Squirrel Cage

by Cindi Jones

  “Thank you Teacher.”

  “Now be good, go get your milk and lie down”

  “Ah where is that freeway exit? Crap! Where am I?”

  “David my mother and I agree that….. “

  “marketing share can be increased by reducing….”

  “Shit… look out for that stop sign!”

  Words and events became mumbled and jumbled. I had anxiety attacks left and right. I could not remember who was saying what, when, or where. I was a leaf cast by about by the river as it floated down the stream.

  Will they ever know how they invaded me and reduced me to a tomato? I broke free. I broke free and came back only to trust them again. Someone had depressed the handle on a Texas sized toilet and I hung on as my very life essence kicked at the jaws of hell biting at my heels. Poetic license? Literary imagery, you ask? It was bloody real. Threaten me with going to hell. Go ahead. I’ve been there. I saw the devil and I kicked him in the face. And I survived to return.

  I don’t remember how long it took. I could barely hold my cells together. I don’t remember eating or sleeping. How did I function? I’ll never really know.

  Charlene’s father would write to me in a letter after I finally moved from Utah to California:

  “I was frustrated and deeply disappointed with this turn of events because I felt then – and I feel the same now – that the only way you could overcome this obsession that has enslaved you would be to put your full trust in the Lord to help you come back and regain your family and your membership in the Church. It would have required constant prayer, commitment to the standards of the Church, and dedication on your part working closely with the bishop and perhaps a licensed counselor with an spiritual orientation through counseling sessions and telephone communication – even daily if necessary – to overcome this deeply ingrained habit of transsexual behavior and desires.”

  Hmmm… he spells behavior like I do. The one that always breaks the spell checker but is absolutely correct. Did I tell you that I adored this man? Maybe it’s the other way around.. Maybe I picked it up from him sometime in the distant past.

  His letter was another final attempt to help me. He loved me very much, I knew. But he could never imagine how these words would affect me that day. That one day of all days to read his letter. The words would soak in and stay in my mind for just a few hours until movie time. To him, the context was an attempt to help me see the error in my ways. It is a substantial letter. I read this statement however, and could only relate to the terror I later experienced. For it was not over. Oh no. The best was yet to come.

  Had my faith wandered? I didn’t know what to think. I settled into the gloomy muck and dragged myself to work then home then back to work. Time lost any real meaning. And I continued to receive a rocket barrage from my loved ones.

  A new name surfaced from a reliable church member. This psychiatrist was really good. I thought that I had played that game once. Did I win? Maybe … “Squirrel? Are you still alive?” “Squirrel?” No answer. Squirrel was down. He was very tired lately.

  “… and just go down to see this doctor…….. up an appointment …..” Fragments of reality slipped in and out. My thoughts were no thoughts. I could contemplate nothing. And at the same time desperate waves of anxiety would wash over me. I drown slowly.

  “The first thing that we are going to do is have you take a couple of tests to see if you are depressed.”

  “Doctor, I can reliably inform you that I am clinically depressed. I am bordering on suicide.”

  “Well, let’s just take these tests.” As he handed me the pencil to fill out the forms.

  “What does it matter anyway. No matter what I put down, I will be under the influence of Satan by the time this gets to my family,” I thought. Nevertheless, I wanted something to work. You can beat the bark on a tree only so much before the tree dies. I had to make something work.

  I finished the forms and handed them back to the receptionist.

  The good doctor briskly opened the door, as he scurried in, peering over his glasses at the results of my exam. “Well, let’s see here David, according to these results you are clinically depressed and you are bordering on suicide.”

  “See? What do I know?”

  We talked for a while. He explained, with certainty, that people like me suffered from a traumatic event from their father in early childhood and then clung to the mother.

  “I love my father,” I said flatly. “He has never done anything to hurt me.”

  “Nevertheless, the studies suggest….”

  “The studies suggest?” I asked as an anxiety attack pressed me into the chair. Who did the studies?”

  “David, lets get back on track.”

  “How do I know which set of studies befit me? Is it the set that you hold, is it the set that someone else holds, just which set of studies are we depending on? I want to see the studies sanctioned by the Church I demanded. That’s the only studies that I will accept.”

  “David, let’s get back on track.”

  “Okay.”

  “So as I was saying, you experienced a traumatic event with your father when you were young. Can you remember it?”

  “Dr. I can’t remember most of last month. But I’ll tell you that my father loved me my whole life. I love my father.”

  “Well did he ever hit you?”

  “Look Doctor, he punished us when we did stuff wrong. I learned not to do stuff wrong. If we are going to talk about getting a whippin by Dad, you should be talking to my brother. He’s the one that got the whippins. I love my father.”

  The first session went… well… nowhere. His firm assertions faded. He realized he was on the wrong track and my train was leaving. He told me that we would be exploring another path on our next visit.

  “David,” he told me with conviction, “what you are experiencing is a sexual fascination for something. I have had patients who were fascinated with door knobs. Every time they saw a door knob, they became sexually aroused.”

