Still, I think we both wanted more for dessert but knew we weren’t going to get it.
Chapter 03
I STARTED therapy during my senior year of high school, not long after my parents found out about Josh Brennan. Much to their surprise, I asked for it.
“This is too much,” I had said when my parents once again prepared to beard the dragon (that would be me) in his lair, in this case when they’d gotten wind of that latest wrinkle in my reign of error that summer. Detective Nakimoto had been true to her word and had never said a thing to Mom and Dad. The district attorney, however, had been another matter, and after a letter arrived in the mail, the shit—a whole manure pile—had hit the proverbial fan. “I need to talk about this—all of this—with someone who’s paid not to get personally involved.”
“You—” Dad had looked thoroughly confused, I remembered that clearly, like he had expected more resistance.
Mom had at first looked surprised, then amused. “He asked for a therapist, Steven.”
“But—”
“Can you recommend one, or shall I help Remy to call our HMO tomorrow?” Mom had said.
Dad had eventually sputtered to a stop and then helped me find a therapist he thought would suit my needs and personality. I’d been seeing Alicia Lopez, LCSW, ever since.
“So how’s the trial going?” Alicia asked me during our next session, a handful of days after Michael and I had enjoyed ourselves in my dorm room.
She meant the trial of Josh Brennan, the one-time intern with the adaptive rowing program at Cap City, the one who’d hit on me one day while I was derigging a boat before a regatta, the one who I lost my V-card to, the one whose indiscretion alerted Coach Lodestone and eventually Coach Sundstrom that something was going on between the two of us.
The one who had broken my heart, if I had to be brutally honest about it.
“I’ve only had to testify those few times, but I’m learning a lot of things I never needed to know,” I said.
Josh was the one who, as it turned out, liked any number of boys younger than I was at the time of our relationship. That was why the DA had contacted me—and my parents.
I had not, in fact, been an isolated thing where Josh had been concerned, so while he might’ve been protected from legal jeopardy in our relationship by Romeo and Juliet laws, Detective Nakimoto and her team had uncovered a number of other relationships that failed the stink test. The only thing that had made me unique was that he had thought I was in college. I guess everyone liked variety once in a while.
Alicia steepled her fingers. “How are you doing on overcoming your guilt at not stopping Josh?”
I struggled with that, which was why she asked. Maybe if I’d figured out what was up, I might have stopped Josh and spared other, younger guys what I’d experienced. I’d been virtually an adult when he and I had gotten together, but those other guys? Not so much. That’s what haunted me.
“It’s been a slow process, and some days are better than others,” I said.
“That’s to be expected. What I meant is, how are you doing at remembering that you were little more than a child yourself at the time?” She gave me a pointed look. Did therapists have any other kind of look?
That made me squirm. “I felt grown-up at the time.”
“I know you did, Remy. We always feel grown-up at whatever age we’re at.”
“You are grown-up.”
She laughed. “I’m glad you think so. I’ll be sure to let you know what I want to be when I grow up when I’ve got that figured out.”
“Does my dad know you feel that way?” I thought adults were supposed to have their acts together, or at least the ones I trusted to help me keep mine that way.
“What Steven and I discuss is our business, Remy. Suffice it to say that we all wear many hats and play many roles. ‘Therapist’ is only one of mine, just as ‘father’ is only one of your dad’s.” Then Alicia grew serious. “The point, Remy, and one I hope you’ll continue to think about, is that you were barely seventeen. You weren’t an adult, although you felt grown-up. A generation or two back, you wouldn’t have reached your legal majority until you turned twenty-one, and colleges stood in loco parentis. My point is—”
“In the Middle Ages, men reached their majority when they were fourteen,” I said. I don’t know why I brought that up. Maybe it was a dodge, an attempt to deflect the truth of her words. On one hand, I knew she was right. On the other, I’d been racked with guilt ever since I found out about Josh’s other conquests and that I’d been the oldest. All those boys… if only I’d known, maybe I could’ve done something.
Alicia sighed. “And they were old men in their forties. My point, since it appears I need to spell it out, is that by our society’s rules, you were a minor yourself. No one expects you to have done anything heroic, no one—”
“No one but me.”
“No one but you.” She didn’t say anything for a long moment. “That’s why we’re here, so you can go a little easier on yourself.”
She didn’t get it. No one did. I clenched my hands into fists.
“Look, had Josh known I was in high school, his attentions wouldn’t have wandered. How’s that for a kick in the pants? If I’d been honest about my age, that creep’s eye would never have strayed and neither would mine. Don’t you get that?” I said loudly.
Alicia didn’t say anything. What could she say?
“I’ve known this for a while.” I wanted to scream. “While there was a definite squick factor, I can accept it. I didn’t think I was being molested then, and I don’t feel that way, now. That’s not why I’m in therapy.”
“Then why are you here, Remy?” Alicia said softly.
I glared at her as my pulse raced. “For fuck’s sake, I’m in therapy to deal with my rage over the fact that if Josh had known my real age, I probably wouldn’t be poz!”
