My clear, direct reckoning with sexual assault.
Truth to tell, my father still lives in me… A shadow cast across every human face I see.
Content Note: Explicit description of parental abuse. If you’ve experienced sexual abuse or assault, this piece could trigger you.
The Room of Revelations
“You’re not hearing me!”
Quietly… I hate it when she pauses then goes all quiet… “I think I am.”
She looks directly into my eye. I know it’s supposed to calmly assure me she’s quite serious….
Not good timing. Eye contact makes me uneasy. I try my usual focus-on-the-eyebrow fake. But I can feel myself building…
Whether she notices my anxiety or not, she pushes on. “Please tell me again what happened.”
This is 1983. Marin County, wealthy suburb of San Francisco.
And therapy feels like an elaborate mind fuck. An expensive elaborate mind fuck.
I’m 30. Publisher of Unix World, my first business computer magazine. Riding the wave just as PCs and Unix are peaking in Silicon Valley. I’m smart. I know it…
“Counseling” is just fucking Dungeons & Dragons… a role-playing mind game for two. There’s this all-powerful dungeon master making rules as she goes… in secret. And then, there’s you. Shackled in a plush, refined trial-by-ordeal chair.
You’re not allowed to win this game. Cuz the professional interrogator is always right. Heads you lose. Tails ya go outta your head.
This is my third attempt working with a therapist. I just don’t get this process…
“Look. Nothing really happened.”
I sigh, “I didn’t get raped. It was just… weird.”
I slump back in the stuffed chair. I break eye contact, then stare into her office floor. Tasteful, dark parquet oak.
I mumble bitterly, “Now I’m sorry I told you.”
She leans into her desk over a tidy arrangement of pencils, rolodex, objets.
“It was weird.” That freaking compassionate mask. Like a funeral director. “Please… try me again. From the beginning. I want to understand.”
“Fine.” Like I was really dying to tell her the first time. Much less again.
I lift my gaze above her thoughtfully arranged bookshelves. Up in the left back corner of her acoustic-tile ceiling… I glare at some imaginary audience. Then subtly roll my eyes… just enough… and shrug for their amusement.
“He was sitting in the recliner. In his underwear. Sipping scotch. With a book in his lap…”
Pause. Physical memories… the light… the quiet in the house. In my mind, I’m there, in that moment…
The only sound, rustling eucalyptus trees brushing her window.
She clears her throat, “And then…?”
She startles me.
I lose her office for a moment, don’t know where I am. I focus… then snap, “That’s when it got weird. Like I said.”
Her eyes widen. “I want you to know that I very much want to hear you.”
Then, quietly, “But I also want you to be aware of your volume. You may not realize you’re getting louder.”
Pause.
“I think people might hear you through these thin walls.”
Pause.
“Just think of us as if we’re talking in your living room. But there are other people in the house.” A nod. A smile. “We want to hear each other. But no one else needs to hear our private chat.
“And, please, when you can, tell me… What happened next.”
Pause.
I speak to myself. “Okay… Okay… Okay.” I rub my eyes. Over and over. I see stars… Stim.
Pause.
I swallow.
Clear my throat.
Then fast as I can…
“He said I didn’t know how beautiful I was. How I could probably sleep in a different bed every night for the rest of my life. But that would be wrong. And that I knew that would be wrong. He and my mother had raised me to know that would be wrong. He asked me if I was still a virgin. I said, yeah. I lied… Just barely. He said, good. He said he wanted to tell me something before I went off to college…”
Long pause.
“Then he got up.”
Her whisper… “What next.”
A dark rush of words… a vomit of my words…
“He got up…. he got close… I could smell the scotch on his breath… he said not just women would want me… some men too… I would have to make a choice… like he made a choice… then he pinned me and kissed me and rammed his tongue down my throat and groaned and began rubbing his dick against me I could feel it through his briefs… it was wet…. and I went numb and I didn’t move and I was silent inside and there was a flash of light…
“He looked at me.
“Just looked at me.
And it was like he wasn’t there… again.
Like the other times.
This weird absent look in his eye and he said that I was the only one.
The only one he ever felt that with….”
Now I’m winding down… tired, fighting to keep my eyes open.
“What next.” She whispers again.
I guess I snap at her… again. “We went over this before. Okay?…
“I don’t remember. I don’t remember. I was upstairs in my bedroom in this weird silence. In the dark. Still in my work uniform. Just sitting. All I could think over and over was I stink and I need a shower….
“It was just weird. Weird as fuck maybe. But it just wasn’t rape. I READ the book Deliverance. Saw the movie. That hideous hillbilly attack. Nauseated. THAT’s rape. I dunno what this was….
“I just can’t get over how weird it was. I keep thinking about it….
“And then the freaking nightmares.
