Uncle Tom

 

Don't ask, don't tell

My mentally-retarded uncle was a bisexual pedophile. 

He is dead now; surely there is no harm in talking about it. 

To my knowledge, he molested one niece, three nephews, and a little girl next door. They say that pedophiles cannot reform; if true, I assume there were more. The family knew about it, but nothing was ever done about it.

His being a pedophile was predictable. He was always kept at home, never put in contact with other mentally-retarded people. He had no social life. He must have had sexual urges, as we all do. Where was he going to express them?

He harassed my mother, but that was not going to get him anywhere.

That sheer necessity explains his instincts jumping the fence against molesting children. Most of us would not be so tempted.

Yet, little girls being available, it does not explain jumping the second fence into homosexuality. 

By the reports I heard, he also seemed in his molestations to show some knowledge of gay sexual technique.

Being mentally retarded, and mostly sequestered, before the Internet, where did this come from?

If, as I posit in a previous posting, homosexual urges come from earliest sexual experiences, he must have been sexualized to this himself in early adolescence. And, given that he was kept away from any wider society, it seems to have come from someone inside the home—although some neighbourhood predator cannot be entirely ruled out.

He did not molest all his nephews, although all were more or less equally within his reach. He seemed to have a taste for blondes. All but one of those he did molest were quite fair of hair; so was the neighbour girl. The one dark-haired nephew he troubled with seems not to have been a favourite--he was left out of the will which Uncle Tom eventually somehow got drawn up. Others seemed to be rewarded in proportion to their perceived attractiveness. Not their cooperation, not their being “nice” to him. One of the biggest behests was to his sister-in-law, my mother, who always rejected his advances and avoided him whenever possible.

So it seems he would dally with a brunette in a pinch, but did not think much of them. Perhaps with my swarthy brother, it was just a one-night stand.

From this, we actually may have a portrait of the predator who sexualized the poor old guy. A male with blonde hair. With ready access.

Awkwardly enough, I have another uncle. Call him Teddy. For a time, he was an alcoholic, although he later, admirably, straightened himself out. He was at least three years older than Tom. He had blonde hair. He never married.

The fact that he didn’t marry is not, of course, proof that he was gay. He had girlfriends. If short of stature, with delicate features, he was a handsome man. He must have had many opportunities. I myself saw women flirt with him. At least a couple of times, he had a fiancée. But something always happened just before the wedding. 

Why did he never marry? Some men don’t; but it is a natural urge.

Teddy became an alcoholic by late adolescence. Again, why did he resort to escapism so early? What was troubling him?

It is suggestive. If he had gay urges, being gay was not okay in the 1940s; and with a strictly Catholic mother.  There were no obvious outlets. One had to keep it closeted. If some part of him were gay, no surprise if we never heard about it.

But what if you had a mentally retarded little brother around the house? He wouldn’t know enough to resist. He wouldn’t be easily able to complain to anyone; he wouldn’t dare tell his mother, even if he could understand. Boys experiment even at the best of times.

Getting drunk first might make it all easier.

I wonder. I speculate. They are both dead. Much damage has probably been done. And the truth died with them.