The Inheritance of Shame

by Peter Gajdics

  Thirty years separated Emery’s experiences from mine, but the similarities between what he went through with Cameron and what I had with Alfonzo shocked me.

  Emery walked to his egg-carton bookshelf and picked up the picture—of a young man with jet-black hair, sea-blue eyes, and a dimpled smile.

  “His name was Jim,” he said, displaying the framed photograph with pride. “Such a handsome man, don’t you think? His parents sent him to the Institute to help ‘cure’ him. By the time he left, he was a vegetable, physically and mentally impaired. They killed him. Two years later, he killed himself.” Emery dusted the frame with his shirtsleeve and replaced it back on the milk crates. “There’s more than one way to murder a fag. Cameron was an architect for genocide.”

  I wanted to ask Emery about his road to recovery, whether he’d ever found love, or forgiveness, reconciled himself with his past. When those who’ve wronged us do not take responsibility for the harm they’ve caused, I wanted to know, how is it possible to release them, the hope for their contrition, from our lives? I wanted him to tell me what I could not figure out for myself. But before I knew it, our interview was over, and Emery, visibly shaken, was ushering me out his front door.

  I was scheduled to hand out condoms in the park that night—the “public sex environment outreach” part of my job. It was also the part of my job I liked the least, that seemed the least productive. At least it would have been for me had someone handed me a condom through all the years I’d had sex in parks, and cars, public toilets, bathhouses, parkades. Condoms, back then, would not have saved me from myself, my use of sex to fill a void. But part of our funding at the AIDS organization depended on the number of condoms distributed, and so I distributed as many condoms in “safer sex packets,” as possible. At least the men liked the flavored lube.

  The park seemed busier than usual. Nighttime brought with it the need for sex, and everywhere I looked shadows of men, like scavengers, roamed back and forth between trees. My routine had always been the same; I’d wait until a man approached me along the trail, then tell him that I was not there to “play,” but as an outreach worker—and would he like to talk instead?

  That night, however, all I thought about was Emery, the years he’d lost to ignorance and hatred, years that he would never get back. His words, There’s more than one way to murder a fag echoed through me as I heard the sounds of ravaged, ravenous souls, breeding in the dark. The memory of Alfonzo was with me, too, as was the realization that the longer I stayed in his therapy, believing that I could “change” while compartmentalizing my feelings for men, dissonantly, the more likely I was to act on an unconscious sexual compulsion, have unprotected sex with a stranger, and potentially “get AIDS and die.”

  I left the forest before distributing my quota of condoms. Back home, stripped and in bed, Emery’s phrase an architect for genocide haunted me to sleep. And before I opened my eyes the next morning, not yet awake but not still asleep, somewhere in between, for a moment I thought I heard someone next to me in bed crying, sobbing.

  I awoke to realize it was me.

  21

  SEVERAL WEEKS LATER I received another letter from Ms. Pearson.

  Following their final review of my complaint, the preliminary review committee had now directed Alfonzo to attend a meeting of the ethical standards and conduct review committee. Comprised of four senior physicians and two public representatives appointed by the Ministry of Health, the conduct review committee’s task, she wrote, was to be educational, remedial, and to provide advice, guidance, or criticism, as appropriate, on the physician’s conduct in order to avoid the recurrence of similar complaints.

  I was invited to attend and was allowed to bring with me a “support person” of my choice. Reviews rarely lasted longer than thirty minutes, and I would not be expected to address the committee, although I would be permitted a few words at the end, if I so desired.

  In closing, Ms. Pearson stated that she hoped I felt my complaint had been thoroughly reviewed and that my “concerns had been satisfactorily addressed.”

  I was outraged. Nothing about my “concerns” had been “satisfactorily addressed.”

  I called my friend Natie.

  “You should sue him,” she said on the phone.

  “What?”

  “Forget the College.”

  “But—”

  “The College isn’t going to protect you. The College protects the doctors, no matter what they say publicly. A conduct review means a slap on his wrist. It’s a joke. You’re a joke to them. Find a lawyer and sue him. Make him pay.”

  “Well, in the meantime,” I said, “will you come with me to the slap on his wrist?”

  |||||||||||

  My parents invited me back to their house the following Sunday, and I accepted. Shortly before brunch, my father walked into the kitchen, where my mother and I were talking.

  “The search for truth is God’s will for all,” he said.

  I was scrambling eggs at the stove, but his statement stopped me. From glancing back into the living room I could see that he’d been watching his favorite television station, the Catholic channel. No doubt the priest had included the statement on his regular Sunday sermon.

  Our conversation throughout brunch, by contrast, was shallow, and that familiar feeling of alienation was setting in. For a change I brought up the subject of the approaching conduct review. I had always been a master of omission, and even though my complaint dealt almost entirely with the issue of homosexuality, I found a way to talk about it without ever once mentioning the word. My mother, as always, knew exactly what we were discussing.

  “What is this meeting for again?” my father cut in after a minute.

  “My complaint. I told you.”

