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I stepped through the swinging glass door into a bare, clinically-white foyer. To the left there was a large wooden door with frosted glass in the center and my therapist’s name printed across it in black. I was getting more and more anxious every time I went into a session with him. We’d had a slow start, talking for an hour each week about my struggles with alcoholism and what I was going to do now to keep it in check. Dr. Kesler was more than kind, but I knew as time went on, we were diving into deeper ‘emotional trauma,’ as he called it.
I walked inside the waiting room and the doorbell above me chimed lightly, loud enough to be heard by anyone in the building, but soft enough not to scare anyone who might already be on edge. Dr. Kesler poked his perfectly-quaffed head from around the corner and gestured for me to come back. He was always so punctual.
I stepped down the hallway and turned the corner where his private sitting room waited. Inside was a tan leather sofa covered in an assortment of colorful pillows. Across from it was a wing-back chair that he always sat in, with a single red pillow. I walked in with my head held low, like a dog about to be beaten for chewing up a pair of shoes. Moving the plethora of pillows out of the way, I took a seat on the squeaky couch and waited for the invasive questions to start.
“Good to see you again, Ryan,” Dr. Kesler said as he sat down across from me, a clipboard balanced on his crossed legs and a pen held at the ready. “How is your new job going?”
“It’s going well enough,” I replied, shifting in my seat. “It’s all slowly coming back to me.”
“That’s great to hear. I’m glad you’re settling into it,” he smiled. He held up his notepad, looking at me, “Do you mind if I take some notes this time?”
“I... I guess not.” I swallowed hard, eyeing the clipboard suspiciously. “What’s different this time?”
“Well,” he sighed, setting it aside and lacing his fingers over his knee, “I’m going to be asking some hard questions this session. I’ve opened up the afternoon in case we run over on time.”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, staring down at the floor.
“We can stop whenever you need to, and I want you to take your time,” he assured me. “But in order for me to really help you, I need to know everything that’s going on and why you turned to alcohol in the first place. So far I’ve just been encouraging you and trying to help you build confidence, but if we really want to make sure this doesn't happen again, we need to talk about the hard stuff.”
“O-okay,” I muttered. I’d been expecting this to happen for a while, but I still wasn’t prepared for it.
“Now you’ve told me about your first drinking experience, with your friends on the camping trip,” he began, bringing the clipboard back to his lap. “You were twelve right?”
“Yeah.” I was already fidgeting with the hem of my shirt.
“Okay. Now when was the first time you actually got drunk?”
“It was probably...” I looked up at the ceiling and off to the left, “sometime in high school? I don’t remember the exact time, but it was just a party. That’s what you were supposed to do.”
“And when’s the first time you took a drink to run away from something? To feel better?”
That question hit me like a brick, causing my heart to jump in my chest. It seemed like therapists had an uncanny knack for knowing more about you than you expected. I racked my brain, trying to find the event he was looking for. At first I thought to just after college, but that wasn’t it. Maybe it was after that first time I couldn’t keep it up. The further I looked back, the more I realized how long this had all been going on.
“It... I think it might have been high school,” I stuttered. “I was at the parties to get away from home, but not necessarily to drink.”
He started scratching away on his notepad, “Why did you need to get away from home?”
“My father has always been... heavy-handed with me...”
“What does that mean? Heavy-handed?”
“He liked to... hit me, I guess? As a form of punishment whenever I did something wrong. He favored his belt.”
More scratching.
“What else did he like to use?”
“He’s struck me a few times with just his fists or thrown things at me. A few times he’d hit me with bigger stuff...” I didn’t want to be thinking about this. I’d spent so much time forgetting, or trying to at least.
“What else?” he asked, looking up at me. “Take your time.”
“He’d thrown me a few times, picked me up by the back of the neck when I was still little.” I stared at the floor. “There were a few times, for no reason at all, he’d walk by and put his cigarettes out on my arms or my neck, anything that was easy to get at really. I still have the scars.”
“Do you... have any other scars from him?”
“He um... he beat me pretty bad after that camping trip.” I could feel my eyes beginning to burn at the memories. “We’d gotten lost in the woods and we came back a day late. I tried to explain to him what had happened, but he just kept screaming at me. He came after me and I ran, which just made him more mad. I locked myself in the bathroom, terrified of what he was going to do. He pounded on the door for a minute before he kicked it in and snatched me off the floor, almost tearing my arm out of the socket. He threw me over the edge of the tub and took off his belt. But this time... this time he used the buckle... I couldn't get out of bed for two days.”
Dr. Kesler had stopped writing and was looking up at me with a look of pity on his face.
“I think that was the worst one,” I said, wiping away the hot tears on my cheeks, “most of them are really fuzzy.”
“When we experience things like that, our brain does everything it can to wipe them away, to save us from the pain of keeping a vivid memory like that. It’s completely normal that they are hard to remember.” He jotted a few more notes on the pad. “So you were going to parties to escape and just happened to be drinking because that’s what was expected?”
“Yeah, that sounds about right I guess.”
“What caused you to start drinking so heavily? And when did that happen?” he asked gently. “Again, take your time.”
