by Pearl Solas
As a delayed bloomer, Frankie was at first disappointed that his friends seemed to be leaving him behind. Later in his life, he understood that he was bothered more by the fear of missing a shared experience than by his own delayed physical maturity. The truth was that his own small, youthful stature was convenient for maintaining the comfortable relationship pattern of elementary and early middle school with the girls who were still attractive to him: the girls who, like Frankie, remained small and undeveloped. Because of his own diminutive height, it seemed natural that his romantic attentions should be directed toward the girls who remained smaller than he was. That he lost interest in young women who had begun to rocket past him in height seemed natural and consistent with a healthy masculine desire to be the larger partner in a couple.
Because Frankie entered high school without seeming to be in any danger of experiencing puberty, he had no reason to question his preference for the girls in his class who, like him, were the smallest and least developed. He did not reflect on his subconscious distaste for the signs of physical maturity that his friends and classmates displayed so proudly. Frankie enjoyed spending time with his male friends, but he was also subtly repulsed by their pungent odors and by how they seemed to take every opportunity to wear tank tops that showed off the hair sprouting from their armpits like troll dolls in headlocks. He learned to fake enthusiasm for the constant and graphic discussions of the breasts, legs, and butts of the girls. Frankie’s “fake-it-‘til-you-make-it” approach assumed that his interest in these areas would eventually grow.
“That’s not how things happened, though.” Father Frank took a brief pause, with an expression that made him seem as though he were again inhabiting the confusion he experienced as a teenager. “When I finally started growing and filling out during the second half of my freshman year, things just got so much more uncomfortable and confusing.”
His rapid gains in height pleased Frankie, but he considered many of the other changes he experienced to make him much less attractive than he had been before. Every day he shaved the hairs that grew on his face because he thought they made him look dark and unfriendly. He found the coarse hair that grew under his arms, on his lower abdomen, and in his pubic area to be disgusting, and he was particularly alarmed by the way in which it trapped odors. He tried to fix the problem by shaving in those places but, after experiencing the discomfort of razor burn and in-grown hairs, he began a nightly ritual of plucking any new hairs as they pushed up through his skin. This process soon became too time-consuming, so eventually he just began keeping the pesky hairs closely clipped. Frankie was also displeased by the way his growth hollowed his cheeks and sharpened his features. The girls at school seemed to appreciate the changes—many of them flirted with him—which made Frankie so uncomfortable that his evasions were interpreted as arrogance. In addition to the unwanted attention from his female schoolmates, grown women also paid attention to Frankie. He soon learned to ignore their sidelong glances. The attention confused Frankie, who did not see the attraction of his new angularity. Frankie himself hated the loss of his soft, clear skin and his rounded, full-cheeked good looks.
* * *
Even after his own metamorphosis, he still couldn’t match his friends’ enthusiasm for their long-legged, high-breasted female counterparts. Not until the latest bloomers of his class had shed the soft roundness of childhood did the concerns lying under the surface begin to invade his consciousness. It wasn’t that he lacked a sexual drive. He experienced physical lust and, like many of his friends, Frankie had begun to develop an interest in sexual behavior late in elementary school.
“The difference was,” Father Frank explained, “that the objects of my friends’ sexual interests evolved in lock-step as they and the rest of our classmates developed. My interests didn’t change. They stayed the same. I never lost my attraction to smooth, soft skin, rounded faces, and bodies covered with peach fuzz rather than smelly, coarse hair.”
Frankie first became consciously aware of his fixed attraction to children when, at 16, a neighbor asked him to babysit for her 9-year-old daughter. Frankie enjoyed playing with the child, and he was amused by her blatant attempts to manipulate him into allowing activities that her mother had explicitly forbidden.
At home in bed that night, Frankie found himself thinking about her sweet face and lively eyes. He was troubled. He had heard rumors of men with a creepy interest in children, and he remembered his friends mocking such “perverts” and other deviants. Frankie knew it was wrong, but he also couldn’t stop thinking about his neighbor. When he was around other children, at church, or at his job, he found his attention fixed on them, too. The gender of the child was less important than the other traits that spoke to him: small stature, rounded features, hairlessness, and the uninhibited expressiveness that lacked the guardedness developed during adolescence.
In addition to consciously identifying his desire, and acknowledging that it was troubling and wrong, Frankie knew, instinctively, that it was not a problem that he could talk to anyone about. Ordinarily, when presented with an issue he could not resolve through his own efforts, Frankie would seek guidance from his sisters, his parents, or even the parish priest, Father James. Without having concrete evidence that any other person shared his strange attraction, Frankie’s sense of self-preservation warned him that no confidante could possibly understand or sympathize with his plight, and that he would destroy himself by asking anyone for help.
Meanwhile, Beth’s mother asked him to babysit more and more frequently because, she said, Frankie actually played with her daughter rather than relying on the TV. Babysitting was exquisite torture. While he enjoyed playing with Beth, and he often found himself gazing at her, he scrupulously avoided touching her unless absolutely necessary. When Beth, in her childish affection, launched herself at Frankie and hugged him, he escaped from the embraces as gently and quickly as possible.
