When I was 18 years old, in my senior year at a Catholic school for girls, my dad caught me on the street with my parochial school uniform’s skirt pulled up a few extra inches so that it uncovered my legs to get the attention of boys. A lot of girls at my school did that after school.
He is very strict. He is Sicilian.
He took me home and called me “putana,” “whore,” in Italian. He pulled me over his lap, pulled my skirt up and my panties down, and spanked me and spanked me as hard as he could. He was a strong man too. He worked as a bricklayer.
I was crying, my butt was burning and stinging, red and bruised. I was afraid.
He was very angry. He demanded to know what I had done with boys. I told him the truth, that I’d never even kissed a boy. He told me that he didn’t believe me.
He pulled me up so that I was sitting on his lap. My panties were still down around my ankles. He said that he needed to know if I was still a virgin. He lifted my skirt, pulled open my legs and jammed his big callused finger into my vagina.
I stopped crying I was so surprised and shocked.
It hurt, too, he was being so rough with me.
He was looking at me down there, my legs wide open, my vulva and pubic hair bare for him to see.
He probed my vagina, his strong finger moving inside me, feeling my maidenhead. I don’t know what he knew about such things. I certainly didn’t know anything.
It hurt so much that I started to cry again.
Whatever he found, he seemed satisfied. He pulled his finger out of me and pushed my skirt down again so that I was decently covered again. My panties were still pulled down to my ankles, however.
“Good, you have kept yourself pure.”
I was happy and relieved that he was satisfied.
“You dress like a putana, men will treat you like a putana.”
“Yes, papa.”
I was still sitting on his lap with my panties still around my ankles, my feet dangling a few inches about the floor, when I realized, felt against my butt, that he was erect, that his penis was hard. I knew about such things from other girls at school.
He lectured me on always dressing like a good girl, on the honor of our family, and on the evils of bad boys and men and especially putana girls. He made me promise never to dress that way again and to stay away from boys.
That night in my bed I thought about what had happened, thought about my own father jamming his finger into my womanhood. I thought about how angry he had been too, about how he had spanked me so hard and for so long and with so much fury.
I lifted up my nightie over my belly and pulled my panties down around my ankles. I pushed a finger into myself, trying to be as rough as he had. I felt around in my vagina, wondering what he had felt for, feeling my own maidenhead.
I thought about his anger, his roughness with me, how red in the face he had been at the mall upon catching me dressed like a putana.
His rage fascinated me and aroused me.
My mother died in a car accident two years before, and my father had not remarried.
I was my father’s last child still at home. My brother was at college, and my older sisters were married with babies.
I had never touched myself before. My own finger felt so strange down there. I kept feeling around, finding my vagina and vulva weird and strangely wet. After a while it started to feel good, then very good, and I realized that I was masturbating for the first time in my life. The sisters, the nuns at our school, had warned us about it, told us how sinful and evil and unhealthy it was. Knowing all that made me feel naughty and evil and sinful, made me feel like a deviant and a pervert. All of that made me feel aroused and excited too. My own pervertedness fascinated me too.
And of course I kept thinking about my own father’s big scarred finger roughly probing my vulva.
I guessed that I must really be a putana.
Each night after that I did it, fingered myself, thinking about my father doing it to me.
A few days later he called to me, “Maria.”
“Yes, papa.”
“Come to me after your shower. Twice each week I must check your purity.”
“Yes, papa.”
It did not strike me as strange or untoward that he would demand to check me or that he would do it so often. He was my father. Besides, I had realized I was a putana, knew that I needed constant watching to insure that my virtue and my family’s honor remain safe and guarded. As well, I was an obedient daughter. I had never questioned my father’s absolute authority over me and our family.
But the truth is, a thrill went through me when told me that he’d be checking me twice weekly, starting as soon as I left the shower.
In the shower I washed and rewashed my vulva and vagina, wanting them clean for his examination. I fingered myself in and out with a soapy finger. My washing of myself turned into my masturbating myself before my father examined me. I came in the shower, came strong, thinking about my own father probing me with his big hard workman’s finger.
I wore my bathrobe, which had belonged to my mother. I was naked under it.
My heart was racing.
“Papa, do you want me to sit on your lap again?”
“No, make yourself comfortable on the couch. I will be checking you more completely this time.”
“Yes, papa.”
I nervously placed the throw pillows from the couch against the arm rest. I leaned back, half reclining, leaving room for him to sit next to me, which he did.
He did not apologize or try to justify his actions. He reached out and pulled the tie on my belt to my robe and pushed the robe open, not only uncovering my womanhood but my big D-cup breasts as well. I was completely naked before my father, and his eyes were on my body.
“You have become a beautiful young woman. You must be careful, Maria. You cannot trust boys your age or men of any age.”
“Yes, papa.”
“I was rough last time, I was angry. I bet that I hurt you.”
“It’s okay, papa.”
He reached out and touched me between my legs, his finger going right to the hole down there, the hole that I knew that men wanted to use for their own animal pleasure. His finger went into me. He was trying not to be rough like last time. His finger probed me.
I was wet. It felt so good, not like when I did it to myself, but still very good. I knew that I was wet. I was ashamed that I was, but I couldn’t help it.
Oh, it felt so good. I couldn’t help moving my hips. Then I moaned.
My father got angry, very angry. “You are a putana! I knew it. No man has used you, not yet. You are still pure, but you are a putana.”
He became rough with me, he forced his finger into me, hurting me, but I loved it. I moan and thrust my hips at him. I was looking at him right in the face, and I’m sure that he could see my excitement.
He shouted, “Putana!” He slapped my face, something he had never done before.
