I sat in her office. Again. I was anxious to get this over with so we could go check out the trolley on display outside. The Ziggy calendar on her desk read April or May, 1991.
The room smelled like old lunch. The leather cushion of my chair announced every shift like the creaky pews of a New England church, so I held myself upright while reading the spines of her books to avoid making eye contact. I’d read the titles a hundred times before, and I was still convinced none of them had actually been opened.
The Physicians Desk Reference.
An Encyclopedia of Dictionaries.
Not a single creased spine or turned corner.
In the seat next to me, my mom looked worried as the psychiatrist ran through a litany of words I’d heard from her before. Anxiety. Depression. My mom pressed her fingertips together like she did when she was nervous and trying to listen closely, then straightened her red coat on the arm of her chair as if its alignment suddenly mattered.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology Volume 6.
Family and Family Therapy.
That book sat next to an Olan Mills family portrait featuring what I presumed was her husband and son. I wondered if she had done that on purpose. They all had blonde hair and in the picture, she wasn’t wearing her large round glasses.
The Theory and Practice of Group Therapy.
Roget’s Thesaurus.
“Isn’t that right?” she said loudly at me, though her eyes remained on my mother. “Sure,” I replied.
The psychiatrist’s voice took a more serious tone, lower and reserved as if she was about to confide something shameful. “There’s something else I’d like to talk to you about, Mrs. White.”
My attention focused and my breath stopped in my throat.
“Your son has expressed some difficulty with gender identity,” she said, in a demeanor that reminded me of a kindergarten teacher informing a parent their child had wet their pants.
I went numb. She’d promised. “If I tell you, you’ll tell my parents,” I’d protested. She said she could help me.
I’d trusted her.
Now I was hearing those secrets being told to my mother, who received each as a fresh horror. My mother pulled her purse close to her side, away from me. Then, new words. Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood. Paraphilia. Benjamin. Genitals. Transsexual. GIDAANT.
Insufficiently homosexual.
I felt flushed and warm, untethered, like a balloon about to slip its string. I wanted to scream, I wanted to run. I wanted to smash her desk clock. I wanted to throw her stupid perfect portrait to the floor.
My body was limp like a rabbit in the jaws of a coyote. There were no tears; there was no scream. I stared at my feet, thoughts barely landing. How could I look my mother in the eye after this? Or my father. Oh God, my father. Nausea pierced my awareness and I tried to find anything else to focus on that was real.
The Collected Journal of Abnormal Psychology Volume 8.
DSM III-R.
Human Sexuality.
“Ohh,” I heard my mother say, her voice wavering and on the verge of tears, “This will break his father’s heart.” Her face contorted like she’d tasted something bitter.
The psychiatrist moved on like a newscaster moving to a new story, tapping the stack of papers in front of her against the table to square it up and clicking her pen. “Given a bit of time, the medication should help with the depression considerably.”
“What if it doesn’t?” I asked with some urgency, causing her to startle in her chair slightly and turn to me, her hair falling away from behind her ear. I had asked her before if the medication could fix me. She had told me no, but it would dull the symptoms.
Tricyclics. Therapy. Hospitalization. That caught my attention.
I immediately thought of Dorothy in Return to Oz. A children’s horror movie was the only reference I had for that kind of hospital. “Do they still electrocute people there?”
She maintained eye contact as she answered, appearing not to blink. “It’s called ECT and it’s an effective option for difficult-to-treat patients.”
She turned back to my mother while I fought against the sensation of leaving my body entirely. “Be a boy and be happy about it,” I rolled in my mind, “or get electrocuted.”
A few minutes later we were in the elevator. I let my mother push the button and I pressed myself up against the rough carpet of the back wall, hoping she’d face forward and I wouldn’t have to look her in the eye. I stared at scuff marks on the floor while we rode in silence except for the hums and clanks of the elevator works. When the door opened into the parking garage, the vestibule reeked with the overwhelming smell of old urine. We didn’t go to look at the trolley on display and I didn’t ask. My talkative mother didn’t say a word on the walk to the car, our footsteps reverberating around the otherwise silent garage. We climbed into the Hyundai and I slumped in my seat.
We drove for a few minutes, Oldies 103 playing “Little Runway” while I watched the rain droplets slide by on the car window and a dreary, unfocused, grey world roll by behind. I didn’t know what had happened, but I knew I had failed, and no help was coming.
My mother drove intensely, focused on the road, shifting the car gruffly. I noticed her lips trembling the way they did when she was practicing what she was going to say and I wasn’t quite sure if she was about to yell at me or not.
“I’m not going to tell your father,” she said firmly. “I think she misunderstood you. You’re not confused, you’re a lovely young man.”
She never mentioned it again.
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