The Home For Wayward Ladies (10 page)

It all began when I was fifteen. I was careless with my urges and my parents quickly caught on to my wacky ways. Naturally, they thought they knew best. They were mistaken. I still get nauseous each time my memory forces me to relive their calamitous cure.

I am pulled from rehearsal for
Little Shop of Horrors
without warning and strapped into the backseat of our car. Mother and Father are so forceful that I worry I’m going to be left forsaken at the railroad tracks and told to keep on walking.

“Where are we going?” I ask. 

Father shakes his head at Mother to ensure she bites her tongue. “We’re taking you to a doctor who will help with your condition,” he says.

I feel so ashamed. If Mother hadn’t glimpsed my shadow from under the bedroom door, she would never have identified me for the freak I know I am. What could I do? She’d barged in without warning and found me hopping about my room like Peter Cottontail. I didn’t know what to do. By then, I was already managing a complicated database of each spot in my room that I could no longer touch. You see, according to the customs of the South, the sins of my sexuality could tarnish silver. Anything related to my lustful thoughts for men became contaminated. Seats on the school bus, the area rug in the parlor, every towel on God’s green earth; as the corruption of desire takes hold, so too does my disorder. 

With nowhere to hide, a formal investigation is launched. I am sat down in my assigned seat on our floral print sofa. It billows around me to make me feel even more small. I am presented with two equally horrendous options. One: quit theater and get help. Two: get better immediately and pretend this offense never occurred. 

While my parents are generous enough to present me with a “choice,” theater or OCD, there is obviously no contest. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder has already consumed too much of my life for it to devour theater too. The theater is the only place where I feel normal, at least when compared to the rest of the social defectives that want to sit around and cast an imaginary production of
Bye, Bye, Birdie
with the characters from
Beauty and the Beast
. I have to prove to my folks that I am well. Meanwhile, my truth becomes another symptom.

With their investigation under way, my parents compile enough evidence to prove what else I have been hiding. My sexual preference has always been the pink elephant in the room, but such things are not discussed in a proper Christian home. And, even if I had any interest in pleasuring a woman rather than behaving like one, Father is never the type to discuss the birds and the bees; therefore, the bees and the bees is simply out of the question.

It is my parents’ deeply rooted belief— instilled in them by their love of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ —that homosexuality is something which a person should keep buried so deep inside that it might combust. It is not until the night of my first handjob that they notice how I peer at my dinner companion over the glazed spiral ham. The smirk on my face is as good as an admission of guilt that other spiral glazing has been going on in rooms that are not the kitchen. My parents look on me repulsed. “The nerve of his disregard,” they must think, “and under our very own roof.” 

Within a week, they take a private meeting with our minister. They foolishly trust in the security of closed doors, meanwhile that cantankerous wildebeest cannot wait to get home to tell his ugly wife about the lingering “problem with the Collier boy.” The minister shows my parents the pity they deserve— none. They are charged with performing my exorcism and are handed the name of a counselor, Mr. Landings. His number is on a scrap of paper that they are instructed to call. With that gesture, they too are forsaken for their association with my sin. That minister cares not for me, the member of his own flock that has fallen. 

So I’m pulled from that rehearsal for
Little Shop of Horrors
to take the first available appointment with Mr. Landings. Mother and Father yank me out of the car by my collar despite the fact that I am not resisting for I know not where we are. I find myself in a pastel-laden office sat down in a chair so small that I feel like a specimen squashed under a microscope slide. Mr. Landings, a middle aged man of modest build, wears a paisley tie tucked into his sweater vest. To alert me that our session has begun, he thumps a Bible on the table with such force that the lamp that sits upon it casts shadows that twitch and wobble. I clutch my chest when I realize what I am about to endure.

Once he starts, he doesn’t stop. I am thrown back into my small chair each time I try to flee. I am subjected to verse after verse of scripture, each passage selected to belittle me more than the that which came before: Genesis, Judges, Kings, Romans, even my old buddy Leviticus stops by to say hello. It is clear to me that the counselor, Mr. Landings, sees me as a lost soul whose problem is not that I am frightened, but that I am not frightened enough.  

Now, as you might have guessed by my current residence with the other wayward Ladies, Mr. Landings was no miracle worker. Even if I was strong enough to resist my urges by day, the nighttime was a frenzy. Images of track team boys dressed up like Danny Zuko in their varsity sweaters would visit my dreams and ask me to accompany them to the Burger Palace after we spent a few hours playing “Ride Greased Lightning” under the bleachers of Rydell High. Before long, I was going through a box of tissues every week. Until I discovered lotion, I’d been rubbing myself raw. Mother knew I never suffered allergies despite the overflow of refuse from my wastepaper basket. Eventually, she came to realize that I was never going to change. Her nightly prayers were answered when God explained that she was as fundamentally Christian as I was fundamentally a homosexual. That’s just who we are; it’s better we agree to disagree. 

But now, standing in my bedroom floating above 162
nd
street and staring at the hem of that GD curtain, I can tell myself the same old story but even I don’t want to hear my lies. Nothing is working out just dandy like I had promised myself it would in the days when I was merely a disgrace and not yet a fully-fledged embarrassment.

Nothing since those days has changed. I am still compulsive and still crazy and still unloveable and still unclean. I am still a faggot who is still tormented by the crooked hem of that curtain that’s making me so angry that I picture Mr. Landings’ face when I rip it clean off the fudge-sucking wall. Then I set my sights on the inside of my closet, whose color-coordinated clothing taunts me as it swings from matching hangers. I cannot see through my tears as I pull my clothes out in fistfuls and throw them in a pile upon the floor. My dresser drawers are next. I open them and make it rain socks and underwear and t-shirts and pajamas. When my effort is complete, I recognize that my room finally looks as unkempt as my addled brain feels.

