Gale Eden Grant
Tucson, AZ
THE TRUTH
by Gale Eden Grant
The first time my father, Howard Keith Henson, molested me I was six years old. The details are not important to me any more, but they may be to those who don't believe that he is such a depraved human being. So I will reluctantly divulge them. We were on our way to Los Angles, coming from Tucson, and stopped at a motel for the night. We had a room with two twin beds, and in the early morning my father got into my bed and said, “I want to teach you something.” He then proceeded to fool with my clitoris and masturbate himself until he climaxed. Here is where I should say that it was horrible, and I was scarred for life. That would not be true. I was perplexed, uninjured, and slightly awakened to the joy of stimulation. I was six. We lived in a trailer somewhere in the LA area for the next two months, during which time he awakened me many mornings with the same “teaching.”
I trusted him. I loved him. It makes me weep to remember how it was to be that way. For the following two years, until I was eight years old, and Arel Lucas moved in to our home, he continued my education. Once Arel moved in, and my mother gave him permission to be with her, he stopped educating me. I would like to say that I was relieved to no longer have his depraved attention, but that would not be true. I was jealous. But I knew it was weird. At eight years old, I became the child scorned. I experienced all of the emotions that one should only have to go through when one is much older.
Keith left me alone for the following four years, until I was twelve. It was the first day of seventh grade that he got into my bed again. Arel and our mother were both out of town, and it shouldn't have been any shock to me that he would predate upon me again, but it was. He said, “You're old enough to experience a real orgasm.” And reached down. I threw my covers off and climbed over the head board of my bed to escape. On the morning of my first day of junior high school, I took the shower of the raped woman - there wasn't enough hot water to wash away the shame of my father's depravity.
A few months later I began to menstruate. I was terrified that my father would decide that I was ready for real sex, and try to continue “teaching.” I managed to hide it for a few months, but my mother discovered evidence that made her happy, and myself terrified. When she told me she was going to tell Keith, I begged her not to. When she persisted in asking why I finally came out with, “He taught me how to masturbate.” This was the only way I could describe what I'd experienced. This led to a long over-due divorce, felony charges that were eventually dropped, and my mother's second marriage to an only slightly less depraved man.
There's a lot more to this story, including me being a policeman of my father, the fact that Amber, my youngest sister, was not molested, the fear that she would be, the eventual confession from another sister that he had molested her as well, and the reality that he molested two of my childhood friends, and I knew it. I was there. I remember saying to one of them, “Isn't my father wonderful?” when I knew he'd just fingered her. Yuck. I Know from an unfortunate consequence of birth in to this family how disgusting life can be, and how depraved fathers can influence ones life. I know from reading a lot that I should end this with a “Yet, despite all, everything is well,” yet I can't. Valerie is being stalked by our star-fucking father, our sisters are in conflict, our mother is deeply myopic due to her inability to identify truth from reality, and I am having to sit here and write all of this down so that my hideous father can be finally exposed.
And here is the most obnoxious part of this... Keith will love this exposure, will revel in it. The hurt and pain and sorrow he has exposed his family to is all about him becoming a person of interest. Insect. He is a loathesome creature, unworthy of his mother, father, brother, children. Let us bury him before his long-awaited death, and when I get his frozen head I will gladly kick it though the gutter, as it richly deserves.