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For some teenagers, their sexuality brings loneliness. They're not sure who they can talk to. I couldn't talk to anyone. Warning: This post might be triggering or unpleasant to some. I'm making an effort to be up front and honest about my desires and my actions as a teenager so that I can convey what it was like. It openly acknowledges my attractions to boys. Being a teenager is a time of dramatic change for just about everyone. But being a teenager and realizing that you're a pedophile changes everything. You have all the usual confusion and craziness of teenage hormones, but with an extra danger and question of what your real identity actually is.
What I'd like to do in this post is share some of those teenage milestones and experiences, but show how pedophilia twists them. The ways in which, when your developing attraction is to children, everything gets a different tone. So this is a bit of my story. A normal teenager... but a pedophile.
Growing up, I was a pretty innocent kid. I liked science fiction, I thought about global warming a lot, and I cared about how we could make the world a better place. I was a math and science geek. But I had basically no knowledge of sexuality. My parents never taught me anything, and I didn't have the kind of friends who'd teach me. I never watched porn. When my sexuality finally hit me, it basically came out of nowhere, and I was not prepared.
So considering that it must have been a major shift, it's strange that I don't remember exactly when I figured out I was a pedophile.
I think I knew by the time I was fourteen. I remember being at a summer camp and noticing that I was attracted specifically to younger boys. It was always those who didn't have hair on their legs yet. I must have been putting things together already, but did I attach the word "pedophile" to myself?
I'm definitely not proud of everything I did at that age. With just about all early teens, there's this juvenile effort to get a look or a feel of the others you find attractive. Maybe you let yourself brush up against someone at your locker, maybe you try to get a look in gym class. For me, anything like that felt more dangerous. The example I remember came shortly after getting back from summer camp.
Before I share this example... I know how disgusting it will seem. I share it here because I think it's so important to be open and honest, and to share the truth about my experience.
I was playing Dungeons & Dragons with a friend and his younger brother, and I found his younger brother to be attractive. He often featured in my fantasies. I didn't feel good about sexually fantasizing about a friend's younger brother; since then, I've stopped fantasizing about any children I know in real life, but at the time I still did.
So it was late summer, we were all in shorts, and we were playing D&D. I don't know if what I did was trivial and unimportant, or totally gross, or both, but I've never forgotten it or really stopped feeling guilty about it: I intentionally let my thigh rub against his as I sat down next to him. That's all I did. It felt amazing to me at the time. The guilt was also immediate. As far as I can remember, I've never done anything else like that.
If that's my version of glancing at someone in gym class, I have my own versions of most of the other teenage experiences too. Whereas other teens might stash porn away somewhere in their room (to inevitably be discovered by their parents), or perhaps browse it online, I had no porn I could view. Instead, I accumulated magazines that my parents subscribed to which happened to have pictures of boys. I still remember a cover of a kid with ADHD or something like that, his mom holding him back by the elbows while he leaned forward as if trying to get away from her, his shirt raised to reveal part of his belly. I suppose the advantage is that if my parents found it, they'd think I was just reading the magazine.
Like other teenagers, I worried about how often it was ok to masturbate. But for me, masturbating came with extra dangers. Did it show low willpower, and indicate I might offend later in life? Was it just plain immoral to think about boys in sexual situations?
Many teenagers hide their crushes from their classmates for fear of being made fun of. I couldn't share mine even with my closest friends. I only realize this in retrospect, but I adopted a clueless, asexual personality to my peers. It almost entirely avoided questions about my sexuality. I never had to lie, or pretend. No one ever asked me who my celebrity crush was.
I think for some teenagers, their sexuality brings on a certain kind of loneliness. They're not sure who they can talk to. Well, I couldn't talk to anyone. Not my friends, my family, or anyone else. I didn't have any role models, or at least not any good ones. The silence, loneliness, and uncertainty of developing sexuality aren't just there for pedophiles like me; they're the defining feature of your sexuality.
Eventually, of course, I figured some things out for myself. I became comfortable that I'd never be a danger to kids, and I understood how to separate my sexuality from the main part of my life and also not feel guilty about it. It took time, and a lot of self-reflection, but it worked out. That's a story for another post.
There's a danger, in all of this, of sounding like a sad caricature. I was actually a really happy kid. While my sexuality was extremely turbulent for me, I had hobbies and friends and my family and much more going on. This post is just about one side of myself, but pedophiles are not doomed to sadness. I'll strive to convey this in future posts as well, when I try to share the fullness of life that I've been blessed to have. You can find the original article, along with reader comments (and the opportunity to leave your own) at Leonard's blog. | |
