Vanessa and I still have mutual friends, so I know she has created a nice life doing the profession she dreamed about doing as a kid. I hesitated to even share this here because I know how quickly my truth will be used against me by people who want to prove that women involved in the adult entertainment business are all “damaged.” In a recent survey of two thousand people, 81 percent of the women alleged they had experienced sexual harassment or assault. Did they all become porn stars? By that logic, if you polled a hundred female surgeons—or politicians—would none of the women say that they got through growing up female scot-free? Vanessa and I endured assaults from the same man. Why isn’t she doing porn?
After the guidance counselor, I never told a single person about the sexual abuse until this past June. I had been so successful blocking out what happened to me that it only came up when I recently went back to my old horseshoe neighborhood for a profile of my life. To show them my childhood home, we had to drive by the house where I was continually assaulted. Seeing it brought back a flood of feelings, and I broke down. I am still receiving flashes of memory, moments too graphic and sickening for me to share. Mainly it just hurts to remember being that vulnerable.
Being a rape survivor does not define me at all. If anything, what was ingrained into me was the expectation that I would not be believed if I ever asked for help. It’s why I keep highlighting this whole passage, my finger hovering over the Delete key. What stops me is seeing a bracelet on my right hand, a blue rubber one that I give out to people at events. In white type there is a quote from me: “Standing up to bullies is kind of my thing.”
I may not always want to, and I may fear what will happen when I do, but I have to tell the truth. This is mine.
My mom kept stumbling into dead-end relationships with guys, and Wade would still come around to sit in the front room. That only ended when she started dating Sidney Kelley. He was really nice and had a good job. What was the draw for my mom? you might wonder. Well, he was also a raging alcoholic. He had four kids of his own already. A boy, Trey, who was a year younger than me, and a set of Satan twins, two girls who were four years younger than me. They lived with their mom, Carla. He also had a bonus baby, Hope, who lived with her mom. She was two years old and the reason he was no longer with Carla.
I was told to call him Mr. Kelley, and that continued even after my mom married him when I was eleven and he became my stepdad. He moved in with us, and my mom found a new villain in Carla. “Carla’s such a bitch and she doesn’t want the kids over” was a constant refrain. Well, I wouldn’t want my kids in that filthy house, either. Team Carla here.
Mr. Kelley drank all the time and would be falling-down drunk around the neighbors. Even in our increasingly trashy neighborhood, it was like Whoa. One time at home he fell into the picture window. He hit it with his head and it shattered but didn’t break. They taped it up and it stayed shattered all through middle school and high school. It stayed that way for ten years.
In seventh grade, I met a girl name Myranda who was a year younger than me. I was walking by her when she mentioned to her friend that she wasn’t taking the bus because her mom was picking her up for a riding lesson.
“Hi,” I said, immediately latching on to her. I may as well have said, “Hi, new best friend. You’re going to be my friend whether you like it or not.” She was woefully ignorant about the riding lessons, so I realized I needed to speak to a manager. Her mom.
“Tell me about these riding lessons,” I said. “Where do you go?” This was pre-internet, and my mom knew nothing about horses. I needed to make this happen. I had her call my mom to tell her about it, and I started taking lessons with a trainer named Miss Cathy at four thirty in the afternoon every Wednesday. Myranda’s mom would pick us up from school and drive us out to the barn, and she would often take me home, too.
For months, my entire week revolved around Wednesdays.
A week before Christmas 1991, my stepdad Mr. Kelley told me he was going to pick me up that night when my lesson was over. He was getting his Christmas bonus and he was going to take me shopping so I could buy presents for people and myself.
I sat in the barn waiting. Myranda’s mom came and lingered, twice asking if maybe she could just take me home. “No, thank you,” I said. My riding instructor, Miss Cathy, busied herself tending to a pathetic horse that had been returned that day. Her name was Perfect Jade, and she was rail thin and had clearly been abused since leaving the barn. She was covered in fungus and was so mangy, I couldn’t tell what color she was. She was mean from all her mistreatment, and Miss Cathy told me to stay clear.
When Mr. Kelley finally showed up, he was shit-faced.
“I’m not getting in the car,” I said. Miss Cathy came over and immediately took stock of the situation.
“She can stay here until Sheila gets off work,” she said.
“Come on,” he said.
“She can stay here,” Cathy said, in the same tone she used to show a horse who was in charge.
“Well, she’s been wanting a horse for Christmas,” he slurred. “So how much does a horse cost?”
“Well, Chiffon’s eight grand,” said Cathy.
“For a fucking horse?” he spit. I now own a fifty-thousand-dollar horse, but that would have been a lot then for Chiffon. Cathy made so much money off that horse, using it for therapy and riding. I know now if you have a horse you don’t want to sell, you put a price on it no one wants to spend.
Mr. Kelley tried one more time to get me to go with him, and then finally gave up. “Well, here’s the money for your presents,” he said, handing me five hundred dollars cash. He got in the car and raced off.
Miss Cathy went to the office to call my mom at work. “It’s a shame he didn’t ask about this one,” she said, gesturing to poor Perfect Jade. “I’d sell you that one for five hundred.”
“Okay,” I said as fast as I could reach for the money in my pocket. “Done.”
And so Perfect Jade was mine. I told my mom later that Mr. Kelley bought her for me. She confronted him about it the next day, but he’d been so drunk he didn’t remember what happened. No one was going to take my horse away from me.
When Miss Cathy gave me Perfect Jade’s papers, I knew it was meant to be. We had the same St. Patrick’s Day birthday, though she was two years older. She was an ex-racehorse, and because she was a Thoroughbred, her papers listed her bloodlines. Her grandfather was Bold Ruler, an American Thoroughbred Hall of Fame racehorse who was named 1957 Horse of the Year. His broodmare grandmother, Primonetta, was one of the top fillies in American racing in 1961, and when she died of a heart attack just shy of thirty-five years old in 1993, she was the third-longest-lived filly known to horse racing. Jade’s bloodlines were so good, I am sure they probably tried to breed her at some point and it just didn’t take.
But looking at her when I met her, you would never know she came from glory. She had this pencil-thin neck with a mane that was so long. She had patches of hair missing from fungus, and what hair she did have was sun-bleached.
Now I had a horse, but I didn’t own anything for a horse. I didn’t have a saddle or bridle, but I couldn’t put a saddle on her anyway because she was so skinny. With no padding, it would have just rubbed blisters on her. I had to fatten her up first, but I didn’t mind because I just wanted to be near horses, period. I became obsessed with her, leading her up and down the road like a dog to get her strength up.
I loved her, but man she was mean. She would chase me out, snapping her teeth at me. If I went to pick up her back feet, she’d poop on me. I know that fucking bitch was doing it on purpose. Every time I’d turn my back she would bite the shit out of me and break skin.