She tore each sketch from the pad,
laid the exhibits around the room
and readied the rod for her child’s back.
The next morning I have my first EMDR session with Tracy, the psychologist. And yes, as I was told, it’s very strange. We talk about me and the treatment for the first twenty minutes and then we start.
I have to think about the negative things that happened to me at the camp, in very small parts. We start off with Lee and his erection pressing into me as that’s the element which is causing me the least amount of anxiety.
Tracy gets me to think about what happened and then waves her hand left to right in front of me for about thirty seconds while I follow it with my eyes. Then she asks if I thought about other things while we were doing the eye movement. Then I focus on the new things and we start again.
As promised, I get to see Porter after. We go to the gym but I’m not in the mood to play table tennis so we sit down and chat.
“How did the session go?” he asks.
“I’m worried about when we come to the harder stuff. How well I’ll be able to cope.”
“That’s a natural fear and we will push you but not so hard things get out of control. You know you just have to be honest with how you’re feeling and all of this will work out for the best.”
I feel like I want to be by myself.
Then I have to see Mary, my support worker. It’s a relief not to be talking about what happened to me at the camp but I don’t want to talk to anyone.
She asks about my situation at home. She seems to be working down a list of questions on her clipboard.
I tell her I can’t live with my parents any more. I tell her they will never accept me for who I am. They will always seek to change me.
“Do you have a problem with it – do you feel shame about being gay?”
“I did, for a while. Then I realised I couldn’t change what I felt. That it was my parents who had it wrong. Then after the camp. when I got home, I felt they all might be right because I was so ashamed. I know deep down that I shouldn’t be ashamed. I hope one day I won’t be.”
“So do you believe God will punish you?”
“I don't believe in god. Will you make me live with them again?”
She puts the clipboard down. “You have to understand that it won’t be my choice. I will have some influence but if there’s any doubt that you’re in danger then it’s unlikely you’ll go back. I think though that what you need is some family therapy, so the four of you together can try to work everything out.”
“There is no working out. Jesus is right, I’m wrong, that’s how it will go every time.” I hit the desk. Why doesn’t anyone understand this?
“Malachi, please calm down. If you meet them half way and they refuse to do the same it will go a long way to prove what you say, do you understand?’
I do understand. It will give me more power to decide what I want.
“And you never know. They might end up surprising you.”
“You’ve never met a Baptist minister before, have you?” I don’t want to see them. Why am I still so angry about all of this? I hardly say a word for the rest of our meeting.
The feeling stays with me the rest of the day. I stay in my room for lunch and eat chocolate and read a book on the history of science but it’s hard to concentrate.
Porter comes into my room. “Why are you not at lunch?”
I shout at him, “Fuck off and leave me alone.”
My stomach eats away at itself when he leaves for having said that to him and that makes me feel worse.
He comes back after an hour.
“Have you calmed down yet?”
“Yes.” I lie.
“What’s upset you? Do you want to talk about it?”
“No I don’t want to talk. I’ve been talking all day. I need some space.”
“That’s all right,” says Porter, “Try to sleep it off. I’ll come and get you for dinner. No arguments.”
I bury my head under the pillow.
I wake up before dinner and make my way to the cafeteria before Porter comes to get me. I don’t want to see him. I hate myself for what I said to him. The sleep hasn’t made me feel any better.
Poppy and Alim don’t ask what was wrong or why I’ve been in my room all day, they must know better, they ask what film I want to watch tonight. The conversation between us is stilted. I know it’s me and that I doubtless look like I feel.
A boy at the table next to us points over at us and I don’t hear everything he says, I hear him say, ...the perverts’ table.
I start to feel sick and my breathing speeds up. I want to hit this boy. I stand up and stare at him. “What did you call us?”
He looks scared. He backs into his chair. “I didn’t say anything.”
He looks so small and helpless. I grab him around the throat and squeeze.
The alarm goes off and before I know it I’m dragged away by three of the nurses who seem to come out of nowhere. I kick and scream and I don’t stop. They get me into the corridor and pin me to the ground.
I’m back in the camp.
The four leaders take turns licking my cock. While the others are doing it, Gareth squeezes the bridge of my nose. It hurts so much my eyes water. “Do what you’re told,” he says, “Open your mouth.” He doesn’t stop squeezing my nose until I open it.
Then he forces his cock inside. “You like that,” he says, “don’t you, you little pervert.”
My mouth hangs open and he pushes his cock in and out while he wanks himself. I shake and sweat. He comes in my mouth and I gag and throw up.
I hear Porter shout in the distance. “Do not pin that boy down! Do not pin him down!”
They loosen up and I curl into a ball but they’re still touching me – I want them to let go of me. There is puke all over me and I’ve wet myself again. I’m crying and screaming for them to let go of me.
I can feel Porter above me. “Just relax, I’m here with you now.”
“Get away from me. Leave me alone.” I scream and shout. I feel the injection in my thigh. I close my eyes to shut everything out – but it's inside.
