Teenage Groupie…XXXIX

That summer I was stationed in a small clinic for Project Concern International in Baja Mexico near the Mexican border. The job was to care for children from the Inner city neighborhood who had either been abused or had suffered some loss in their lives that had traumatized them greatly.

They had their quarters in large ranches embedded in the desert, somewhat in the middle of here and nowhere. It was well equipped so as to let its occupants not want for anything. It had its own pool, a kids’ size pool, and a huge lawn where study and focus groups were conducted in little caves. And then there were the special quarters at the back, for their staff. This was a small lie-in room, with one table, a chair, no TV facilities, and a small size bed. It was minimalist and lowly but I had chosen it to be my home for the next 8 weeks.

I tutored the younger class, ages of six to twelve. I had five students in total. They were Brittany, a six-year old who had lost her entire family to a fire but refused to be placed with a foster family; Kevin, an eight-year old who liked to use knives and had been caught holding one to his sister’s neck showing his veracity for violence; Paula, a six year old who liked to cut herself with knives eliciting pleasure from hurting herself; Jane, a ten-year old who was afraid of the dark for no medically explicable reason, and Peter, an eight-year old who touched himself when he was alone, a habit that was developed too early for a boy his age. I taught them the values of facing the road ahead and learning to ignore their shortcomings.

“Things happen for strange reasons, and even though we wish they happened to someone else and not us…we can only look forward to the day we can write our own destiny and make our lives our own. Learn to look forward to tomorrow.” This was often my closing speech to them at the end of our sessions together.

I often sat in on the sessions with the older students whose ages were closer to mine. Their classes dealt with character building, studying under duress, and management skills. Some of the children had been kicked out of their homes or had run away and found it hard to cope with life on their own. These were all instances to which I could relate. The counselors preached against using our body for food...soliciting, stripping or prostituting of whatever kind was not an option. She asked the women to take up a skill like babysitting, working at a local grocery store, waiting tables, kindergarten assistants, and reporting to the welfare office, if things proved impossible.

Then she warned the boys against use of, or sale of drugs as a means to survive. She said they could work as garbage disposal men, or to engage in some kind of community service, anything that would get their brain focused on the right path. She wanted us to do it all, preaching that the sky was our limit and we shouldn’t let our unfortunate backgrounds hinder our hopes of success. Somehow I wished someone had told me all this sooner.

 Different faces, different cultures, different backgrounds all connected by one intricate detail: we all hated our lives, and ached for a way out.

There was Jason, who had been raped by his stepfather; Amanda, who had solicited since she was 12 because her father left her--the first child--with 6 siblings to take care of, then Paulo who sold drugs so that his mother would have a roof over her head, and so many others and there was me---who though I had my own history of abuse, I had led these people to believe I was working on a school project for college.

I made so many friends and heard stories that were worse than mine so that it revived my spirit and determination to make a difference with my deprived childhood. I kept my groupie lifestyle a secret, but filled them in on my drifter childhood, and my flight from home. The reasons I did I kept to myself. One of the girls had been accused of stealing food from a local convenience store, when in fact it was her best friend who had done it. Her friend had fled leaving her to get arrested. She was sent to a juvenile detention center that only aided in ruining her mind, and making her a bigger criminal than she was before she got there. They tortured and abused her recklessly and her mind was destroyed from all the pain and abuse. So in the end, they had sent her to us, her name was Candida.

I don’t know why but we took to each other immediately. She was older than I was by a couple of months, had curly hair that was cropped like a boy’s, deep-set eyes, and a firm manly body. She often slept in my dorm when her nightmares would increase, and we would talk about our wasted youth, our lost loves, and our nightmares which we wanted to leave behind until we fell asleep.

“Last night was pretty tough, huh?” I asked her when she woke up. She had run into my room in the night, shaking and gnashing her teeth in pain. It had taken a little over an hour to calm her and in that hour I had had to dab her with cold water to cool her steaming temperature, sing to her my favorite Backstreet songs and rock her until she finally closed her eyes.

This morning, she sat on the edge of the bed, cradling her face in between her hands. “No more than the usual. I thought I was being strangled, couldn’t breathe.” She sighed. “Thanks,” she said simply.

