The words to even make it stop wouldn't come. I couldn't figure out what was happening. we were sleeping together, and I woke up in the middle of an abusive episode and it was the most shocking thing to me. I later would come to understand or believe that he had designs on abuse from the moment that he arrived.
'Also, now, the idea that men and boys can be attracted to each other is a very present thought in my mind - that that sometimes enters my mind and trying to figure out what does that mean for me as I develop into an older boy and a man of my own?' 'I don't think I was even questioning as much as I was trying to figure out, 'Why me? How could this happen not just once, but twice from someone else also in my family? What did it mean?'' Blow tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. He also writes about a period in which he says he was bullied into keeping the abuse a secret - a period that left Blow confused about his sexual orientation.
His memoir, Fire Shut Up In My Bones, is about the abuse Blow says he suffered - from the cousin and an uncle. He finally realized he couldn't continue to live his life 'through the eyes of a 7-year-old boy,' he writes. That man is Blow's older cousin, who allegedly sexually abused Blow when Blow was 7 years old.īlow, who was 20 when he set out for vengeance, turned back and never pulled the trigger. A new memoir by New York Times columnist Charles Blow begins with him in his car on his way to shoot and kill a man.