Chapter Twenty Three
When I wake up I’m back on the acute ward, cleaned up and in my pyjamas. No windows and an almost empty room. Porter is sitting next to my bed writing out a form.
“Why am I back here?” I’m groggy.
“You’re back on fifteen minute watch,” says Porter, “because of what happened earlier. It’s best you don’t see this as some kind of punishment. You need looking after a little bit more and need some rest.”
“How long will I be here?”
“That depends. Now do you want to tell me what happened?”
I talk to him. I tell him I've been feeling strange since the therapy session. I tell him about the new memory; I tell him about Gareth coming in my mouth, calling me a pervert and telling me I like it.
“Alim said that boy called all of you that word and you went into an episode. I think we found a trigger.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I hate that I told you to fuck off.”
“It wasn’t you,” says Porter, “It was your anger speaking. You have to get in control of it. You've had a big day today and I could tell something wasn't right after your therapy. Look, I’m off for the next few days and you’ll have other people looking after you. Just try and rest.”
Those two days are horrible. It’s not like it was when I first came in and Porter was with me. I’m by myself almost all of the time and I’m not allowed my phone, only my Kindle. I can’t see Alim or Poppy either and that, and even more not seeing Porter, does make this seem like a punishment.
I get out of the acute ward forty eight hours later. And I go directly into the Friday evening group session. It’s not what I thought it would be, where everyone tells their life stories. People talk about the problems they’ve been having in the unit. Emma, who leads the group, asks Ben, the boy I grabbed, if he has anythi
ng to say. He stands up and apologises to me for what he said and that he wishes he could take it back. I tell him I’m sorry for strangling him and then we shake hands and everyone claps.
As the days roll by I have more therapy, a session every other day. I feel tired and deflated after it and I go and nap in my room. I meet with Doctor Black once a week to discuss my progress and my wants and needs. I see Porter all the time, though for shorter periods as he’s helping other kids a lot.
As time goes on I become more aware of how this place works. There seem to be at least two members of staff for every patient in the unit, so there’s always someone around. The nurse practitioners are like the rock stars of the place. When someone new comes in on the acute ward one of the NPs stays with them during waking hours, like Porter did for me.
Alim was almost right – they don’t make us fall in love with them, they make us trust them. That’s why they’re the most popular staff amongst the suicidal teens. Who are the most hated? Any of the nurses who have to make the anorexic girls eat. When this one new girl comes in she refuses to even go into the dining room and screams and shouts when they ask her to try. When they eventually manage to get her in there’s an alarm every other meal as she kicks off.
Warren and Jacob visit. I can tell Warren is uncomfortable at first and doesn’t like being here. He looks at me as though I’ve got cancer and am about to die but with each visit he gets better.
Sam and Catherine come three times a week when they can. After a month all of my visits are unsupervised. I tell them I want to come and live with them as soon as I’m out of here. They tell me they would love that but it may not be that simple; it hasn’t been easy for them to foster Noah, though they are still working on it. They tell me as soon as they can they’ll arrange for Noah to come on a visit.
I phone him every night now before I go to sleep. We wank when we’re talking to each other. It’s not as good as the real thing but it’s almost like him being with me.
I continue on the EDMR therapy and it does seem to have an effect. It’s not like I can forget about what happened to me but the attacks where I’m reliving it, even thought they seem to occur less often, are easier to pull myself out of. After each one I tend to need alone time and sleep as it feels like my brain is being rewired.
After I've had the EDMR for four weeks we start to deal with going outside. Every Friday morning after breakfast, Porter takes me to the front doors and I try to walk through them. Each week I get a little further. After three weeks of this we try every morning and I begin to see that I have good days and bad days. On a good day I make it to the local shop and get to buy chocolate, crisps and coke for our movie nights. On the bad days the panic sets in, I see Gareth and I have to go back. When this happens we try it a couple of times. By the time I’ve been there ten weeks, I succeed more often than not.
Sometimes kids who walk past shout out insults at us when they see I’m holding Porter’s hand. When they see us coming out of the unit they call him a pedo. They call me a window licker then lick the palm of their hands like they’re mental.
Porter tells them to fuck off.
The best part about being there is hanging out with Poppy and Alim. Over the weeks we go through every film in Alim’s collection and the musicals which Porter brings in for us – he is such a closet case.
When term time starts again, Alim does a project for social studies about how gay people are treated around the world. In his parent’s country, Iran, you can be hanged for being gay. In some places they put you in a sack and throw you off a cliff – if you survive you’re hanged or stoned. He shows me some videos on you tube of gay people being hanged and I get depressed.
He says he wants to be a gay rights activist when he leaves university and it makes me want to do that too but I know deep down I still want to be a scientist.
I don’t have to attend the school classes as I have my GCSEs and A-Levels. I still have to do art and music therapy, dancing and yoga, which I quite enjoy. I laughed at the yoga class when I first saw it but let me tell you, I’ve never done anything as painful and so physically challenging in my life.