“No problem.” I knew what she was going through, her panic attacks rang too close to home. I nodded and went over to the mirror to access the damage the lack of sleep had done to my face. My eyes were blood shot but had a tinge of white in them, and by noon they would probably gain some speed.

“Nikki, when was the last time you had sex?” she asked from nowhere in her thick Spanish accent, carefully picking out the words as she curled her feet up on my bed.

I pursed my lips as I searched my mind. The last time I had sex was about a year ago with Lance on the night before we said goodbye. A tumultuous evening as the sex was interrupted by bouts of tears from both of us, mostly from Lance. He was absolutely heartbroken. I was surprised he could manage an orgasm. Since then I hadn’t had sex, and didn’t have the urge to, quite unlike me. “A while…” I emphasized rolling my eyes, “Almost, a year now.”

“With that guy who calls you?” she asked, referring to Lance. I always got a call from a male almost every day, more often than the others. It was either someone from the Backstreet camp checking on my welfare, or Lance, or someone from Lance’s camp asking if I was doing okay, or some strange college buddy from school who had by chance scored my phone number.

I had led them to believe this was all one person, it was too complicated if I had to explain all these people from my past. I shrugged with a smirk, “Well him and… many others,” I replied, shyly.

She laughed at my shyness, I laughed at it too. “Oh…someone’s been a bad girl,” she teased. “I used to enjoy sex so much in juvenile hall…SO MUCH.” She smacked her lips, “With women, all sorts of girls…it was amazing, before then I was like a log.”

I agreed with a slight nod. So did I but with men…all sorts of men, sparing no one. Those were ravenous times and the men ravaged every bit of my innocence. She continued, “You know they say people who have been abused enjoy sex a lot…or are taken to sex, or what’s the word…” she trailed off, her English knowledge lacking in skills to complete her sentence.

“Promiscuous.” My faint voice responded. She was right; promiscuity was my middle name at one time.

“Yeah,” her eyes lit up. “That’s what the psychologist said, when I got thrown in with her, I had caught this disease from in there, she couldn’t explain it but she said, I was having one of the two psychological reactions to my prior sexual abuse…promiscuity. I wanted to have every girl just the way they had had me when I got in,” she explained with relish.

“What’s the other reaction?” I asked, numb.

She thought for a split second and replied, “It’s the complete opposite…you shut everyone out and turn into a zombie when someone touches you…you hate sex absolutely. I’m glad I didn’t have that reaction.” She laughed off.

I laughed off with her, a happy thought slipping in midway, happy that I had had a little of both: a heart cold as ice and also overly generous with my sexual favors. “Did you know that?” she asked, twisting her head to the side.

I shook my head innocently, “No…I had no idea. It is a pretty new theory to me.”

“Yeah, me too. All the time I just thought I liked to fuck…and now it’s like I fucked because I got fucked…what a conclusion,” she concluded, without any remorse. She did like to fuck, enormously. She had ended up harassing every new inmate in her cellblock that most of them had formed little groups amongst themselves just so they could exact some payback on her. Luckily for her, that was the day she got moved to our community.

“But I still miss sex?” she said on a final note.

I didn’t reply I just shrugged. I didn’t know if I missed it or not, I certainly didn’t have need for it as much as I used to…thank goodness.

“Why do you pretend?” Candida asked again cutting into my thoughts.

I turned round from the mirror where I was combing my hair, “I don’t understand?”

She was still cradling her head tiredly, her eyes bleak from lack of adequate undisturbed sleep. “You pretend, that everything is okay…I’ve sat in your classes with the kids, you tell them to look forward to what tomorrow would bring and all that bullshit, and then you come home and cry yourself to sleep.” I stared at her aghast. Candida never hid her feelings from anyone; she was one of those outspoken, rash bullies…a talent she had learned in juvenile detention. After saying her business, she walked out of my room, as unceremoniously as she had entered.

The tears on my pillow were my business, my private moments alone, and my grief at my depravity. She had no right to notice them and use them against me. I knew I still had a lot to face, a lot of my life to deal with and I wasn’t sure I knew how. I had a sister who wanted nothing to do with me, a niece I couldn’t go to visit, a deceased father whom I still had nightmares about, a mother that was locked away in an institution I didn’t know where and a friend whom I cherished dearly but lost. The tears were expressing just an ounce of my pain.

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