Copyright © 2008 by Tiki Kritzer Seger. All rights reserved.
It was a freezing cold, winter night (the kind of night where your breath hangs in the air in icy, white puffs and the tip of your nose, fingertips and toes go numb even when they are wrapped in warm, woolen socks and gloves) in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, and I was hanging out with a group of local parkies (people who practically lived in Manhattan’s second biggest park) in Washington Square. I wasn’t really in the mood, however; what I really wanted to do was curl up in a warm bed and go to sleep. I had been running around (partying, playing pool and just basically blowing time and energy on nothing) for four days nonstop and I desperately needed some rest. I was very grown up and sexy looking, with too much experience and knowledge for my age. I knew my way around the streets and there were no bad surprises left for me; still, I had a basically innocent and trusting nature. I was 13 years old.
I guess I could have gone home to my mother, but even as a little kid, I wanted to protect her from the sordid side of life and I was definitely a part of that. She wasn’t really equipped to deal with me – at least not at that point. Anyway, for some reason, it didn’t even occur to me.
Someone asked me why I was so quiet, and I explained that I needed some bed time urgently, but that I had nowhere to go. There were a couple of new kids in the group; two rather good looking young guys. They were both muscular, with sexy smiles; one of them was blond and a little bossy, and the other was dark and dreamy looking. The blond one asked me if I wanted to come home with them; he said that he had a small basement apartment in his father’s brownstone and I could sleep there for the night if I wished to. Both of them were clean cut and friendly, and the offer was certainly more then welcome.
I left with my two new friends and we walked across the Village to the blond’s two room underground apartment. It was a warm, cozy little space; filled with weights (both of them were into bodybuilding), dirty magazines (typical for young guys) and drums (the blond said that he played in a band). Fully half of the room was taken up by a huge bed that doubled as a couch during the day. The bed was covered with pillows in all different sizes and colors and had several fluffy quilts thrown across it.
We all sat down on the bed, and the blond passed each of us a Sprite; he took them from a half size refrigerator in the corner of the room. It was warm and peaceful, and my eyes kept closing of their own accord. The blond noticed, and he offered me a t-shirt and a pair of shorts to sleep in; I took them gratefully.
After changing my clothes in the little, blue bathroom, I snuggled up on the bed and started to fall asleep. The guys took out some coke and snorted a few lines; they asked me if I wanted some, but I was too sleepy to answer and just shook my head. I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep to the rumbling murmur of male voices and the purr of the little refrigerator.
I woke up because a heavy weight was crushing me; the blond was lying on top of me and grinning into my face. I started to struggle, and he gave me this coked up smirk and picked up a 20 pound barbell lying next to the bed; he said “We are going to fuck you and if you don’t cooperate, I’ll smash your face in with this and then we’ll fuck you anyway.” It was clear that he meant it, and that he was so full of coke that he wouldn’t feel it even if I managed to hurt him. His friend just sat there and watched and smiled. I shrugged and said ok; it wasn’t as though I had much in the way of choices.
The blond took my clothes off and his own, he licked my nipples and bit them a few times, and then without any warning, he heaved himself up and shoved his penis into me. It was endless; the coke kept him from coming quickly and he just kept bucking on top of me for over an hour (there was a digital clock in the corner and I watched the minutes tick off in glowing green numbers). When he was finally finished, he rolled off of me, picked up some of his weights and started working out. The other guy came over and almost apologetically mounted me. Again, it seemed to go on forever (he took twenty-one minutes to finish). I just lay there and stared at the clock.
Afterwards, I felt dead inside, drained and infinitely weary. I said nothing to either of them and they were quiet as well (I guess the coke was starting to wear off); I quickly put on my clothes and left. As I opened the door, the blond asked me if I was sure I wanted to leave; he said that I could sleep there as long as I wanted to. I just closed the door softly behind me and went out into the bitter night.
I was cold, inside and out, and I had gone into a kind of automatic mode where feelings and emotions didn’t exist. Somewhere deep inside I was screaming, but I was accustomed to pain and it was easier to be numb then to acknowledge my anguish.
After walking the half mile or so over to my mother’s building, it occurred to me that I didn’t want her to see me, especially not then. So instead of using my keys to go in the front door of the apartment house, I decided to use the indirect route. All of the buildings on a New York block are connected in one convoluted way or another, so I went over to the restaurant two doors down, crawled through the cellar until I reached the boundary to the next house, climbed across the narrow wall that enclosed the courtyard of that building and wriggled along a narrow passage on top of the wall until I reached the fence that divided the buildings from each other. I climbed the fence, entered my mother’s building through the back door, and walked up the eight flights of stairs to the roof.
On the roof, I looked down eight stories to the ground and shivered; then I looked up at the sky and saw a single, tiny, twinkling star. There was an old rug spread out on the tarpaper that covered the roof; it looked reasonably clean. I rolled myself up in the rug and went to sleep.