Pee-Shy

by Frank Spinelli

  “I’m sorry I made you tell me, but I had to know.” I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. This time Jonathan did not pull away.

  “Frank, are you mad at me?”

  “No, not anymore.”

  Then we embraced. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, burying his face into the hollow of my shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

  I could feel his heart pounding against my chest. I pressed him closer. His tears moistened my neck. Then something strange happened. I felt the warmth of Jonathan’s lips on mine. That was the first time I kissed a boy. As it was happening, I told myself it wasn’t a real kiss, but I knew that wasn’t true. Then Jonathan shifted his body onto the cot next to me. We embraced, and my thoughts drifted to Bill, wondering why we’d never kissed. Then I froze. Jonathan’s lips felt oddly strange. When he stopped kissing me, I felt as if I was coming out of a dream. The spell was broken, and Jonathan was back on the couch again. I rolled over on my side and pretended to fall asleep.

  “We’ll always be friends, right?” he whispered.

  “Of course,” I said, but that was a lie. The truth was that Jonathan’s confession angered me and our kiss only drove us further apart. If only he had told his mother what Bill had done to him, maybe things would have been better. After that night, we never spoke again.

  It was comforting to think Jonathan was out of my life. Grammar school was eight long years. Now it was over. I was moving on to a high school where no one knew me. It was a chance for a new beginning. By telling my parents about Bill, I had taken the first step in ridding him from my life. Now he was gone. What remained of his memory would be erased by letting go of Jonathan, as well.

  ONE WEEK LATER, I RODE MY BICYCLE TO BILL’S HOUSE, waited by the telephone pole, and stared up at his bedroom. He never came out. His truck wasn’t even there, but I waited anyway. I don’t know what I would have said if he’d appeared. I just wanted to see him. Standing there by the telephone pole, I no longer felt like myself. I had become dissociated. Now that Bill was no longer a part of my life, I was unable to collect the fragments that were left behind, and it was confusing to feel unrelated to myself. But, even in the midst of all this confusion, I wondered where Bill was and whether he ever thought about me. His absence left me feeling lonely. I waited for several minutes more before I got on my bicycle and rode back home from his house for the last time.

  After that day, I would always blame myself for what happened. I was convinced that Bill felt the need to punish me because there was something horribly wrong with me, something I was still unaware of. For years I moved through life feeling numb, and the emptiness grew black with hatred. I became a dark teenager and, later, a cynical adult. At twenty-eight years old, when I finally admitted I was gay, it occurred to me that Bill had already known this back then. Long before I had a conscious thought that I was gay, Bill had singled me out. As a child, I threatened Bill’s sexuality because I was a reminder of the very thing he loathed about himself.

  PART III

  CHAPTER 24

  Taking the Plunge

  A MONTH AFTER I MADE CONTACT WITH BILL, I took Dean’s advice and met with a therapist. It was April and I was about to turn forty-one when I made an appointment with Dr. Kate McGovern. I walked the entire way from my apartment, thinking about what I was going to say. I hadn’t been in therapy for over a year, and the thought of starting over again with another therapist (Kate would be my fourth) was something I wasn’t looking forward to.

  I arrived early and took the elevator to the fourth floor. A door at the end of the hall opened, and a tall, slender woman stepped out. We looked at each other. She smiled and motioned me toward her. As I walked down the hall, the floorboards creaked, reminding me that I was about to take that plunge off the gangplank again, headfirst into therapy.

  “Hello,” she said. “Come inside.”

  Dr. McGovern’s office was a large room with the obligatory overstuffed couch. She sat in a leather chair and rested her feet on a matching black ottoman. A small coffee table separated us. The furniture behind her consisted of two large wooden pieces with cabinets and doors that closed in order to ensure the privacy of their contents. The art was minimal: a poster of a Rothko, another Expressionistic work. There were two small clocks: one behind her on the cabinet, another next to me on the couch, placed in such a way so we both knew how far into the session we were at any given time. In the past, I always kept a watchful eye on the remaining minutes. One of my biggest issues with therapy was that time was a double-edged sword: not enough when you needed it and too much when you didn’t.

