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Russian Doll

Russian Doll is known as a wooden matreshka or matrioshka doll, which has smaller wooden dolls inside each other. Symbolically speaking, it is an issue or situation which repeatedly reveals more levels of complexity. Mine is also the story of the Russian Doll.

Keeping it in the family
I didn’t have a “first” steady boyfriend. But I do remember the first guy I fell in love with. It was Shaf.

In fact he has been one of the few “older” guys in my life. He was 23, I was 17. It was 1987.

Shaf was gorgeous. Fine featured with beautiful skin. But he already had a “steady” girlfriend. And he had been to prison. Plus he did drugs and was one of the brothers at the top of a notorious local gang, the Panthers.

My cousin Sherry introduced me to him. She was seeing Shaf’s older brother Chico, whom I slept with later on too.

In fact this whole episode was rather incestuous, in that I believe my cousin Sherry slept with Shaf too. She doesn’t know I knew that. But then we have not spoken in 20 years so it doesn’t really matter.

My cousin Sherry, was also the first girl I had sex with. Well semi-sex there was no orgasm from what I recall.

16 years of control, suppression and abuse had constructed a time bomb waiting to be detonated. The plug had been pulled.

It was my second year at college. People couldn’t believe the transformation from innocent sweet plaits to spiky gothic girl. I hardly showed up for College. And there would be all kinds of colorful crazy rumors about me flying around, some true and some not! I didn’t give an “f,” I was having the most fun of my life. Or so I thought.

I really liked Shaf. I think I loved him. I certainly would have done anything for him. And I did. We split the first day I decided to say “No,” to him but that was later.

I’ll never forget the first time I kissed Shaf. We’d been picked up and my cousin Sherry was with Chico in his black shiny Saab. I was outside with Shaf. I’d never had anyone kiss me like Shaf before. He nuzzled and edged into spots on my neck I never knew I had. I wanted him to bite harder. I can still taste and feel his wet lips trailing all over my collar bones. He seemed to know exactly what to do to turn me on. I can still feel the excitement rising in my stomach. He tantalized my body with his touch.

We were making out on a bench, it was a fall evening and there was a slight chill in the air. I remember his soft warm breath all over my neck and shoulders. Then the clinch got more passionate and powerful. His ardor had reached a crescendo and his hungry lips found their appetite satiated on my neck. I was rolling in luxurious intense pleasure.

And that was it. I was addicted.

Shaf saw me anytime he wanted. Even if that meant the middle of the night; and it usually was. He’d come by with his guys; they as a gang seemed to have access to endless houses and flat that we’d go to. I never slept with any of the others apart from Shaf’s brother but that was to get back at my cousin Sherry.

I had sex with Shaf in front of others. Not on purpose it just happened. We had sex everywhere, on old mattresses, bare wooden floors and in gardens on grass.

Shaf gave me my first joint, I think, and of course I was drinking. So I was normally high with him, which as I was new to it all, heightened everything. I was intoxicated with it. The joint takes the edge off alcohol. And I use to get the munchies big time.

I don’t know what my mom and brother thought, and whether they knew I’d sneak out after midnight. My mom was descending day-by-day into a delusional haze and was losing her grip on us and herself. My brother was only 13. He’d cut his hair his hair off too.

Cars, figured a lot in that time. One time, I remember Shaf entering me whilst I sat in is lap. I think we were making out in a dirty red Capri.

It was the first time I had anal sex. I was so off my head the pain never bothered me. Neither did his friends sitting in the seats either side of us.

Another time we ended up, before or after a party, I can’t recall, at Harry’s house. I was partying with different people every day and night.

At home, I’d be smoking my Marlboros standing on the edge of the bath leaning precariously out of a slit of a bathroom window. Or I’d sit on top in the double-decker bus and smoke; in those days you still could up there. Even smoking a cigarette I use to have this strange experience of stepping out of my body. My stomach would feel queasy, and I seemed to disconnect from my self.

But I think that was the whole point.

We’d arrived at Harry’s house in the afternoon. There were about ten guys squashed in the lounge, crowded around a television screen. I remember being in that house quite a lot.

In particular, one time I remember spinning around to a Taylor Dayne song called “Tell it to my heart.” I loved this tune it, so captured that moment for me. Music does that for me. I just have to listen to the song and images flash back to me.

The reasons I remember this day at Harry’s is because the memory of the pictures I saw on the TV are imprinted in my brain. It was a film called “Animal Farm,” and by that I do not mean sweet, puppy-dogs type of film. I mean full on pornography.

Then I think someone wanted to have sex with me upstairs in the bathroom and do a group thing. I think I somehow managed to find an excuse not to. At least I had a light switched on in me somewhere.

Frequently I wonder how close I’ve been to the raging flames. Maybe I wanted to be consumed and burnt up. Maybe I felt like I deserved to be. I certainly know I felt worthless.

More of a contrast to the girl I’d been in my early teens could not be made. I was Miss Obedient. In fact I was Miss Talented religious singer. I had been tutored by a guy from India, Surjan, who I think actually slept with my mother.

But there you go; one thing about my life was that we all liked to keep it in the family. My Uncle saw to that.

And writing this about the sex I had is the hardest part for me. It’s because it was so taboo and scary. It was the deepest, darkest secret we all kept.

I guess at 16 with Shaf and the boys I was only playing out what I had been taught. It’s like you “play” out the songs grooved out on your vinyl, if you get my drift. These were etched by hand.

The guy from India, Surjan, my singing teacher had a crack at me too. But he was given the green light by my grandmother. I recall the night I did not sleep a wink. She’d said the previous evening that if I wanted to learn music, I’d have to let my teacher do things, even if I didn’t like them.

Yeah I was protected by my family, very well-protected.

No wonder I could not tell my left from my right. My head and heart were screaming but my mouth had to remain silent. I was helpless.

I remember a guy who had seen me do my religious thing at the temple where I looked like butter wouldn’t melt. He saw me at a nightclub and I overheard him say, “Gosh what she doing here. She is supposed to be godly and religious.” I should have replied, “She is hoping to be undone.” And she was.

This pattern of drink, drugs and sex would be repeated for at least another 10 years. It just became more sophisticated, and upgraded to drinking copious amounts of champagne and even dabbling with snorting cocaine through rolled up £20-pound notes. It would become a crutch and a release. The worrying thing is I’d never know when it’s ugly head would pop up.

Eventually I decided to stop drinking all together. It literally unleashed too many beasties and demons. And if the mood was right, one was never enough. I wouldn’t know when to stop or draw the line.

In some ways I wonder how I wasn’t more damaged. But that’s the “little” me talking.

The only remedy was piece-by-piece unravelling the complex “Russian Doll” layers I had wrapped myself in. That was my road to healing and recovery.

That is how I saved myself. In the end I was the only one that could.

Until…we meet again to break the rules!

Love,

Rita x

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