“I think it was in college.” I looked away again. I couldn’t look into his eyes while spilling my guts all over the floor. “I had run away from home basically, in the middle of the night, and moved away to go to school. I was already having a rough time and I was really stressed out. One of the guys invited me to another party.”
Dr. Kesler was writing away.
“My plan was to go to the party and get wasted and laid. The best way I knew how to relax back then.” I continued. “So that’s what I did. I got drunk and some random girl took me upstairs. Everything was going fine... we were getting kinda hot and heavy... then...” I paused for a moment. “Something went wrong and I went soft. I was so embarrassed that I just got up and tried to leave. She started screaming at me and calling me all sorts of names and people were laughing at me, but I just left. I tried again at a few more parties, but it just kept happening over and over.”
“Do you know why your body reacted the way it did?” he pried, hand still furiously writing.
“I... don’t,” I lied.
“Ryan,” he stopped, setting his pen down. “If you want me to help you, you’ve got to be honest with me. There is no shame here, this is a safe place to talk. I am bound to keep everything you say here secret by federal law. More than that, I want to help you.”
“I think... I think it’s because when I closed my eyes...” I hesitated for a moment. “When I closed my eyes... I saw my best friend in my head.”
“Which friend?” he asked gently.
“Kit...” I replied, looking away from him once again.
“Explain it to me.”
“I saw him in my head and... and I liked it a lot,” I blurted. “Then she started making weird noises and I realized it wasn’t him and I just lost interest. I couldn’t figure out why I kept thinking of him and why I liked it so much. Sure we had fooled around one night before he went to college. We were both high, but when I woke up in the morning it scared the daylights out of me and I just ran. On top of that, my father had threatened to kill both him and me if something was going on. He already suspected...
“Anyway, I knew I liked women, I’ve always liked women. I couldn’t understand why I kept seeing him over and over and why I liked it so much. I couldn’t get him out of my head. I started doing drugs to get some peace because it was tearing me apart. I couldn’t even touch myself without thinking of him and now he’s practically fucking living with me.”
Dr. Kesler was writing at an astonishing speed now, never looking up from his notepad.
“Does that make me gay? I don’t want to be gay,” I continued, not noticing how fast I was talking. “I just want to live a normal life. Instead I’ve done nothing but be a royal fuck-up. I screwed up my body, my life, my career, and now I can’t even get my dick up because I’m so scared of what it might mean.” I stood up from the couch and began pacing. “I don’t want to be like this. I can’t be like this. What if my dad finds out and kills me? What if he kills Kit? I could never live with myself if that happened...”
“Why are you getting so emotional about this?” Dr. Kesler asked, looking up at me pacing the room like a caged tiger.
“What the fuck do you mean ‘why am I getting so emotional?’” I cried. “If anyone found out I could be killed! Don’t you watch the news? It seems like every other day some person is killed or beaten up for daring to be different! It’s not safe to be anything less than normal. Fuck, even that isn’t enough most days! God, I need a drink!” I threw my arms up as I flopped down on the couch and buried my face in my hands. “I just want to be normal...”
“Is being normal worth all this stress and your hard-won sobriety?”
As if he didn’t know what the answer to that question had to be.
“I don't know...”
“Ryan,” he said gently, leaning forward in his seat. “You are not abnormal. Have you ever considered that you might be bisexual?” He paused for a moment to let the statement hang in the air. “You talk about sexuality like it’s a dichotomy, a choice that must be made forever, but in reality it is very fluid and it changes for people all the time. The fact that you had such a strong emotional connection with your friend before you had sexual relations with him most likely fueled your confusion. There is no shame in enjoying what you experienced with him and there is no shame in having issues with your own body because of it. I think, with a prescription to get you started, you would find that your faculties came back to you once you built some confidence. It would be your choice after that who you pursue.”
“What are you suggesting...?”
“Go get some pills and have sex with someone!” he chuckled. “Man or woman, it doesn’t matter. Just make sure you're comfortable and you take it slow. You’ve built up so much anxiety. Start on your own and just let yourself be free. Explore what you want to. Nobody is going to know what you do in your own bedroom.”
“I think I need to tell you about something else that happened...” I said, images of the truck stop and the towering brute flashing through my head.
“I’m here as long as you need me. We’ll work through all of it together,” he replied, picking up his clipboard once more.
When I walked out of the office over two hours later my eyes were red and puffy and a delicate slip of paper with a physician referral was tucked into my shirt pocket. Kit was sitting in the parking lot on the hood of his car, reading a book as he leaned against the windshield.
“That took a while,” he laughed, not looking up from his book.
“S-sorry,” I replied hoarsely, walking towards the car.
He looked up, his face dropping as he saw mine.
“Are you okay Ryan?”
He shut his book and hopped off the car, jogging over to me. Placing a hand on my shoulder he pulled me into a hug.
I didn’t respond for a moment as I stood there, my arms hanging limply at my sides. Kit didn’t deserve this. To have to worry and try to care for me. He deserved so much better.
“Yeah,” I lied. “I’m okay.”