After my rampage, I stand in shock in the mess that I have wrought. My hands are trembling as I pull the sheets off my bed and cover the wreckage as if it were a crime scene. The pile on the floor has formed a perfect island. I take refuge atop it and continue to cry. I cannot stop for I have ventured so far away from the truth that I may never find my way home again. 

13

ELI

As Maureen McGovern always cautioned, “There’s got to be a morning after.” This is mine. I awaken ten minutes before my alarm to the sound of Nick’s supersonic hairdryer echoing off the bathroom tile. My hangover is intense, like something out of Strindberg. When my eyes are clear enough to search the covers for Jason, I see that the whirring annoyance must have woken him too. He’s nowhere to be found in my miniscule room. Perhaps he’s wandered into the kitchen to fetch a glass of water? I make my way into the hall, my feet dragging the cuffs of my pajamas as I set out on a mission of search and recovery. 

The level of activity in the apartment informs me that I am the last to rise but not shine. Nick’s new toy Danny is watching television in the living room. His feet are up on the coffee table, which would drive Hunter up a wall. Meanwhile, Nick continues to pantomime the story of Narcissus in the bathroom’s vanity mirror. I stalk past them both as I make my way to the front door. Jason’s hand is on the knob.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I ask, pretending to sound coy.  

“Oh, hey dude.” He hasn’t yet gone through the trouble of putting on his scarf and gloves, as if that would have made too much noise lest he be discovered. “I, uh, didn’t want to wake you. Look- I’m sorry about last night.”

“What’s to be sorry about? Nothing happened.” I try to coax him back in with a smile. “Is that why you’re sorry? Because you would have liked something to?”

He laughs unapologetically. “Not quite, pal. It’s a relief to know you were a gentleman. No harm no foul, dude, but I have to run. I need to stop at home before work. You understand.”

“Oh…” I try not to sound hurt but it’s obvious that I am. “I was hoping you might join us for brunch.”

“No, no, no, no,” he sputters. “I haven’t trained my cat to feed himself. But I’m sure I’ll check you later.”

Without so much as a handshake, he is gone. So much for ceremony, it’s as if my mind imagined him all along. If only I had then maybe I wouldn’t be here alone in my snowman pajamas feeling sorry for myself. Last night, I made sure Jason knew he was worth the time it took to sift through the thousand pieces of mismatched jigsaw to help him construct a picture of who he deserved to be. In response, that cock-tease has the nerve to treat me like a common cad, like some deviant that doesn’t deserve to be answered to. It reminds me too well of the time I found a puppy that my mother wouldn’t let me keep.

An anger boils up inside of me and climbs to my esophagus until I have to spit. I can’t believe that I had been so stupid to trust that, had Jason awoken, wrapped securely in my arms, he might not feel the shame of kissing me again. And how foolish I feel for wanting to kiss him too, even now, wanting to feel his lips pressed against mine, for him to know that to love me was to forget a world full of fear. In that moment, I put on my robe as if I were donning a knight’s armor. Jason would never get the keys to my heart and I would never play the fool again. Fuck him- or abstain from trying to do so, as the case may be.

It is Sunday, the day the Ladies brunch. At least this event gives me fodder to contribute to our weekly kiss-and-tell. I make my way to the bathroom where I find Nick. He’s got his head upside down, spraying it with shellac in an attempt to infuse maximum volume and hold. I don’t have time for this shit. My body is still coursing with vodka and contempt. I cross my arms and do a pee-pee dance to move his interminable process along. Three minutes into my morning and I’ve already earned the right to be a bitch all day.

“Hey, Lady,” he says. “I’ll only be another minute.”

“Famous last words, dear. If you don’t hurry, you leave me no option but to go piss in your bed. Is that really what you want?”


He turns off the hairdryer and puts down his brush. Stray hairs from his stark black mane appear like cracks on the white porcelain sink that I know he will not clean. “Rough night?” he asks, giving me the once over. 

“A real doozy. I’ll tell you all about it at brunch. Now, scoot before I mess my PJ’s.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Nick stands at attention and salutes as he pushes his way into the hall. “Oh, and about brunch…” I can see where this is going. “Danny and I were thinking he and I could get to know each other better over pancakes at the diner instead.” I sigh. He’d only met the man the night before and already the Ladies are a distant memory. “I’ll have to take a rain check.”

Nick’s new beau is my boss, so I really don’t have grounds to stomp and whine. When Jason and I were introduced to him the night before, I was somewhat surprised that we had never seen him at the theater; it’s pretty hard to miss someone that’s six-foot-four with a pompadour that adds another three inches. To be honest, Danny is an anomaly to me. I guess that I expected all producers to be like they are in black and white movies: old Jews drinking brandy and blowing cigar smoke out the back window of their Rolls Royces. Danny’s definitely not that type. He seems nicer than all that. Why, when we met, he even stood to shake my hand (which he certainly didn’t have to do, what being my professional superior) and looked me in the eye during our how-d’ya-do’s. It really is a shame, though, that Nick cancelled on me today of all days. Brunch is the closest thing to therapy that any of us can afford and my night with Jason is eating away at my stomach lining like a cancer. 

“You don’t mind, do you?” Nick asks. 

“Would it matter if I did?” I reply, attempting to close the door.