  “To begin, I’m going to ask you a few questions,” she said. Her voice was comforting and gentle. I imagined she was in her late forties. She was dressed comfortably in a white button-up shirt, light beige chinos, and penny loafers. Immediately, I saw Olga in her kind face. But Kate McGovern appeared more reserved, and unlike Olga, I imagined she had an Ivy League education, a white Protestant family, and a Latino girlfriend to piss them off.

  I began.

  LATER THAT WEEK, MY CELL PHONE RANG. The area code was unfamiliar to me, and despite my general rule not to answer unknown callers, I picked it up anyway.

  It was Jonathan.

  “Oh my God, how are you?” I asked. “After I spoke to your dad, I didn’t think I would hear from you. He said you were living in Denver.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I love it here.”

  I was stunned. His voice was calm and sweet, like Kermit the Frog’s, just as I remembered.

  “I’m so sorry about your mom,” I offered. “I really liked her. She was a cool lady, with such style. I loved her dark Farrah Fawcett hairdo and those round glasses.”

  Jonathan laughed. I recognized it as the same laugh from childhood. “That makes me so happy to hear you say that. I feel like I forgot so much of my childhood.”

  “I wish I could say the same.”

  “How have you been?”

  “Good . . . mostly,” I said. Then I added, “I’m a doctor living in New York. I’m gay!”

  “Me, too.”

  We laughed at our mutual disclosure. “That didn’t take long,” I said. “But why beat around the bush? Hell, I wrote a book on gay men’s health.”

  “I heard. That’s amazing. I can’t wait to buy it.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ve been traveling to promote it. Overall, it’s been an exciting time for me. Recently, I came into contact with two guys who knew Father Roberts. Remember him?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well, one thing led to another, and I started to think about Bill Fox. You remember Bill, right?”

  There was silence at the other end. I was sure he had hung up the phone.

  “Of course I remember him,” he said finally.

  I noticed the change in his tone, but I continued. “I tracked him down in Pennsylvania. It seems he’s adopted several boys over the past twenty-five years.”

  “How awful.”

  “What makes it worse is that he still might have children in his care.”

  “How did you find all this out?”

  “I called him.”

  “You did?” he asked, as though that was the most striking thing I’d said. “You spoke to Bill Fox?”

  I took a deep breath. “Jonathan, how much do you remember about what happened?”

  “Honestly, my memory is very fuzzy. After I graduated from St. Sylvester’s, I had a terrible time in high school. I started doing drugs and dropped out. I even ran away from home. My uncle Vito took care of me. Do you remember him?”

  “Absolutely. That dildo is forever etched into my memory.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I remember that. Well, my uncle Vito arranged an intervention. Luckily for me, he got me into rehab, and eventually, I finished high school. My parents divorced shortly after that. Then my mom died several years later. That’s when I moved to Denver. I had to get away.”

  “I’m so sorry, Jonathan. I had no idea. Do
you have a partner?”

  “Yes, I’ve been with my partner, Mark, for nearly eight years.”

  “That’s great.” I was relieved he had someone. “Well, I hope I didn’t freak your father out, but I needed to find you. I wanted to talk to you.”

  “When my dad called, I was like, who? And then he explained, and I was like, Frank Spinelli! Now that’s a blast from the past. Then I looked you up online. I’m so proud of everything you’ve accomplished. Tomorrow, I have to buy your book. I still collect them.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “I guess some things never change.” Immediately, I was reminded of that skinny boy with tortoiseshell glasses, riding his bicycle up to my house. “Jonathan, I need your help. I want to report Bill and get those children taken away from him.”

  “But what can I do?” he asked. “I really don’t remember what happened. I mean, I remember something happened, but I couldn’t give you details.”

  “Do you recall that he molested us?”

