making sense of it all

Well seems like I have been answering all the wrong questions. I have been chasing all the wrong demons. When I was in third grade at the Montrose elementary school, I was molested by a neighbor hood kid. I can’t say his name and any prosecution of the crime is the farthest idea from my mind. I’m not looking for money or fulfilling any vengeful quest anymore. I’m over all that.

I should begin at the incident. When the big brother of my neighbor came into the drive three doors or so up the block from my house, He said “who wants a sucker”.  The other children including my sister seemed at once to take a herd mentality and began to move off. But if you know anything about stormin Norman by now he doesn’t scare easy.

I stood there thinking why don’t these idiots want a sucker? Whatever must be my lucky day and stood there waiting for my sucker. Well it seems the drive way wont such a good place to give me this sucker or maybe he didn’t have it on him cause he said lets go over here and took me behind the tool shed.

Well behind the shed I followed because why wouldn’t I I still want the sucker. When we stopped just around the corner, I said where the sucker? He said it’s in my pocket. Well I stood there still waiting and waiting now with baited breath because I was about to get the reward for being brave. He removed his half erect penis and presented as the “sucker”

Well I never saw an erect penis before, and it did not resemble any body part I had and I questioned as to what flavor this sucker was. He said “it taste good” well stupid me put it right in my mouth. Two seconds didn’t go by before I realize that did not taste like any sucker I ever had before. I looked up and said I don’t like it, well you  can imagine he did not have to work too hard to push his penis into my mouth twisting a lock of my hair and saying suck it boy. He came and laid load right on my face.

Traumatic as that may sound stormin Norman was in for worse. My sister took straight up and went home telling my parents. No I know you must be thinking that that is a good thing. Nope not so much. Well my parents asked me about it alright.

My mom took an account of the events, and then made “Billy” come in and hear the story. Well I recounted the events same as I told you. To a shaking head and terrible frown my father had the brilliant deduction that I am gay. That I should have known the difference.

My mother and he fought doggedly about the issue. Ending with his reluctantly leaving the house with me in tow to go to the police station. I can still hear her saying “he’s your son, your gonna take him” e left all right, but instead we went to his friend Jonny smiths house. He had a caboose in the back yard. I was always tickled to see jonny, a guitar player and friendly soul/ after a couple hours we returned home.

Mumma asked how it went, and my father said I told you they won’t gonna do nothin. She was livid. When mother was livid she really shook the house. All four feet nine inches of her stomped around and you would swear a herd of elephants were passing in parade. She was mad but seemed satisfied that he had done his duty.

But Judy didn’t trust Billy so much. And the next day she began to question me about the police station. Of course I knew noting about any police station I had gone to jonnys house. It did not take long for her figure out the sequence of events and billy got kicked out of the house. He spent some time over at Michael babichs house several weeks as I remember.

I would like to say that my father was a man of conviction and with time and retrospection looked to correct his error. But nope, just yesterday he brought me my motor cycle. Painted with leopard spots, and told me that I can’t wash off my spots. Wow what a guy. My hero.

Hey look world if someone pulls his dick out on your third grader; the problem is not your child. Just in case there is someone else out there in my situation. It will take years of counseling to make since out the whole thing.

You see that is the problem with putting you idea of what someone is onto them, it may not be true. And certainly you have to be intelligent enough to know that a third grader does not know what sex is, and certainly has no business making his mind up about his or her own sexual identity. Only people who have been through this kind of thing will have any idea about how this feels.

So dad thanks for the motor cycle, I will cover those spots up you painted on for me like I have for years. You see it’s up to me how I display myself to others. All the facts behind my back all the really hurtful things you have done I forgive you for, you’re stupid you did not know better, all the forgiveness and mercy I sought from you I now bestow upon you.

To esteemed friends at the county. I apologize, not because you are innocent, because this was never about you. I felt I had to prove my case to protect my sexual identity, something I have been doing almost all my life. But now I’m ready to start living. I found by Christ and moving forward the man I was meant to be.