  “That’s very nice doctor, but what has that to do with me?”

  “I’m trying to explain how you have a sexual fascination. It is similar to these cases where people are aroused with doorknobs and some are aroused with cattle or sheep.

  “Okay, I give up, how do we fix that?” I asked.

  “I am going to give you this pad of paper. I want you to take it and every time throughout the day, I want you to write down what you are thinking about when you have sexual thoughts.”

  “I don’t have sexual thoughts, Doctor. What exactly do you mean?”

  “I want you to write down what is happening every time you have a daydream or thought about sex.”

  “Sex as in copulation or sex as in gender?”

  “Copulation, David.”

  “I don’t have sexual thoughts Doctor”

  “David, just do it okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I took my pad and paper and carried it around for a week. I decided to write down my fantasies of gender as well as any sexual thoughts I might have. Sexual desires would be a “1” followed by description. Gender fantasies as in “I would like to cut off my penis” would be listed as a “2” Followed by a description.

  I filled sheets and sheets. I ran out of space in the once new notebook. After that, I quit.

  I described to the good doctor what I had done.

  “He looked on every page, on each of the three columns that I had scribed in. The notebook was filled with number twos.”

  As he started again from the beginning of the notebook searching for a number one, I reminded him.

  “I told you that I don’t have sexual fantasies.”

  He clearly did not want to believe me.

  And from there, I lost track of time. I did not remember what happened. I was at home staring at the television. It wasn’t turned on. I just remember sitting there watching television with nothing on.

  Months later, my friends and I met up at Tris
h’s place. I was renting a room from her so my gas costs were cheap. We got together every Friday night for a pizza and we watched “Elvira, Mistress of the Night”. We liked Elvira, she was a hoot. She added a valley girl commentary to B and C horror flicks.

  Elvira was preempted that night by some news program or something. Hey everybody, let’s watch A Clockwork Orange.”

  Someone pulled out a tape. In it went. We were going to see a movie that I had always wanted to see. I had seen Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey and I had loved it. I would rather watch a good science fiction flick than some C grade horror flick, even though it had a valley girl commentary by Elvira. The movie started.

  Trish had ordered the pizza and we all settled down with a slice and a can of soda. The story centered on a young man that was treated with electro shock therapy. I sat there as my eyes soaked up what was going on. My stomach turned as I rushed up stairs to the toilet. I emptied the contents of my stomach and without cleaning my face ran in my bedroom and flung myself on my bed sobbing silently to myself. Trish followed me quickly up the stairs.

  “Cindi, what is wrong?... Cindi what is wrong? Please Cindi, tell me what is wrong?” She held me brushing my hair, for a half hour before I could finally regain control of my speech. I had finally remembered what that doctor did to me.

  I sat nude in the chair as he attached electrodes to, to my genitals. “What we are going to do David is shock you when you exhibit a behavior that is abnormal.” I was shamed. My nudity was exposed to the cold air of the room. And he, the doctor, the real pervert had attached little sticky clips to my penis. The thing that was most disgusting about my life was exposed to this animal. How could they do this? I was completely numb as he assaulted me.

  “Now I want you to watch these movies David.” The movies started playing on the TV. Men were having sex with each other. They started playing with each other, then they performed oral sex with each other, and it culminated with full anal intercourse. I had never in my entire life, even with my gay acquaintances, seen anything so disgusting and vile. What were they trying to do? How could this man be a good LDS doctor? I sat there, cold, embarrassed beyond belief. And I remained limp.

  The good doctor opened the door and stopped the tape. He examined the connections on that thing. “David, we are going to start over. Just watch the film. Hmmph he said, as he left the room.”

  I endured the films again. I started to shiver in the cold. I glanced at the window where he was peering at my maleness. I was sobbing inside. I couldn’t endure this.

  He came in and checked the clips yet again. “David, we are going to run a different film this time okay?”

  “djaaw” I responded. I felt like one of those half full glasses, you know the ones where the glass is half empty or half full depending on your point of view? My glass was half full but somewhere there was a leak. It wasn’t a drip leak; it just sort of seeped out.

  “Let’s leave,” said Squirrel. I closed my eyes and let Squirrel take me to the ether.

  “ZZZZZZTTTT”

  An electric shock fried me in the most sensitive area. It was painful. What had I done to deserve this? The film on TV had a new orgy playing I noticed as I turned my head toward the window where the good doctor was watching my nakedness. I looked at his eyes, they did not meet mine until he raised them.

  “ZZZZZZZTTT”

  And then from then on, I recalled shock after shock after shock. I don’t even know what was on the TV. I wasn’t looking at it. “Please turn it off!” I screamed in terror. “Please, please, please,” I sobbed uncontrollably as he punished me for refusing to look at his pornography.

  No, I was not permitted to cut it off. That was a sin only next to murder in severity. But they could fry it up. I wondered if they would make me eat it. The room turned blue and a light appeared at the end of a tunnel. I turned and ran. The good doctor was chasing me. And that is all I remembered. It was enough. It was disgusting. It was an assault. He had hurt me more than a rapist. At least the rapist would run away. The good doctor would chase me the rest of my life.

