Stuttering Joe: A True Story – Growing Up In Sunny Valley

Stuttering Joe

...A True Story

Growing up in Sunny Valley

Stuttering Joe

...A True Story

Growing up in Sunny Valley

Gerhard J. Loots

Copyright © 2016 Gerhard J. Loots

First edition 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Printed and bound by Novus Print Solutions

Edited by Vanessa Finaughty for Reach Publishers

Cover designed by Reach Publishers

Website: www.reachpublishers.co.za

E-mail: reach@webstorm.co.za

Although I have deliberately changed historical facts, order of events, names… and even omitted or created certain characters… to protect the true identity of other people involved in my story, the story itself remains unchanged and a hundred percent true.

My version of events might differ from that of other people.

Warning to sensitive people:

The first two chapters of this book might be very upsetting and disturbing.

List of books in the Stuttering Joe series:

Stuttering Joe (Part 1): Growing up in Sunny Valley

Stuttering Joe (Part 2): The University of Breezy Bay

Stuttering Joe (Part 3): Passionate Jane

Stuttering Joe (Part 4): Little Jay and I… and the ladies in my life!

Stuttering Joe (Part 5): Charlie, I am!

Stuttering Joe (Part 6): Little Joe

Stuttering Joe (Part 7): It’s a kinda Magic

Stuttering Joe: My Spiritual Journey

Contents

Pre-School

Chapter 1. Innocence Interrupted 1965 – 1971

Primary School

Chapter 2. Tragedy Strikes

Chapter 3. Reality Bites

High School

Chapter 4 Sunny Valley High

Chapter 5. Naughty, But Nice

Chapter 6. Those Pesky Hormones

Chapter_7. The Long Distance Runner

Chapter 8. Matric

Pre-School

Chapter 1

Innocence Interrupted

1965 – 1971

My earliest memory is where I am running down a street on a very hot day… bare feet on the hot tar road… the huge frame of Aunty Stinkalot chasing after me, shouting all the way that I should stop and go back home. I was only five at the time, but a feisty five at that. I maintained a good ten-metre gap between myself and my pursuer… until I got fed up with her efforts to catch me.

When Aunty Stinkalot showed no signs of giving up the chase, I stopped in my tracks, picked up three rocks from the pavement… and attacked!

The chaser became the chasee.

When the first rock flew past her huge frame and Aunty Stinkalot saw me advancing, like I meant business, she lost all her nerve and fled. Without thinking, I might have thrown a ‘fuck off, Fatty’ in there… just to show her that I meant business.

Rude and disrespectful, I know. But that was the kind of language and behaviour I was exposed to at that time; I simply didn’t know any better.

I cannot recall that I stuttered at all when I said those words, but then, that became a lifelong trend for me. To this day, I stutter on all words… except swear words. For that simple reason, I began to employ swear words to help me get through difficult sentences or circumstances.

Amusingly so!

Paradoxically, swear words became my safety net that I used – not to swear or express my anger – but to make communication easier for me. Luckily, most people realised it.

Even Reverend Charl found it very amusing at times.

Back to Aunty Stinkalot:

Being as big as she was, her escape happened in slow motion. I could walk casually and still keep up with her. I remember finding her huge fleeing bum amusing… drilling from fat and rhythmically moving from side to side in an over exaggerated fashion with each step she took – like two giant bags filled with water. I was tempted to land a rock on her bum. I knew I could not miss, and I dare say she would not even have felt anything with all those layers of fat as protection, but sanity prevailed and I deliberately aimed the next two rocks just to her left or right… just enough to scare her off.

My tactic worked.

Even at that young age, I instinctively realised that attack was the best form of defence. Aunty Stinkalot promised me a hiding when I got home later… and I did get that hiding. Not from her, but from my mother, Ma Molly. But that didn’t prevent me from doing the very same thing over and over again.

Was I a naughty child?

No, far from it.

