POV Experiment, Concluded: The Session

            I grew up in a pretty average suburb, sandwiched between the hustle and bustle of the big city and the rural farmland beyond; an affluent neighborhood marked by a delicate stream cutting through the middle, the culvert of which all the kids loved to play near and catch crawdads, and looping cul-de-sacs that tucked into lovely corners of foliage and shrubbery, with great looming elms that provided scattershot shade on Spring days when the wind ripped through the streets and shuddered their leaves.

            The neighbors were decent, I suppose. I never got to know them. I spent the majority of my time either indoors or riding my bicycle by myself, tracing huge figure-eights through the concrete mazes. I could recall, suddenly, a time during one of those trips that I came across a dead bird. It was a huge, ugly thing, sitting in the middle of the road. It was off one of the backstreets in the northwestern corner of the neighborhood, where the sidewalks were cracked and torn up, and most other kids avoided coming back here, afraid they would fuck up their tires.

            But there I was, in front of this dead bird, and I had slammed on my brakes and half-stood, glaring at the thing, one leg balanced on the pavement for support. I could see its guts and innards glistening in the Summer heat, but the corpse itself was devoid of maggots. A grounded electrical box housing circuits for the streetlamps that lined the circle sat tucked slightly up into the yard of the nearest house, which was somewhat sloped and extended a good twenty or thirty feet. For no particular reason that I can recall, and lacking any explainable motivation whatsoever, I decided that the bird needed to be buried. I shook loose the plastic housing on the electrical box, and, disregarding the risk of diseases and cootie-contamination, dropped the carcass into the soft, cool earth below, right next to a lot of scary-looking equipment I didn't know anything about.

            I placed the cover back on top of the unit and stared at it for a second, before turning tail and pedaling home as fast as I could.

            "Was that your first sexual experience with a male?"

            "Hmm?" I shook my head, my train of thought derailed. What was she talking about? Oh, right. "Haha, no. Not really. I mean, I had touched another boy's penis before. It was my first time ever getting caught like that though."

            She nodded thoughtfully. "Did your parents ever find out?"

            "Thankfully no. Or if they did they never let on." My hands felt clammy and cold. "I don't know what would have happened if they'd found out."

            Silence. Rain began to splatter the window outside, clouds moving in from the west.

            "There was this one time, when we were watching television, and my dad had control of the remote. All of us as a family. But dad always decided what we watched." I could feel the terrible, crushing weight descending again. All of these memories were like throwing more bricks on the pile. "One night he had stopped on Will & Grace for only a second, flipping through the local channels. And he said 'fuckin queer shit' before moving on." I looked out the window and empathized with the rain. Destined to fall and disappear. "That always scared me."

            "Did you have any other experiences when you were younger?"

            My stomach did a somersault and I forced myself to calm down. "Do we have to talk about this?"

            She shook her head calmly. "You don't have to say anything you're not comfortable with. But Brendon, let me assure you, this is a safe place. Nothing leaves this room."

            "I know that, I'm not fucking stupid," I snapped.

            She closed her mouth abruptly. Another awkward silence.

            Finally she ventured forth again, perhaps realizing I wasn't going to take the initiative. "It sounds like you haven't really accepted yourself."

            "What is there to accept? A life of loneliness, guilt, regret? No, I don't accept that. Who would?"

            "Brendon, homosexuality is perfectly normal."

            "You wanna try it some time?" I grinned sardonically, then let my smile drop. "No, didn't think so. Pardon me if I don't accept your well-thought out opinion on the matter."

            "I can see why someone would have that idea if that was their only experience, being that it was so..."

            "I never said that was my only experience," I interjected. Another moment passed. I bit my lip. "Gay men are like animals. Whores with no sense of decency. Right after I turned fourteen, there was this other guy. We met in phys ed. He was sort of a jerk, but we had similar taste in music. And we both hated phys ed." I laughed mirthlessly. "So we had some common ground. But anyway we finally exchanged numbers and we started hanging out."

            More nonjudgmental looks. I forced words to leave my mouth. "I was starting to feel like one of the normal guys. I had a best friend." Agony began to drip from my bones and flow through my veins, and my heart threatened to contort into some unbearable shape. "One night he came over to my house and asked me if I smoked. I said no. Then he surprised me by taking a cigarette out of his pocket and gesturing for me to follow him outside. I thought smoking was disgusting, but I also thought he was cool. At that moment, I would have followed him to the end of the earth.

            "So he lit up and passed it to me, told me to hit it. I had no idea what he meant, but I did my best. Hurt like a motherfucker. Anyway, that's not important. All I knew was that I had gained his acceptance. Or respect. Or whatever.

            "It wasn't too long after that he asked if I had ever had my dick sucked."

            Raised eyebrows. More folded hands.

            "I told him no, and then asked if I had ever sucked a dick. Same answer. And then he said he wanted me to suck his dick." I gripped the arm of my chair and tried not to grit my teeth. "I don't think in that moment I could have said no...I didn't want to say no. Goddammit, but I didn't want to say no."

