Like all memories from so young this is more a flash of feeling and a sense of the moments than a clear cut memory. I see an old picture of me when I think of my face then, but my hair in my memory is lighter and I, with my round face, am more of me. He was my auntie's husband. He would ask for a kiss and would deliberately rub his face on mine and his hard, unkind beard bristles would scratch. I would try to wriggle away quickly and he would laugh. This didn't happen often because we lived a long car journey away and then he divorced my aunt. I know I never felt safe around him and I'm glad he wasn't in my life. My mum didn't feel safe around him either, she has never said those exact words but I know.
The next more vivid memory of a smiling male face was painted as dirty yet innocent behaviour by the adults around us. At school, I would have been younger than 7, he was the same age, the boy who got out his willy and waved it around in the classroom. We all were delightfully disgusted. I knew what it was, my mum was ahead of the curve on using the correct names and I knew it was a penis.
At hospital, pre pubescent me had a male Dr lift my knickers up with one finger - no pubic hair - that was the check. He didn't ask, he just looked.
I remember being that young and being called a flirt. I have told myself ever since that I am one. I have been scolded for being one and admired. Boys began to like me at secondary school for being a girl. I was asked out, I was frigid.
My brothers best friend, who I adored lifting me onto his back for a piggy back around the blue room, standing in a doorway chatting to my parents as he used his thumbs to rub hard at my covered and yet widely spread labia and body. The doubt in my mind and the horror of it being real all as I stayed as still as possible. His cure for consent I later discovered.
I was taught by all around me that being pretty was good but being attractive was better. I longed to be attractive, I was mostly pretty. And then I got boobs. More men wanted me and more comments were made. Male teachers made me overly aware of my own skin. One asking 'as a joke' if he could nibble my ear. One art teacher, me and him alone in the dark room, telling me he found it hard to control himself around me. He had left a previous wife for a now ex-pupil. The PE teacher spending too long lingering near us. And the science teacher announcing to the class, she is top heavy, while smirking to the assembled boys, we were measuring centre of gravity. It was not a scientific term for teenage girls in you care.
Another male medical technician asking me to remove my bra - alone and frightened I did - I didn't need to. And a few years latter a horrid test - venus sampling, shaving me, no cover or protection, just the hard shoving of a tube to the side of my groin that wouldn't behave and the pain ignored, the humiliation of people walking in and out tolerated while I lay, exposed. My mother banished outside.
The party where I wanted to be seen as boobs. It oddly I realise now, felt safer then. In some kind of control, giving my permission to be a chest on legs.
The men who grabbed each arm and held me while their friend pushed his face between my breasts and all laughed whole heartedly. The nights out were full of small gropes and hands. I took charge then in this space and kissed almost anyone who showed a passing interest.
The boyfriend who gifted me a lemon, a bottle of tonic and a bottle of gin for my 17th birthday and told me to drink it before he arrived. He ran me a warm bath, asked me to undress and sit in it. I did, he did not, no romance, just demands. He lifted me onto his lap, his erect penis, the blood down my leg warmer than my now cold skin, his clothed body moving me. My virginity leaving me with each thrust. And then our secret - dangerous public sex, often and always after drink. My performances. Until he left, 5 years my senior and the one who told me he'd touched me all those years ago because he loved me.
The man in the park flashing me and the man on the tube, pulling his penis out of the bottom of his shorts leg and grinning as I looked. The fear of being followed many times. The leers of strangers.
The male nurse after the birth of my daughter, sweeping his hand inside me and remarking it was routine as I squeeze my thighs together to stop him, he had not asked, assumed perhaps.
The two male members of staff - both my line managers, both at very different times in my life, chucking my cheek in a pretend paternal way. Touching me without consent or any plausible cause, they just could.
As a mother, being shouted at you sexy mother fucker as I held her hand crossing my own road. It stood out because she heard, not because it was the first catcall - of those I lost count years before.
A colleague getting me so insanely drunk I began to pour my drinks on the floor to avoid more, his persistence hard to escape and then his offer to walk me home that turned into a grope and attempted kiss, in which I bent double to avoid and then his rage and silence. Me the tease.
Another Dr, I generously think he was trying to to be helpful taking out my catheter without any real warning.
I didn't report any of these to anyone in authority, except the penis on the train and for that the male officer laughed at my description, and I laughed too, what else can you do? Mostly other women have heard, some when we have been sharing our tales of men, some when they have asked, some when I have needed it. These the ones I have a clear memory of. These ones that have stuck and made me feel ashamed at times, guilty at others, fearful always despite trying so hard not to be afraid.
My daughter has reported some of hers. Not much has happened as as a result but at least they are recorded, crimes. And for all the ones she told me about I have been able to be there for her.
I was unable to sleep last night as some of these memories felt like they were haunting me and so I've written them here in a semi private place. I know I have blamed myself for some of these, and been blamed for some. Most sadly by women, who know how to keep themselves safe.
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