PEITSCHE

I’ll be damned if I can tell you when it begun. Or how it begun. Or with whom it begun. I’ll be damned if I am capable of understand the onset of my very fate…

Well, I’m damned and that’s for sure. Cause I know more about suffering and tears than I know about laughter and happiness. I know more about blame than I know about innocence. I know more about insignificance than I know about value. I know more about damnation than I know about salvation.

The memories don’t come easy cause they’re hidden in the darkest part of my brain. But I can pull out my first damnation. Let me call it Peitsche. It’s German for whip. See, I only know scars and wounds and scrapes. All I know is running and hiding and crouching.

He was a big man. My scrawny muscles would never match to his and my barely able height no match for his gigantic one; which to my child-like eyes was a mountain. His ever blood- shot eyes always glued to the little screen he called our television. Well, it was Mama’s but when he arrived it became his then ours whenever we had guests.

He calls me “boy” and I must respond. Lack thereof would warrant attornment. And his was blood in every sense. One unanswered call would equate to a calculated ounce of wickedness. All accompanied by the stench of heavy words, none of which were kind enough to speak well of my fate.

And that was just the beginning. Blows after blows came after each transgression. Sometimes even a flame was lit on my bare back. Other times it was a rod. Most times I wasn’t conscious enough to know the extent and effect of the lesson. Each lesson concluded with the iconic “I do this because I love you.”

What about my mother, you ask … As much as that is the second damnation, all I can say is she was no more a victim than I was. Perhaps more damned than I. But who knows? Suffering is relative. So is happiness.

Sometime over the years I embraced it, craved it. Wanted it so bad, I intentionally transgressed. The lash of the long whip so precisely layered on my back felt like home. I knew no other. And each burn drew me in like a moth to light.

Last week I kissed Kelsey, then hit her, she didn’t make the bed right. The other week I flogged Mercy cause the food was cold. And two weeks before that I kicked Diana for failing to iron my favorite shirt on time. And many before them. Each left claiming I was inhumane.

So now I’m drowning in the damnation that I am. For each day I only crave the crack if the cane, or the taste of fire. They say it’s persistent depressive disorder or something along those lines. I don’t know what to believe. Because in my world, it’s all I have ever know. The caress of the whip is all the love I know. The enticingly hot taste of the flames are the seduction I’ve lived to know. But maybe it’s just me being damned. Maybe it’s my eternal damnation. Who knows…