I didn’t like the sound of aversion therapy. I toyed with the idea that I’d already experienced it, with Luke’s visit a calculated step in the process. I rejected the thought immediately: the boy’s demeanor had been so honest, with no attempt to provoke my lowest desires. But if he had intended to manipulate me in that way, the therapy could hardly have been more successful: those uncomfortable moments with Luke made me want to pray for myself. I almost wished I’d never again have another sexual thought.
“You’re right,” Jack said, as if I’d responded. “It doesn’t seem the kind of project a church group should sponsor. Besides, can you imagine a mother doing that to her son, attaching the electrodes and stuff? Gross.”
I started cleaning up the mess he’d made, scooping up pages from my bed and tucking them into his binder. While I was at it, I pulled the bed slightly away from its twin.
Jack tugged at the front of his T-shirt, shook it a few times. “I still haven’t cooled off after digging around in the back of the car.” He reached under the hem and started to lift the shirt over his head.
We were young then, physically fit without needing to exercise. Jack’s torso was tall and lean, like he stepped out of an El Greco painting.
I turned away to give him privacy.
“Hey, c’mere.” He patted the bed in a familiar invitation. Maybe he only wanted me to sit close with him; maybe it would lead to something more.
It wouldn’t feel right. Not in that room. “I’m still worried about Luke,” I said.
“We’ll see him tomorrow.”
“I don’t think so. I promised him I wouldn’t do it.”
The bed frame squeaked, and the next thing I knew Jack arms hugged me from behind. I felt his shirtless torso against my back. An affectionate loving gesture—the most natural thing in the world. To me, it felt like our bodies didn’t fit together anymore.
“We have to go through with it.” Jack’s arms loosened and withdrew, then he brought his hands up to massage my shoulders. “I’m even more curious about tomorrow after Luke’s visit. I wonder when it will get weird—right away, or will they try to sneak the crazy stuff up on us?”
The knuckles of his right hand traced along my spine. I pulled away before he got too low. “It’s not a joke,” I said, turning to face him. “That kid’s really confused and scared. We don’t want to end up the same way.”
That last part, I hadn’t intended to say. But it got through to Jack—kind of slowed down his careless enthusiasm. “Aw, how could we? We’re not some naive kid. We know who we are, right?” He stepped closer, patted the side of my arm. “Listen, these programs can’t possibly work. That’s why she didn’t have any successful graduates for us to talk to: there aren’t any. She had to use her own son in the brochure, for pity’s sake. Don’t worry. The first sign that something’s wrong—the first sign—and I’ll get us out of there.”
I was going to protest further—how do you know you’ll be able to get us out? what if we’re in too deep?—when a police officer banged against the door of our room.
#
At least, that’s what it sounded like. Heavy raps with a closed fist, persistent I know you’re in there and I’m counting to ten before breaking this door down kind of knocks.
Remember, we were in Georgia in the mid ’80s. That state had a sodomy law on the books until 2003. Jack was standing there with his shirt off, and our beds were pressed together.
We’d had a minor in our room fifteen minutes earlier.
I think we reacted the way drug dealers must, flushing the evidence in a quick panic. I pulled the beds apart, tossed Jack his shirt, and we hid any scrap of paper with the word “Gay” on it. I ran my fingers through my hair, then took a deep breath to appear casual when I opened the door.
Not the police, but worse.
Gloria Leavendale.
#
“Why don’t you invite me in? You didn’t have any trouble hosting my son here, even though you knew I’d forbidden him to speak with you.”
The sun caught her from behind, her golden hair ethereal in the light. She’d removed the scarf from her dress. The cream-colored straps blended with her skin, making her shoulders appear naked.
“Oh, I didn’t follow him,” she said, stepping into the room. “But a mother knows her son. He can’t fool her.” The door shut with that awful clang, and a loud click that was supposed to make us feel secure.
Explanations sifted through my brain like sand through spread fingers. Luke came here of his own free will. We only talked with him for a few minutes.