I wasn’t angry with Josh. I was angry with myself.
I COULD have heard the proverbial pin drop, and its noise would not have been a tinkling chime but the door of a bank vault thundering closed.
“I did this to myself, and my meds remind me of that every goddam day.”
Alicia scrambled to keep up. I could see it in her face. “And why do you think that’s the case?”
“Don’t you get it?” My lips curled in contempt. “If I’d kept Josh’s eye, if he hadn’t embarrassed me, if my coach hadn’t connected the dots, Josh wouldn’t have gone looking for other playmates, and I wouldn’t have run amok like a bug chaser on Grindr. You don’t pick the bug up from a water fountain or a toilet seat, you know.”
Given where I’d tricked, a public bathroom had probably been involved, but you can’t pick up HIV that easily. Jeez. If I let myself go and really think about this, I’d consume myself with fury.
“All right,” Alicia said. “I’ll bite. How would your life be different if you’d stayed with Josh?”
A bark of cynical laughter escaped me. “I wouldn’t have HIV.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake…. You can’t say that.”
“Neither can you.”
She was good, I had to give her that.
“What? That doesn’t even make sense.”
“All you can say is that you wouldn’t have picked up HIV from whatever trick you picked it up from. You don’t know you wouldn’t have caught it from someone else. You don’t know that you wouldn’t have contracted it from Josh. You don’t know that he’s not where you got it in the first place or that you didn’t spend your post-Josh summer infecting your other partners,” she said patiently.
I stared at her, mouth agape.
“You did know that he’s HIV-positive, didn’t you?”
I couldn’t process what she said. I slowly shook my head.
Alicia flipped to a section of my very thick file. “I have a copy of the detective’s report since you were a minor—by the skin of your teeth—when I started treating you and it
was deemed important to your care. A précis of Mr. Brennan’s record is right here, including his HIV status.”
“What—” I cleared my throat. “—what does this mean?”
“It means that you can’t be sure where you picked up the virus. Being angry at someone for giving it to you is a huge waste of emotional resources.” Alicia leaned forward and looked me right in the eye. “You are HIV-positive. It means that being angry at yourself for being poz is the biggest waste of energy I can think of. You have it. Build a bridge and get over it. Tilting at this particular windmill will not help you maintain your health or help you to reach your life’s goals.”
Wow, mind blown. I sat back in my chair as Alicia watched me with hard blue eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be nice to patients?”
She laughed. “No, I’m supposed to help them. You’ve been flirting with self-pity for a while, now. I can’t stand self-pity.”
“So what do I do?”
“I can’t stand whiners, either.”
I rolled my eyes, waiting.
“Look, Remy, you’re the only one who can help you. I can guide you to certain insights, but you still have to do the work of figuring out that rage is only hurting you. Brennan doesn’t care, and neither does HIV. If Brennan cared, he’d have used condoms or have left you alone in the first place. People like him are narcissists, chasing their own pleasure, and let me tell you something. They will never find it, which is why they move from victim to victim. There’s something else you need to realize, too. The virus itself is barely alive. It’s incapable of feeling anything, so it doesn’t care, either.”
I found myself nodding. “I can accept that.”
“Good,” Alicia said, “because you don’t have a choice. Your only choice is between acceptance and unhappiness. Let me tell you something else you don’t have a choice about accepting. The past is over. You can’t rewrite it, and so far, time travel is nothing but a figment of science fiction and theoretical physics. Neither will help you. For next time, I want you to work on letting go of it. Every time you find yourself dwelling on ‘if only I hadn’t done that,’ I want you to be aware of it. Don’t blame yourself for thinking that way, don’t worry about the fact that you’ve done it, only be aware of it. We’ll work on replacing it with other thoughts later. Do you think you can do that?”
I thought about it. Don’t dwell in the past, because it’s already over and done with and will only make me unhappy. I knew what she meant. I’d been obsessing over the events of last summer more and more, and other than spinning my wheels, I’d achieved nothing. Now that Alicia called my attention to it, I saw her point.
I nodded. “I think so.”
Alicia pulled out her appointment book. “Now, can you make it next…?”
IN EARLY October Coach Ridgewood, the JV men’s coach, called me into her office. I liked her. She wasn’t as intimidating as Frank Pendergast, the men’s varsity coach. He tried to be intimidating, I thought, whereas Joanne Ridgewood was naturally approachable and more effective for it, at least in my opinion.
I knocked on her office door. “You wanted to see me, Coach?”
“Yes, come in, Jeremy.” She typed a little more into her computer, presumably saving what she had been working on. “Have a seat.”
She stared at me for a moment, not long enough to make me edgy or anything. “So. You and sculling.”
“What about it?”
“I know you come out here and scull every afternoon.”
She definitely had my attention. “Yes, ma’am. I hope that hasn’t been a problem. It was dumb luck there were those Hudson singles and a crying shame they weren’t being used more often.”