Him in that chair.
Back.
Not dead.
In total control again.
Drunk. And rotting.
Rotting in that chair.
Flesh just rotting off his bones….
“And I’m frozen in place. I can’t move…”
I hear my voice. A hurt child’s voice….
She sits, quiet.
Looking out the window. Kind of awkward pause.
I’m thinking, She’s tired of my shit. She doesn’t know how to “professionally” tell me, Get the fuck over it…
“John.” AGAIN with that fucking pause.
I want to HIT something. ANYTHING. Stop with those fucking pauses.
“John, What if he had done that… to your sister?”
Like a thunderclap. Then someone is SCREAMING in the room…
“I WOULD’VE FUCKING KILLED HIM. I WOULD’VE FUCKING KILLED HIM. FUCKING KILLED HIM…”
“John. Stop. Sit down. You’ve got to stop. Just sit.” Is she reaching for the phone?
I snap to. I’m standing. I’m not in my chair. My arms are waving.
I stop…
I sit down…
I sob.
I finally hear me. I don’t need her answer. I know.
I’m stunned. I start to fall asleep…
Back then I always started to fall asleep in emotional distress… Maybe I did briefly lose consciousness… I had before with other therapists.
After a moment I start apologizing. There are reassurances back and forth. She gets me water. I sip. My throat hurts.
“Are you feeling better?” I nod.
“Good. I want you to listen to me for just a moment.” I nod.
Having trouble following what she’s saying. I say, “I’m having trouble staying awake.”
“I see that. You’ve got a lot to process….” She looks down, thinking. Puts down her pen.
Speaks slowly, evenly… “You came to me with several areas you were concerned about… your career… your relationship… your isolation. But when I asked you to pick the first, top one that you wanted to work with… You chose this memory.”
Silence. I believe I’m supposed to fill it…
“Yes.” Hoarse whisper.
“You want me to tell you what I think.” Glances at her admission notes on me. “You want to know, is this event in your life important… or should you just move on.”
Tiniest of smiles… like she got it right…
“Honestly, I think you know.” Then she says, “I’d like to ask you something… Hard…. May I?”
Awkward silence. “Um. I guess. Okay.”
“You understand how difficult, how destructive for a girl it would be if her father sexually touched her. Even something that some might call, ‘minor’… say, intentionally brushed her breast. Especially… if it happened repeatedly?” She waits for me to nod. “Different people might call it different harsh things… but you understand. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
“You were his son. You were 19. Just exploring being an adult, sexual male.”
Pause.
“Do you think… that the fairly explicit sexual activity you just described… with your father… would be easier for you, less destructive for you… because he didn’t actually penetrate you…. because you were a male?”
And things suddenly got real, real clear.
And even more confusing…
Because what she DIDN’T know to say… what NO ONE knew to say to me back in 1983…
I was his autistic son.
And of course, this was just one incident. One individual. One act… And there were other acts. Other individuals. From age 3 on.
If you’ve seen autistic children’s agony,
what annoyed adults casually label “meltdowns”…
in social situations,
in supermarkets,
when senses become totally overwhelmed
by noises or smells or atmospheric stress…
Perhaps you can imagine the agony of an autistic kid being attacked. By someone he’s born to look to… for safety. A friend, a babysitter… a dad.
The searing betrayal of trust…
Nearly incomprehensible to my trusting, autistic neurology. I was born believing everyone was a potential friend to share my dinosaur cards with. And every adult was someone to turn to for protection.
So maybe you’ll understand why,
as near as I can tell,
that betrayed, raging, fear-filled child
who I became…
still lived in me.
As I sat, as an adult, before a rather gifted therapist. Even as I doused her with the brusque sarcasm and the fragile arrogance of a former “gifted” child…
Truth to tell, my father still lives in me.
The ghost of him.
In that chair.
Powerful.
In control.
Rotting away.
Ready to roar back into my life.
Mere moments… and one too many stressors… away…
At age 73.
A shadow cast across every human face I see.
- If this excerpt grabbed you… more here: The Book: Frag by Frag.
This is Fragment 14 of my upcoming autobiography, Autistic Noir, arriving Fall 2026.
I’m building a book out loud. Frag by frag. Just like I lived it.
The Next Act
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Why I Write My Autobiography
I’m only an expert on my own life. Born 1953, diagnosed at 63. Your mileage will vary.
Individual marginalized voices speaking truth out loud? They build bridges to mainstream readers. Think Malcolm X. Think Maya Angelou. Think Janet Mock’s Redefining Realness.
This Fall, I hope to deliver that kind of impact, that power with Autistic Noir: My Autistic Life is My Art. For our neurodivergent community.
Since 2019 I’ve published a quarter of a million words. Over half the size of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Gotta be a pony somewhere in that shit.
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