  Jonathan exhaled deeply into the phone. “I know something went on, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you much more than that.”

  I found it difficult to believe that Jonathan didn’t remember the past as vividly as I did. I wanted to shake him and get him to remember. I became more aggressive. “Jonathan, you don’t remember sleeping over his house, the Farrah Fawcett poster over his bed, and that scary Mrs. Fox, sitting in the living room watching television?”

  “I can’t believe you remember all that. I’m sorry, but it all seems so fuzzy to me.”

  Something told me not to press him. That it was pointless to push him further. He would remember eventually. All he needed was time.

  “I think we should keep in touch,” I said. “I’ll give you my e-mail. That way, if you remember anything, you could just write. Sometimes it’s easier to write down the things we feel uncomfortable saying.”

  “Okay,” he said. I felt him slipping away, back into my past. “It was so nice talking to you, Frank.”

  The next day, I received an e-mail from Jonathan. Attached were a series of photos taken with his partner, Mark, on a gay cruise. I stared at one photo in particular, where they were posed in front of a palm tree, the crystal-blue ocean behind them. Mark was a tall, fair-skinned man who wore glasses. He looked twelve years old. They had their arms over each other’s shoulders. I couldn’t believe how much Jonathan had changed over the years. His once dark, wavy hair had receded and gone gray along the sides. He’d grown a goatee, and those narrow cheeks had filled in. Only his eyes remained the same—forever distracted, forlorn, and hidden behind a pair of glasses. Time had changed him, Bill had changed him, and—even though we were once the best of friends who believed in telepathy and shared a love of books—he now recalled very little of the past.

  In the last paragraph of his e-mail, Jonathan wrote:

  It was good talking with you last night. Despite all the bad that happened in those years, I remember the positive things the most. I look back on it with happy memories. You were part of those happy memories, and I am glad to have had the chance to say hello again.

  WHEN I MET WITH DR. MCGOVERN THE SECOND TIME, she had a yellow notepad on her lap. The office was warm and quiet, the couch soft and cozy. I wondered how Dr. McGovern kept from falling asleep, listening to patients talk all day. Outside the window, a group of pigeons gathered on the ledge. The soft hum of the cooing was distracting. One was staring directly at me. It was completely white like a dove.

  “How often did you see Bill?” she asked.

  “I’d see him every week at Boy Scout meetings, but I suppose that’s not what you’re referring to? Honestly, I don’t know how many times I saw Bill. He came by my house once or twice a week. Sometimes I didn’t see him for a week or two, but then, out of the blue, he’d come over without even calling. He’d just show up.”

  “How’d it make you feel when he’d show up at your house?”

  I stared at the pigeons again, knowing very well what Dr. McGovern was getting at. Next she’d ask me about my relationship with my parents, and then, just like all the other therapists before her, she’d nod repeatedly, as though she’d figured me out in just under two visits. Therapists always wanted to connect my molestation with my parents. I had all the textbook traits of a fucked-up gay man: domineering mother, absentee father, and sexually abusive childhood. All I needed was a crystal meth addiction to complete my unlucky hand.

  Not wanting to play this game again, I stared at the pigeons instead, thinking how much I hated Dean for suggesting I go back into therapy and grateful I hadn’t told Chad I made this appointment. The night I spoke to Dean at Chad’s apartment I took his advice and told Chad everything. He listened, staring at me with those huge blue eyes of his, the same ones that reminded me of Mary Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie. The whole time I was convinced he was thinking, What the hell did I get myself into? When I was done, Chad just looked at me and said, “I’m sorry you have to go through this.”

  The process of exploring how I felt was something I grew to hate about therapy. My body felt tense sitting there on the couch. I counted the seconds on the small bronze clock and wondered how many different ways I’d answered Dr. McGovern’s question before—first to Olga, then to Tim, and finally, to Roger.

