Boy Erased

We watched as Janet Leigh stepped into the shower, her pale calf tensing. We knew what would happen next, but we held our breath. Though she didn’t need it, Chloe had applied extra foundation to her face, removing the shallow pockmarks where acne had once scarred her. She wore her hair down. We had both dressed for the occasion. I wore a black button-down and a light jacket that I had waited to remove until I was in the doorway. Chloe wore a dress I’d never seen before. If her mother thought there was anything strange about our outfits, she never said so.

We sat on the couch in her basement in front of the blue light of the television. Occasionally, Brandon would sneak down the stairs and hide behind the couch, jumping out to scare us.

“You’re too old for that,” Chloe said, after he had grabbed her arm just as the shower curtain parted. “Get a life.”

“You’re the one who needs to get a life,” he said, tossing his head back in a remarkably accurate parody of his sister. “Watching scary movies on your big romantic date night.”

Brandon was dressed in his Sunday-morning blazer. He wore a bright pink rose in his lapel, one he must have stolen from a neighbor’s garden. He liked to dress up like his favorite video-game characters. When we asked who he was today, he said, “I’m James Bond from GoldenEye,” and made a gun of his index finger and thumb. I was glad for his occasional interruptions, the way his sudden appearance caused Chloe to unconsciously scoot away from me.

Every movement on that couch was either a victory or a failure. Often both. I was on a different side of the war from one moment to the next.

Brandon removed a candy cigarette from his pocket and acted as though he were about to perch it delicately on the edge of his lips. Instead, he bit into it. “Don’t forget you’re rooming with me tonight,” he said, making a stabbing motion at me with what remained of the cigarette. “Psycho II. Bates strikes again.”

We watched the camera move in a gyre up from Leigh’s gaping pupil, Hitchcock’s shot held intentionally for one second too long, the fear excruciating in that second. Chloe scooted closer.

“It’s still scary,” she said. “Even with the stupid sound effects.”

I FIRST LEARNED about sex when I was Brandon’s age, on a stormless night when my father wasn’t snoring and I could be certain he was awake. I felt the house relax and settle into its hidden joints, and so I could walk through the dark living room without fear, running my fingers across the cool glass of the living-room table, fingering the sharp plastic jonquils in their china vases. I sat in my father’s leather recliner and switched on the television. Since the living room shared the same satellite connection as my father’s bedroom—but not my mother’s—I could see what he was seeing in those sleepless hours after he had already exhausted his prayer. I watched the snow-fizzled channels settle into hints of a bare thigh, an open mouth closing over something long and hard, bright red lipstick shining through static. I heard the woman’s low moaning—so scripted, so different from my father’s spiritual moaning. But the display didn’t last for more than a minute or two, the amount of time I imagine it took for my father to feel the weight of his guilt. Still, I would tell my mother of his transgression the next day, knowing even then that by airing his secret I might better hide my own darker secret.

“I’m sure it was by mistake,” she said, always the mediator. “Why would you spy on him like that?”

Then she forced a smile and said, “Let’s make crème brûlée tonight. We’ll get your grandmother’s silver out and everything.”

I HAD BEEN lying on a sleeping bag in the dark basement of Chloe’s house for about an hour. I decided to sit up and listen for Brandon’s steady breathing before I made my attempt up the stairs. I kept the condom package tucked into the elastic band of my pajama pants; the plastic scratched my skin, burning. I had no idea how I planned to do it. Sneak up to her room and announce my intentions? Stand in her doorway in the hopes that she made the first move?

“I’m not asleep, in case you’re wondering,” Brandon said. I heard him throw his sheets to the ground beside his bed. “Your movie kept me awake.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I thought it might be fun. Theft, murder, cars sinking into tar pits.”

“You know?” he said, bare feet slapping the concrete floor as he came toward me. I made out the outline of his cowlicked hair, then his thin arms sticking out of his pajama top. “You’re not like her other boyfriends. You’re a lot nicer.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

He stood at the edge of my sleeping bag, his toes wiggling into the taffeta lining. “Can I ask you something?”

My eyes adjusting to the dark, I could see that his face was contorted, twin wrinkles running down the center of his forehead. I could hear footsteps coming from the spot on the ceiling directly below Chloe’s bedroom floor.

“How do you get your character to level up to fifty?” He smiled an impish smile. Whatever he had planned to say was still unsaid.

He sat down on the edge of the sleeping bag. “Do you mind?” he said, holding the television remote close enough so I could see it. He switched on the television and crawled over to the PlayStation to press the power button. We settled into our gaming positions, hunching toward the screen. We were now standing in the chamber of a large Gothic castle lit by torchlight. Dark red carpet shot across the room from one door to the next, and guards in gold uniforms stood before every entryway.

Brandon’s eyes glazed over. He licked his lips unconsciously. “This part is tricky. Those guards will come running if I move another inch.”

“Check your inventory first.”

The two of us riffled through potions and equipped stronger weapons. Brandon had obviously not kept track of his inventory. Using too many potions when he didn’t have to. Tossing crossbows aside without first selling them in the market. Though I continued to think of Chloe in the bedroom above us, I tried to block her out. I had already crafted an alibi: How could I leave if her brother saw me?

After a few more hours of intense concentration, we both lay back on the sleeping bag.

Brandon propped himself up on his elbow, his palm cradling his chin. “You know what?” he said.

“I don’t,” I said.

“I think he’s probably gay,” he said, his voice suddenly breaking at the last syllable. He looked away. His breathing was shallow. It took several seconds for me to realize that he was talking about our avatar.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I really do,” he said. “So much hair gel.”