Jack stood by the desk, uncharacteristically silent.
Gloria surveyed the room. She looked at the beds. She sniffed the air.
I backed out of her way. Her sense of moral superiority was stronger now, scorn and disgust together. At the church, it had been easy to disagree with her. Now, she had the upper hand.
Gloria picked up Jack’s binder from the edge of the bed, opened it to the inside front pocket. She pulled out his permission form.
“Signed. I guess you’re eager to begin treatment.”
I found my voice. “I didn’t sign. Whatever you do, I think it’s wrong.”
“You don’t sound so certain.” She let Jack’s paper fall to the floor. “I don’t really need your signature. You won’t tell anybody.”
Gloria let the binder drop to the floor, too, and the loose sheets spilled out again. A high heel punched through one of the pages as she stepped closer to Jack. I saw the back of her head, the straps blending into her shoulder, the dress tight to the curves of her hips.
“We might as well start now.” Her fingers curled over her left shoulder, the thumb slipping beneath the strap. She pulled the strap slowly down her arm.
I couldn’t believe it. Gloria pulled the other strap off her shoulder, and the top of her dress peeled down. Soon, I saw the whole of her naked back; Jack saw more.
She turned sideways to face us both, then pushed the dress past her hips and stepped out of it. Gloria Leavendale, someone’s mother, a leader in a conservative small-town church—she stood nearly nude before us.
She kicked off one shoe, the other, then slowly rolled off her nylon stockings. All that remained was a pair of white lace panties.
I was horrified.
Because she looked . . . beautiful.
Straight friends sometimes make an offhand remark, not even realizing how offensive it is: “If only you found the right woman . . .”—as if homosexuality was the result of inexperience, rather than being an authentic part of someone’s identity. The same reasoning lies behind these religious groups that advocate conversion: “If only you found the right path to God . . .” Such an insulting perspective.
Yet in that moment, Gloria Leavendale seemed the right woman, the right path. I felt an overwhelming desire for her.
She hooked her thumbs under the waistband of her panties.
(You see why I hesitated to tell this story. The sexuality of it, of course—no daughter wants to imagine her parents in this kind of situation. But I’m also unsure how to convey the true horror of what Gloria Leavendale did to us. These feelings she produced—a mental reaction and a, uh, physical response, too—those new feelings were so intense, they made everything I’d previously experienced seem false. Not just those awkward attractions to Luke, which I’d gladly exorcise, but all my experiences with Jack. Sexual intimacy, yes, and the whole of our intense life together: meeting each other in college, learning each others’ taste in music and movies and books, sharing the same friends and inside jokes, fighting with our families, traveling together, maybe getting frustrated sometimes but loving each other anyway because that’s what a relationship is, gay or straight—it’s never simply a physical attraction, it’s a life together. But as she was drawing us to her, it’s as if Gloria Leavendale was draining that life from us. That was the true horror for me. For both of us. Does that make sense?)
Jack pulled his shirt over his head, but I
didn’t look at him. I was too busy looking at Gloria Leavendale, hypnotized, stepping closer to her. I desired her more than I could possibly express. At the same time, I felt overwhelming loss, an emptiness that was moving me to tears.
The therapy, her son had said. It’s terrible. Worse than you could ever imagine.
Jack was there with me—I heard his belt unbuckle—but I couldn’t really attend to him at all. I fumbled with my own clothing, nearly tripping over my pants as I stepped out of them.
Jack’s hand covered one of her breasts, and I heard a familiar groan of pleasure. My vision was blurry with tears, and the woman smiled at me, a smug alluring smile, and her face was all I saw, growing larger as I drew close, my bare leg pressing between hers. In that awful heat of passion, I wished I could stop, but was powerless.
Then Jack used his gift, in the most horrible way possible.
#
Gloria Leavendale’s face . . . her face . . .
(This part is going to be nasty, Celia. I’m glad you’re not eating—honestly, I’m glad you’re not sexually active yet, too, but all fathers feel that way. Are you sure you want me to go on? Okay.)
