"What?!"

"I didn't say anything."

"How can you say such a thing?"

"I'm not going through this again."

"What do you mean?"

"All this -- denial. I'm done. I'm just going to say exactly what happened as I remember it."

"It never happened!"

"The reason I know it happened is that I renember it. I was eight years old. My brother was twelve years old. I was able to recover the date because I remember at some point in the week preceding the event, our father for some reason had told us, I'm going to be speaking at the Unitarian Church this Sunday at 11:00. It did not seem weird to me at the time, because he was always out of the house anyway. Plus all he used to when he was home was harangue me, so good."

"You lie."

"In fact, I remember thinking, it made sense that he would get something going on Sundays, because that was the only time he was ever even around anymore. Weekdays he was working, of course, and weeknights he was always at one of his many, many important community activities."

"You are delusional."

"Then, I found this article, and it all slowly started to fall into place."

UNITARIAN CHURCH
Barnstable Patriot, May 23, 1968
http://digital.olivesoftware.com/olive/apa/sturgis/sharedview.article.aspx?href=BAR%2F1968%2F05%2F23&id=Ar00400&sk=8FD39EEE&viewMode=image
Speaker for the 11 a.m. service of the Unitarian Church May 26 will be Louis Jacobucci, executive director of MSPCC, who has been chairman of the social concerns committee of the church and is chairman of the prudential committee. Among other activities are membership in Hyannis Rotary; he is also vice president of Cape Cod Community Council and chairman of Community Action Committee of Cape Cod.

"You just make all this up . . . "

"And he seemed to feel a need to tell us about these activities. I don't know why. This one. So I think nothing of it."

"What is it you really want?"

"Then I remember a memory, one of those memories that you definitely remember but try not to think about. So it's always been in the background."

"Who's putting you up to this?"

"So Sunday morning rolls around and I'm sitting in my bedroom that is not a bedroom. It's more like a paper mache bedroom and my brother is standing in the doorway. Our mother also just happened to be out of the house at the time."

"You brought it upon yourself!"

"Then I remember something that involved something that I had no idea. And by 'something,' I mean -- You know what happens at the end of p*rns?"

"Yes . . . "

"The only thing I can say is that: Everytime later in adult life, everytime he ever gave me my annual 'brotherly hug,' my skin would crawl. I wrote a song about it in 2017. About his hands. Poison Touch."

"You always exaggerate . . . "

"I remember it, so f -- No, and there was me, sitting on my bed feeling super awkward. Plus there was like this stuff. Plus I remember being super out of it. Plus no word of a lie I remember sitting there thinking, So that's what happened. Then I went into the bathroom and wiped the stuff off my face and neck. Plus I remember, there was one time when I was in Treatment and one of my fellow Offenders was like, oh, this is what I did. And I remember feeling an awful lot like I felt, and very unpleasant visual and tactile flashbacks, did include physical characteristics. One note of interest: my father went on, apparently, to later basically 'fill in for' or whatever for the Unitarian Minister."

"Let's see -- well, in his defense, I must say, your brother was a child in that house. I mean, he was only twelve, for f -- "

"Our parents were what they would call today: Groomers."

"Back then, they didn't have a word for it."

"Children's advocate, and communi -- "

"Community organizer!"

"Right. Our Dad was always out there organizing all over that community. Weird how all his community organizing involved other people's kids. Cubmaster Jacobucci. Untli he wasn't. Weird how that happened, too."

"Well, I must say . . . "

"What?"

"In any case, it is time to forget the past and move on.”

She woke up in a panic attack.