Spot the Difference - a narrative poem of reality. trigger warnings.

Spot the Difference

TW: SA, graphic imagery

 

A man molested a twelve-year-

                  old boy at our church campout.

I saw same man,

                  years later bring a high-school

                  boy a rose, after a

                  theater show.

The man had gone to jail, like seven years.

After got out of jail popped back up in college

                  theater as the favorite of fresh out of high school

                  boys who admired him, were intimate

                  with him.

Ask him at a post-show party if he was

                  gay, at the time thinking

                  that might rationalize something.

But isn’t that the justification

                  Kevin Spacey used about abusing

                  young men.

I remember asking him the question

                  and I remember him smiling

                  with a shrug.

 

When I graduated high school

                  the class of ’06 had big

                  bonfire.

The party had died down, most

                  people had left, and those

                  left were tired-tipsy.

A classmate sat down beside me and

                  asked if I still went to that

                  Ravenna church.

No, I said.

That’s good, he said, and then,

                  You remember that guy.

And I said yeah, he’s in jail.

Good, he said. He used to

                  have me take my pants off

                  to measure my dick. I don’t

                  know why I let him do it.

You were twelve I said.

But I remember what stopped it.

What?

When he said we should measure

                  it erect.

 

I tallied the score, two twelve-year-olds

                  a year apart.

 

The church had allowed closed door

                  meetings, not just with

                  this man but his good friend

                                    who was youth paster and groomed

                                    a high-school girl to marry him.

Like most churches, they buried

                  the controversy,

                  hid it, like it never

                  happened.

 

Flash forward, to the High-School boy

                  given the rose. Something felt

                  sick in my guts. Especially when

                  a married couple was enthused

                  with encouragement at this 

                  attention of the nearly forty-year-old

                  and this boy.

I checked sex offender

                  registry. Yup, still says:

                  sexual acts with a minor under

                  twelve.

He had become a staple

                  of new community, good with tech.

                  He was charismatic, friendly,

                  funny.

 

Flash forward some months later

                  and I hear that same controversy

                  was stewing around the discover

                  of a sordid past.

I name drop his name mid conversation,

                  because I knew it was him

                  when my heart took to sink.

I illustrate the chronology of

                  events, arrest, bonfire

                  conversation, his reemergence

                  in my college theater,

                  and the grown man’s post

                  show rose.

Someone else discovered

                  record, made a stink because

                  he was actively involved

                  with minors.

People formally respected

                  made justifications for his

                  presence, I guess too lazy to

                  google sex offender

                  registry.

Instead they accepted bullshit

                  he made up, about

                  statutory charges. Some

                  nonsense he said about

                  a seventeen-year

                  -old and he twenty.

Okay, leaders said, that’s enough for us.

                  Want to work in a

                  High School, under the radar.

                  Want to work with

                  high-schoolers, under the radar.

Oh, but isn’t he charming, disarming, goofy,

                  oh, his skills so useful.

Sure, they must have thought,

                  he was accused by some

                  church, those are bad news.

                  This institution understands

                  nuance. We lambast those

                  bigots, those abusers,

                  like the president of the

USA. But we’ll get in a tizzy

if people bring up our

pedophile friend’s true

record.

 

It’s okay to have been deceived,

                  sexual assaulters are good

                  with that. But it is not okay

                  to double down on coverup,

                  and defense.

I can draw a line,

                  from them to them, and the dressings

                  are different, but the children

                  get hurt the same.

 

Oh, and that twelve-year-old

                  boy, eventually grew to his 30s.

That twelve-year-old boy

                  ended his life.

And I know how to draw a line.