  And so for years that followed, that doctor became my adult Rusty. The focus of my nightmare would have him hook up his electrodes and fry me to a crisp. He would then remove the charred member and make me eat it.

  “and dedication on your part working closely with the bishop and perhaps a licensed counselor with an spiritual orientation through counseling sessions and telephone communication – even daily if necessary – to overcome this deeply ingrained habit of transsexual behaviour and desires”.

  This would be my waking thought as I woke up sweating profusely several times a week from this unconceivable repeating torture.

  Charlene’s father would never have written the letter if he had one thought that I would mingle it with what happened in the good doctor’s room. I didn’t mean to do it. I had only read his letter on the same day we watched the Kubrick film. I know that he would be horrified to see that his perfectly well intentioned letter had been gnarled as it was married to a twisted, sick, brutal pervert who hid under the guise of his diploma. I don’t know how many others he molested with his sick toys. I hope that it was not many.

  Off to church

  I was living alone. All alone. I could bear the pressure no more. I found the cheapest apartment I could find and I moved out. The continuous barrage from family and church was wearing me down. I didn’t know what was right. I just knew that everything was wrong. There were no right answers. I missed the spiritual side but I knew that if I were to go back to my own faith, it would be more of the same. My LDS faith told me that I was a sinner, that I was a pervert, a never ending guilt trip. It wasn’t their fault. I just couldn’t match my reality with the teachings of the theocracy. I missed the hymns. I missed the social contact. I missed worship. It was Sunday morning.

  Somewhere, at some place, at some time in my recent history, I had heard that the Metropolitan Community Church was an accepting place to worship. I knew nothing more than that. I had attended other sects in my lifetime and I knew that they were significantly different than my LDS experience. There had been a time in my life that these experiences were uncomfortable for me. But as I looked back, I could see that I still might enjoy religious service just as long as it did not “revolve around me”.

  So, I opened the phone book and looked them up. Yes, there was an MCC in Salt Lake City. They met in a chapel of another sect. I thought that this was odd. Why would one sect let another let them use their building? Let’s put the Squirrel to work on that for a while I thought. I noted the phone and address on a piece of paper. I gave them a ring and sure enough, an answering machine provided times for worship services. I noted them down.

  It was still Sunday morning and the service was in the afternoon. I had plenty of time to think about this. I will never be able to describe the struggle that I had. Abandoning my own faith was unconscionable. I was a cult member. I did not know it at that time. But during my lifetime, I had given my very being to the church. If they asked me for my first-born, they would have had him.

  Now please understand, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS, commonly called Mormon) is not necessarily a cult religion. Any faith can be the umbrella under which a member can become a cultist. I literally thought my life would end without it. I sat in my small chair in my small living room and mulled it over for over an hour.

  But I’d been thinking about it longer than that in reality. Just to take the effort to pick up the phonebook and make that first call had taken me months of thought and reflection. If I became a member of another faith, I knew that I would become a son of perdition (there are no daughters of perdition). In the LDS faith this is someone who has come to know Christ and then denied him. The son of perdition is fit to spend eternity with all other sons of perdition and Satan himself. In my mind I could make no distinction between Christ and the LDS faith. To me they were intertwined and inseparable.

  And what of the doctrin
es that I truly believed? That the president of the LDS church was the only true prophet of God. I mulled this over as I drank a Diet Coke. “Now anyone knows that if you sin, by drinking a Diet Coke, while pondering religious matters, then the result of that thought is invalid,” the Squirrel jested.

  “What? Shut up Squirrel”.

  “Okay, let’s back up and think this through again.” Was that the Squirrel or was that me?

  “Cindi you silly girl, don’t you know that we are one and the same?”

  “Yes I know”

  “Then why do we play this stupid game?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know”.

  “Okay, we should start over.” “What do you mean we, girl?”

  “Damnit! Can’t you shut up while I think this through?”

  “Okay, that’s what the task is this morning isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Wait a minute… “who said what?” I asked myself. And the answer was “does it matter? We are one and the same.”

  “Okay, the prophet is the only conduit to God who can speak for all people on earth right?”

  “Correct”.

  “Good. So church doctrine should cover my problem. This is a modern day problem and the prophet should know about these things. He then should have passed this knowledge on to his apostles, right?”

  “That follows.”

  “And that knowledge should have been passed on to me through the senior Church leadership. I’ve talked to my mission president twice and both times he told me to pray, get married and go to the temple. Right?”

  “Yup.”

  “And he is a general authority of the church.”

  “Well that should count for something.”

  “So, I’ve done everything that he and other church leaders have told me to do.”

  “And that didn’t work.”

  “Nope”.

  “Ah, but did I do it long enough?” No answer. No answer. I wondered how long I should suffer this anguish before God would bless me and repair my broken mind. “How long did Job wait?” one of us asked. Despair flooded my mind.