I Hate the Color Orange

I Hate the Color Orange
John A. Lewis, Jr.
The primary pigments of red and yellow unite to create the common, and beautiful color orange. Sunny days are book-ended by a huge orb of orange that can make one feel awe at the sun’s consistent majesty. Marigolds and Monarch butterflies are eye-catching shades of orange. And of course, most people appreciate the bright, sweet, tangy fruit of the orange tree. But I hate it.
I do not own orange-colored clothes, and I do not plant orange marigolds in my garden. The sight of orange juice nauseates me. In the hotel room where I write this, a room full of every creature comfort imaginable, the duvet off my king-size bed is stuffed in the closet, due to its shade of deep orange. The room’s curtains have vertical stripes matching the duvet, but I loathe the idea of being watched by strangers more than the offending color scheme, so I have no choice but to endure the awful drapes. To me, orange represents pain. I am not writing about the use of orange on traffic cones to signal caution or danger, or the myriads of other ways humans have adopted this glaring beacon of color to capture the attention of motorists, pedestrians, or even consumers. Orange affects me on a raw, visceral level.
My history with orange is one of tragedy. It is not easy for me to explain how my hatred of this harmless hue came about. However, I am compelled to share my story; and I hope you are able to bear my tale.
I am a thirty-five-year old man. Like most ambitious men, I waged many battles in my twenties to achieve success in a career that ultimately proved joyless. I abandoned my job. It is more correct to say that internal pressures led to my collapse, and forced me out of my career. While I engaged in the daily fight to establish the life I assumed I wanted, I buried a childhood episode deep within the recesses of my mind. Memories can be like scars. Wounds heal to form scars, indelible reminders of injuries. Usually, the worse the scar, the worse the injury. I wrongly assumed the wounds of my memories, including the worst ones, had healed decades ago. No, I never forgot. The scar was always there. I just thought that old memories, even ugly ones, would remain buried, especially as years of new experiences covered them like the prehistoric ill-fated dinosaurs covered by sedimentary rock. I was woefully wrong. Nearly four years ago, with the birth of my son, my life took an unexpected, unfortunate trajectory. The stress of being his protector was a responsibility that scared me to my core. The dead dinosaurs of my subconscious were resurrected.
When I was seven, maybe eight-years-old, I was sexually molested. I detest that word: molested. It can mean different things to different people. I am sure no sane person would claim that molestation has a positive connotation, but the word does not have the same gravity as the word “rape.” To be totally accurate, that is exactly what happened to me. I was raped, violated in a most horrific way. My abuser was a young, cruel man, who probably is heterosexual. But I will never know, and it does not matter. He was never punished for his brutal attack on me. He may have other victims, or a family of his own now. I do not know, and as far as my life is concerned at this point, it does not matter.
My mind plays the film of that incident as clearly as if it occurred yesterday. I was a small, skinny boy. Like most children, I wanted to be liked, especially by those older than me. I will call my abuser “Tony.” Tony and his family were members of our church, and our families socialized often. I wanted to be Tony’s equal. I envied his cockiness and masculinity. He was in his late teens, his voice had changed, he had hair on his face, and he used Brut deodorant. He was the epitome of what a “real boy” should be, in my pre-teen mind. I guess I idolized him, and he knew it. While our parents were visiting with one another in the living room one evening, Tony invited me to his bedroom. “He likes me! He thinks I’m cool,” I thought. He closed the door behind us. Tony’s room reeked of dirty sneakers, the odor of a guy who did not shower often, and the faint smell of urine. I close my eyes and I can see vividly the dingy blue and white mattress of his bed, uncovered by sheets; and dirty jeans, socks, and dress clothes clinging to the closet door knob, and strewn across the bare wooden floor. He talked about sports and girls, and I pretended I knew what his life was like. The local radio station played on his boom box. We talked about Madonna, Michael Jackson, and who the best on-air DJ’s were. And then, he wanted to play a game, and the nightmare began.