I’ll be talking to lee this week tomorrow dad. I hope he is just as understanding……

James Norman Robinson

the train wrek

Came a cold December long around the year let me think must have been the Christmas of 1984. Pond was froze and school left out for some week after the Christmas holiday normally given to students of the Stonewall Jackson Junior high school. I was in the in the eighth grade and likely as not I might just make the school baseball team come spring.

I was a stout boy arms like wiry saplings and could flat whiz a ball. But uh mostly boots adorned mis pies, as often as I would go bare foot. My first day on the practice field I wore boots, work boots. They had the most tread of any shoe I had. And I figured why not. Old tony cook took to teasin me right off when he saw them. He was quick with a joke and an all round good friend.

My dad was the baseball coach and I was the pitcher. When I wasn’t too wild I dominated the game. I knew two pitches fast ball, and change up. I only used the change up once in my life during a game.  My victim was David Christian. I threw him one down the middle that he swung on and missed. He glared after the cut, and looked straight at me when I got the ball back from Les, Tony’s older brother.

Well I paid no attention to him whatsoever. I perched up on that rubber and took a look in at les, gave a nod and brought the house. David swung this time, and he kept his eyes open. Gave him a damn sight better chance of hittin it and when he glared this time, I looked him hard. Again I stood fence post tall as I looked in at les. I gave a nod as if to say yep the heat is what I wanted you to call. Looked David a split second, drew back like an archer turned my hips and clinched my teeth.

David swung so far before that pitch landed in the dirt ahead of the plate that the crowd had anticipated the incident and a laugh let out from behind the plate. I had a spectator that night, aside from the normal family and neighbor my dad’s work buddy Lamar had come out. And he took quite a chuckle out of that swing I breezed through the rest of the game with admiring looks from the concession stand. I have never been more content than that when I knew I was pleasing my mother. I’m doing that now.

The school bus picked me up two doors up the road at Chris Brewers house. We played army men together I took some army men from him one time and I regret it to this day. Stealin is not in my nature as I had left him some very fine replacements, but probably along the same reaction as the presents tween me and Debbie on the famous pony Christmas, him getttn my half on this occasion.

 I was standin in front of his house when I heard the car go off the bridge. As the bus pulled to a halt lights blinkin, we could hear screaming coming from down the road on that cold winter day. We looked at each other as we got on, and the kids that got on during the subsequent two stops seemed equally puzzled as they got on. But all my attention was on Stephanie Shaw, that’s the only reason I didn’t ride with mumma. I did not particularly like the bus. But I knew she was going to be riding cause I had taken the idea that being friends with her younger brother was a good idea, even though the first time we met he fought with me by choice. Simply on the idea that he could beat me. He couldn’t.

Well as we approached the bridge, there was a screaming girl that I gave a first glance and did not recognize. But when she started hollerin I recognized it was my bloody faced sister wet as a drown rat. Mrs. Wade put her arm up to hinder my exit and I fainted to go toward the back, she gave a grab at me as I went down the steps. I think I might have hit two of them on the way down, two outa three aint bad.

The car was sittin up right when I first seen it. Mumma was inside dead still. But I felt her there. Under the bridge into less than neck deep water, but more than waist high, and movin with quite a force. I took a notion to go right in. but I resisted and took to the other bank as it was closer.

Along the way I secured one of the boards that had been dislodged in the crash and took the notion of bridging to the car. She was not moving, but I knew from my CPR class in school that we had just done. That since she had been in cold water, and since it was cold out, she may still come back. Well the worst mistake I ever made was not tying that. The next thing I saw she was layin on the other bank one foot hanging out covered head to toe.

The look on her face in the casket could tell you she had unfinished business, and my mumma Judy Ann Horne did not care not much at all for unfinished business. I like to think that she has always been workin to finish this business, this business at hand I mean. This business about the previous summer. In which I began my workin carrer.