I regularly ran away from Ma Molly’s house simply because I missed my father and nothing would stop me – not Aunty Stinkalot, nor regular hidings and threats. When I missed my dad, I didn’t wait around, think about it or allow anything to prevent me from going to his house. Yet, strangely enough, I do not have any memory of my dad during this time. The reason for that will become clear as my story unfolds.

I am told that my father and Ma Molly got divorced when I was four years old. Apparently, one of our neighbours suffered from cancer. Ma Molly – being a simple and good-hearted farm girl – went out of her way to help them and make their burden easier to carry. Amongst other things, she regularly cooked supper for them. To cut a long story short, the neighbour eventually died and Ma Molly was rewarded in the cruellest of ways for everything she did for them, when his widow, Aunty Belinda, stole my father from her. So much for doing good deeds….

My father gave new meaning to ‘love thy neighbour’.

My broken-hearted mother was forced to move to my father’s other house some three kilometres away, with her two children. My father stayed behind in his house and Aunty Belinda moved in with him. Ma Molly’s world crumbled around her; she was devastated. For Ma Molly, it was tears and heartache every day, while, for my father, it was butterflies, passionate sex and the excitement of a new love in his life. To rub salt into Ma Molly’s wounds, I ran away to the very people who broke her heart, and all that meant was that she had to see my father and his new girlfriend more than she needed or wanted to, thereby increasing her pain and trauma tenfold. I was totally ignorant of the pain I caused Ma Molly. For this reason, Ma Molly asked Aunty Stinkalot – who was home all day – to be on the lookout for me and to prevent me from making unscheduled visits to my dad’s house.

I remember employing various tactics to get past the ever vigilant Aunty Stinkalot, who even recruited her more mobile domestic worker to try to stop me. At times, I simply walked casually down the street. I had to go past Aunty Stinkalot’s house. When she saw me coming, she stumbled to the pavement and ordered me back to my house. The sight of her formidable frame blocking my way didn’t put me off. I confidently walked right up to her, and, when I was about three metres from her, I suddenly exploded into action by taking off as quickly as I could. I was quite fast and agile as a child.

It was a total mismatch.

Aunty Stinkalot had no chance.

Before she could even think about reacting, I was past her and on my way to my father. All she could do then was to call after me, plead with me and threaten me… none of which worked. She quickly learnt to stop chasing me after I attacked her – and her domestic worker – with rocks on a few occasions.

On other occasions, I started running as soon as I stepped out onto the pavement in front of our house. I easily covered the forty metres to Aunty Stinkalot’s house before she could cover the eight metres from her porch to the pavement. It became a big joke to me. I often laughed loudly as I sped past her.

Sometimes, I had no intention of going to my father’s house, but still pretended to do so just to have fun with Aunty Stinkalot. I often used the low boundary walls along the street as cover to stalk up to Aunty Stinkalot’s house. Then, when I got to her gate, I waited until she nodded off, where she sat on the porch, before I crept up to her and shouted, "Bah!"

I was so paralysed with laughter that she almost caught me on a few occasions.

I loved having fun with Aunty Stinkalot!

Neither she nor her domestic worker ever succeeded in catching me or prevented me from going to my father’s house. They had the bulk – I had the mobility – and they simply didn’t stand a chance, more so, because I was so fearless and confident.

***

Ma Molly is a very simple person. She grew up in the farming community of Slumberville, where my grandparents, Grandma Fran and Grandpa Jacob, farmed all their lives. Not being academically inclined, Ma Molly struggled through school – always in the special class – and dropped out when she was sixteen. Jobs were very scarce in the small town of Slumberville, so Ma Molly moved to Sunny Valley, where she quickly found a job. As luck would have it, she met my very handsome father on the train, while both were travelling to Sunny Valley. They eventually got married and I was born in December 1965, while my younger brother, Edward Playstation, was born three years later.

Neither Edward Playstation nor I have any memory of Ma Molly and my father being together. When we were old enough to comprehend what was going on, we were living with Ma Molly and only saw our father every second weekend – apart from me, of course. I spent a lot of time with my father and Aunty Belinda, because I made it happen with my running away sessions.

