I Was an Emotional Prostitute Part 3

Trigger Warnings: Verbal abuse; bullying, suicide thoughts

During the divorce, Don moved out of the house. A couple of years later he remarried and moved to a city north of us. Despite the abuse, I still thought of him as my father. After all, I didn’t really have a good father figure in my life.

On occasion I would take the bus to see him, which was a three hour trip, one way. One time I accidently got off at the wrong stop. I’d been reading a book, looked up, thought it I was almost too late for my stop, and pulled the bell. I borrowed a phone to call him to come get me. He had to drive 14 miles or so to pick me up because it would be at least another hour before the next bus. He was so angry with me that he chewed me out the whole way to his house. Told me if I hadn’t really wanted to come, I should have told him so. He couldn’t understand that I’d made an honest mistake.

Another time he wanted me to come see him at Christmas time. I didn’t want to, so he told me that if I didn’t come see him, he would withhold the present his mother had sent to his house for me. I refused anyway, even though I really wanted what his mother had sent. She had a knack for choosing just the right gift. I have often wondered what he did with it and what, if any explanation he gave her.

The abuse Don did to me wasn’t the only thing about him that caused misery and shame. His last name, which became mine when he adopted me, was Gass. I took a lot of teasing over that. Children in elementary school would see me coming and say things like, “Oh, no! It’s Gasser. She stinks!”

Then they would run away from me. Or worse yet, they would threaten to beat me up for simply walking by or through the area in which they were playing. Telling the playground monitors didn’t do me any good. They simply told me to stay away from the kids. Telling mother didn’t do any good either. She told me to ignore them.

The other kids also told me I was ugly. Adults would tell me that I was going to be very pretty when I grew up. I know they meant well, but it made me feel a bit like the ugly duckling. Only my question was, when would I be grown up enough to become the lovely swan?

To make matters worse, I was bullied on a couple of occasions when walking home. Once when I was a couple of blocks from school a group of kids quickly surrounded me as I walked. A boy named Jimmy was on his bicycle. He held up his front tire in front of my face while telling me to kiss it. I refused, but he kept insisting. When I realized I was pinned against the fence surrounding our babysitter’s house I screamed as loud as I could. The babysitter’s mother came out to see what was wrong. The kids quickly scattered. I thanked her for coming to my rescue, then told her what had been happening.

The other time, I was walking across the playground after school one day, when a couple of older boys started chasing me. One of them threw a rock at me and hit me in the temple causing a cut, which required attention. I went to the school office where I was taken care of by the school secretary, Letty. Several days later, I went to the school office for some reason and happened to notice a framed picture of a boy on Letty’s desk. It was one of the boys who had chased me that day. When I told Letty this, she said, “Keith? Oh, no, he’s a nice boy. He wouldn’t do that.”

Until then I had thought Letty was an adult I could trust. I never felt safe or comfortable with her afterwards.

Another time when I was walking home, I saw a couple of boys up ahead hiding behind some trees. Because I’d seen them, I didn’t think there was anything to worry about. As I walked past their hiding spot, I heard a thud. Then one of the boys said something about a branch blocking it. Only then did I realize that one of them had a large rock in his hands that he’d tried to throw at my head. The tree branch saved me from serious injury.

            The last time I was bullied, I was riding mother’s bike up and down the street in front of our house. Some girls I knew from school walked by on their way to the airport. We all started talking then one of them lit up a cigarette and wanted me to take a drag. I didn’t want to do any such thing, but she insisted. I clamped my mouth shut and refused. Pretty soon I realized she wasn’t going to give up. We happened to be in front of the next door neighbor’s house, so I thought if I screamed loud enough, mother would hear and come running. I screamed; and sure enough, mother came running. The girls ran. I told mother what had happened and that I thought I knew where one of the girls lived. She drove me to her house and we talked to her parents. They came by later with her in their car to ask if she was the one. I said she was and never heard another word about it, but from the expressions on their faces, I am sure she hadn’t heard the end of it.

There were times even at this young age when I was so depressed that I wanted to kill myself.  I literally hated my life because of the abuse I’d suffered. I felt life wasn’t worth living. The biggest reason I didn’t was that I could not figure out how to do it in a relatively painless manner. The act of killing myself scared me more than the idea of dying. I am thankful I didn’t.

I did however, try to run away a couple of times with a friend and my brother, Mike. The first attempt we did in broad daylight. A neighbor lady saw us and figured out what we were doing. A few minutes later, she pulled up beside us in her car and ordered us to get in. She then drove us home and told our parents what had happened. Mike and I were grounded for a week or so. The next time we tried it; we had agreed to meet after going to bed. That time Don, mother’s second husband, saw the packed suitcase sitting in my closet. He proceeded to open it up and dump the contents onto the floor of my room. I never did have the courage to tell him that he was the biggest reason I wanted to run away from home.