⚠️ IMMEDIATE CONTENT WARNING: TRIGGERING MATERIAL
Please be advised: The chapter below, "Tickle and Goodbye," contains graphic and unflinching descriptions of child sexual abuse and themes of complex trauma. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
If you or someone you know needs help, please contact:
RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline: 800-656-HOPE (4673)
National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or Text 988
Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
I used to call him Dad.
That was before I realized “Dad” was just a costume he wore while he violated me. Before I understood that tickling can be a cover for abuse. Before I stopped giving him the dignity of a title he never earned.
Now I call him "sperm donor." The title fits, and the shame is his.
He left our family in 1979. I was nine. Lori was five. Roger was three. And I didn’t want a relationship with him after that. Not even a little. Lori, oddly enough, seemed to yearn for one. I couldn’t understand it. Maybe she hadn’t seen what I had. Perhaps she hadn’t felt what I had. Or maybe she was just too young to know what yearning meant.
In one of my first therapy sessions, I described the “tickling” without fully grasping its weight. My psychotherapist asked me, “What if you fondled your nephew, Steven? Would that be all right?” Steven was six. My first nephew. My heart.
I burst out, “NO! Of course not!” The horror became visible. I hadn’t realized—hadn’t let myself realize—that what the sperm donor did to me was wrong. Not just confusing. Wrong.
I have Steven John to thank for that. His innocence gave me clarity. His existence gave me a mirror. And what I saw in it was repulsive.
I remember the day he left. A beautiful Sunday morning. He brought a woman to our townhouse, "chun." That’s how I’ve always spelled her name in my mind. She was Korean, and I don’t know her citizenship status, nor do I care to speculate. What I do know is that she married the sperm donor twice and opened a Korean-American restaurant with him. His name, as far as I ever saw, wasn’t attached to the business. I assumed that was intentional. Maybe to avoid financial accountability, and maybe to keep child support off the books.
Because let’s be honest: the checks he sent were piddly and few and far between. Mom raised us with mustard sandwiches and K-Mart layaway. He didn’t contribute. Not meaningfully. Not consistently. Not honourably.
We visited chun’s apartment once. Mom, sperm donor, Lori, Roger Jr., and me. Her husband and two kids were there. I don’t remember their names. I do remember being ignored, shunned into a bedroom with Gone with the Wind playing on the TV. The food was awful. The vibe worse. I was older, sensitive, and highly attuned to human shifts. I saw the way sperm donor and chun interacted. I felt the exclusion. I knew something was changing.
Back at our townhouse on West Howard Avenue in Milwaukee, sperm donor announced he was leaving. He was moving in with chun. He went upstairs to pack. He invited me to help him pick out an outfit for the day. Said he wanted to explain things to me—just me. I was nine. Emotional. Old enough to grieve. Old enough to notice the rift expanding.
And then came the “help.” The kind he’d offered for years. The kind that had become disturbingly normal. He chose a frilly pale pink dress for me. Laid out lacey underpants from my vanity mirror—the one I used to sit in front of proudly, like a little girl playing grown-up.
I remember lying on the bed. Laughing. Writhing. Tickled between my vaginal lips. It felt good. That’s the part that haunts me. That’s the part that makes me kick myself. How dare I feel good from something so vile? But I was a child. I didn’t know better. I didn’t have the language. I didn’t have the power.
Dr. Mary, my first psychologist, helped me name it. Helped me see it. Helped me hate it. I remember the stroking. The access he had once I stopped wearing diapers. I remember the years. The repetition. The normalization. And I remember thinking—maybe I should thank chun. Maybe her arrival saved Lori from becoming the next target.
I never told dan, my ex-husband, about these memories until years into our relationship. And when I did, I recount no emotions seemed to exist. I had stayed tune to his facial expressions, and his words, but he barely reacted. No anger. No disgust. No haunted silence. Just... nothing. He didn’t seem to care. Not like Roger did. When I told my brother, he looked gutted. Haunted. Like the truth had punched him in the gut. That’s the difference. That’s what I needed. And didn’t get.
Many times during the intimacy I experienced with dan, I had to redirect my mind. Force myself back into the moment. It was sick. It was exhausting. It was PTSD at its finest.
Sperm donor, how dare you. How dare you touch me in ways that brought pleasure to a child who only wanted attention? How dare you use your daughter to satisfy your deviance? You were careful. You covered it up with underarm tickles when someone entered the room. You made it look normal. You made me feel special. And that’s the cruelty of it.
If I’d known it was wrong, I would’ve told Mom. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Kids weren’t taught good touch/bad touch in the ‘70s. You were rarely alone with one of us. But when you were, you made it count.
You were a drunk. A deadbeat. Mom had to keep a six-pack in the fridge for you. When I was three, she called home to check on me. I answered. Told her you were asleep on the couch with a cigarette dangling from your hand. She asked me to put it out. I did. I don’t remember that memory—it was told to me. But it fits.
You took your anger out on Roger Jr. when he was just a toddler. Yanked him out of the car. Rushed inside to drink. Left me to care for the kids. You weren’t a father. You were a liability.
And then, ten years later, you showed up. Because you heard I was getting married. You weaselled your way back in. I let you. I don’t know why. Maybe I wanted a father. Maybe I wanted counsel.
Maybe I wanted to believe that redemption was possible, or that forgiveness would free me from the weight I’d been carrying for decades. Even now, the echoes of those years ripple through my relationships, shaping the way I trust, the way I love, the way I flinch or deny comfort or even a possibility of affection with certain words or gestures. The legacy is silent but ever-present—a shadow that stretches across birthdays, milestones, even ordinary afternoons. I keep searching for moments that feel untouched, pure, unspoiled by your memory, but they’re rare. Each time I think I’ve found one, the tickle returns, threading itself through the seams of my life. And yet, I’m here. I’m writing. I’m naming what happened. That’s how I move forward—not with closure, but with clarity. The shame is not mine to carry. It never was.
Maybe I wanted closure.
You paid a piddly amount of child support. Mom struggled. We ate mustard sandwiches. Kraft Mac and cheese with hot dogs. School clothes from K-Mart on layaway. One year, she got your tax refund. That was a gift. But not from you.
Years later, your new wife—not chun, who married and divorced you twice—paid off your back child support so you could get a passport for holiday travel. Mom refused to lie for you to say she received the funds by providing you a receipt. Good. That money should’ve gone to her. Not the courts. Not the IRS. Her.
The lack of role modelling passed to Roger Jr. Sins of the father. Generational rot. I should’ve cut you off when I was ten.
After dan left the Navy, we stayed with you. You gave me an X-Files mug and cap for my birthday. Told me not to tell the others. Didn’t want them jealous. You remembered my interests. You played the part. I fell for it.
You claimed to have mental powers. Said you wished chun ill. Said your thoughts made her sick. Said when you stopped, she got better. That story messed with my psyche. Made me believe in magical thinking. Made me think I inherited something dark from you.
I didn’t know I had PTSD. Not until much later. This chapter isn’t the whole book. But it’s the beginning. Only one sperm donor. Only one physical abuser. Thank God.
I’ll never forget the tickle.
I may not say your full name, but my brother was a Jr.—so anyone who wants to know can find out. Good. Let the memories haunt you for once.
The tickle wasn’t innocent. It wasn’t playful. It was abuse.
And it’s a memory I wish I could live without.