Live stock is a common thing to indulge in for folks of my ilk. I wanted to be a cowboy before kid rock shot his first cap pistol, ridin pony is in my blood as I am of some distant but worth mentioning by my mother a kin to Mister Wild bill Cody himself. My grand Mother Mary Farrel Came the blood line from that branch of the family tree. I took the encounter of that evidence found in the state archives by my mother filling out of the family bible had revealed.

Our family heritage was important to her and it is now important to me. I have problems to face and memories to cleanse. When mumma got me the job workin with her family friend I was abused for the second time. This time I did what she had said. I fought him and not let him put his penis into my mouth.

After he had sodomized me we got back into his plumbing truck and we rode away with me tellin him was going to speak with Uncle bubba about this when we got home. Uncle Bubba was a plumber, but not the workin kind, the tell somebody else to work kind. And I was workin with the do the work kind.

He saw me as a victim soon as he laid eyes on me I guess. He asked me what are you smiling at when we got out the truck the first time. Told me he was going to wipe that smile off my face before lunch. When I went to the bathroom after lunch he had waited all he was going to wait. He busted into the stall and grabbed me by the back of the hair and rubbed his penis around my face until orgasm. Threw a rag in my face when he was done and laughed smiling as I sat there dumb found.

Well I told him I was going to tell Lyman Junior, bubba as I knew him but as directed, Lyman Junior at work. Lyman was highly upset the next time I saw him. See old jerry dropped me off at the office about come probably 535p, right after Bubba decided beer thirty had come., and he took that truck stold the tools out it dropped off in the black neighbor hood and reported it stole. Man when Lyman junior got there the police was hot behind him.

The barrage of questions would take your breath. Talk about confused. They was askin, bubba was pissed as I ever seen a good southern man, and I had no earthly idea what they was talkin about where was the truck. Where did I leave it? All kinda of cursing which I won’t supposed to do but may have utter a god damn once to my recollection. But I got in the care with Bubba and we went on to the house.

Uhh, getting fired from your job with your mumas brother. Man talk about a bad kid. I felt horrible. Laid awake in bed for some nights thinkin about it. The first time I ever masturbated was then. That summer right after it happened on a sleepless night. I felt strange. But agreed after the first night it helped me sleep. I learned to use my masturbation as a tool to sooth my anxiety I have learned of late.

My mother told me she wasn’t going to help me anymore after that. She said I was on my own. I like to think she is helping me now, speaking through me to those who may need to hear. I want to help others whom have suffered the same. I want to tell them what it is they need to hear, the victims, the boys whom have suffered the same.

Sex between men is a sin it’s indulged by the sick of sole and absence of the lord. Seek first his love and he will bring you as he has me peace. I was just about to take my own life trying to prove that my Uncles employee was infect my attacker. Proving an old case like that can really be hard to do. Pretty much when it happened thirty years ago, its water under the bridge. But for me it was never about that. For me it was about proving I wasn’t gay.

The first time I was raped on eanes lane. The incident was put off as one that I had acquiesced willingly. My mother insisted that I cahnge schools after the first incident. We moved to Hanover County, and I became James. Before then I was Norman in school.. I changed from Norman good ole boy, to James bad kid who stole a truck, and for the next years I did my best to live up to it. Drug use every form of debauchery, but now I am saved because I asked for forgiveness. You too can enjoy this freedom if you but ask for it, and know that anyone whom does acts as these upon children have evil within them living and the only thing to do is pray for them to receive god,

I have spent some 13 months broken up with my second wife. The same without seeing my daughter. I miss my family and I’m really hoping that righting this will make everyone understand that I have been really worrying about proving I am not gay. Strange that my brother in law told me he has never thought I was gay. He is the first one I told my revelation to after being saved. I have been spending my entire adult life proving I’m not gay.

