Afraid of Boys

His name was Adam. He was around my age. He lived a few doors down from my grandmother, in a small, yellow house. My sister and I would play with him and another mean boy named Nick. We never legitimized why we played with them, because they were violent and cruel to us. We played with them because they were the only children around, not because we actually liked them.

Adam would dare us to do things we did not want to do. Once, we jumped into a dirty pool in front of him and other adults, because we were intimidated and did not know how to react. Another time, he spray-painted my sister's new dress, that she had just received as a birthday present. And on yet another occasion, he pushed me down, lifted my skirt, pulled down his pants, and rubbed his penis on my panties. He then tried to rub it on my mouth. He was obsessed with his penis, with peeing on fences, with flashing it to people. He would laugh and give passers-by the middle finger.

His name was Adam, and he was the reason why I was afraid of boys. He and his friend Josh made fun of me in school. They called me "Cow," and mooed when I walked past them to turn in my math homework. To mess with them, I willingly dressed as a cow for Halloween in third grade. My teacher had dressed up, too, and we both got our pictures taken for the local newspaper. I posed mouthing the word, "moo." I confused my classmates with this behavior, with my getting bigger and laughing loudly and playing off by myself at recess, by the fence that separated the old factory from the school, the boundary between adulthood and childhood. I played alone because I felt safer that way. And, truth be told, I am still afraid of boys.