***Trigger Warning – mentions elements of sexual abuse against a child/teenager which readers may find graphic in detail
The Predatory Dance
Once the martial arts instructor had what he wanted regarding the ability to subdue me for my dad’s inability to keep up with payments, he (the instructor) began his predatory dance with me. I call it a dance because he seemingly obliged me to dance along and follow his lead.
I was 13 and had found myself taking a liking to him. I realized I liked him when I began taking more care about my appearance before attending class sessions even though I was covered up in martial arts attire. When the instructor gave me compliments about my appearance, I made sure to wear my plain clothes to the studio and then put on my martial arts attire.
I was not thinking about how to physically attract him. I was simply considering the things that he would say to me in terms of liking to see me in a more normal way when I was outside of the studio classes. Of course, I was not the only one to do this either. Many other students waited to change until they arrived to the studio too.
In the beginning, I did not change my clothing because I wore my martial arts attire to the studio. At first, I could have cared less, but once the instructor’s compliments began, I changed up my routine. I wanted to impress him. I did not see that he was making it all a competition.
Seemingly, I was not the only one who changed up my routine either. My younger sister had a crush on him and tried to impress him too. Yet, I considered her musings of him to be rather childish. She was in fourth grade. [As time progressed with his games against me, he looked at my sister more as a way to get back at me for not submitting to his will.] My sister was clueless, however.
I also figured that an older woman, a divorcee with a son, fancied the instructor too, and she had the physical beauty to allure him. [I actually liked this older woman and would later seek her out for protection against this instructor’s advances against me.] Strangely, the instructor seemed flattered by all the female attention, but while the females attended to him, his youngest sister was fiercely protective of him. I always found his sister’s behavior in this way extremely odd.
The Dance
At some point, warm up sessions became longer in time length. The instructor made up some excuse in the form of chastisement that the class was not taking the time to stretch because our bad form was showing up in our floor routines. Now, however, I look back and realize that he lengthened warm up sessions solely for one purpose, and that was to get me alone with him.
The first episode of alone time with him came about because of my going out during the warm up sessions to the restroom. I would periodically leave to check the status of my menstrual flow. I was fearful of leakage and having an accident. My mind was far from the instructor, but at the same time, I did not want to be embarrassed in front of him because of an accident either. If I did not leave during warm up, I would leave during the class’ main break.
Nevertheless, when I came out of the bathroom during a warm up session, the instructor was always waiting for me. We would always end up in the foyer area alone, and I immediately remember feeling flushed with fear that seemed to grip me out of nowhere. Heat suddenly rushed to my face, and I felt cornered by his presence. It was very unlike the feeling I had whenever I was around the boy I had a crush on in school. This feeling was different. I did not feel excited at all, and I did not particularly want to be in the instructor’s presence alone either.
Once I was cornered by the instructor, he remarked that I was one of the most attractive young women that he had ever seen. I was very taken aback by his statement because it seemed to come out of nowhere. In that particular moment, I was sweaty, dressed in martial arts attire, and on my period. Yet, this man called me attractive. I remember wondering what the catch was and whether there was some joke to follow, but there was no catch, though, and he continued to compliment me.
“I was just hoping you were okay since you’ve been gone for a while in the bathroom,” he said with a sly smile. I remember feeling nervous as I expressed to him that I was okay. The air around us was stifling with a weird sense that something was very wrong about this entire situation. I strongly sensed something was off in the atmosphere, but I did not gather that he sensed the weirdness at all. To counteract him, I made a futile attempt to step forward in the direction of the studio room, but he blocked my movement by leaning to the side in front of me. Then he folded his arms in the process and stared deeply into my eyes. I looked away.
“I’m 28. So, I want you to know that I’m not too old to be a good boyfriend for a pretty little thing like yourself. I know you young girls like mature guys, but I know you don’t like them old,” he said while waiting for my reaction. I clearly did not know what to say to him in response. I honestly did not know what he was talking about. No girl I knew talked about men unless the men were untouchable celebrities.