Should you ever find yourself in the position of having to explain such things to your son. Please keep this in mind. No matter if he is your family member, your church brother, your fraternal or even you paternal brother, your son and his life are at stake. How you treat your son is what is important, if you are not courageous enough to stand up for him, stand behind him. Let him know it is no reflection on him what happened, let him he was a victim let him no just because you are victimized once it doesn’t have to be a lifelong condition. Let him grow his own plumage then see what flock he migrates toward, in fact judge not lest ye be judged.

the early years

Well i guess it must have been 1974 when we got our first pony. Got it for Christmas we did, my sister Debbie and i. she is three years older than me, and uzsed to getting her way. I lover he to death but she is kinda mean. Well we’ll get back to that.

My parents Billy and Judy, were young parents. She was 15 when she got pregnant with my sister. All 4’9” of blue eyed lighting, Judy was a deliberate and determined woman. Stricken with a mouth bout two sixes too small for her teeth, she had a reluctant smile. Billy bore the same cross and I’m pretty more than sure the commonality of their cross brought them closer together. As my godmother Rita said, Judy loved her some Billy.

Well I can’t say whom it were that forwarded the idea, but they did not just give us the pony straight away. They wrapped a saddle up and put it under the tree without a name tag. Well my sister like I said was pretty used to getting her way, and let me just interject that she got quite the load of gifts in comparison to my pile.

Then there was the saddle, I mean I was five but, it was a wrapped up: saddle under the tree”. I did not have a horse duh. Debbie didn’t have a horse, so she did not move to her already overflowing pile of girly crap. Not a single army man in sight and she is over there complaining about what she didn’t get not paying a bit of attention to the saddle WRAPPED UP UNDER THE TREE.

Well as I sat left a little dumb found by the glaring lack of things in my pile…..i said who the saddle is for. Well Debbie jumped right on that thing hardly got the paper off before she was testing it for her ass size. Naw just kiddin, she thought it was for mumma cause like I sad she idd not have a horse. So we looked the thing over for a name tag at the behest of my father as I recall. None found it remained a mystery.

Well without a whole lot to do with pin wheel and jacks I got for Christmas going down to feed the horse was not such a bad thing to do on Christmas morning when the issue arose. You know break the ice on the water put down fresh hay and clean up some droppings. Well I was up for horse business most any time. But Debbie had just enough girly crap to keep her from jumpin at the idea of leaving but she came around to the idea  rapidly with a look from my mumma.

Well wouldn’t you know old Santa had left the pony in the field and failed to leave a note in reference on the saddle, which I pointed out to my father. Hell I didn’t know he was Santa. It brought a look from my mom. And they laughed, as we road the two blocks up gay avenue to the horse field we had rented from local farmer and my official buddy, Mr. Crafton.

The day went off great and everyone was completely the picture of a wonderfully happy family. I would say that that emotion is the one I have always tried to stimulate in the relationship I have with my one daughter. I think if you ask her she will tell you the same. The two of us can’t talk right now, but I hope before I finish writing this book that changes. Im tryin to do this in a week. I got no time to waste here.

So you get the picture of the foundation. From here we must begin to grow the family both working him still in the gard billy and Judy were accomplishing raising two kids and buying a house in their twenty’s. Ahh, the seventies. Great music everything seems possible everything was changing. But the more things change the more things stay the same. I was in kindergarten when I met my first “black person”. We was working with the friends of my father from work to build the fence that housed our live stock, consisting of one horse and one pony, Palomino mare, and gelding bay pony stand about 18 hands, tween the two of um….bout eight on the pony and ten on the mare…..naw im just fooling around they was legit animals. And we loved as family. So here come this “black person “ along as I was instructed to call him and not to talk to him whatsoever if I did have a need to. I think just don’t say nuthin to him was the official directive, but should the need arise he was officially going call him a black person.