I am told that my father was the only one in his large family who had a stuttering problem, and that I somehow inherited or developed the same problem, although to a much worse degree than he ever had. I really do not know when I first realised that I stuttered. I guess it was just part of life for me at first, and I certainly cannot remember that it bothered me during those early years. Edward Playstation was lucky; he didn’t develop a stutter at all.

Although my father had a new love and bed-warmer in his life, he wanted his bread buttered on both sides. He played mind games with Ma Molly by promising her that he would come back to her and the kids.

She believed him.

Her resistance crumbled.

They had sex.

He never came back.

This scenario repeated itself over and over… and over again.

Every time, Ma Molly’s hopes were raised by my father’s empty promises and, every time, he didn’t honour the promises he made to her in the heat of passion.

In this way, my father kept both Ma Molly and Aunty Belinda’s beds warm simultaneously. He might also have kept a few other beds warm at the same time – after all, he was a very handsome man… and rumour has it that the women made it clear that they adored him.

***

At age five, our immediate neighbours formed a big part of my life; in fact, they were the only people I knew, apart from my family.

Aunty Stinkalot and her family lived to our left. The family comprised of Aunty Stinkalot, the huge mother with the foul, sweaty stench. Uncle Tiny Tony was her very small husband. He was half her size. Being a railway worker with absolutely no ability to get promoted, Uncle Tiny Tony earned a very low salary. They were the poorest family in the neighbourhood. They never had a car, and walked or took a bus to where they wanted to go.

Aunty Stinkalot was treated as if she had the plague by everyone in the neighbourhood, because of the stench that accompanied her. It was rumoured that God was punishing you for something when Aunty Stinkalot plodded her huge frame down next to you in church. Many breath-holding records were attempted in this way, and many unofficial world records were set, but, sooner or later, you had to breathe… and, when you did, the pungent smell threatened to make you faint. At such times, it was impossible to concentrate on anything the reverend was saying. Your survival instincts just naturally kicked in… and getting through the sixty to ninety minutes spent in church – alive or barely alive – was all you could focus on. Nothing helped… not even the most sincere promises to God if he could just make the smell disappear or render you incapable of smelling anything for an hour and a half, or if he could miraculously make you disappear and re-appear elsewhere in the church – very far from Aunty Stinkalot.

There was no such luck.

When God decided he was going to punish you, he made Aunty Stinkalot your ‘church buddy’. Suddenly, she started to search you out week after week in church, wherever you might be hiding.

First, you heard the shuffling footsteps… then you saw the big shadow… then everyone moved out of the way or suddenly had to go to the toilet… until only you were sitting there totally at her mercy, alone and God-forsaken. Then the benches creaked as she squashed through them until her huge frame plodded down next to you, making you bounce up a good ten centimetres or so… and, when you landed back on the bench, Aunty Stinkalot shifted closer to you and made herself comfy and cosy, with her one huge breast on top of your head, pinning you down for the duration of the church service. This position gave you maximum exposure to her appalling smell.

You knew God had a quarrel with you when this happened… big time!

Needless to say, I very often found myself in this horrible situation.

It was as if Aunty Stinkalot favoured sitting next to me because they lived next to us and because Ma Molly was one of the few people who were friendly to her. Or maybe I just deserved to be punished for something, like running away to my dad’s house.

God didn’t seem to be very amused that I prayed to him to make the church service pass by quickly, either. For this, he seemed to punish me by letting Aunty Stinkalot make a nuisance of herself at our house too. There simply was no escaping or hiding from her; not even the safe haven of our house offered any protection or shelter from Aunty Stinkalot.

Apart from her appalling smell, Aunty Stinkalot also had the very irritating habit of rolling her eyes when she spoke. Not rolling as you think – rolling until only the whites of her eyes showed. For much of the conversation, the people she was talking to had the misfortune of having to stare at the whites of her eyes only.