Her face transformed. Imagine bristles on a black caterpillar or on the torso of a magnified fly, the soft hairs that spring up from moldy bread, the flakes of scabbed skin that slough off from an infected wound; imagine liquids, too, like gray, curdled milk and yellow discharge from a burst pimple. And imagine genitalia: folds and wrinkles and colorations, but dirty and bruised and rotten and . . .
(Oh, I’m having a lot of trouble telling you this.)
. . . imagine all these features alive across a hideous face that still thought it could tempt me, if you can believe it, Gloria Leavendale trying to be her most alluring while her caterpillar lips squished together in a vile pucker and while one eye winked like a withered foreskin.
I threw my hands between us, pushing myself back. I’m not a violent person, and I know it’s wrong to hit a woman, but I raised a fist and punched.
It didn’t feel like I hit a face. My fist slammed into a thick, spongy membrane, then it felt like I scooped inside a hollowed pumpkin, the seeds and pulpy mush pushing against my knuckles, between my fingers.
God, I couldn’t believe what I’d done. But the spell was broken. Hitting her, that awful sensation of my fingers sloshing through the contents of her head . . . I think what happened is that I broke past her magic, and almost literally pulled it out of her brain.
Her power was out but she kept trying to flip the light switch. I felt nothing.
And then she was furious. You know how those holier-than-thou types act when they’re caught in a lie—their hands in the collection plate, or down the pants of an altar boy? Well, that’s how her face flashed now, so angry to be caught, and acting like it’s our sin instead of hers that caused the trouble.
Yes, a normal face now, flashing its own ugly intolerance to replace the repulsive swirl of horrors Jack projected onto her for my benefit.
Jack and I covered up pretty fast, and she gathered up her clothes and did the same. Some blood ran from her nose where I’d hit her, but the damage didn’t look too bad.
I didn’t feel any emotion: not a gentlemanly concern for her pain, certainly, and no residue of that unnatural desire she’d inflicted upon me. I just wanted her to leave. I wanted to be alone with my boyfriend.
She obliged, without speaking a word. We never saw her again.
#
That was the end of her conversion ministry, too, from what we gathered later. Gloria Leavendale wasn’t a gorgon, as Jack predicted earlier that day. She was some variation of succubus: she had the ability to control desires in men, including gay men and teens, and she used this ability to tempt them away from supposedly unnatural desires. I don’t even want to consider how far she’d gone with her own son.
Jack apologized to me later. In the middle of it, while we were both under her spell, he understood what was happening better than I did—yet was equally powerless to control himself. In a desperate plan, he summoned up the worst possible images he could think of, gave them all a perverse sexual flavor, and transmitted the loathsome mess to me, hoping I’d be repulsed enough to save us both.
In some ways, I wish he hadn’t done such a good job. I still shiver when I think of that face writhing next to mine. But I forgave him.
Who knows what would have happened to us otherwise?
Anyway, we sure weren’t visiting Liberty Baptist Church the next day, and I wasn’t too keen on staying in that room. We got the hell out of that town and never looked back. The picture is all I kept, as a souvenir. We look young and handsome there, and I like to remember us both that way.
(Luke? Yes, I can see where you’d wonder what happened to the boy, and I did, too, for a long while. Do you think it’s likely that he had a fraction of his mother’s ability, and didn’t realize it? I considered that possibility, myself. It would certainly make me feel better about some of the thoughts I’d had about him, though I never expected I’d learn for certain.
Then, out of the blue, we heard from him again.
But that’s definitely a story I’ll save until you’re older . . . )
Chapter IV
Beyond the highway, the world was dark. Celia imagined fenced communities of homes, stretches of wooded areas between. In each, there were bad patches: cabinets of sharp objects or sinister totems, men or women who weren’t what they appeared; furred creatures that scurried beneath a damp pile of leaves, while behind a tree impatient claws scratched into the bark.
