Chapter Sixteen: Alan Parsons

Music has always been a very big part of my life, and from a very young age started collecting albums, and one of my best friends at the time was a girl named Kristy. Kristy was the daughter of one of my dad's coworkers at D & D Manufacturing, and she was also a huge music fan and often we would go shopping for music together or go to each other's house to listen to new music each of us would discover.

But one day, Kristy brought an album over to my house that would be my cornerstone, because life changed for me after hearing it for the first time. She brought over a new album called I Robot by Alan Parsons, and she said I had to listen to it, and put it on. After the album started, my world stopped.

I started crying and feeling very emotional while listening. After Kristy left, I went down to Budget Tapes & Records and bought my own copy and simply listened to it over and over and over and over and over again. And was just blown away by the deepness and overall quality of it's sound. And as I continued listening to it, I found my wounds from the rape I had been experiencing at that time, slowly recovering.

Being only 12 at the time of the attack, and I hadn't experienced certain things. He took my virginity by fucking me in the ass before anyone else and he did it without using any lubrication. So besides being totally in shock and humiliated, I was in pain from it and I was forced to learn something from a complete and total asshole. And because he used a knife, my life was threatened. I did not know if during or after the rape, if he would kill me.

I also knew I was starting to develop feelings for men. And I decided a long time ago, if I was ever to tell my parents about those feelings, I did not want them to say to me in the future, that it was because of this incident that I decided to become gay.

And while listening the music forced me to re-examine my life. I am quite certain I was heading towards a life of superficiality and my priorities were about self gratification and I was becoming materialistic. I also feel I was becoming conceited, and stuck up and I was headed towards a life of gratuitous sex.

But while listening to the album, I also began to see life in a different way. I have been given a unique circumstance to be able to educate people about certain things they might not be able to understand.

All my life the greatest things happened to me when I least expected them. And so was the case in when I heard Alan Parson's I Robot for the very first time. I knew the healing power of music since it healed me. And it was at that moment, I decided to become music's greatest champion and would do all I can to get people to listen.

Also the music was giving me a great message of hope. A message to do something more with my life. To experience more with my life. And to help more people in my life. It also created a new dimension to the attack.

That new dimension was changing from regret of this attack to a better appreciation of it happening, because it changed me to a better person. And as I continued listening to I Robot, I would become a kinder, more empathetic person. My life goals would change to celebrate the one life I was given because you never know if some bastard will take it from you.

Am I glad this attack happened?

No, of course not.

But am I wiser, because of it?

Yes I am, and...life does go on.

Next chapter.