What?

Why?

Being a friend to Ma Molly, Aunty Stinkalot knew all about how my father was toying with her feelings to get sex. Thus, whenever she saw my father pull up at our house with a huge bulge in his pants, she would ‘quickly’ run over to confront him and tell him to leave Ma Molly alone.

But my father simply lost his temper and ordered her off his property. She was told to never set her feet there again… much to my relief.

But God was much stronger than my father; he always made Aunty Stinkalot come back when my father’s back was turned….

There simply was no hiding when God had some beef with you. I learnt that very early on in life.

Aunty Stinkalot and Uncle Tiny Tony had three children – Elvis Crisphead, Snotty Sylvester and Round Julie.

Elvis Crisphead was the oldest. He got rid of all his teeth as a teenager, roots and all, and rumours had it that he had probably envisioned getting a toothache at some or other stage in his life, so he took the proactive approach… prevention is better than cure, after all.

Elvis Crisphead certainly was a man who planned ahead.

He never bothered to replace his teeth with false teeth and he walked around with a toothless mouth as if it was the most natural thing to do. Having no teeth in his mouth naturally changed his appearance quite a bit. Apart from having no teeth, he also had naturally crisp hair, which he wore in a thick bush in the same way that many black Americans did at that time. The combination of a thick bush of crisp hair and a toothless mouth was quite a sight to behold. It looked freakishly like an ostrich with a bush of very funny looking hair.

Sunny Valley was accustomed to the many strange characters who walked around, like Silly Ed, who firmly believed that he was driving a car while he walked around the streets clutching his steering wheel. He even ‘parked’ his steering wheel in parking spaces… and beware the car that parked where his steering wheel was already ‘parked’.

There was major drama!

Even in a place like this, Elvis Crisphead stood out. He was quite a strange-looking individual.

But, at the same time, he was also quite a nice and decent chap. The unsettling truth was that he was also the most ‘normal’ person in the family. His idol was Elvis Presley and he soon became an active Elvis impersonator, although he didn’t look or sound anything at all like Elvis, particularly not with that big bush of crisp hair and the flat, toothless ostrich mouth. Elvis Crisphead soon became Sunny Valley’s own Elvis, much to everyone’s embarrassment. However, he did miraculously make it onto a television programme and numerous radio programmes.

Incredible, but true.

Needless to say, the quality of programmes on radio and television was very dodgy at the time.

Snotty Sylvester was Elvis Crisphead’s younger brother. His trademark was a perpetual stream of snot running from his nose onto his lips, where he would wipe it clean with his tongue every few seconds, much like a car wiper would do. To the disgusted onlookers, it appeared as though Snotty Sylvester quite enjoyed his snotty treat every five seconds. Snotty Sylvester was almost a carbon copy of his father, Uncle Tiny Tony. Although he was slightly bigger than his father, they looked very much alike. They were also competing to be the dumbest in the family. I instinctively felt sorry for Snotty Sylvester from an early age. This shy, withdrawn, incredibly stupid person with absolutely no hope to achieve anything in life was an easy target for bullies. They loved to bully and mock him simply for who and what he was.

So intellectually challenged was Snotty Sylvester that he stuck his foot under the wheels of an oncoming bus one day. The heavy load of the bus caused such damage to Snotty Sylvester’s foot and leg that he struggled around for some time after the incident with a heavily swollen foot and leg that looked blue and sick. When asked why he stuck his foot under the bus, he simply replied, I just wanted to see what would happen.

He certainly saw what happened….

Having no capacity to think for himself, he had to learn the hard way.

To the best of my knowledge, Snotty Sylvester was never taken to a doctor to tend to his leg. Whether it was his punishment or a lack of money or medical aid, I do not know, but Snotty Sylvester struggled with that medically unattended leg for a very long time afterwards.

When Snotty Sylvester comes to mind, I automatically compare him to Ed from the cartoon series Ed, Edd n Eddy. They are equally intellectually challenged.