I wondered why it was even necessary for him to tell me his age. I had not enquired about his age or any other personal status update at all, and I did not care. I found myself feeling suddenly ashamed because it must have been evident to him that maybe I liked him. Yet, the more I stood in his presence, the less I wanted to be in his presence. It was a strange feeling. It was like encountering someone I thought I liked because of my imagination about the person but realizing after a brief meeting that I did not like the person as much as I thought I did.
Conflicted
As with any crush, there will be conflicted feelings that a young person will experience. I remember going back into the studio with the rest of the class and feeling like I did not know what to do with myself in that moment. I felt an odd feeling that I had never felt before, and it was a feeling that did not bring me warmth at all.
Instead, I felt bad and almost sick to my stomach. I knew intuitively that what had occurred with the instructor could not be shared with anyone. I knew I would not be believed, and the way my mother and grandmother behaved, I knew that they would accuse me of having caused something to warrant this man’s attention of me.
Although I relished in the instructor’s attention, I was conflicted because his attention seemed very off to me. I questioned within myself why a grown man wanted a girlfriend if he was married and why a 28 year-old-man was interested in being the boyfriend of a 13 year-old. It just did not make any sense. In my young mind of naivety, I assumed that this was a May-December situation I had read about and seen movies about – a huge age gap between two people who were smitten with each other. Yet, this was not the movies, and I was not smitten with him.
In fact, I did not think that I liked him enough to actually have feelings for him. I had never even considered this. Plus, I did not like the idea of being an adulteress. Frankly, I did not even comprehend the concept except from the bible stories my dad always read to my siblings and me. I was 13! I was in the throes of trying to understand the crush I had on a boy who had moved on to high school.
This man, the instructor, had begun a very graphic dance with me of which steps I knew nothing about. I was ill-prepared for what was to come. I was too young for the dance steps that he attempted to teach me. At most, he was simply exploiting my naivety, but at worse he was using my naivety to his advantage. He created a dance that I did not really like at all, and the steps were only hard for me but easy for him.
Increasing The Steps Of The Dance
Over time, the warm up sessions during class became longer and so did the break times, and when I realized that he was continuously intercepting me whenever I went to the restroom during either of the times, I began going to the restroom during the middle of a class session. If he was instructing, he would least likely be able to leave out of the room. But leaving out during odd times during actual class lessons also meant that I had to double up on padding myself up to prevent a menstrual accident.
So, I began wearing two sanitary pads like a diaper to keep from having to change pads so frequently and prolong the time that I would need to change. It was most uncomfortable, but somewhere within a locked part of my dissociated brain, I knew that I needed to keep myself safe and stay out of the instructor’s way. In retrospect, I did not want to really learn any of his dance steps. I was not really all that interested. In actuality, I was very afraid.
At some point, the instructor took notice that I was not leaving the class during warm ups or breaks, but instead during class lessons. So he ramped up his part of the dance and began calling me out in class for trivial reasons as if to chastise me. He would single me out for fouling a routine or not stretching long enough or whatever he made up that would make sense to the class. I do not know how no one noticed that he was making things up just to have me out of class. Yet, everyone seemed to be preoccupied and oblivious to what was occurring with the instructor and me. [No one noticed until eventually someone did notice.]
Needless to say, things began to take a turn. When the instructor pulled me out of class as if to speak to me about something I did or did not do correctly, he questioned me, and I could tell that he was angry with me even though he did his best to conceal it.
The Instructor: Why are you toying with me?
Me: Huh?
I was confused by what he meant, but intuitively I knew he realized that I was avoiding him.
The Instructor: You don’t like talking to me?
Me: Sure … I guess.
The Instructor: I enjoy talking to you. I actually enjoyed our talk the last time, and when I don’t get to talk to you, I miss you. I’ve thought about you a lot actually.
I could not help but think that he was weird … that this whole situation was weird. I had not even had an official boyfriend my own age in school yet, and here was a grown man chasing me. I was flattered to be thought of, but I was also bothered by it at the same time. I wondered how a married man was thinking about someone other than his wife and why he was thinking about a 9th grader.
The Instructor: I didn’t mean to yell at you in front of others, but you’ve got to understand what you do to me.
Me: What? What I do to you? What do you mean? What do I do to you?
