I shaved my legs for the first time, dumped Sun-In in my hair and tanned with baby oil. The summer I turned 12, I went to sleepaway camp. The real reason is because I believed I asked for it. Until now, I have been far too politicized to admit the chief reason I never called it sexual abuse in spite of the fact that it would be considered as much from both a criminal and a clinical perspective. The word 'abuse' seems to imply victimization and has always made me uncomfortable in this instance. I never called it sexual abuse, because it felt like an overly dramatic Oprah-ization of what happened. Over the years, I have called it an 'inappropriate relationship.' I have called it 'an incident with an older man.' Most frequently, I have called it 'the thing that happened that summer.' As in - remember the thing that happened that summer? Names and identifying details have been changed.