As if this family was not a strange lot already, the worst was saved for last: her name was Round Julie.

Round Julie was shorter and fatter than her mother. Miraculously, she never had the same sweaty stench as her mother, because she was more conscious of personal hygiene. But she was a very strange individual nonetheless. Her favourite pastime was to pull her hairs out of her head one by one and then suck on it like it was some kind of favourite treat. This gave her endless hours of pleasure, and she indulged in this strange activity regardless of where she was or in whose company she found herself. When she was in Grade 8, she even got engaged to a man in his mid-twenties! At that time, she was semi-bald as she continued to snack on her hair….

The last time I saw her, she only had a few strands of hair left on her head.

Strange, very strange.

Their collective intelligence was lower than that of one very intelligent person. What their purpose on Earth could possibly have been was totally unclear. Their life was one of constant struggle and poverty, being ridiculed, treated like rubbish and absolutely no hope to improve their circumstances. Yet, they were given life… and at least they made Sunny Valley an interesting – albeit strange and embarrassing – place.

***

On the other side of us lived Cyril the Paedophile and Provocative Sally – brother and sister. There were other family members, but only these two stand out in my memory.

Provocative Sally had numerous sexual relationships with numerous boyfriends from a relatively young age. I witnessed one of them touching her private parts right in front of me while I looked on with big eyes – not missing a thing. Good thing she had her clothes on at that time. Provocative Sally didn’t only fancy older boys; she also quite fancied and enjoyed seducing very young boys… like me.

One evening, while she and I were standing on their porch, she asked if I knew how a girl’s vagina felt.

She was in her mid-teens; I was five.

When I innocently answered that I had no idea what it looked or felt like, she invited me to slip my hand under her panties. My heart bounced and a deep fear overwhelmed me, but Provocative Sally was offering and that prevented me from running away. It was dark and, as she lifted her shirt and pulled her pants away from her body invitingly, I allowed my hand to touch the flesh of her belly near her belly button. Not knowing what to do or where her vagina was situated, I kept my hand motionless against the smooth skin of her belly.

Sensing that I had no idea, Provocative Sally said, Slip your hand down.

I moved my hand down… and still further down, but I was confused, because all I could feel was smooth skin. In those days, pants were cut high up and the button was above belly button height, so it was a long way down to her private parts. For me to touch her private parts with my little five-year-old arm and the high-cut fashion of those days was basically impossible unless I stuck just about my whole arm in there. I remember going quite far down – but still felt nothing – before fear overwhelmed me and I pulled my hand back.

You’ve got to go down further; your hand was too high up, coached Provocative Sally. Come, try again, she invited.

I tried again, but, again, my fear got the best of me before the big moment of truth, much to the frustration of Provocative Sally, who was desperate to feel my hand down there.

After pulling away the second time, I refused to try again, my fear completely overwhelming me. But Provocative Sally quite fancied seducing me and she tried again a few days later. A five-year-old boy was fair game to her.

Provocative Sally was having a bath and she knew I was in and around their house. Initially, she invited me to come and sit with her in the bathroom, but I refused. When she was done, she wrapped herself in a towel and called me into the bathroom. Once I was in the bathroom, she showed me some of her dark pubic hair that was still lying in the empty bathtub. I assume she was hoping I would be inquisitive and ask where the hair came from so that she could show me, but I was already wary of her and I declined to ask any questions. I suspected – without fully knowing – where the hair came from and I certainly didn’t quite understand what Provocative Sally’s motives were. I walked out of the bathroom as a totally innocent little boy, not fully realising that Provocative Sally was preying on me.

But I would not remain innocent for much longer. A more persistent and unforgiving sexual predator was lurking in the shadows, waiting for the right opportunity to pounce upon little unsuspecting me.

The monster was Provocative Sally’s older brother, Cyril the Paedophile.

That figures.

Seems as if they had a family trait going on there.

