It's ugly and, even now, more than 25 years later, difficult for me to say. With my father, in his bed, I first experienced the bump and grind of sexual relations. It was his genitals I first explored; he was the first to touch my body sexually, and those hands have left an indelible imprint. I have no memories that predate his abuse -- his rubbing and touching, his forcing me to touch him.

I was 4; it was 1972. At night, while my mother worked, he took me into their bed and made me believe he was doing me a favor, giving me a special privilege. It took me a long, long time to really believe there wasn't anything special about it, that it was all just sick. For many years I held onto the notion that in some way, his attention and his obsession with me made me special.

In bed he would watch TV, snapping the edge of the sheet between his fingers and the mattress while I pretended to fall asleep. Knowing what was ahead, of course I could not sleep. After a while, the snapping of the sheet stopped and I knew it was time. He would grope me, run his giant hands under my nightgown and into my flowered panties -- the kind that little girls wear, with yellow and pink daisies on them -- and he'd talk to me. He was always talking to me, whispering things, telling me he loved me. He'd tell me how nice I made Daddy feel. He never penetrated me with his penis, but his fingers would routinely enter my tiny vagina. It was terrifying. At times I fought with him, begging him not to touch me, and he responded by scaring me further, pressing his hands too firmly against my neck, ordering me to be quiet, to behave. He spoke in the harshest voice I knew from him, as if I had started screaming in church. Sometimes he would leave me alone in the closet until I begged to come out, but when he let me out it was more of the same. I learned to be quiet. I learned to "behave."

Other times, the routine was different. He would work up to things slowly. We'd be wrestling, rough-housing playfully, maybe in the living room, and he would casually, repeatedly touch my vagina through my clothes. Later in bed he would hold me close and we'd laugh. He'd ask, "Who's my No. 1 girl?" And he would touch me under my nightgown, and I would like it.

I could hardly wait for him to reach into my panties and give me that tingling feeling. I didn't know then that I was having orgasms; it would be years before I learned that word, and even longer before I admitted to myself that what I experienced was orgasm. But sometimes the incest felt good -- that special feeling, all that attention and love and affection from my nice daddy. And he was, in my young mind, my nice daddy; he hugged me and put Band-Aids on my skinned knees and sang Sinatra songs to me.

Private Life Romance, relationships, and the personal side of Table Talk