"If you start to notice that your breathing becomes uneven or really fast, or your heart feels like it is pounding in your chest or you get dizzy or feel unreal please put the book down, look at the things that are around you, and go and find or call that trusted adult."

As I read through the book, I noticed my breathing became uneven, my heart started pounding fast and I felt unreal. I put the book down.

What's up with that? I thought.

I'm not a girl, for example. My parents, uncle, aunts and grandparents loved me and never, ever did anything remotely like abusing me. I know people who were horribly abused by loved ones. That never happened to me.

And then I remembered Rudy.

When I interviewed PeggyEllen and Kimber, we talked about how child sexual abuse is a range of activities. Kimber noted that sexual abuse is "anything in which the intent is to sexually arouse someone," and that "there are different types of abusers." Sometimes abusers do things that initially might seem innocent, but are part of a long-term plan to groom a victim so she or he becomes more vulnerable to the really, really bad stuff.

Rudy tried to abuse me.

There you go. I said it. When I was a 13-year-old boy, an adult man tried to take advantage of me.

At 13, I lived in Forest Hills, a middle-class suburb a little down on its heels in north Tampa, Fla. There were all sorts of kids about my age on our street, Valle Drive, but my best buddies were Mike, George, Chris M. and Chris W.

In those weird, formative years of early adolescence, like all boys I experienced strange feelings. My voice deepened, my shoulders broadened and changes happened, you know, down there. Guys didn't talk about sexuality back then, not in the Oprah sense, but changes, you know, down there occupied our thoughts a lot.

Chris W. had this older cousin, Rudy. Looking back, I realize Rudy was a creep and a pedophile, but at the time we thought he was kind of cool. He drove around in this funky convertible VW Bug. He was in his 20s or so that vague category of "adult" kids put people between 20 and 40 in. Old, but not really old, like our parents. Rudy would talk with us about guy stuff. As boys trying to pilot the shoals of adolescence, we didn't know it, but we hungered for advice about guy stuff. Rudy did that in a sort of man-about-town, Playboy savoir way.

OK, again thinking back, that was way wrong. In an ideal world, boys learn about adolescence from their fathers or uncles or older brothers, and in a loving, non-threatening way. We Baby Boomer boys were of the "Leave it to Beaver" generation, where dads didn't they just didn't talk about that stuff.

So when Rudy suggested that we guys do an inappropriate sexual act involving an inanimate object something we'd be really, really embarrassed to tell our mothers about we thought that was really cool. Oh, and he'd show us how, too.

When you're a young guy, you want to be cool with your friends. You don't want to wimp out. You dare each other to jump off the third level of the big diving tower at Lake Eckels: "OK, I will if you will, but you go first," "No, you go first." Peer-pressure: It's the enabling impetus for all sorts of dangerous, evil mischief.

We rode our bikes down to Chris W.'s garage where Rudy would show us how to do this inappropriate sexual act.

Ding ding. Alarm bells went off in my head. Something Mom said or Dad said or that I had learned told me that adult men didn't coerce young boys into doing an inappropriate sexual act. I remember the scene in the driveway of Chris W.'s house, all five of us and Rudy.

"I think it's time for dinner," I said.

"Yeah, me too," Chris M. said.

Maybe I should have stood up to Rudy and said, "This is weird." Maybe we all should have done that. I left. Chris M. left. I think George left, but Mike and Chris W.? They stayed and under the modern definition, they got abused.

We all got abused. A creepy older man took advantage of young boys for his own sexual titillation. No good man would put a boy in that position. No good man would even suggest to young boys that we do what he tried to get us to do. This wasn't adolescent boyhood sexual play. This was a grown man teaching boys sexual play grooming us for something more sinister.

I hope that was that, one bad call by a creepy older guy, but I don't think so. I think Rudy went on to nastier, more horrible things. I hope maybe his younger cousin told his parents. I hope somewhere along the way, Rudy got his justice.

If there's any good in that one bad moment, it's this: I learned that boys can be the victims of sexual abuse. I learned that sexual abuse isn't just the really unspeakable stuff. I learned that when an adult tries to take advantage of children for his or her sexual pleasure, that's wrong. What happened to me was not as scarring as what happened to a family friend who got abused for years by her father, but it was still wrong.

Kimber told me one in six boys and one in three girls have experienced some kind of sexual abuse some of it like what I went through, some of it much worse. Boys don't talk about creepy men trying to get them to do creepy sexual acts.

Guys, if someone tries to get you to do that if it makes you feel uncomfortable pay attention to your feelings. Don't do it. Run away. Talk about it. Tell a trusted adult.

Years later, if you're reading a book about sexual abuse and your heart feels like it is pounding in your chest or you get dizzy or feel unreal, pay attention to your body. Pay attention to your memories.

Write about it. Talk about it. Take power over evil people, and know you're not alone.

I was there. I am a victim of sexual abuse. As the counselors say, "Let the healing begin."

Michael Armstrong can be reached at michael.armstrong@homernews.com.