When he looked back at me, we both knew what we were.

We decided to keep playing until he reached the next level. By the time an orange sunrise worked its way through the blinds and shaped itself into slanted rectangles across the concrete, Chloe had already prepared breakfast by herself.

“Surprise,” she said, standing on the bottom step, refusing to touch the basement floor. She didn’t sound at all surprised. She hadn’t bothered to change out of her cotton gown. I tried to shut out her pain, kept my eyes on the wadded sleeping bag at my feet. “Breakfast is served.”

MY FATHER wrote a note to God, left it in my desk drawer, and told me never to open it. Never to touch it, but to leave it there. It was the formal promise he made to God after the car explosion that he had folded into a tiny square and tucked away behind the scores of mechanical pencils I would chew in frustration when I couldn’t get my journal entries to come out right.

That last summer I spent at his dealership, old enough for my curiosity to outweigh my reverence, I read the note.

Heavenly Father,

Thank you for saving me from literal hellfire. I have made a promise to you that I intend to keep. From this moment on, as for me and my house, we will serve You. I promise to raise my son in the church. I promise to be a God-fearing man and to bring others into Your divine flock. Please, spare my son from all that I have suffered, and from my mistakes. Spare him from the confusion of the world. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou hast perfected praise. Let him rest in the truth of Your holy Word.

Your Servant

“WHY HAVEN’T you answered any of my calls?” Chloe asked.

A week of silence had passed since our failed night. I was sitting on my bedroom floor, the PlayStation controller tucked into the triangle between my crossed legs, the phone nestled against my shoulder. “I don’t know.”

“How do you not know? You either answer or you don’t.”

After a minute of silence, she hung up.

Another week passed. Two. I opened the phone, thought about pressing speed dial for Chloe’s number, snapped it shut.

“I don’t know,” I said to the screen.

It wasn’t relief I felt. More like fear: of the unknown, of myself. What kind of person was I becoming?

ANOTHER WEEK PASSED. My parents were concerned. They wanted to know why Chloe and I hadn’t been hanging out. Her mother was calling, people from church were asking, and nobody could believe we would end things so suddenly without any real explanation. I pretended I was sick on Sundays so I wouldn’t have to see her again at church.

Another week. When I could no longer fake being sick, I volunteered to work at the projector booth at the back of the sanctuary, far from the congregants’ questioning gazes. Chloe was sometimes there, sometimes not, but we made sure we never ended up in the same part of the church together.

Another week. It was almost time to move to the small liberal arts college where I’d been accepted. My mother and I took occasional trips to Walmart to buy what I’d need for the dorm, coming home with heavy sacks full of plastic storage containers, with jumbo packages of T-shirts and socks and underwear. Then, late one night, my father received a phone call from Chloe’s mother. She was hysterical. Brandon had been caught with another boy in his bed, a close friend. They had been experimenting. She couldn’t think of anyone else to call. She wanted to know if my father could come talk some sense into the boys. I sat in our living room for most of the night, trying not to shake, waiting for him to return, my mother beside me on the couch.

“Why did you two really break up?” she asked. “You were so cute together.” I couldn’t answer. There were no words, no clear explanations that didn’t involve some terrible admission. I knew my sudden silence was hurting my mother, was hurting all of us. But in only a few months I had already managed to ruin everything. I didn’t want to say anything else that might make things worse.

My father came home around four o’clock in the morning, his eyes red, his hair a mess. He wouldn’t tell us much of what happened, just stood in the kitchen shaking his head. The boys had made a mistake, he said. He had explained to Brandon and the other boy that continuing their sinful behavior would turn them against God, expel them from the Kingdom of Heaven. Brandon would grow out of it, my father said. His voice sounded unconvincing, and I could tell he was shaken by the visit, that perhaps he suspected something about me that he hadn’t suspected before. I turned away, walked to my bedroom, and shut the door.

Another week. Video games every night. I hardly thought about the next phase of my life. I hardly thought about anything other than what I would need to equip for my avatar’s journey through the wilderness. In the few moments when I wasn’t playing a game, I tried to ignore the fact that not talking to Chloe also meant that I would have to stop talking to Brandon. That the only person who seemed to know who I really was would never again be part of my life. That whatever either of us decided to do about our urges, we would be alone.

A month before I was to go to college, I finally put down the PlayStation controller. I walked into the living room, where my parents were sitting on opposite ends of the couch. I invited them to follow me to the bathroom to view the corpse of my gaming life.

“I want you to see something,” I said. I hardly knew what I was doing. I wanted to tell them everything: about why I broke up with Chloe, about how I was just like Brandon. I wanted to tell them, but I didn’t have the right words. I wanted to let them know that something was wrong, that I had been trying to ignore a part of me but that I wasn’t going to ignore it any longer. I was going to fix it.

In the center of the bathtub sat my PlayStation, its two controllers curled up beside it like sleeping cats. My parents stood in the doorway, wearing what-is-this-all-about looks on their faces. My father ran a hand through his thick black hair. My mother crossed her arms over her chest and sighed.

I slid back the clear plastic shower curtain and turned the knob for the shower. My parents and I watched the water rush over the console and swirl into an oval before disappearing with a hollow gurgle down the drain. I imagined the water trickling through the motherboard, following tributaries formed by the microchips. I kept the water running for a few extra seconds than needed until I heard my parents shift uncomfortably behind me. I slid the curtain back in place.

“I’m done with games,” I said.

Whatever I would face after this moment, I would face it directly.

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