Coach Ridgewood smiled. “Why would it be a problem, Jeremy? You’re putting in extra time in a boat. Besides, I spoke to Peter Lodestone over the summer, so I knew what to expect.” She sighed. “Competence in a single makes for better rowing in the sweeps boat. I think it’s great that you’re a skilled sculler, and that’s why I was asked to speak to you. You’ve never been to the Head of the Charles before, right?”
“No, this is the first time. I rowed for Cap City in high school. While the masters sent boats, the juniors didn’t. We put our travel money into the Crew Classic and the Youth Nationals.” I still couldn’t talk about the Nationals without thinking about one of my teammates dying on the operating table as I won his race for him.
“I know about those races. I was there, watching,” Coach Ridgewood said softly. She knew.
“The second year no one died.” Thank God.
“Way to set that bar high, Jeremy,” Ridgewood said. “How would you feel about entering a second race as part of a quad?”
Ignoring that, I stared, openmouthed. “The Charles. As a sculler. Won’t… that is, aren’t the races the same day?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I checked before I agreed to approach you.”
“Wow. Um… sure. I’d love to.” Sweep rowing in the big boats was all well and good, but sculling? I would always love it more.
“Great! Now for the fine print. There are no collegiate sculling events, and ordinarily you cannot row more than one event at the Charles. They’re very strict about that—no one, not even cox’ns, can row more than one event. That said, the Directors’ Challenge events are the exception to that, but these events go to fund the regatta’s endowment, so oddly enough they make an exception.”
I rolled my eyes. There it was again…. “Self-interested much?”
“Tell me about it.” Ridgewood smiled. “Lodestone asked me to approach you. He and three friends from Cap City usually row a quad in the Directors’ Cup challenge, but someone dropped out at the last minute.”
“And they want me to fill in? Why didn’t Lodestone contact me himself? It’s not like he doesn’t know how to reach me.” I sounded peevish to my own ears. I wondered what my coach thought.
Ridgewood nodded. “I know, but it’s because I’m your coach now, and he didn’t want to do anything that might affect your performance the next day in the main event. I can see how it’d look bizarre from where you’re sitting, but between coaches this is considered good manners.”
“Oh. Okay, then.”
“So glad you approve,” she said dryly. “It may also raise questions about your NCAA eligibility. I’m still looking into that, but I think we’ll be in the clear. You’ll blow their age handicap, but they knew that when they asked for you.”
I slumped in the chair. “Wow. I’d never thought of that.”
“And there’s no reason why you should have to. That’s why you have coaches. You’re a freshman. You’ll be entered as a member of Cap City, and you’ll have to pay your share of the entry fees for the quad yourself.”
“That seems reasonable.” And it did. This would have nothing to do with CalPac. Why should the team pay?
“I knew you’d see it like that. That said, we’ll transport everything on the school trailer, ours or UC Davis’s. It won’t be a problem, so don’t give it a second thought.”
“Guess I’d better talk to Lodestone next time I’m at the Cap City boathouse.” I gathered my things to leave, but Ridgewood stopped me.
“There’s one more thing,” she said.
“Oh?”
“There are points awarded for—” She paused, choosing her words with care. “—let’s call it unusual or humorous rowing attire, so be prepared for Lodestone or his friends to suggest… well, anything.”
I laughed. “I can’t wait to see where this lands. Thanks for the heads-up. And for approving it in the first place.”
Chapter 04
LIFE CONTINUED with the extra race and the extra practices on my mind, and a whole lot more besides. I couldn’t say my situation with Brady improved noticeably. I made an effort to be a more aware roommate, but Brady apparently wrote me off after his blowup. I still tried to tutor him for our biology seminar, but it was like trying to teach a pig to sing. It wasted my time and annoyed the pig. If forced to
guess, I would have said he had stopped trying. Oh, the muttering with his friends and their pointed looks continued, but any actual effort? That went down the dorm garbage chute along with pizza boxes and the bedroom trash.
Brady did, however, try to make it very awkward whenever Michael spent any time in our room. I couldn’t imagine what he thought that would accomplish. Sure, he could bring his friends over while we tried to study together and generally be obnoxious, but he overlooked the fact that I had friends, too, and they came in multiples of eight; nine if you counted the cox’ns.
It came to a head one morning after practice. We were all hanging around the boathouse, at least those of us who didn’t have to jet back to campus for classes or other reasons. I liked the CalPac boathouse. I hated to admit it, but it was much better than Cap City’s cluster of three smaller boathouses that were always too small the moment renovations stopped. CalPac had only the one house, but it was huge, with enormous twin bays. CalPac had money, and it showed.
That morning I could not have cared less. I only wanted to stretch out after my row and maybe curl up under one of the boats and sleep for a hundred years or so. Concrete couldn’t be that hard, could it?
“You okay, Jeremy?” Robbie, the junior varsity team captain, asked me.
I shrugged. “Yeah, why?”
“Because you look like shit. You need to get more sleep. We leave for Boston, like, the day after tomorrow. This is so not the time to be partying.” Robbie was a tall guy, we all were, but while he was shorter than me, he was bulkier, and I tried to stay on his good side.
All That Is Solid Melts Into Air Page 3