Such was the lesson of her fathers’ adventures. Turn off the road, and you steer away from familiar comforts. The old rules no longer apply. You cannot feel safe.
And she was riding in a car with strangers.
#
Celia imagined her own supernatural nightmare unfolding within the car:
“I thought you lived in Marietta,” she would say from the back seat. “We passed that exit.”
“Oh, Pop Pop knows a short cut.” Her grandmother sits in front of her, but Celia can only see a halo of her hair above the headrest, backlit by halogens that search the road ahead.
Her grandfather would then turn toward an unmarked access road. The road loses its gentle, predictable rhythm, but the car doesn’t slow as much as it should. Celia grips the seatbelt at her shoulder. Her grandmother turns off the radio then the air conditioning; the interior of the car is silent, save for the occasional scratch of tree limbs along the roof.
Celia stares out her window, but it’s even darker out there than inside the car. The window protects her from what she can’t see.
Something like a piece of rotten fruit thumps heavy against her window. It slips down the glass, leaving a long, dark smear. Celia knows the sound of a wet fingertip on glass, and she imagines it now, accompanied by the cry of a wounded animal.
“Night air is better,” Pop Pop says, and all the automatic windows slide down. Forest breeze rushes loud over engine sounds and the scrape of tires across asphalt. The warm air blows into Celia’s face and a sticky mist forms over her bare arms. She starts to itch, as if insects are crawling on her. Maybe they are.
Her grandmother’s tuft of hair suddenly drops beneath the headrest. The woman’s breathing seems louder. Perhaps she has fallen asleep, her head dropping to the side, and it’s some version of snoring that arises—although, it sounds more like the snarl of an angry dog.
Another rotten fruit thumps against Celia’s door, this time hitting the open window frame and rolling inside. It falls damp and heavy onto her foot, but it’s too dark for Celia to see what it is. She lifts her legs, hugging her knees to her chest as the car continues to bump over rough road. The shape in the footwell jostles with the ride. It makes a chittering shriek, and she also hears something like the flap of wounded wings.
“There’s something in here,” she says. She wants to bring her feet down hard to crush it, but she’s too afraid. The smell of rotten food
fills the car, mixed with skunk and dirty creek water, the foul matted fur of a stray animal.
“Pop Pop, are you there?” The car is so dark, there’s no telling what might have happened. He could have fallen asleep while driving, the car drifting forward on its own. He could have died.
“Don’t worry, girly,” Pop Pop would finally say. “I know this road like the back of my hand.” He would lift one hand from the steering wheel and wave it.
In the faint glow from the headlights, Celia would see that his fingers ended in sharp claws, and his hand was covered with coarse hair.
#
Such supernatural musings were fairly easy for Celia to banish from her imagination. In fact, the dark interior of the car offered some comfort, making discussion easier. Back in the restaurant, they had the distraction of food, and the other diners in that public space; they watched each others’ expressions, trying to read extra meaning into every gesture.
Here, while Pop Pop concentrated on driving, Celia learned new things about her other father, and the circumstances of his illness. For some stretches of highway, it was like listening to an old-time radio show—her grandmother’s voice from the seat in front of her—but the experience was more vital than that. Celia had to concentrate on every word, test them against long held assumptions, match them against Dad Shawn’s stories and the occasional scraps of details he’d let slip.
“I offered. From the very beginning, from the first moment Shawn told us, I offered.
“And thank God he told us, by the way. Not that it’s something a parent wants to hear, of course. But you need to hear. Wouldn’t it have been terrible to find out afterward, when it was too late? After you’ve sensed something was wrong, anyway, but were too afraid to ask? —and then thinking back about every insensitive thing you might have said, maybe complaining about a headache or allergies, a slight pain in your feet from arthritis, and your own son sympathizing even as he faces something far worse. Or my mentioning you, Celia, and how delightful it will be for him to watch you grow up, go to daycare then grade school, high school and college before he knew it, won’t that be wonderful—talking on and on about a future my son would never see.”
Odd Adventures with your Other Father Page 11