He was so angry. But his anger excited me too.
“This is what putanas want, they want a man to touch them.” He tore my robe completely off. “They want to be naked for a man!”
He took me by my wrist. He stood up and jerked me up onto my feet and pulled me into his room and shoved me onto his bed.
He slapped my face again and began to undress.
“I’ll show you what putanas want, they want this!” He showed me penis. It looked big, so huge. It was hard and sticking straight up.
I was crying.
He took my hands and put them on his penis.
“This is what a slut wants, what a putana wants. Tell me the truth,” he slapped me again, “you want it, don’t you?”
I didn’t say anything, so he slapped me again.
He took a big handful of my hair and pulled me off the bed and pushed me down on my knees in front of him. He roughly pulled my head face-first toward his penis.
My father is a bricklayer. He works in the hot sun. He hadn’t showered yet, and I could smell his body, his sweat, and feel the heat of his body on my face. I was so close to his penis that I could smell something else too. I loved the way he smelled, and it excited me all the more.
“Take it in your mouth, putana.” He had taken his penis in one hand and he still held my hair with his other. He pushed my face right into his penis.
I opened my mouth and he guided his penis into my mouth. “I will beat you if you bite me, whore.”
I didn’t know what to do, but he pushed my head and thrust his hips.
“Suck me, putana! It’s what you want, you want cock, slut. You want it, and you’ll get it!”
I was trying my best to suck him like he wanted, but he pulled me up by my hair and shoved me onto the bed, the same bed where he had slept for 26 years with my mother before she had died.
He roughly pulled my legs open and climbed between them, and I realized that my own father was going to rape me.
He thrust his penis at that hole between my legs, pushing and pushing, boring into me, and I felt something tear and burn. I cried out as his penis, my own father’s penis, cut deeper into me, ripping open my virginity.
He pushed it all the way inside me and began fucking me, fucking me as hard as he could. He was still in a rage.
“This is what sluts want. Admit it, putana, you want this, don’t you?”
He slapped me, first one cheek, then the other.
“Admit it.”
“Yes, papa, I want it, I want it, I want it!”
It was true, too, I did want it. I was crazy with something, lust or joy, that he was raping me and that he was so enraged with me.
He was on top of me, fucking me, fornicating with me, his own daughter, and it hurt, really really hurt, burning inside me, but I loved it too, actually even taking joy in his rage and my own pain.
He began to moan. I could see his pleasure on his face. His righteous rage had turned to lust, I guess. He pulled out of me and spurted on my belly and beasts, his sticky seed feeling warm and hot on my skin. I felt empty in my vagina too.
My father got off of me and went and showered. I was lying there, bleeding and weeping.
When he came back he informed me that from now on he was going to drop me off at school and pick me up afterward. He’d have the nuns give me a volunteer job after school until he could come to get me, maybe in the library, some place where they could keep an eye on me so that I would never have a chance to spend time with a man or a boy after school until he could come get me after his own work.
He informed me that I was not going to go out alone any more. If I didn’t go out with him I’d have to stay home or go out chaperoned by my aunt.
I was lying on my back, still naked, and he was looking at me.
“You will never marry. You will take care of me until I die. No husband can ever trust a putana. No good man wants one. You are not a virgin. You will not dishonor our family by going to your bridal bed a deflowered woman.”
It didn’t strike me as the least bit strange or unfair that he said these things even though he was the one who had deflowered and that he had raped me to do it.
“Yes, papa.”
“Instead, I will use you for my needs. You will go on the birth control pill.”
“Yes, papa.”
“I will use you whenever I wish, do to you whatever I desire. You are a putana, so there will be no excuses. Men have dark desires sometimes, and I will make demands on you that I never have made on your mother. But you are a putana, and putanas want to be used a man for their twisted, dark desires.”
“Yes, papa.”
“Go and wash yourself. Strip the bed first. Your blood will stain the mattress if you are not careful.”
“Yes, papa.”
“This is your fault. You are a putana. Putanas have needs, hungers, like the needs and hungers of men.”
“Yes, papa.” I believed him. I still believe him thirty years later.
I did as he said.
I came back in my robe. We watched TV together, the same as most nights.
“Papa?”
“Yes, Maria.”
“Can I sleep with you from now on, like momma did every night?”
“Yes, sweetie.”
“Thank you, papa.” I felt joy.
“You are a good girl, other than being a putana, and I guess that the good Lord saw fit to make you this way.”
“Yes, papa.”
“You must be careful, Maria, very careful around men and boys. Your hunger is strong.”
“Yes, papa.”
That night he did to my anus what he had done to my vulva, did to my rectum what he did to my vagina. It hurt at first. He used olive oil from the kitchen. Then, after hurting, I started to feel something else. I couldn’t help myself, I reached between my legs and began to masturbate while he did it. I started to beg him not to stop. He became angry again and did it harder and rougher, only all that merely made me all the more avid for it.
In the morning I had a black eye from him striking me. I was so sore, too, both in my vulva and my rectum. I was bleeding from both of those holes. He called me in sick at school, and I spent my days at my aunt’s until my black eye faded completely.
He never struck me again. Part of me always wished that he would have.
He was a healthy man, a man of big appetites. He used my body for his pleasure every morning and night for the next twenty-three years, until he died last year.
I loved every minute of it.
Now I wear black, like a widow. I pray every day for my father’s soul but never for my own. I miss him very much, especially at night.
But I have noticed that my 18-year-old nephew has hungry eyes. Maybe he would like to use my mouth for his needs. Maybe he would want to use other parts of me for his pleasure too.
My father was right. I am a putana.