So instead of classes, I read the books that Sam gave me on the kindle and try to get to grips with the undergraduate level maths most of all. I know back before everything happened I’d have torn it up in a few days. Now it seems like work – I think it’s the drugs.
I read the gay novels as well and with everything I’m starting to understand the culture I feel I’m a part of. These books and films and the poetry which flowed out of the oppression of very brave gay people who lived at a time when there was no acceptance for being gay, when coming out didn’t even exist.
Then I get my first appointment at the eye hospital and they don’t tell me anything but make me endure these horrible exams where they put these huge contact lenses in my eyes. I’m booked in for multiple appointments and none of them are pleasant. The sight in my left eye isn't improving and I get the feeling that the damage is permanent.
The days go by, the weeks go by but it’s impossible to be aware of the time other than when things deteriorate. Like when Poppy is found to have cut herself to the point of needing minor surgery and gets put on the acute ward. When she gets out she tells us it’s like having to start from square one again.
Sometimes I’m happy. Then I find myself getting angry more often and a couple of times I end up punching walls and hurting myself. I’m warned if I keep doing it I’m going to be put back on the acute ward.
We start to deal with the rapes and I get so mad at my therapist I hit my head into the wall and then I am taken back to the acute ward and don’t get to leave for five days. By the end of Summer the new medication starts to work and I feel more even about things. That, and I have to do anger management sessions.
A few weeks later, Alim has a difficult phone call and he’s off with us all day. He doesn’t tell us what it was all about but I think it was from his family.
He tries to kill himself in his room that night and we don’t see him for a week. When he comes back we don’t talk about it – we’re glad he’s back with us again. Glad he's alive.
Then, one Wednesday morning in October, me and Porter make it as far as the McDonald's by the tube station. I ask if we can go in for milkshakes.
“Are you kidding?” says Porter, “How could we come all this way and not.”
So we go in and the bloody milkshake machine isn’t working. So I get a mocha frappe at Porter’s suggestion and I’m addicted. Porter gets a double sausage and egg muffin meal, a big breakfast, an orange juice and a frappe too. All this even after his customary six slices of toast.
We sit in the restaurant. It seems so normal, like we’re friends meeting up for a chat and breakfast.
Porter unwraps his sandwich and puts it on the Big Breakfast plate. “So, if I tell you something, will you promise me not to get upset?”
I sip at my drink. “No. Did you bring me in here so I wouldn’t throw a tantrum when you told me?”
“Now would I do something like that?” He chomps back a hash brown in one go.
“Yes, actually yes and you can wipe that smile off your face cause you bloody know you would.”
We both laugh.
“I can take whatever it is. It’s a long time since the acute ward and, anyway, I think I know what this must be about. I’m almost done here aren’t I?” It makes me feel sad. I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to leave. I want to move in with Sam and Catherine but I don’t want to leave here.
“Yes and no. Your progress is brilliant. You’ve done so well with this and with the therapy. The episodes have reduced in number and intensity. You may not be quite there yet but in a few weeks I think you’ll be able to cope with them all by yourself.” He picks up the sandwich.
“But I’m not fixed yet.”
He puts it down without taking a bite. “I never promised you a fix. Some days will be good, others will be bad but before you know it the g
ood will outstrip the bad by a long shot. You’ve got to stop thinking in terms of broken and fixed. In truth, Malachi, everyone is broken. It’s about learning how to cope with not being perfect.
“Look at where we are now and what we’re doing. Even two weeks ago, would you have thought this possible?”
“No but I don’t want to leave. I especially don’t want to go home.”
He picks up his sandwich again and takes a bite, letting what I said hang in the air. He finishes the entire thing before he says anything else. “Do you still trust me?”
“Oh, don’t pull that out on me. You know I do.” It’s frustrating. I want to hit the table but I don’t.
“Well lets be honest about the situation then. Right up front, agreed?”
“Fair enough.” I say.
“You’re fourteen. Right or wrong your parents are your parents and have a say and legal rights when it comes to your life. Do you accept that?”
“I hate it, but yeah, you’re right.”
“So what we need to do is let you and them have an open discussion. To discuss your feelings about everything and listen to theirs. We have to get the process underway.”
“Say I accept everything that you’re saying and, in principle, I do – my parents won’t listen. It’s going to be me against Mum, Dad, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit!”
Porter laughs. “Sorry, I know you’re making a valid point but that was funny.” He starts laughing again.
“Will it be fair. Will they be told off if they don’t listen to me?”
He wipes his face with a napkin. “You can count on it. And listen, what you want and need are a big part of this. So don’t be afraid to make yourself clear. If you do go back to your parents house we can draw up a contract that both sides have to keep.”
“I still don’t like that it’s five against one. Will you be there with me to fight in my corner?”
“It’s not going to be an adversarial process.” He shakes his head. He looks frustrated.
“Then to back me up – to make sure I don’t get steamrollered.”
The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Malachi the Queer Page 24