  “What complaint? I thought we were talking about your job.”

  “You know, the doctor,” my mother said in a hushed tone. “The one he filed that complaint against?”

  I recognized the disturbed glare, registering in my father’s eyes. “Just what’s the basis for this complaint?” he asked, as my mother walked to the counter and began fiddling with the toaster.

  “What’s the basis? Didn’t you read my letter to the College?”

  “Oh, that,” he said, “that has nothing to do with us.”

  “Well, I did start therapy with that doctor because of what I’d been through at home.”

  “What happened at home?”

  “During my childhood?”

  “What about your childhood?”

  “The fights…spending all that time alone, downtown. Kriska running away…”

  “What does Kriska have to do with anything? Lots of children run away from home.”

  “You don’t think our family was just a little bit dysfunctional?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t.”

  “Well maybe you were dysfunctional, but your mother and I were never dysfunctional.”

  “But—”

  “I’ve told you how I feel, and I expect you to respect our wishes.” And, with that, he stood and left the room.

  “Why are you doing this?” my mother asked when he was out of earshot.

  “Doing what?”

  “This complaint. Why can’t you let it go?”

  “How can you say that after what you survived?” I resented her comment—that I should “let it go.” For me that would have been tantamount to crawling back into bed, as I did so often in my teens and early twenties, sedating myself with sleep because it hurt too much to stay awake. I didn’t want to do that anymore. I couldn’t do that anymore.

  “I’m trying to prevent this doctor from doing to anyone else what he did to me,” I continued. “I’m standing up for myself. Considering your own traumatic history, I thought that you more than anyone would understand.”

  “Traumatic?” she repeated, as if mulling over the word. “Today everyone is a trauma survivor. I’ve never had time for trauma.”

  I glanced ou
tside. My father was standing in the late autumn chill, alone.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Trauma might have found you, though.”

  |||||||||||

  While talking to Albert on the phone about the upcoming conduct review, he told me that Alfonzo believed my actions over the previous two years were “completely out of character” and that I would never have betrayed him by filing the complaint had it not been for my friendship with Natie and her vindictive meddling.

  For this reason alone, I decided instead to invite my childhood friend, Tommy. I hadn’t talked to Tommy in nine years, but I called him on the phone. When he answered, for a moment, I said nothing. He said my name.

  “How did you know it was me?” I said.

  “I heard you breathing.

  “You recognized me from my breathing?”

  “Peter, I would recognize you blindfolded.”

  I filled him in on the outcome to my therapy, the College’s two-year investigation, and asked if he could come with me to the conduct review.

  “Sounds like fun,” he said, dryly.

  |||||||||||

  In October 1998, a national media frenzy exploded over the savage beating and death of Matthew Shepard, a twenty-two-year-old Wyoming student, a “homosexual.”

  “By the time Shepard died in a Colorado hospital,” Newsweek reported, “his suffering had been transformed into a passion play of sexual politics, touching off a vicious new debate: on one side, civil-rights crusaders who say that federal law can help protect gays from hateful violence; on the other, Evangelical Christians who believe that Jesus Christ can save gays from themselves.”

  Christ, according to right-wing fundamentalists, now wanted the unhappy homosexual, just as Uncle Sam once had the naive civilian.

  As Shepard became the poster child for hate crime, and I waited five more months for the conduct review, I couldn’t help but think about all those men and women who were battling another kind of hatred: the one inside themselves that made them want to “change.” Theirs was the worst kind of hate crime. I knew, because I’d done it to myself.

  |||||||||||

  On March 24, 1999, nearly two years after filing my complaint, Tommy and I arrived at the office of the College of Physicians and Surgeons for the conduct review. Albert shuffled us directly from reception to a small, private waiting room with two green vinyl chairs and a half-melted plastic plant. The air inside was stale, and the flickering fluorescent bulbs secured behind a chipped paneled ceiling burned my eyes. After a minute, Tommy broke our silence.

  “Your mother called me,” he said. “Years ago, when you were in that house…”

  “The Styx?”

  “I guess you’d called her one night, sometime in the early nineties. I don’t know exactly what you said, but she was really upset.”

  “She called you?”

  “She was crying.”

  “My mother was crying?”

  “She must have called me as soon as you hung up. She said something about you being in a cult, that you were brainwashed. She wanted me to help her. She sounded desperate.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I didn’t know what to say. Your mother had never called me before, the whole time we were friends as kids. I also thought you were in a cult. For a while I actually thought about kidnapping you out of that house.”

  “By the way, what’s that cologne you’re wearing?” I asked.

  “Dalí. I prefer the musky scents, lots of sandalwood and patchouli. Mark Birley had a wonderful top note of oranges mixed with wood and leather. I couldn’t decide which one to wear today. Why, do you like it?”

  I said nothing, thinking how his pungent cologne smelled just like Alfonzo.

  “Dalí used to spread shit all over himself, you know.”

  “Pardon?”

  “And other things, but mainly shit, just before he met Gala, and apparently the result was intoxicating. Gala, of course, being the love of his life.”

