happened hadn’t been his fault. Adeline had stood in the hallway
of Parr House, immaculate in a black wool suit and pearls and watched
her younger son dragged out of his home in the middle of the night and
shoved into the back seat of a black Cadillac Fleetwood with blacked-out
windows.
Turning to the driver, who had obviously been summoned to wait by
the front door in case Jeremy put up too much resistance, she pointed a
manicured index finger towards the drawing room off the main hallway
and said, “His bags are in the other room. Please see to it that they’re
loaded immediately. Tell Dr. Gionet at the clinic to telephone me if there’s
anything else.”
And with that, she’d turned away, her high heels clicking on the
black-and-white marble entryway, without ever turning back.
At the Doucette Institute, the psychiatrists set about attempting
to cure him of his affliction. For six months, Jeremy endured icy baths,
and electric shocks applied to his hands and genitals while being forced
to watch black-and-white films of naked, oiled, muscular men. He was
strapped to chairs in darkened rooms for hours, and injected with
apomorphine, after which he was forced to drink two-ounce shots of
brandy to induce nausea. When the nausea became nearly unendurable,
the room was heated and bright lights were shone on large photographs
of male nudes, and he was told to select the one he desired the most. At
that point, Dr. Gionet played a tape describing his “illness” in graphic,
sickening detail until Jeremy vomited out the drugs, and was given more.
The tape was played every hour. After thirty hours, detecting dangerous
levels of acetone in Jeremy’s urine, he was sent back to his room to
recover.
But the treatments always began again. Other nights, he was
awakened every two hours by congratulatory messages about how
different his life would be once he’d conquered his “inversion” and been
rendered “normal.” Every morning he was injected with testosterone
propionate and made to listen to records of women’s voices, lush and
frankly sexual voices that, to Jeremy, merely sounded whorish and
insectile through the scratchy speakers of a turntable.
In sessions, his psychiatrist, Dr. Gionet—who, Jeremy noted with
fresh disgust at every session, had terrible pitted acne scars on his face,
and eyes that were even colder and more censorious than his mother’s,
and breath that made Jeremy think of an open grave—forced him, over
and over again, to repeat every graphic aspect of every sexual fantasy
he’d ever had. In the end, Elliot made them up, which seemed to satisfy
Dr. Gionet, who seemed unable to distinguish between fact and fantasy
when it came to what Jeremy told him.
Worse still, he forced Jeremy to reveal every intimate detail of his
discovered friendship with Elliot McKitrick. He made him describe
Elliot’s body—every part of it, what he’d done with it, and what Elliot
had done to him by way of reciprocation.
That implacable, dry voice, impatient, professorial and peremptory:
What did you do with that boy, Jeremy? Tell me again.
Weeping in reply:
He’s just a friend. We’re friends. It only happened
once. We didn’t mean to do anything wrong. I’m sorry. It only happened once.
I’ll never do it again. I’m cured now. Please, please, please let me go home. I
want my mother. No more tests. They hurt too much.
And, coming full circle, Dr. Gionet’s oily, coercive compassion again:
How are you going to be better, Jeremy, if you don’t trust me? You do want to
be normal, don’t you? Don’t you want to be cured?
At night, locked in his cell-like room, he’d cry himself to sleep,
wondering what he’d ever done to be sent to this place.
On the nights he was allowed to sleep through till dawn instead of
being woken every two hours by the recording, he dreamed a mosaic of
familiar images—Parr’s Landing itself, swimming with Jack in the cold
of Parr House, immaculate in a black wool suit and pearls and watched
her younger son dragged out of his home in the middle of the night and
shoved into the back seat of a black Cadillac Fleetwood with blacked-out
windows.
Turning to the driver, who had obviously been summoned to wait by
the front door in case Jeremy put up too much resistance, she pointed a
manicured index finger towards the drawing room off the main hallway
and said, “His bags are in the other room. Please see to it that they’re
loaded immediately. Tell Dr. Gionet at the clinic to telephone me if there’s
anything else.”
And with that, she’d turned away, her high heels clicking on the
black-and-white marble entryway, without ever turning back.
At the Doucette Institute, the psychiatrists set about attempting
to cure him of his affliction. For six months, Jeremy endured icy baths,
and electric shocks applied to his hands and genitals while being forced
to watch black-and-white films of naked, oiled, muscular men. He was
strapped to chairs in darkened rooms for hours, and injected with
apomorphine, after which he was forced to drink two-ounce shots of
brandy to induce nausea. When the nausea became nearly unendurable,
the room was heated and bright lights were shone on large photographs
of male nudes, and he was told to select the one he desired the most. At
that point, Dr. Gionet played a tape describing his “illness” in graphic,
sickening detail until Jeremy vomited out the drugs, and was given more.
The tape was played every hour. After thirty hours, detecting dangerous
levels of acetone in Jeremy’s urine, he was sent back to his room to
recover.
But the treatments always began again. Other nights, he was
awakened every two hours by congratulatory messages about how
different his life would be once he’d conquered his “inversion” and been
rendered “normal.” Every morning he was injected with testosterone
propionate and made to listen to records of women’s voices, lush and
frankly sexual voices that, to Jeremy, merely sounded whorish and
insectile through the scratchy speakers of a turntable.
In sessions, his psychiatrist, Dr. Gionet—who, Jeremy noted with
fresh disgust at every session, had terrible pitted acne scars on his face,
and eyes that were even colder and more censorious than his mother’s,
and breath that made Jeremy think of an open grave—forced him, over
and over again, to repeat every graphic aspect of every sexual fantasy
he’d ever had. In the end, Elliot made them up, which seemed to satisfy
Dr. Gionet, who seemed unable to distinguish between fact and fantasy
when it came to what Jeremy told him.
Worse still, he forced Jeremy to reveal every intimate detail of his
discovered friendship with Elliot McKitrick. He made him describe
Elliot’s body—every part of it, what he’d done with it, and what Elliot
had done to him by way of reciprocation.
That implacable, dry voice, impatient, professorial and peremptory:
What did you do with that boy, Jeremy? Tell me again.
Weeping in reply:
He’s just a friend. We’re friends. It only happened
once. We didn’t mean to do anything wrong. I’m sorry. It only happened once.
I’ll never do it again. I’m cured now. Please, please, please let me go home. I
want my mother. No more tests. They hurt too much.
And, coming full circle, Dr. Gionet’s oily, coercive compassion again:
How are you going to be better, Jeremy, if you don’t trust me? You do want to
be normal, don’t you? Don’t you want to be cured?
At night, locked in his cell-like room, he’d cry himself to sleep,
wondering what he’d ever done to be sent to this place.
On the nights he was allowed to sleep through till dawn instead of
being woken every two hours by the recording, he dreamed a mosaic of
familiar images—Parr’s Landing itself, swimming with Jack in the cold
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