How it happened and how Cyril the Paedophile lured me into an outside toilet in the back of their yard has been lost from memory, but the fact of the matter is that he did manage to get me to go with him into the toilet… and, when he did, Cyril the Paedophile pretended to get ready to urinate, but all he really did was expose his fully erect penis to me. I looked on curiously, totally overwhelmed by what I was seeing… partly because his penis was huge.

Naturally, I was curious, and, seeing the innocent curiosity, Cyril the Paedophile took his chance. Before long, he had managed to coach me to first touch him and then to masturbate him. Cyril the Paedophile’s penis was so big that I had to employ both hands to try to do the job. But I could not do a proper job and Cyril the Paedophile ended up masturbating, while he even attempted to masturbate my little underdeveloped penis. To me, it was a question of being naturally inquisitive. I didn’t enjoy it in any way. To him, it was a question of being a perverted monster preying on an innocent little boy.

So the innocence of a little boy was lost forever….

In the weeks that followed, Cyril the Paedophile abused me regularly in this way. At one stage, he even seemed to regard me as his girlfriend, because he held and caressed my leg lovingly while we sat on their porch. These images remain etched in my mind to this day… but do they bother me? I can’t say that they do. I certainly never developed perverted tendencies like this.

Mercifully, Cyril the Paedophile never attempted to go beyond masturbation sessions. He would have caused serious physical damage to me if he had. Sodomy would also have given absolute proof of the sexual abuse that was taking place. Maybe he was wise to this fact, or maybe he just wasn’t that kind of a monster.

But the damage was done, even if there was no sodomy. Cyril the Paedophile destroyed my innocence… and this caused me to become increasingly sexually inquisitive – prematurely so.

Suddenly, everything revolved around sex and sexual acts in my life… maybe because I had been made so aware of it.

Things I was ignorant of before were now at the forefront of my mind. I began to seek out situations like that, and I was very alert about sex and sexual acts.

In the days that followed, I saw a domestic worker sitting against a front wall while she was breastfeeding her little baby. Curiously, I walked over to her and watched while the baby suckled on his mother’s breast. The domestic worker didn’t attempt to hide her exposed breast.

I watched in fascination.

The domestic worker just looked at me and smiled up at me. I was invading her privacy, but she was black and blacks had no rights in our country at that time, particularly not in the very racist town I was living in.

Suddenly, I leant forward and removed the domestic worker’s other breast from her bra. I looked at her dark nipples in fascination. Then I told the domestic worker to switch the baby to the new breast that I had just exposed. She did as requested, with a shy smile on her face.

She didn’t attempt to stop me in any way. After letting the baby suckle on the breast, I again leant forward and removed the other breast. Then I shoved the unused breast back under her shirt. The baby barely had time to suckle on the new breast when I leant forward again and exposed the other breast. The object of my fascination was to touch, handle and look at her naked breasts as much as possible.

I continued to expose and cover her breasts over and over for the next few minutes before I lost interest and walked away to play with my friends… like a normal five-year-old should be doing.

What was totally taboo before Cyril the Paedophile got hold of me now became something that was at the forefront of my inquisitive little mind… nudity… sexuality… sexual deeds. I became an active participant….

My mind was so polluted by Cyril the Paedophile that I even fancied having sex with my father’s girlfriend, Aunty Belinda. Having previously overheard my father and Aunty Belinda having sex, my little five-year-old brain figured that when people were sexually active anybody could have sex with them. I got that idea, because I observed how dogs just randomly jumped each other all over the streets. I figured it worked the same way with humans.

One day, I found myself alone with Aunty Belinda in my father’s house. Remembering that she had had sex with my dad, I thought I might as well try my luck, so I gathered all my courage, walked up to Aunty Belinda and asked, A-A-A-A-A-A-Aunty, c-c-c-c-c-can I ask you s-s-s-s-s-s-s-something?

Yes, of course; what do you want? Aunty Belinda compassionately leant down towards me.

Aunty, w-w-w-w-w-will you…? I paused.