  “Okay.”

  “He felt the smell of excrement was incredibly sensuous and erotic. When he was young he mixed his own cologne and the main ingredient was shit. Of course there were other ingredients, like olives. But now that I’m thinking about it, if this Alfonzo person had done his research, he would’ve been aware that the smell of shit has its own sensuous aphrodisiac properties…”

  I was glad when Albert reappeared from around the corner.

  “I’m afraid I have some potentially disruptive news,” Albert said, holding a letter.

  “What?”

  “Dr. Alfonzo just presented a letter to the committee that lays out the reasons why he believes you should not be allowed to attend the review.”

  “Are you serious? Can you read it to me?”

  “I am not in a position to read you the letter. However, I can tell you that he’s cited your…‘fragile state of mind,’ and that he’s warned the committee that by listening to them talk about your ‘mental instability’ it could be ‘hazardous and detrimental’ to your emotional well-being. He says that it could set you back years in your therapeutic process. He’s concerned for you.”

  “Is he.”

  Albert smiled and nodded his head.

  “Does this mean I can’t attend the review?”

  “No, no, of course not. But you needed to be aware of the letter. It’s up to you whether you attend.”

  “Dr. Alfonzo will say just about anything to pathologize me. Of course I want to attend.”

  Albert didn’t seem surprised. I think I even caught him smiling as he led us down a hallway and into a boardroom.

  The walls inside the room were dark and oppressive. Around a large rectangular table sat three men and three women. All eyes turned toward me as I entered the room. Peter Gajdics, the complainant they’d read about for nearly two years, was now a real live person. Tommy and I took a seat at one end of the table. No one spoke for five minutes; then an older man in a pinstriped suit entered the room, followed closely by Alfonzo, carrying a large box that he dropped next to a seat adjacent to us. There was a frantic manner to his arrival: he appeared confused, disorganized, like a man on the edge, and I imagined that he’d just been led out of a car, chauffeured by one of his “family,” because he did not have the mental stability to drive it himself.

  Mrs. Humphries, the committee’s chair, a mid-fifties British woman with a beehive hairstyle sitting at the head of the table, called the meeting by outlining the reasons for our attendance. Then she walked us through my five-page letter of complaint, which had set the process in motion twenty-three months earlier.

  “Dr. Alfonzo, could you please tell us a bit about your attitude toward homosexuality?”

  “Attitude?” he said with a raised brow. “I have no particular attitude. Twenty percent of my clients are homosexual. I do find homosexual women more amenable to treatment. But no one knows the cause of homosexuality. Freud pioneered theories based on an emotionally weak father in combination with a smothering mother, that this may cause the male to identify with the mother and therefore choose a love object of the same sex. Efforts to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals have never been successful. But there’s a lot of debate about the nature of homosexuality, whether it’s an illness or a part of a person’s nature. The whole nature-versus-nurture theory. But I know that homosexuality hasn’t been an illness since nineteen seventy-three when it was removed from the DSM, so how could I treat someone for an illness that hasn’t existed since then?”

  “Dr. Alfonzo,” Mrs. Humphries responded, already with an edge to her voice, “there is no debate about the nature of homosexuality. None. The Canadian Psychiatric Association has never considered homosexuality a mental illness. And the Canadian Medical Association has long considered homosexuality equal to heterosexuality as a sexual orientation. Research into homosexuality is irrefutable, and it is considered neither mental illness nor moral depravity. Moreover, homosexual orientation has been found to be in place early in the lif
e cycle, possibly even before birth. Efforts to repair homosexuals have been shown to be nothing more than social prejudice and could result in severe psychological damage inflicted onto the individual.”

  Like an animal in a zoo, I had become The Homosexual At The Far End Of The Table.

  “Dr. Alfonzo,” she continued, “this committee is aware that you practice a highly unorthodox form of therapy which could involve an intensification of the power difference between therapist and patient. Could you tell us a bit about the ‘slave and daddy’ roles used in your therapy?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”

  “Your treatment involves a form of primal therapy, does it not?”

  “I wouldn’t call it primal therapy.”

  “Your patients undergo regression, do they not?”

  “Yes.”

  “They are therefore extremely vulnerable to suggestion, correct?”

  “Vulnerable?” He repeated the word as if he’d never heard it before.

  “Could Mr. Gajdics have said things in his therapy that you wanted to hear? Perhaps just to please you as a father figure?”

  “Oh no, no no no no no. I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “No.”

  “Why don’t you think so?”

  “I believe that patients can control what they say during their primals. There’s never been any evidence to suggest that a therapist can extract from someone something that they did not want to say.”

  “Are you saying patients can control what they say or that they cannot control what they say?”

  “Cannot. Sorry. Cannot.”

  “Have you ever used abusive language on your patients?”

  “Abusive language?”

  “Screamed at them, called them names or threatened them in any way. Undermined their hopes, exploited their fears, coerced them into behaving or doing certain things. Your chores, for instance. Cooking your meals and delivering them to your home.”