            And the tears came again.

♦

"Brendon, I understand how difficult this is. But it's becoming clear that a lot of this pain you're feeling is a result of extreme denial. And the longer you dwell in this stage of denial, the worse you're going to feel.

            "A lot of people come here," she began clasping and unclasping her hands, eyes darting around the room, as if she were conducting her reasoning on the fly, but she sounded clear and confident, "they feel depressed, and they want medication prescribed to them. Quite frankly I don't think that's the right path for you." Well, nevermind. In that moment, I hated her. Denial? Of course I was in denial. Why wouldn't I be? "I think if we worked on this," she stared hard at me, "just this, you would begin to feel a lot better."

            "So you can cure me?" I began to feel hopeful. Maybe there was a way out of this after all. I wouldn't have to constantly swim against the current, instead I could let go and flow with it.

            She stopped short again and frowned. "Cure what? Depression? That's not exactly how that works. See, depression is treatable..."

            "No, I meant fix the gay."

            Blank stare.

            I said nothing.

            Silence hung in the air like a dense fog, impossible to see through or penetrate.

            I went back to visit that dead bird day after day for over a week, pedaling through the streets like a madman, ignoring the catcalls of the other neighborhood kids, who were undoubtedly curious as to where I could possibly be heading in such a hurry. I would throw the kickstand down and kneel beside the electrical box, carefully removing the lid, almost reverent of its contents, like performing a sacrament. I observed the bird's carcass through several stages of decay: first, the feathers all fell off, revealing muscle tissue and skeleton underneath, then the eyes disintegrated and I could see the empty skull underneath. Internal organs quickly rejoined the earth, ashes to ashes. Miraculously, few maggots and other insects (other than flies, of course) feasted on the corpse, so I never felt too icky constantly peering within. Finally, after a long while, I came to see the bird one day and it was almost completely gone. The entire thing; bones, muscles, skeleton, guts, marrow and sinew, blood and all, had been devoured by the soil. On that final day, I gently tossed the plastic cover aside and sat down on the warm grass, hugging my knees to my chest. I pondered what had happened inside that box, and even at that young, somewhat naïve, highly impressionable age, I immediately understood the earth-shattering implications of what had happened to that bird, and it rocked me to my core. The inside of that box had become a microcosm of our entire world, that bird was me. And my mom. My dad. My sister. Everyone I had ever met or will ever meet. Our lives, in the grand scheme of things, were absolutely and completely meaningless. We lived, we died, and in the end we all go into the dirt. Nutrients for whatever was to come next. No one would remember that bird except me. None of his little bird-brained friends or relatives were wondering where he was, or if he was okay. You can dress up death all you want, it doesn't change the fact that when you die, the earth keeps fucking spinning, and all its natural processes refuse to stop, and you are nothing if not in service to that infinite schema.

            All of a sudden my sister was upon me, a large shadow looming over my private funeral. I jumped. "What the..! What are you doing here?" I asked her.

            She towered over me despite being almost three years my junior. Looking up at her only increased the illusion of smallness that I felt inside. "I should ask you the same thing," she replied, crossing her arms.

            I quickly stood up and tried to stand in front of the electrical box, shielding my shameful, voyeuristic experiment.

            She didn't buy it and quickly pushed me aside and knelt down. But there was nothing inside left to see anymore. "What's going on here?" she looked up and narrowed her eyes.

            "Nothing. I was just goofing around. We should leave before the neighbors catch us," I said quickly, running a hand through my hair.

            "Are you alright?" She rose and studied me closely.

            "Perfect. Totally."

            "You're a bad liar."

            "And you're a nosy bitch."

            She smirked. "Yeah, you're fine. Whatever. Let's go home. Dinner's almost ready, by the way. Mom wanted me to tell you."

            I continued staring straight at my therapist, slightly confused. "What?"

            She shook her head. "Brendon, there's nothing wrong with you. Homosexuality isn't a disease, or a condition. We don't 'treat' it. You must come to terms with that. That's what I'm trying to tell you."

            I wanted to pick up her furniture and throw it. I wanted to rip up the pictures of her family sitting on her desk. I wanted to grab her stupid hair and slam her head onto the desk and scream in her ear. I wanted to run to the window and jump out and let the cool rain splash me on my face before I splattered on the concrete. "You're lying. If there was nothing wrong with it, then there'd be nothing wrong with me."

            "Let me ask you a question," she said slowly, trying to smoothly change the subject. "Are you a virgin? Have you ever actually had sex with a man?"

            My breath caught, and I forced myself to swallow a lump that rose up in my throat. I averted my eyes. "I can't," I whispered.

            My therapist looked incredulous, but quickly reassumed her composure. "Why do you say that?"

            "How can I? This is what I'm trying to tell you," my voice rising, "I'm not supposed to do it. I can't do it. ...Gay sex," I spit the phrase, "is unnatural. Men's genitals aren't supposed to go inside men's anuses. Our bodies...our minds intuitively realize this. So they prevent us from doing it naturally. I can't do it." I began to trail off, feeling lightheaded and fatigued.