Frankie tried to avoid his growing, unwanted obsession by exploring the expanding electronic networking world. It thrilled him to find a community that shared his passion for technology and all its possibilities. Being forward-thinking, Mr. and Mrs. Muncy encouraged his interest because they understood that, through his “hobby,” their son was teaching himself skills that could serve him very well in an increasingly technological world.
“It was a really exciting time,” Father Frank told Tavis, his eyes shining as he relived the memories. “Hackers weren’t the criminals we think of today. We were puzzle solvers. We loved the idea of figuring out how to get useful information and then sharing it to make the world more accessible.” Father Frank went on to explain how clever technology buffs had evolved from phone phreaking in the 1970s and 80s to trading harmless but difficult-to-find data in the 1980s and early 90s. Members of the growing virtual communities took documents and other information from their offline lives to upload and share with other members. Membership in these communities, and access to the information they held, was limited. A person couldn’t join a network without knowing an existing member and having useful information to share.
In the early days, most of the information shared was only exciting because obtaining it required problem solving. As the electronic bulletin board communities expanded and diversified, some groups focused on pornography, and even these groups were often divided into specific fantasies and fetishes.
Frankie first encountered this facet of the virtual society after his hacking chops had earned a degree of respect that made his online handle sufficiently recognizable that he no longer needed to have a personal relationship with an existing member if he wanted to join a specific group. As a goof, Frankie and Jackson accessed some of the images shared in bulletin boards that traded in pornography. They didn’t discuss their true reactions to the photographs—they just joked about the ridiculous expressions of the people pictured.
But when he was alone, Frankie found himself drawn back to the pornography boards. He wasn’t aroused by what he saw, but he wa
s interested in the images that were more amateurish and raw, that captured the participants in unguarded moments.
* * *
“I was almost seventeen when I stumbled on the ‘RealJailBait’ folder on one of the porn boards. The children in the pictures were probably between six and ten. Although the folder was in a board that focused on porn and fetish, the images in the folder were not at all sexual. They were just snapshots of young boys and girls smiling, laughing, and playing in ordinary clothing.
“Young people today see graphic porn at earlier and earlier ages. Back then, though, it wasn’t nearly as accessible, and I had seen much more than most people my age because of my digital presence. Even with all I had seen, the pictures of those kids, which didn’t have anything to do with sex, were more exciting to me than explicit pornography.”
Father Frank paused, and regarded the wall above Tavis, avoiding his face, gathering the strength to continue. Years of experience had taught Tavis to remain silent and mask his disgust with a sympathetic expression to encourage a perp to keep talking.
“For me, the best part was being able feast my eyes without bringing attention to myself. I couldn’t stay away from it, and I felt a rush whenever new images were added.”
* * *
Frankie had been visiting the folder for a few weeks when he received a message from the forum’s administrator: “FraMu, I see you’ve been spending some time with RealJailBait.” Frankie flushed with panic and shame. He knew administrators could see the content visitors accessed, but it was the first time his secret interest had been acknowledged by someone other than himself. Frankie continued reading. “I have some new photos I think you’ll find interesting. I’m sharing with only a few like-minded friends with the understanding that you’ll return the favor if something similar comes your way.” Frankie closed the message and shut down his computer without responding, his brain sounding alarm bells.
Frankie’s struggle with his better judgment lasted two full days until his curiosity finally prevailed. He responded simply, “I’m in.” Later that evening, the administrator sent Frankie a new dial-in number and password, which opened a folder containing a series of image files.
After waiting what seemed forever for the first image to download, he was dumbstruck by the likeness of an angelic little girl, about six years old. Her blonde hair was so fine that the soft, loose ringlets at the uppermost layers seemed to reach toward the heavens in a halo-like effect. She wore a white nightgown that accentuated the overall impression of sweet innocence. Most breathtaking, though, was the stunning child’s expression. She looked into the camera with such love and trust. Every photograph that followed was worth waiting for the download, and Frankie studied each image as it became accessible. The series depicted the girl variously holding a portion of each side of the hem of her nightgown in her two hands, her arms straight down at her sides, and then she twirled and curtseyed, and generally acted silly. Her expressions ranged from tight lips barely containing an explosive laugh, to a high head and outthrust hip that conveyed obvious pride in her pretty frock, to a head thrown back in laughter that showed a face less pretty than enchanting, with toothless front gums that were hidden in some of the other, more conventionally lovely photos.
Frankie found himself particularly drawn to a close-up image of the child’s jack-o-lantern grin and dancing eyes, which conveyed pure joy. There was a small, faint heart-shaped birthmark just below her left eye. Frankie stared at the photo for quite a while before moving on to the next image that had completed downloading. After a few more photos of the child alone, the camera appeared to have been mounted on a tripod because all of the subsequent images shared the same angle and perspective. A man, whose head was out of the frame, led her to a bed on which the camera focused. The last image before the pair reached the bed showed the little girl’s legs raised in a carefree skip.
