Memories of Junior High School

 

Not My Photo

Trigger Warning: Trauma, Sexual Abuse/Exploitation

I wrote this back in late January. The story is a culmination of years of work

on my personal recovery. I share it now, in the hopes that its content is helpful

to others. God bless all of us who have survived such madness.

Today, I walked through my old Junior High school. The building has been updated to a multi-purpose recreation center, but the memories remain.

I was twelve years-old when our student body moved from the old building on Main Street, to the palace which was our new Junior High school.

The facility had new furniture, new everything! Best of all, it had an indoor pool. In the spring, I joined the recreational swim team. A broken arm that summer would cut short my participation in the program.

There were other activities I began to experiment with during that spring and summer.

In May of 1975, I journeyed into Portland. I heard rumors about Deering Oaks, and had been the recipient of jokes in relation to those stories. The bullying I endured at Canal School had faded somewhat, but there were still some very angry boys, larger than I who would threaten and intimidate myself and other smaller boys.

Their rhetoric was rife with homophobia, and they seemed to intrinsically know that being homosexual was the worst thing someone could possibly be. At least, I was convinced so.

Looking back at how my classmates were front-loaded with such a disparaging narrative of homosexual behavior in Portland was emblematic of the homophobic environment I was raised in.

Tough place to be a gay kid, for sure.

But there I was, barely thirteen, and riding my bike down Brighton Avenue to check out “The Oaks” in all it’s mystery and splendor. Later in life, I would realize that other instances of sexual trauma influenced my drive to go there.

There were public bathrooms in the park then. I locked up my five-speed bike and headed inside. This was years before the internet, and there were mini-novels of hook-up information scrawled on the bathroom walls. There were viewing holes between each stall, and a couple of grown men appeared more than eager to expose themselves to the excited and frightened child that I was.

One man in particular took a special interest in me. He handed me a note wrapped around a pencil. The note offered activities that promised incredible physical pleasure. Initially, I refused, but he persisted. He promised fun and good feelings if I agreed, and coerced me to go with him.

I should add that this man was in his 40’s.

I went with him, and he took me down to the old Casco Bay Lines. He directed me to a private bathroom, and then followed me in moments later.

He preformed a sex act on me, but I got scared and left. He followed me out and offered me a ride back to the park.

Being unfamiliar with where I was, I agreed, and he gave me a ride. He offered future interactions. Said he knew of other boys my age and wanted to take pictures of me with these boys. He promised more fun (fun . . . yeah), and left me his phone number.

Then he did something else. He handed me twenty dollars.

In my young and vulnerable mind, I knew that meant I was a prostitute.

I threw his number away on the way home. Tears streamed down my face as I pedaled back into Westbrook. I was now a manifestation of everything anyone had ever made fun of me about. There was no going back.

This man found a vulnerable and curious, gay child, and left them exploited and victimized. I now had a secret I knew I must never tell. This man promised mutual pleasure, but stole from me. As surely as anyone has ever committed a crime, this man violated me. I was far too young to be a willing participant in his abuse of me in my childhood.

Regardless of this man's orientation, he was a predator. My childlike experimentation resulted in a theft of my sexuality. It would take years of suffering through alcoholism and addiction, and a trek into recovery to reclaim it.

A few weeks later, I fell out of a tree I was climbing with some friends. It wasn't a great height, but it was enough to cause a broken bone in my left arm. No more competitive swimming that summer.

Soon after breaking my arm, I tried marijuana for the first of what would be many times. "Partying" became a huge part of my young life.

In the fall of 1975, I began my 8th grade year. The Boston Red Sox would lose to the Cincinnati Reds in game 7 of the World Series. I was a weekly alcohol and drug user by this time.

The following spring, I joined the Junior High swim team. I set a school record in the 50 yard backstroke, and swam well that season. I met some good kids and started swimming for the Westbrook Blue Fins that spring and summer.

But trauma and shame had a hold on me. And the addiction to alcohol and drugs that ran in my family began to take hold in a way that would lead to a fifteen years struggle to get and stay clean and sober.

Thank God for swimming! Swimming was the one thing that tempered my substance misuse and abuse. There were brief periods of sobriety, but always followed by a bender. Only we called it partying.

As a young adult, the benders became more frequent, and goals . . . more fleeting.

Yet swimming set the standard for an ideal to be achieved. Before I graduated, I was a Maine High School state champion and Westbrook High school record holder for the 100 yard backstroke. Swimming offered me a safe alternative to my potentially destructive lifestyle.

And years later, when I finally asked for help with my addiction to drugs and alcohol, it was my falling short as a lifeguard, swim instructor and coach that created a place of willingness for me to get and stay sober. There were struggles, but there was also support form the aquatic community.

In some cases, it was the kids I used to coach who offered the most support. When they found out I had gotten sober and was living at Serenity House, a local High School team invited me to states to watch them swim and be with them.

It meant the world to me to know that kids I had coached when they were ten, eleven and twelve years old, wanted to help me dust myself off from the rigors of active addiction.

About 18 months ago, I had business in Deering Oaks. I attended a rally to bring awareness to the heroin epidemic both locally and nationally. After the crowd cleared, I went to the spot where those bathrooms used to be.

I wanted to visit my 13 year-old self that had made that fateful journey into Portland some forty years ago.

"I forgive you." I said. "You had no idea what you were signing up for that day. It wasn't your fault Michael."

I reflected on all of this as I wandered the halls of my old school today. I gave that 13 year-old a tour of what he had been through and how his life had worked out.

I have friends, support, faith in a power greater than myself that keeps me clean and sober, the love and respect of family and community, and a loving husband truer than anything I have ever known.

 

And I felt truly blessed to have survived.

M