            "Brendon, I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about, but I think we need to discuss this further. I would like you to come again next week..." she quietly pulled out a slip of paper from a desk drawer and began scribbling on it.

            "I'm not leaving yet," I moaned. "What don't you understand? Sex is like calculus to me. It doesn't work."

            She put her pen down. "What do you mean, it doesn't work? Have you never slept with a man? Are the only experiences you've ever had ones where men were using you?"

            I recoiled. "Tyler didn't use me!"

            I didn't realize I had shouted. I blushed furiously.

            "Who's Tyler?"

            I said nothing.

            "Brendon?"

Tyler was the only boy I ever had real feelings for. I don't mean sexual feelings. I mean...he made me horny and everything. But a lot of guys did that.

            No, Tyler was special. I liked him.

            A lot.

            Tyler liked me too, but I never told him. So he never knew. He never told me he was gay or that he liked boys, but there were signs. I played coy. We were both eighteen and inexperienced, it was cute in a way. But as much as the chase thrilled me, I was also disgusted. I was terrified of Tyler at the same time I was falling in love with him. He had a perfect bowl of black hair on his head that came down just past his ears and arresting green eyes. Sometimes he would catch me staring at him in class and smile, showing his teeth. It was wicked. His grin could disarm a highly trained assassin.

            Yes, he was my first real crush.

            I finally decided to come out to him one night after a round of heavy drinking. I broke into my parents' liquor cabinet and chugged a fifth of low-proof rum. Although I eventually threw it all back up and went to bed with a spiraling headache, I made one call before I lost consciousness.

            It was to Tyler.

            He took the news pretty well, and although he didn't say anything back regarding his own sexuality, I could tell he was pleased. Maybe even a little relieved. "I just want you to be happy," he said.

            From then on, we were inseparable. I had a new best friend, and this one wasn't going anywhere. We would talk to each other over the phone for hours at a time, often until the sun came up. We would walk to each other's houses in the middle of the night, crawling through windows and watching TV in dark rooms, giggling in the white glow. We would play videogames nonstop, until we either had to eat or pass out. He liked all the things I liked. I liked all the things he liked.

            I liked him most of all.

            Finally we decided to go to bed together.

            "It was a complete disaster." I told my therapist everything. "I couldn't do it. I was so embarrassed, and afraid he would never talk to me again. I was afraid I was ruining everything we had. That's when I figured it all out. From that moment on, I knew. My lifestyle...this thing," I winced, "it's unnatural. It's not right. And I fucking hate it!" I wanted to shove myself backwards in the chair, distance myself from her as much as possible. Instead, I pulled my legs up and hugged my knees.

            "Brendon," my therapist said sternly, "you did not do anything wrong. Look at me now."

            I looked up, every muscle in my neck straining for purchase. It felt like a rusted wheel grinding over.

            "You did not do. Anything. Wrong."

            "Then why didn't it work! Why does this never work! I just want it out of me!" I sat up, shouting. I stomped my feet on the ground. I felt like an infant.

            "Have you ever stopped to think," she said matter-of-factly, "that maybe the reason you're having so many problems with sex is that you refuse to accept your own sexuality? You're right, these two conditions are connected. But your order of causality is backwards. If you want to have fulfilling, rewarding sex with someone you love, you have to accept that part of you that loves that other person from the inside. You can't keep fighting it, otherwise these feelings are only going to get worse. And you will never have a healthy sex life, with men or women. Does any of this make sense?"

            I stared off, stunned. The pathetic thing, the truth, was that everything she said made sense. I was just too stubborn and stupid to see it before. For all my intelligence and test scores and "gifted classes," I wasn't so smart after all.

            "Do me a favor, because unfortunately we do have to wrap this up, and I do want to see you in here next week, but do me this favor. Think back on those nights you spent with Tyler. Remember the sights and sounds. How did it feel? How did you feel back then?"

            Immediately I could remember the train roaring past his house, the cramped space in his bedroom with the TV, the couch, and the bed. Most of all, I remembered his smile. If only looks could kill, he would have murdered me over and over. And I would die happy each time.

            There...that was the key: I was happy. For at least some part of it, some brief moment, I was happy with Tyler. I looked up at the old woman scribbling on a paper on her desk. "I was happy."

            She stopped and looked up, then smiled. "Good. Remember that. Focus in on that. Take this slip to the receptionist at the front desk, she'll get you rescheduled. I'll see you soon."

            I went to the door, prepared to leave.

            "And Brendon?"

            I stopped and turned around.

            "Don't give up."

           

♦

I collapsed into a booth in a small diner on my way back home, feeling like I'd been turned inside out and scraped clean. A weird sense of anxiety still dwelled in the pit of my stomach, but surrounding it was a new warming glow of calm. I sought to stoke it. I decided coffee was the best bet.

            The waiter came by after a moment and asked what I wanted, and as I looked up, I noticed a young man with dark hair and a hollow-point smile, and the horn of a train sounded outside.