* * *
“I looked at the pictures of what happened on the bed over and over. I knew that my body’s reaction to what I saw was wrong, but I was so, so tired of fighting against it. Finally, I gave in. I stopped fighting and gave my body what it wanted. Afterward, my body felt sated and, actually, sleepy, but every other part of me screamed with horror and shame.
“I never had any doubt that the images I had viewed, and the pleasure I had taken in them, were an unequivocal moral wrong. Against this certainty, though, my brain tried to justify my actions, and it nagged at me and asked me to consider whether I was overreacting. Surely, if something were so wrong I wouldn’t be able to access it so relatively easily, right? Maybe there were flickers of distress in some of the images, but in almost every photograph the little girl’s expression showed nothing but love and trust. Could it be possible that the child had willingly participated? If so, was the activity really so terrible as our culture wanted us all to believe?”
In worrying over these issues as a tongue compulsively probes a loose tooth, Frankie allowed these louder justifications to drown out a much smaller, more still voice, which said that all of the expressions of love and trust appeared in the earliest images, and there were no shots of the child’s face after she had skipped to the bed. Frankie’s fragile and immature psyche was unused to participating in unvarnished analysis, so he clung to any possibility that what he had viewed represented voluntary, albeit culturally unacceptable, activity. And he comforted himself by insisting that regardless of the circumstances in which the photos were generated, he had not had a hand in making them. He had just observed the damage, if any, that had already been done, and that he could not change.
Frankie promised himself to think about the issue again when he was less exhausted. He saved the images to his external drive, stored the drive in a shoebox at the top of his closet, and cleaned all digital traces of the evening’s activities. As he worked, Frankie reflected on his decision to save the images. He had done it almost instinctively, without forethought. What would he do with them? Would he turn them over to some authority figure? Even in his own overestimation of his integrity, Frankie admitted to himself that he would not tell anyone about them. No, the most unflinching aspect of Frankie’s personality, the core being that refused to allow him to delude even himself, acknowledged that he saved the images so that, when he had created a sufficiently rational argument to justify it, he could look at and take pleasure in them again.
After double and triple checking to ensure his electronic activities had been erased to the best of his ability, Frankie powered off his computer, crawled into bed, and promptly fell into a deep sleep.
Chapter Sixteen
Like in most dreams, Frankie never had a clear moment of achieving awareness. Instead, the alternative consciousness revealed itself to him slowly; first, he had the sense of watching a far-off scene—like a play or a television show—and then the setting zoomed in until he was no longer in the audience, but a starring member of the cast. His individual will had been disabled, and he had no power to manipulate his own actions or other events. He simply looked out of eyes that he somehow knew were not his own, and passively and powerlessly experienced alien thoughts and sensations. Just after recognizing that he inhabited another consciousness, but before he could probe the mind he occupied, his independent thoughts were turned down, like a volume knob, to the lowest level above absolute mute. He had no choice but to live the scene from his host’s perspective, without distraction from his separate, imprisoned mind.
Frankie’s dream-self peered at its small, pale hand, which clasped a large, strong hand attached to a man navigating them down a steep flight of stairs.
* * *
I wonder what kind of treat I’m going to get tonight!
I didn’t get to see Daddy before Mommy said I had to go to bed, but Daddy woke me up when the house was quiet and dark, and he said it was time for a fashion show. Our fashion shows are so fun and funny. Daddy gives me pretty new clothes and then we go down to the basement and pretend that I’m a famous model and he’s taking pictures
of me for a magazine. He says silly things like, “You look maaahvelous, Dahling!” or “Blow your fans a kiss, Diva!”
When our fashion shows are over, Daddy gives me chocolate cake, or Skittles, or some other sweet treat Mommy would never let me have before bed because it would “rot your teeth,” and Daddy and I giggle about our secret play time. By then, I usually get pretty sleepy, so Daddy carries me to my room and tucks me in with butterfly kisses and he tells me I’m his beautiful little girl.
I’m always so tired the morning after our fashion shows that Mommy gets flusterated with me. Her face gets pinchy as she helps me tie my shoes, and she pulls the laces too tight, or brushes my hair too hard, or says that I’m a big girl and I should know better than to make my bed in such a sloppy, “half-fast” way. She says that I’m going to miss the bus and make her late for work again. I don’t like it when Mommy is so grumpy, but secret playtime with Daddy is worth feeling tired and making Mommy’s face pinchy.
Tonight, Daddy woke me up by sitting on the edge of the bed and brushing my hair away from my face. When I was awake enough to see him, he reminded me to be quiet by smiling at me with his finger to his lips. I pushed off my covers and gave him a big hug, and he rocked me back and forth. After a little while, he pushed me back from him to show me what he had brought for me tonight. It was the prettiest nightgown I had ever seen, and I had a hard time remembering that I couldn’t clap my hands together or I would wake Mommy. Daddy helped me out of my Strawberry Shortcake nightie, and pulled the new nightie over my head. It was soft and smelled so nice—a little bit like Mommy but different. Once my new nightie was on, Daddy asked if I wanted to bring one of my stuffies, so I chose Geraldine Giraffe, and we headed down to the basement for our fashion show.