Tony convinced me that the game would be fun; our own secret game that he did not play with his friends. But all games have rules, and since it was his game, he made the rules. There was a skinny, wrinkled, polyester orange tie on the floor. He decided he would use it as a prop. I allowed him to blindfold me with the stained, stinky orange tie, which he bound tightly. What followed was him pressing me on his sheet-less, twin bed, and forcing me to blindly stroke his penis. The moment was revolting; I did not know how to react. Tony guided me in silence punctuated by his heavy breathing. Then, he suddenly pulled away. There was an instant of stillness, the echoes of adult conversation and laughter beyond his room, and then I felt the air forced out of my lungs as my ribcage was crushed. Tony sat on my chest, grasped my head, and forced his erection into my mouth. For all that I can remember, there are some words I cannot recall. I am sure he used every expletive in his vocabulary because he cursed the entire time his penis was in my mouth. Until this moment, I still have no idea what possessed him to do what he did. Worse was to come.
After a few minutes, he decided that it was time for the next phase of the game. He unknotted the tie from my head and straddled me, allowing me to gulp air as if I had surfaced after being submerged beneath murky water for several minutes. I opened my eyes and saw that he was naked from the waist down. I felt the fear only a child knows. I could not move. I could not scream. I lay still, hoping it was over, and that my parents would never learn what just happened. Mom always told me that God saw everything, and I was convinced at this point that God would punish me eternally for what He just witnessed. Guilt overpowered me reason. I did, or said, something very wrong, and I was responsible for this awful course of events. I began to cry because I felt alone, abandoned, filthy.
Tony called me a punk for crying. He said I was a weak, little girl. He was a diabolical psychological genius. His words stung like the prick of a needle. They had the effect he was hoping for because I stopped sobbing. He then wound the tie around his hand into a coiled cylinder. While I was still on my back, he stuffed the rolled-up tie into my mouth until my gag reflex stopped functioning involuntarily. My body only knew I had to breathe to stay alive, and I drew ragged breaths through my nostrils. Tony managed to pull my Spiderman underwear and blue corduroys off without taking off my socks and sneakers. He spat on his fingers, and stuck them inside of me. He pinned me to the bed, and pressed himself against me until he was inside my anus.
I believe in God. I believe that He allows us to leave our bodies during times of extreme physical, mental, and emotional trauma. It happened for me. The pain nearly blinded me, yet I saw pinpoints of light in the blackness. But then came my miracle. My soul seemed to float above my tortured body. No longer trapped beneath a hateful man-child, I observed what was happening as if I were a helpless spectator of an awful crime. I have no sense of time of the length of the assault. When it was over, Tony pulled the spit soaked, orange tie from my mouth. I fumbled around on my knees and found my clothes and dressed. Tears of pain and shame streamed down my face, soaking my shirt collar. He then did something that hurt more than anything he had done to my body or spirit up to that point: He laughed at me as if it had all been a gut-busting joke I was too stupid to understand.
Those are the things I remember in my night terrors over the past few years. I hear his laugh, smell his funk, and see that shiny, stained, smelly orange tie every night I manage to get to sleep. There is more to the story. I could detail the terrible way my parents learned what happened, and the embarrassing confrontation that followed so many years ago. Or I could tell of my breakdown and suicide attempt two years ago, and how I became unable to function on the most basic level. There are the pills I have to take to force my body to relax, to sleep, but they seldom work. I involuntarily flinch when someone innocently and accidentally brushes against me. I will save those accounts for another time.
Writing this does not make me feel better. My nightmares probably will not stop, at least not anytime soon. I will still guard the safety of my son like a lion protecting his pride. And I am not sharing this for any altruistic purposes. My mind is unquiet. My soul is without peace. Sorrow for the child Tony killed has been augmented with white-hot anger and fantasies of revenge. I want others to have an idea of the agony I live with daily. I could not save myself, much less the world. Monsters are real in this cold, sometimes cruel world where children will continue to be prey for the evil humans walking among us. But not mine.
So, now you should understand why I hate the color orange. It literally makes me sick. Orange unleashes every negative emotion possible within me. But like I said, I believe in God. I will not burn the curtains in my hotel room, mow down my neighbors’ marigolds, or poison and torture the beautiful Monarchs when they journey south to Mexico this autumn. And I trust God will forgive me when I watch the spectacular setting sun, but my anger and bitterness only allow me to see red.