Where's the line? / A disturbing GM

In trying to stay on the safe side of the line between
acceptable and
unacceptable behavior, I often find myself asking--
just where is the line?
Who defines it? How is it defined? How does one find
out where it is on
those occasions when one doesn't know?

Does my intent influence where the line is? That is,
if I do something that
most people would deem acceptable but which I know in
my heart of hearts is
being done for pedophilic reasons, have I crossed the
line? Even if no one but I knows what my reasons were?

Does the child's perception influence where the line
is? If the child
perceives my behavior as 'just fine,' does that mean
the behavior was
acceptable, no matter what other people might think?
No matter what I myself might think?

Do the child's parents or guardians define where the
line is? If I do
something that crosses their own personal line-- even
if no one else would
think the behavior was unacceptable-- does that mean
that I have indeed
crossed the line in actual objective fact?

Does the law define the line? Does it even try to?
And if it does, are we
supposed to 'read between the lines' in the law to
determine just what it's
trying to accomplish, or do we go strictly by the
words and phrases it uses?

I know what the Enemy would say. The Enemy would say
that I should stay as
far away from the line as it's possible to stay, and
then I won't have to
worry about whether I've crossed it or not. But "that
way madness lies," as
a friend of mine would say. If I have to do that, I
might as well be dead.

My own tendency, I have to admit in my more objective
moments, is to do the
opposite of that. I tend to skirt along the edge of
the line, following its
twists and turns, trying to see how close I can stay
to it without crossing
it or stepping on it. But that gets highly dangerous
at those moments when
the line suddenly disappears for me, or gets very
hazy. Or seems to move on its own.

Let me give an example, an actual event [somewhat
disguised] that occurred less than a month ago:

I'm at the home of a family with whom I've been good
friends for several
years. It's a family of five-- both parents plus two
boys and a girl. I
first met the girl when she was three. By the time
she was six I was
seriously hooked on her, and by the time she was eight
I was head over
heels. Now, she's eleven, for me the most critical
age of all. Although
the mom is a really good friend of mine, I know in my
heart that if I ever
touched her little girl suggestively, she'd buy a gun
and kill me, no
questions asked. I mean that absolutely literally.
(And I think that would
remain true even after the age of consent!) So I'm
very careful when I'm
around this family. [For one thing, I don't want to
be dead!] I've never
touched this girl, except for high fives and shaking
hands and things of
that sort. I've never hugged her or held her on my
lap or anything of the
kind. Also, I would rather die than harm her. At all
costs, I feel I must
avoid even so much as 'warping' her in any way. Any
influence I have on her
must be of the purest and most praiseworthy type.
[That's my own rule, nobody else's.]

My relationship with this family causes me a rather
major dilemma. If I was
suddenly to cut off all contact, in an effort to avoid
'temptation,' such an
action would do more harm than good. It would raise
many questions that I
can't afford to answer. Plus which, seeing this girl,
at least on occasion,
is more important to me than eating. I get something
from knowing her, from
being around her, from interacting with her, that I've
never gotten from
anything else or anybody else, and that 'something' is
highly important to me.

One day I'm visiting in this family's home, and,
through no effort of mine,
I end up alone in the 'family room' with the girl.
The door to the rest of
the house is ajar, but not wide open. If someone else
in the family were to
arrive at the door, they would do so unheard. And
unseen by me.

I'm sitting on the couch, at the end of it closest to
the door, which is
slightly behind me and to the side. The girl is
standing in front of the TV
[which is off], on the other side of the room, about
as far away as one can
be and still be in the same room.

The girl has recently gotten orthodontic braces, and
is telling me all about
how horrible they are. I'm commiserating. She tells
me that she has gotten
a really bad cut, on the inside of her lower lip,
caused by the braces. I
make groans of sympathy.

Suddenly, almost instantly, she is beside me on the
couch, lying down on her
back with her feet pointing the other way and her head
on a small pillow
right beside my leg. She's almost touching me, but
not quite. Another
inch, and the top of her head would be rubbing my leg.
"Take a look," she
says. She tips her head back, toward me, rolling it
up on the pillow.
Using both hands, she rolls her lower lip down so that
I can see the cut. I
can see it plainly-- it's a bright fiery red, not at
all like the healthy
pink of the rest of her mouth. It's fairly large too.
It goes at an angle
from where the lip joins the gums, out almost to the
edge of the lip.

"You can touch it if you want to," she says. (This is
extremely hard to
understand, as she is holding onto her rolled down lip
as she says it.
Nevertheless, I hear her all too clearly.)

Very tentatively I reach across myself with my
opposite hand, and,
pinky extended, I touch the hurt place.

I hold the finger tip there a moment, then retract my
hand and sit there,
staring down at her. She's looking me right in the
eye. She flutters her
eyelashes briefly. Other than that, she doesn't move
or make a sound. Her lip is still pulled down.
Clearly, she's waiting for something. The moment goes
on forever.

I can almost hear myself ask, "Would you like me to
kiss it?" But I never
say the words. I just sit and stare at her.
Eventually, she gets tired of
waiting, sits up, moves away, though not quickly, and
the moment is gone.
She doesn't seem particularly disappointed, and is
still friendly, but I
sense that a corner has been reached, and turned, in
our relationship. Or rather, reached but not turned.

Eventually, we both leave the room and rejoin the rest
of the family, who are elsewhere in the house.

In reflection, by myself much later, I realize that
the primary reason I did
not ask the fateful question is that the door was
ajar, and I could not have
seen if anyone had approached. I do know that if I
had asked the question,
and if she had allowed the kiss, and if at that moment
her mother had
entered the room, I would never get to see the girl
again in my entire life.
[However short that might then be!] It wasn't worth
that risk, and that's why I didn't ask.

But the question remains. Where's the line? Did I
cross it? My mental
health therapist would say that I crossed it by
allowing myself to be alone
in a room with the girl. But that happened
fortuitously, not by my
intervention. So can the line move while one is
standing still, and thereby
force one to cross it willy-nilly? I myself don't
believe that I did cross
the line, at all. Would I have, if I had asked the
question? Would asking
the question have constituted crossing the line,
regardless of her answer?

Even if I had asked and she had acquiesced, and I had
in fact kissed that
sore lip, I know absolutely that the girl herself
would have perceived the
whole episode as entirely innocent, regardless of
what her true but
probably unconscious motivation might have been. So
by her perception, at
least by her conscious perception, I would not have
been crossing the line
even if I had followed through as a major part of me
wanted to.

On the other hand, the mom would have said an actual
kiss crossed the line.
Probably if I had asked the question and the mom found
out, she would say
that the question itself crossed the line, even if my
intent had been wholly
innocent. [Which of course it wasn't.]

I have no idea what the law would say.

The Enemy would say that I have no right to have those
kinds of feelings in the first place.

I feel fairly sure that Society as a Whole would say
that, judging by my
actual behavior, if not intent, I did not [quite]
cross the line, but that I
would have done so if I had kissed her. On the other
hand, I must admit
that my intent throughout the entire episode was to
see how far the whole
thing could go before somebody would have to call a
halt to it.

Where's the line?

I don't know. All I know for sure is that I will
relive that moment a
thousand times and every time I do I will wonder.