Not my first boyfriend

When I was little all I wanted was to play with my older brother’s friends. He was in high school and I had just started junior high. They would lock themselves in the basement playing video games for hours. My brother would sometimes let me play with him when he was alone but never with his friends.

One of his friends was nicer to me than the others. He would talk to me when none of the other guys were around and call me his “baby girl”. He said the other guys couldn’t know, they wouldn’t understand, but that maybe one day if I grew up into a fine looking woman he would be my boyfriend.

That day I had asked my brother again if I could please just watch them play video games and he said no. I was lonely upstairs by myself and happy when my brother’s friend came and sat on my bed. He said I was doing a good job of growing up into a fine looking woman and that maybe he could be my boyfriend after all. He said he wouldn’t want to be my boyfriend, though, if I was too inexperienced and so I would have to practice being a woman before he could date me. He said not to worry; he’d help me practice.

Over the next eight months, my brother’s friend molested me every chance he got. I stopped liking his attention and became scared every time he would find me in my room. After the first time, he told me no one else would ever want to be my boyfriend now so I’d better not lose him. He told me that my brother and my parents wouldn’t love me anymore if I told them so I had to keep it to myself. Every time I would cry or say I didn’t want to he would tell me I was being a baby and he didn’t want to be with no baby.

I don’t know how it would have ended if his family didn’t move away. When he came over to say goodbye to my brother he didn’t look at me or say anything to me. I was so hurt by that, which for years I thought meant that maybe I had wanted everything he did after all.

I disrespected myself in my teenage years. I believed him when he said that no one else would ever want to be with me. The other day someone asked me how old I was when I had my first boyfriend and I started crying. I didn’t know what to say. I don’t want him to have been my first boyfriend. He said he was and I always thought that meant he was but I think maybe I get to say that he wasn’t. He wasn’t my boyfriend. I was a little kid and he molested me. And it was wrong.