My Two Fathers: the Cop and the Priest. Which was worse?
Before my Dad and the Priest. I would place this at when I was age 2.5 years, because that’s when the beatings started. I was happy, enthusiastic, and curious. I had a big mop of curly hair like Harpo Marx; I greeted days and people with brio. I was happy in the house and out of the house.
After my father started beating me, I was careful and wary. He started calling me Crisco (fat in the can) which I hated. He cut my hair short at home when my mother was out.
Decades later, he told a sibling: when [me] was two and a-half, he had beaten me like he beat prisoners in the station house. He was a cop.
Being outside was better than inside, being with others was better than being with my parents. I learned my block and my neighborhood. I still had most of the core of myself when I was out.
I became a reader because he respected reading. Years later he’d say I had my head in the books too often, and why did I read the front of the paper when I should be reading the sports pages? This came up a few times. I stuck to the front of the paper. I was not a joiner, I was a loner.
I was not a sports kid. I played Little League for two years because my father told me to. I was never any good at it and he wanted me to be good at it. I did play stickball, football, and skate hockey in the street with the boys on the block.
I saw a blurb on the 6pm news, Channel 7 with Roger Grimsby, about reporting child abuse. The next day, my dad was sleeping after a midnight and my mother was out, so I called the operator to report I was being abused. My dad heard me on the phone, told the operator never mind and told me to never do that again.
When I was 8 years old and in the 4th Grade, the Priest started on me. He was in my ass and in my mouth. He was very stern and corrected me, he wasn’t in any way kind or sensitive. It lasted through 4th, 5th, and 6th grade. When I was in 7th grade and school resumed after summer, I expected to resume with him but he’d gotten some new 4th graders. He was finished with me and I was replaced by a younger boy.
In fourth grade, told my Dad about the Priest. He didn’t like it and challenged the truth of it. He locked me in a cell to shake me. I didn’t cave in, I stuck to it, and we never spoke of it again. I had told him, and he didn’t believe me, and I learned about power and grownups who stick together.
After the priest I was shook inside. I went to high school and I was floundering. The first high school, in Brooklyn, I was over my head with the Jesuits and didn’t get what was expected of me. IF I’d stayed there, I’d have flunked out and quit when I was 16. But we moved to Long Island and this second high school was much easier.
After the priest, I never had any plan. No sense of high school and a job, or high school and college. I was aimless and unmoored. I never assumed anybody was going to treat me decently again. I was cynical and weary and although I kept going to school I had mostly given up on the inside. I tried to join the Navy at 15 but I couldn’t swing it. I got a full ride at a college and failed out.
Although the priest's raping me was a big thing, my dad beating me and teaching me to "suffer in silence" was a bigger thing.