In first grade I went to Sunkist Elementary School. My family lived on First Street in Port Hueneme and we had a fireplace, a sunlight in our living room, and sunflowers the size of plates in our backyard. My teacher was Ms. Williams, she had teeth that weren't well kept and she always reminded me of a rat with really nasty, sharp yellow toenails. I never once saw her feet, but I knew that her toenails must match her teeth.
That year was the only time I can remember a boy liked me. If I remember correctly, his name was Walter and he was Mexican. We would spend time together at recess and one day he didn't show up. He'd never come back. His older cousin told me that he had moved but he had been planning on giving me a ring. Walter, who also didn't have the best teeth, was a good boy in my life and I liked having him around. My six-year-old self wanted to run away with Walter.
The same year another boy, Troy Pena, touched my vagina. It made me feel embarrassed. I went home and told my family about it. The next day my older brother Jason tried to find him at recess to give him a talking to. It was different from Walter. Walter was kind to me and made me feel like I was worthwhile. Troy reduced me to being nothing but a body. There was nothing more to me to him than my body and my sexuality. In first grade I knew that there was a difference and that it was not okay.
That year I lived down the street from a girl named Elizabeth Navarro. She was a year older than I was and my best friend. I would go to her house to play, mostly Mario on the Nintendo. Someone in her house was a fan of pornography. Elizabeth would find the videos and show me the covers. One time she cut the pictures out of the video case. Inappropriate pictures, of women wearing fake male sex organs. She gave me some of the pictures and I took them home and hid them in my drawer. My mom found them one day as she was moving my dresser to go to a different house. She thought that they had to have been from one of my uncles, and afraid that I had been molested because I also knew way too much about sex for a six-year-old, I found myself going to a psychiatrist. All I remember from her (well, the first time, I would end up going to see the same doctor in high school) was that she had stuffed animals and games that I could play with. My family went out of town when I was done being examined a few times, and the doctor lady never told my mom if she thought something had happened to me or not. I think it was all Elizabeth that taught me the inappropriate things. Because aside from the porn pictures she showed me (I can't recall ever watching a video) there was also the shed.
Her family had a shed in the backyard that they turned into a little playroom for Elizabeth and her younger boy cousin. One day we were in there playing together, along with my little brother Jacob. Elizabeth insisted that we should pair up and kiss, two on each side of a partition so we wouldn't see the others. I wanted to be with her boy cousin, because I didn't want to kiss my brother. But Elizabeth demanded that I kiss my brother while he laid on top of me. So I did. Like innocent, clueless children trying to copy what they saw in the movies. I didn't like it. I felt like I was being forced to do something that I really did not want to be doing. Then I heard giggling. I looked up and Elizabeth and her cousin were peering over the partition watching the whole time. I felt disgusting and hated myself. I have never, ever spoken of this incident aloud. And I've prayed for 17 years that Jacob does not remember it. I couldn't bear it if he did. Because I'm afraid that if I felt like I had been forced into something I didn't want to do by my friend, I don't want him to have felt that I forced him into doing something that he didn't want to do by his only sister.
Was I sexualized before this? Or was this year the year that I became acquainted with human sexuality and felt the pressures that go along with it? Or was this something else altogether?
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