Seemed a lot of fus about somthin I could hardly pay close attention to as I was being told because they was so confused on the message. And I guess it added to the anticipation of seeing this guy for me cause I took a special notice of him when I saw him first time. I said hello when he spoke, as instructed, but when he stuck his hand out, I looked straight at daddy, he looked away, and I looked at mumma. She gave a nod, and I stuck my hand out and looked that old nigger straight in the face and shook his hand.

As he stuck it out there, I noticed it won’t blak on the bottom. And I called attention to it to my daddy when I said, he aint black all over he aint a nigger. He part white. Well poor old Chris was offended as you may imagine, but my dad offered no apology and as that old nigger left, he complained quite a bit. The other four or six assembled boys, well they aint particularly seemd to miss him and they went on about their business.

Well the whole thing was a little confusing to me. But as far as dadday was concerned I didn’t do notin wrong. I was content nobody hit me, nobody hollerd at me, and when I met the second black person in my life I knew how to handle it I figured. Well wouldn’t you know it, but I just mees things up left and right. They called me stormin Norman. I recon I must have been a rapid little guy. Used to take bed sheets of the line and jump off the shed roof use em like a parachute. Fun but mumma raise hell if she caught you.

Well you might be thinkin somethin now that aint just true. I took him Wayne as just another person. And I spoke to him and shook his hand and took notice it was quite a bit darker than the hand of Chris. I talked to him on the play ground and we both had new bikes. So I took a chance to invite him to race bikes. Eanes lane would be the spot long about the intersection of Bromby lane. He told me to meet him but I told him I couldn’t ride that far alone my mom would have to come. I told him just come on to the house and get me then we can go. I went bike riding often, but just in front of the house.

Well I waited and never saw Wayne that afternoon, but when I saw him the next day at school, he said he had come by and I had told him the wrong house.  I said you aint go to thie right house you mean, cause I live on the corner of eanes lane and gay avenue, 4421. Give you my phone number if you was the police and I need little help, as instructed. Well we agreed that he would come back tomorrow and I agreed on a bet that he was in the wrong house if he came yesterday.

Well when he came to the door that afternoon, I was waitin. When mumma opened the door, I went straight to it. She was in the mid I told you yesterday, to Wayne, when I said “I know him” he’s my friend Wayne from school” she said no he’s not and close the door right in Wayne’s face. Well you want to talk about bore me to tears with a confusing tell me what to do and argue session worse than that about the what to call Chris, this whole black people issue is just well confusing.

Well seems I was going to get a call to travel on account of the whole thing. Daddy was gonna take me down to white head road. And we was happy about it the two of use were. But seemed like mumma was having some reservations regarding the issue. As turns out she intervened and we never went to white head road, which I had never heard of nor seen before, but it was right down by mumma house, and I been by it a bunch of times, and there was gonna be people I knew there, people I liked granddaddy, uncle bubba, and we was gonna go like Halloween like a Casper the ghost seems.

Caser wont my favorite costume idea. Woulda like super man, or cowboy, casper not so much, but ok. Do I get candy? Yeah you do daddy said. So I was in. and mumma put the dam icsnay on the deal and said he don’t ?see a difference  so there aint no difference” and “were not going  to raise him like that” well her word was final when she turned her back and daddy he didn’t argue much, bothered me worse than him,

Race relations were strange in the south during the seventies. I think everyone was sort of forward looking and we were all learning to live together. I was the first class that had no kids in the school that had been segregated previously during their scholastic career. My parents weren’t as old as many of my teachers. Segregation was liked in Richmond Virginia. By both whites and blacks and we still practice quite abit of it voluntarily.

You’ve met the family and we’ve grown. But old ideas dye hard, but people are taken from us far to early and it hurts awful bad when it happens as it did ont the following Christmas eve night. My Grandfather Lyman Horne was taken off the earth to our heavenly fathers embrace on December 24 1976. Saddest I have ever seen my mother’s face,  Before but not since.