And I had a sensation like you get when an elevator plummets downward beneath your feet... only it was a good feeling. And my cunt was suddenly drenched. And the good feeling went on. I strained my hips upward. My nails clawed at him, they kept clawing until he cried out, flooded my cunt with the warm, spasmodic spurts of his come, and fell limply into my arms. I had come for the first time in my life.
Those were the first two times he fucked me.
The next time I didn't have to be raped.
I didn't have to be raped at all.
In this case we have seen an artificial factor appear; that is the total destruction of the restraints against incest through the use of alcohol.
While alcohol is by no means a stimulator of sexual desire (it is, in fact, to a limited extent, a depressant), it does serve to lower the inhibitions of the drinker, to interfere with his judgment, and to allow the release of his frustrations.
Those are its greatest dangers.
With the moral senses which exclude incest dulled by alcohol, and with his sexual awareness of his young daughter obviously honed to a keen edge at the moment of greatest opportunity, Melody's father was confronted by a situation which practically pleaded that he satisfy the incestuous desire he harbored.
The accusations of his somewhat shrewish wife very likely increased his awareness of Melody's young sexuality, added to his frustrations, and speeded him onward toward the moment when these frustrations and desires would explode in incestuous rape.
Lucy Freeman, in The Cry For Love, describes the inhibition-releasing effects of alcohol this way:
"Take a frustrated man. Give him too much to drink."
No man can predict his actions. He may careen wildly down a highway. He may become belligerent. But he will rid himself of those frustrations. Sexually, he may express — or attempt to express his most carefully hidden desires.
Very few figures are available regarding the frequency of incestuous rape, probably because they are mingled with the statistics on other statutory offenses. It seems safe to assume, however, that Melody's case would approach the classical in its elements: An unhappy, argumentative atmosphere in the home; alcohol; the first incident occurs while the girl is extremely young; it involves daughter and father, rather than brother and sister. These conclusions are easily reached. Frustrations are present due to the tense marital relationship. Alcohol is used as a valve to release these frustrations. Moral restrictions are dimmed. The stage is set.
Several factors lead one to the conclusion that most such rapes occur between daughter and father when she is extremely young.
Incest between brother and sister is much more likely to be a thing of mutual consent, an experiment, thus removing the need for rape. The brother-sister relationship seems more conducive to mild exploration than to forcible rape. Then, too, there is always the knowledge that the victim may "tell".
With a daughter and her father the situation is entirely different. Who is she to tell? The mother? The father is the strong, dominant figure in the life of most girls. He provides. He is often the one who punishes. She is accustomed to doing as he tells her. These images are especially true during the early years of life, and it is for that reason that a great majority of cases of incestuous rape involve younger children. In the mind of the father she seems less likely to reject his advances. She can most likely be frightened into silence. She is not aware, as an older child might be, that her father can be sent to prison for such acts.
While the mind of a rapist, any rapist, incestuous or not, is a devious thing and too intricate in its workings to be explored at this time, the incidents described in Melody's narrative can lead only to the conclusion that she and she alone was the only female capable of arousing him to such an extent that he would commit rape.
His first approaches to her were almost childish in their shyness. They were the clumsy "accidental" touches of the sexually inexperienced, growing bolder only when he became intoxicated. It is likely that he had no intention — consciously, at least — of going beyond the caressing, the fondling and the kisses to which he first limited himself — until the moment when his long-smoldering sexual desires were released by Melody's reactions... He was intent on seduction, or sexual play within the limits of her acceptance, rather than forcible rape. Thus when Melody allowed him to exceed his expectations, and her actions made it obvious to him that she was sexually aroused, his drunkenness combined with his own state of arousal literally propelled him onward.
Though Melody herself possessed absolutely no sexual knowledge at the time of the first rape. It would be naive to believe that she was totally unaware of the effects of her submission to the sexual caresses of her father. Nowadays, few children of her age are that unaware of their sexuality. True, sexual taboos — such as the taboo against incest — are seldom taught as a unit. They are imposed piece by piece, so to speak.
For instance, rarely does a mother say to her daughter, "It is wrong for you to have intercourse with your own father." Instead, the girl is told, from an early age, "Don't come into the bedroom while your father is dressing." And, "Close the door while you change." These same rules are seldom applied where the mother or brothers are concerned, and the young girl is thus separated sexually from the males of the family. Other means of sexual separation are also used, of course.
So, even if one accepts as truth Melody's professed ignorance of the mechanics of sexual intercourse, it must be assumed that, by other means, she knew she was in violation of certain restrictions when she allowed, returned, and perhaps encouraged these first sexual caresses.
Most important of all... she knew her father would be punished if she told. But she did not tell.
Despite her youth and her lack of sexual knowledge, Melody knew her father had done something terribly wrong. She knew it was wrong even before the rape itself occurred. A threat might well have stopped him, had it been made before her father lost complete control. The fact that she waited so long shows — despite her fears — incestuous desire on her own part.
Her awareness of the power of such threats is shown by the manner in which she later used them to gain a certain amount of power over her father; the power to taunt him, to torture him by flaunting her body before him, etc.
The second rape was the child of the first. By the manner in which she held the first act over the head of her father — through the occasional threats, the exposure of her partially nude body, etc. — Melody invited it. Each reference to the first rape must surely have awakened new desire in her father. In fact, Melody may have meant to do just that. It may have been her way of punishing him for the loss of her virginity — a possession of great, though dubious, value in our society. Then, too, her subconscious mind may have longed for a repetition of the assault. Later events support this last possibility.
The fact that Melody, whose parents had never explained to her the barest essentials of the sexual functions, was so strongly aware of the wrongness of incest tends to support Freud's theory that the taboo against incest is so deeply ingrained in the human race that it is an "historical inheritance", e.g., the taboo is biologically inherited. Wayland Young, author of Eros Denied, a study of sexual taboos and their origins, also subscribes to this theory.
"This taboo against incest is probably determined by evolution itself," Young says, "and Freud is probably correct in his theory and in his belief that the taboo is of a genetic nature."
Young adds that the taboo against incest, unlike most others he considers, "... is appropriate to mankind as a whole."
Appropriate or not, the barrier between Melody and her father had fallen, never again to be erected... at least not by themselves.