Go ahead; ask what you want. Don’t be shy.

Aunty… w-w-w-w-w-w-will you…?

That was how far I got. I wanted to ask her if I could see her naked. If I could feel her body. If I could have sex with her – like I heard my father doing with her. Like I also sometimes overheard and saw my father doing with my mother when he visited. I remember walking into Ma Molly’s room one evening and how I saw a man quickly rolling off her. I know it was my father, although I don’t recall the actual blocked image of him.

In my naive little mind, my father was definitely displaying the same behaviour displayed by the dogs on the street, by having sex with the female he happened to be with at that time, so I genuinely was under the impression that was how things worked.

I also wanted a piece of the pie.

I was totally ignorant about the reality of it all. All around me, I saw people having sex… heard people having sex… being exposed to sexual deeds by Provocative Sally and Cyril the Paedophile… saw people touching each other’s bodies in front of me as if I was not there or too small to notice. Even dogs were having random sex with each other in the streets.

All of this gave me the impression that sex and sexual acts were quite normal activities to participate in….

For some reason, my common sense got the better of me and I never asked Aunty Belinda what I so desperately wanted to ask her. Somehow, my gut told me that it was wrong and unnatural.

But I continued to be exposed to sex and sexual acts… and nobody was preventing it from happening….

One day, while I was playing in the garden, a man came to visit Provocative Sally. I became very suspicious when I saw them slip into the house hand in hand. Suspecting that they were going to do naughty stuff, I waited a few minutes before I slowly stalked towards the front door of their house. The door was wide open and everything in the house was silent. I was very careful not to make the timber floors creak as I silently stalked towards Provocative Sally’s bedroom door, which was half open. I reached the door without making a sound. Then I leant through the half-open door and peeped in… and I saw exactly what I expected to see, which was the man’s hairy white bum feverishly pumping up and down on top of Provocative Sally.

They were having sex in broad daylight on her bed.

I could not resist….

"Bah!" I shouted.

As I did, I turned and ran out of the house, howling with laughter. Expecting someone to chase me, I hid behind a bush in the garden, where I lay giggling uncontrollably until I realised that nobody had followed me… so I stalked back into the house. This time, I was not as careful as the previous time and I did make a few floorboards creak. When I reached the bedroom door and peered in, I saw Provocative Sally and the man lying side by side with their hands on each other’s genitalia. Both were fully clothed. They heard me coming and, as soon as I peered into the room, Provocative Sally shouted, Stop being silly; we see you. Go away.

I laughed and ran away.

That night, I told my mom that Provocative Sally had sex with the man, and, the next day, I even told her mother. It was big news for me, so I thought it might be big news for our respective parents too. I was totally oblivious to the fact that I caused trouble for Provocative Sally by doing so. If anybody spoke to Provocative Sally about the incident, they did so without my knowledge, because I never heard another word about it.

Following this incident, I saw Provocative Sally having sex with at least four men in different locations. Two of them were in public areas – in a park and on a beach, under blankets. Being a regular at their house, I frequently accompanied them on outings. I was beginning to realise that Provocative Sally was quite a willing and sexually active teenager. It was becoming such a normal occurrence that I didn’t even bother to tell Ma Molly about the other times I saw our neighbour having sex.

Sex… sexual acts… sexual discussions… indecency… sexual abuse….

I was prematurely exposed to all of the above very regularly at the tender age of five – and, to my little five-year-old brain, that was just the way people behaved.

It became normal.

I was none the wiser.

***

My parents were divorced for about one year when somebody introduced Ma Molly to a police officer called Uncle Bastard. He was a sergeant in the Sunny Valley Police Force. Being a small man, he adopted a no-nonsense, tough guy attitude simply to fool people into respecting him. His favourite pastime was to read Western books, especially those written by Louis L’Amour.

Uncle Bastard had four children of his own. His wife had died a few years before, whereupon he had moved his family to Sunny Valley to get away from the memories.

So, five people who were going to play a major role in