  “How did I feel?” I repeated. “Why’s it so important to talk about how I felt as a little boy when my Scoutmaster picked me up to have sex?” I felt my cheeks heating up. I turned away, not wanting Dr. McGovern to see this side of me yet. I didn’t want to explain the complex feelings of standing by the door as a little boy with my face pressed up to the screen, waiting for Bill to come.

  Silently, I stared at those pigeons, thinking how beautiful the white one was. I could just hear Eric, “But you don’t even like pigeons. You call them rats with feathers.” Then the white one flew away and, with it, any hope I had that Dr. McGovern could help me.

  “Proud,” I said finally. “I felt proud, as though he’d chosen me from all the other little boys. But then afterward, I always felt shame.”

  “Shame because you felt what you were doing with Bill was wrong?”

  “Yes,” I said. “So there you have it in a nutshell, the warped nucleus of my soul—a mixture of false pride and shame. Are you happy now? Because this isn’t going to help me figure out how to get those boys away from that monster.”

  Dr. McGovern sat up and put down her notepad. “Our time is almost up,” she said. “But before you go, I’d like to say something. We need to talk more about the feelings the molestation stirred up in you as a child and now as an adult. As for the remaining boys who still live with Bill, my advice is that you seek legal counsel with a lawyer who specializes in childhood sexual abuse.”

  I stood up and bolted out of the room. Assailed by a deep, burning rage, I felt that if I didn’t get out of the building I would melt. When I reached the street, I stood against the wall and breathed. I noticed tears on my cheeks against the cool wind. Then I wondered when I had started to cry—whether it began while I was in Dr. McGovern’s office. I didn’t want her to see me cry.

  Walking back to my practice that morning, I convinced myself that I wasn’t going to return the following week. I was done. There was no point in talking about how I felt as a child or now as an adult. Dean was wrong. He didn’t know me. We hadn’t even met. I had Chad now. He was all I needed, and he didn’t need to feel as though he was dating some fucked-up, stereotypical gay man going through a midlife crisis.

  But it’s not only about you anymore.

  Then I remembered that picture of Jonathan. I saw his face, those eyes, and recalled the story he told me about how he ran away from home, became a drug addict, and almost never finished high school. Bill had adopted fifteen boys. He still had three with him. When they turned forty years old, what stories would they have to tell?

  That night I searched for an attorney online. I found one based in Philadelphia who specialized in working with victims of childhood
sexual abuse: Jeff Brenum. I called him, and surprisingly, he answered the phone himself.

  Mr. Brenum listened to my entire story and then informed me that I couldn’t press charges against Bill. “Thirty years?” he confirmed. “I’m sorry, but this is well past the New York statute of limitations. If you had been molested in Pennsylvania, then that would be an entirely different story. Boys here have until their fiftieth birthday to press charges.”

  “Then what about the boys he’s adopted?” I asked. “Is there anything we can do for them?”

  “There’s very little you can do. Of course, if there were other allegations involving children, particularly ones he’s adopted, that would be important.”

  “How could I find out?”

  “You could hire a private investigator to look into whether or not there have been previous allegations of child molestation made against this man by other families, but that could be costly.”

  “I see.”

  “Off the record, there is something else you could do. You could agree to meet your molester in person. Tell him you’re having a difficult time understanding what you did to attract him as an adult man in such a sexual way. You could wear a wire and record the conversation.”

  Suddenly, I had to urinate.

  When I didn’t answer right away, Mr. Brenum asked, “Are you still there?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry,” I said, pressing firmly on my groin. “I was just thinking about what you said.”

  “Remember, this is completely off the record. I’m not insinuating that you should do this. You asked me what your options are.”

  Once I hung up, I ran into the bathroom, sat on the toilet, and waited to pee.

  Could I meet Bill and wear a wiretap?

  Then I recalled something Dean had said to me: “To do that, you would have to have the skills of an Academy Award–winning actress. No offense, but you’re no Meryl Streep.” Dean was right. I couldn’t face Bill, even without a wire. Not yet.