I was naïve, but I could tell by his undertone that something was amiss.
The Instructor: I think about you all the time. I think about your beautiful eyes and that gorgeous smile you have. Your smile just lights up a room when you’re in it. Did you know that? Do you know the effect you have on people … on me?
I stared at him blankly, a bit in disbelief, but wanting to believe him. I wanted to believe I had a mesmerizing effect on someone, but I was an outcast – a black sheep. I only effected change in cataclysmic ways that always erupted into a huge firestorm. His explanation seemed a bit far-fetched to me. I did not know whether to believe him.
At some point, he must have read my mind because he seemed to reply to my internal thoughts.
The Instructor: You are beautiful, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I actually wonder what the flavor of your lip gloss is … it looks delicious.
And there it was … THE PREDATOR. I felt odd about his response because I could feel him staring longingly at my lips. With his eyes, I could see him detailing the contour of my lips, and I felt embarrassed and uneasy.
Me: It’s not lip gloss. It’s Vaseline.
He laughed, but I continued staring at him blankly. I felt nervous and thought about the amount of time that we were out of the studio room. I wanted to get back, but I also wanted someone to interrupt us. I felt very uncomfortable. I remember the prickly feeling that something was crawling on the skin of my neck. I wanted to leave, but …
He leaned into me and over me.
The Instructor: Can I taste them?
Me: Taste what?
I was dumbfounded.
The Instructor: Your lips. I want to taste your lips. The Vaseline makes them look delicious.
I had reached a point of fright. I literally froze into place. I could not move, and even though I willed myself to respond “no”, I could not say anything. I was stuck in position. I thought I might urinate on myself or even vomit. I felt an internal heat blazing through me like fire, but I still could not move. I could not even panic. I was stuck.
Without waiting for an answer, the instructor leaned downward and kissed me on my lips. I held my eyes open in shock. I was overwhelmed in a way that I did not understand, and I was afraid. I knew instinctively that I was now in territory that I did not want to be in, but for some reason I also knew that this territory would be very hard to get out of as well.
I felt my heart beating extra fast, and I thought I could literally hear it pumping outside of my chest. I held my breath and waited. I wanted him to stop. After kissing me, the instructor leaned back up into his original position and smiled down at me. “Just as I thought,” he said. “They are delicious and sweet like sugar.”
Then he gently caressed my face and said, “We don’t want to make anyone mad in class. We don’t want anyone to think you’re getting my special attention. We’ll make sure to keep this between us, okay?” I simply stared without acknowledging him and without responding to his request. I was in shock. “I really like you,” he reiterated, and then he gently caressed my cheek again.
I attempted to step back from him, but my legs were like stiff glue sticks. He looked at me as if to reassure me of something, and then he walked to the front of the foyer and drank from the fountain. He seemed to move with an extra glide in his steps as if he were very proud of his new accomplishment. I gathered myself and went into the studio class.
Several moments later, he came back into class and did not cast his glance my way again. In fact, he never looked at me again for the rest of the time we were in session. “It is our secret,” is what his body language seemed to direct towards me while he was turned away from me completely. I felt a sense of hurt, shame, and wonder all at once. I pondered and replayed the events that had occurred over and over again as if the events were stuck on a television station I could not change because there was no remote.
I wondered where I had gone wrong that had led to this sordid scene, and I reasoned within myself that avoiding him had been a major mistake. I did like him but not in the way things were quickly progressing. I liked him because he was my instructor, and I believed that he was a good teacher of martial arts. I did not like him enough for him to be my boyfriend. That did not even make sense to me. I was so caught off guard by his forward approach that I did not dare think of what to do. I was frozen within my thought process for quite some time.
I had a dilemma, and my dissociated mind had not come to help me, but it was even worse for the sound mind that I did have because it had not helped me either. I was lost, and I did not know what to do. Normally, the right boy my age would have sent me over the moon with this sort of attention, but this with the instructor was not something I would have ever hoped for. I had entered a dance with a predator who lavished attention upon me for the purpose of possessing me.
Stay tuned for more of The Instructor.
My Voice Unchained 