that I wanted, all that I deserved. The physical actions were just a new dynamic in my development of who I was and what I would become. In this light, he was helping me be me. I believed that he and only he knew anything about me and who I really was. I believed that he cared about me.

At least, that’s what I kept telling myself when I was crying the hardest.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I was gay. I had thought I knew who I was. I mean, I had an ability to understand who I was through outside feedback about school and hockey, but my sexuality had never been on my radar except in respect to the normal issues all teenagers deal with. Graham was now introducing something dramatically unexpected.

I had previously always thought, never doubted, that I was heterosexual, and had never for a moment thought otherwise. I had never fantasized about anything other than girls and women and, while I was quite shy, I was very interested in girls. So it was confusing for me to find my body responding to him physically. I try to make it easier on myself now by noting that the average teenage male can have an erection simply because a breath of wind hits the right place. This protects me from facing a difficult reality that I continue to grapple with to this day, notwithstanding all of the therapy and the greater insight I now have into how the body operates. Whatever he was doing to me, I was responding to it physically.

Although I had always thought that I was heterosexual, evidence to the contrary was piling up. The result was a great deal of confusion and a huge impact on my personal development and self-image.

The easiest part of assessing the impact of sexual abuse is considering the actual physical actions themselves. Still, words like massaging, touching, fondling, groping, masturbating, oral sex, and ejaculating don’t come close to describing the horror of what was going on. And all victims, whatever they have experienced, live with that horror of the physical actions. There is no erasing the memories, and until they invent a pill that allows you to control your own dreams and nightmares, I will never know from night to night whether I will or won’t revisit those horrors in my sleep.

It is harder to deal with the lingering uncertainty and confusion created by the disconnect between who you once thought you were and who you now see yourself being. A single incident of abuse by Graham left me with deep questions about myself, questions I answered in ways that left me less than whole.

Who am I? I must not be who I thought I was.

Why did my body respond to his advances and actions? I must have liked it.

Why didn’t I stop it? I must have wanted it and I deserve what I’m feeling now.

But there would be more than just a single incident. Much more.

I was, on the outside, still succeeding at everything. But sexually confused, isolated from my parents, and without close friends at school or a support network within my own hockey team, on the inside I was now alone with a secret, which, if revealed, he had told me, would shatter all of my dreams.

But was I gay? I didn’t have any girlfriends during high school. Oh, I had crushes on girls and I had dates with girls, but I had little free time outside of my extracurricular activities for dating. As much as I thought that I was heterosexual, I couldn’t honestly and unequivocally confirm to myself that I wasn’t gay, especially now that I had had this physical response to a man. There was no Internet to consult about sexual abuse. There was nobody I could speak with, nobody to counsel me. My physical responses to him were all I had to form a judgment against myself.

And I still had him, his interest and his support. In poker parlance, he was now all in with me. All in.

Me? Who was I? I had no idea. I thought I did, but not anymore.

Me, that teenaged kid, lost, all by himself?

I, as I had known myself, had ceased to exist.

I was now nobody at all.