NOW
My roommate in New Vistas is a cutter. That’s the word he uses to describe himself. We all have problems with drug addiction, but some of us have bonus issues to work through. Group therapy can get really messy when all the other junk bubbles up to the surface and overflows like a clogged sewer pipe. Some of the kids in New Vistas have survived some really terrible shit. I’ve been lucky in that way—my parents never abused me, I’ve never been homeless or hungry, never had to sell my body for a warm bed. In some ways, it feels like I haven’t suffered enough.
Anyway, Ryan is a cutter, and a couple of days into us being roommates, he shows me proof. The cuts are so straight and orderly they look almost geometric, like a Piet Mondrian line drawing. I don’t tell him that though because I don’t want to encourage him. By now, all of his cuts have faded away to silvery scars. I ask him what convinced him to stop cutting, and he admits that he hasn’t really stopped. He just retraces the old lines so they don’t make new scars.
“I don’t cut too deep,” he says to me like it’s a threat.
“That must take a lot of self-control,” I tell him, not realizing how fucked up it sounds until after I’ve said it.
“It does,” he says seriously.
“It’s like that for me too,” I admit. “Only it isn’t a blade.”
He thinks I’m talking about drugs, but I’m not.
In group it comes out that I’m gay—kind of hard to avoid when Seth’s name keeps popping up—and a couple nights later when Ryan can’t sleep, he starts sharing with me how hard it is for him at home. How he doesn’t have too many friends, and he’s really horny all the time, but girls don’t like him because he’s chubby and insecure and has acne. “All they want are jocks,” he says, “or guys who can buy them shit.”
I tell him it might not always be that way and that those girls sound pretty shallow to me, but he still feels pretty bad and even starts crying a little. I can tell he’s trying to hide it, which makes it even worse.
Long story short, I end up giving him head. He asked me to—it’s not like I offered. I don’t even think Ryan’s gay or bi or pan; I think he’s just really lonely. It seems like a small sacrifice on my part if it makes him feel even a little bit better about himself. I don’t even consider it messing around, since it was pretty one-sided.
I don’t know why I have to make that distinction. It’s not like Seth and I are still together.
Anyway, I tell Dr. Denovo about it in our one-on-one. He asks me if I wanted to do it, and when I say, not really, he asks me why I did it anyway, so I tell him I felt bad for Ryan and he says, “Why aren’t your desires as important as others?”
That’s the thing about Doc. You’ll be talking, talking, thinking he’s only half-listening or just being a sympathetic ear, and then he’ll pull out a question like that. He tells me he wants me to do this exercise where before I say yes or no to something, I ask myself if it’s what I want and to give that more importance than what the other person wants, even if it feels uncomfortable.
He also tells me he’s going to have to tell administration about the “incident,” but that I won’t lose any privileges, since we’re working through it. Ryan and I both get moved to singles. Strangely, it’s even harder for me to fall asleep without his snoring.
Ryan asks me not to tell anyone about it—me giving him head. I think he’s ashamed. I want to tell him what Dr. Denovo said, We live in a culture of vicious shame, but you can’t just drop that shit on people without context, and I don’t trust myself to explain it correctly. Besides, there’s nothing more annoying than when one of the residents tries to play therapist.
I tell Ryan he doesn’t have to worry about anything getting out. I’ve always been good at keeping secrets.