In a recent news story, a sexual abuse survivor stated his life “is full of other people’s consequences.” This statement resonates with me, as I’m also dealing with the wreckage of an intergenerational affair, decades later.

The man was sixteen at the time of his sexual seduction by a much older woman, who became pregnant with his son. Mine a similar story, however, my perpetrator’s first pregnancy ended with an abortion.

My bestie and I went with her to the abortion clinic in a city less than an hour drive from our small town. We were supposed to be in class, but instead with a married woman getting an abortion while her husband was at work (and had no knowledge of the pregnancy).

She had manipulated others as she had me, perhaps to spare herself shame, or guilt. I should have been left alone, allowed to be a teenage boy, to finish high school. But behind a veil of Christianity, she convinced those who knew us that we were in love, the teenager and the older married mother.

She had to have an abortion. Not because she might be pregnant by a teenager, but possibly other men she was sexually involved with, including a car salesman and volunteer police officer.

She would abort two pregnancies. One thing was certain, any child could not have been her husband’s, considering he’d had a vasectomy after the birth of their second daughter (years earlier).

They were very much involved in a late-1970s small town Pentecostal church. I attended his Sunday school classes. We’d had regular outings as a group, where he’d take us ice-skating, and once overnight to a revival with Andre Crouch and the Disciples.

He wouldn’t control his sexual behavior either. More than a few women (and men), whispered about the youth pastor’s wearing skin-tight Angel Flight’s, without any underwear. The outline of his manhood noticeable enough to illicit gossip.

Yet, amid their marriage of infidelity, she convinced the congregation that I had somehow misled her into believing we were in love. Me, the teenager.

My innocence had already been stolen. Raped at ten, molested at twelve, seduced at sixteen. A puberty now marred by the antics of a former felon (who spent five years in the notorious Folsom Prison) and his wife.

It was the biggest scandal to ever hit the little chapel off a main highway, on the hill overlooking our river view hamlet. Decades later, those who witnessed the depravity claim the pastor was asked to leave. After all, he was responsible for bringing the born-again biker and his wife to the small assembly. Today, those witnesses also believe “the church never recovered.”

I’m told a church is not a house of saints, but rather a hospital for sinners. That may be, but it’s not where any of those involved in my story healed.

It took me a lifetime to understand what I had no control over, where complicit, and most-importantly when innocent. As I’ve often said, they were “playing adult games with my teenage life,” with dire consequences.

“This little boy grew up with a stepdad who would constantly talk shit about his real dad being a faggot/gay…The little boy would stare in the eyes of his stepdad, and with heart full of tears and rage…He just smirked, enjoying the moment of a little boy suffering.”

Heartbreaking and somewhat infuriating to read (decades later) the feeling of abandonment and hurt my son felt growing up. Unfortunately, he was too young to understand the dynamics of our separation; and I’m not sure he understood what abandonment meant, rather I believe he was taught this narrative by my ex-wife.

She is still a homophobe, as evident by her mistreatment of our grandson recently, when confiding in her that he was LGBTQ. Instead of being a supportive grandparent, she responded to his coming out with “That means you like to get f***ed up the a**?”

What my son may not realize are legal aspects of dissolving a marriage during an era of homophobia. His mother threatened to use my being gay against me in court. In fact, her ex-husband also threatened to use my behavior in their divorce. He’d hired a private detective, who captured photographs of me partying underage in a Sacramento gay bar. That blackmail resulted in her divorce settlement only consisting of ten-thousand dollars and two lamps.

This subject matter is the theme of my current work-in-progress, titled Ghost Dad: The Better Parent.

The story of a father’s contrition explores the prejudice and discrimination gay men faced (regarding divorce and child custody disputes) during the 1980s. Prior to the 1990s, men (and especially gay men) rarely received custody or visitation rights when divorcing.

When I walked away from their lives for too long, it was not only to save myself but give them a better chance at a happier life, or so I thought. I kept telling myself not exposing them to my vices or conflicts with their mother was best, but my absence was wrong. All children need a father.

Before I had a chance to graduate from high school, I was lured into an affair that would destroy a marriage and lead me into a delusional relationship I’d struggle with for years.

Too young and immature, I felt lost in an existence that seemed pre-arranged, pre-determined. Somehow, I’d gone from telling my mother that I was gay at sixteen, to her arranging a marriage before my eighteenth birthday.

Without a diploma, I was expected to support a wife, two stepdaughters, and a newborn son. He may have been born once I turned eighteen, but he was conceived when I was a minor.

The pseudo-marriage to a woman from another generation stifled my true sexuality, and our home became a place of shouting, anger, and instability. I worried echoes of trauma from my childhood would also haunt my son.

My attraction to men did not stop once I married a woman. Having been exposed to extra-marital affairs (and open relationships) before puberty, gave me a skewed sense of sexuality and relationships.

As the marriage came to an end, my soon-to-be ex-wife convinced a judge that she would be the better parent.

Following the divorce, a dysfunctional pattern of careless parenting ensued, and our sons would later father eight children with five different women.

The birth of my eighth grandson became yet another chance for ending a trajectory of broken families. Today, my eldest son tries his best to be the father I was not, the parent he did not have.

At the beginning of writing my story, a memoir guru told me they are old enough to understand; they were teenage boys once and fathers themselves now.

While memories of my son crying and pleading at the window for me not to leave still haunt me today, I know a wound also exists for my other son. An emptiness from being estranged during formative years remains within the three of us.