Brokeback in Boystown

“So, I’m the sixth therapist you’ve met with,” Gwen remarked nonchalantly as she casually glanced over Robin’s intake form. “It’s like trying to find a good barber,” Robin deadpanned, as he studied the woman sitting in front of him, searching for some sign of mirth. Gwen obliged, offering Robin a genuine chuckle; her teeth flashed brilliantly, undoubtedly the result of fastidious dental hygiene practices and an overreliance on teeth whitening kits, Robin surmised. But he genuinely liked the way she looked. She dressed with all of the subtlety of a prepubescent Prue Laith who’d finally been given access to her grandmother’s costume jewelry, wearing an oversized bumblebee brooch on the lapel of her cerulean pantsuit. She was an amalgam of noise from toe (perfectly pedicured fuchsia toes) to head (something of an homage to Guy Fieri on fire).

“I’m sure that won’t really be a challenge for much longer,” Gwen observed casually.

“The barber or the therapist?” Robin questioned incredulously.

Gwen inhaled sharply, pressing the insides of her cheeks together as she scrutinized the man with flowing brown hair, swept to either side. His impossibly put together façade belied a boy ablaze, someone who was now in her office trying to stop-drop-and-roll because that was what he was told to do – he dressed much the same way 

Mohair cardigan.

An ivory oxford shirt that was perfectly aged.

Donegal charcoal trousers.

And a black pearl pendant.

She sighed. Immaculate boy with too much intentionality and too little originality. The sort who boasted about bettering Jackson Pollock with Microsoft Paint.

“Both if we’re being honest,” she finally answered.

“What does that mean?” Robin guffawed.

“Well, you won’t be needing a barber much longer,” Gwen answered plainly.  Robin choked on his words, as he fumbled for some sort of retort. “I don’t think you can say that,” he finally managed. “Sometimes it is good to dispense from the morass of social rules. Say what you mean and mean what you say. That sort of thing.” Gwen produced a cerulean pen from her pocket and inhaled, shooting him a knowing look before inhaling a plume of powdery smoke. “I don’t think you can do that in here,” Robin muttered, clearly taken aback by the therapist sitting in front of him. “It’s either this or a cigarette, and I don’t think I’ll be giving you lung cancer – not in addition to colorectal.” Robin chuckled nervously, “thoughtful.”  His legs began flutter like a restless hummingbird, which she noted as she returned her attention back to the intake form.

---

“Oh,” Gwen chuckled to herself later in their session.

“Out with it,” Robin chided.

“You just looked like the kind of person who bandies about words like ‘cromulent.’”

“And what about it. It’s a perfectly cromulent word.”

“What do you get out of using words like cromulent?” “We’re having a conversation, not playing badminton,” Gwen reasoned. She smiled knowingly, and seemed to Robin, to recognize his anxious coping mechanisms from past clients. Robin returned Gwen’s penetrating question with a puzzled look, as he furrowed his thick brown eyebrows. “Come now, you’re too smart to act so naïve. You use big words like you are trying to spread me across the court so you can win a point.” “Therapy isn’t competitive,” she added.

“Well neither is math, but that didn’t stop me from being head of the middle school mathletes. You may write that down in your notes as well,” Robin chuckled, as he laughed at his own joke.  

“Is that something you wanted to talk about,” Gwen observed gently. “What makes you think I wanted to talk about that?” Gwen stared down the bridge of her nose, shooting Robin an unblinking, knowing look.

“I’d sooner die than talk about middle school.”

Gwen chuckled sardonically at the irony. “Your words,” Gwen said as she raised her hands pantomiming surrender.

“And so they are,” Robin answered raising an eyebrow.  

Gwen righted her posture, her blue gray eyes pressing into Robin’s gaze. “I see why you’re on your sixth therapist.”

“And why is that?”

“You got kicked out of the other therapist’s offices.”

“No, I decided not to rebook,” Robin countered.

Gwen rolled her eyes and her whole head followed, as she considered Robin while painstakingly selecting her next words. “It’s quite obvious that you need help. I mean, you have cancer” she said bluntly. “But people like you think you can Laurel and Hardy your way through therapy. “I enjoy exchanging witticisms and anecdotes, but you aren’t coming to therapy to reenact ladies who lunch. You’re dying, dear,” she said compassionately, “not enjoying high tea with the Red Hat Society.”

Robin and Gwen let a long pause settle between the two of them, as they studied one another.

“So, they fired me?” Robin eventually asked.

“Unequivocally,” Gwen announced with a level of confidence that expunged any of Robin’s doubt. “We can do that. We’re therapists… not nurses. It’s like dating when you aren’t interested in someone. You could berate them and beg them to get the hell out of the restaurant so you can enjoy what’s left of your risotto and Friday night, but we live in society. And as tempting as it may be, you can’t simply go around screaming at the hoi polloi. So, you just kind of neg them out of your life,” she said as she pantomimed shooing away a pest.

“Hoi polloi? Are you making fun of me?” Robin asked with an upturned smile.

“Would you rather I said NPCs?” Gwen countered with a self-satisfied smirk spreading across her face.

“By all means, hoi polloi to your heart’s content.”

“Anyway, people just leave and never comeback. It’s not ghosting if you wanted them to do it,” Gwen noted, winking at Robin while taking a sip of tea.

“I’m aware,” Robin responded cooly as he sat up straighter in his seat.

“Oh, that was quite clear. I have your intake form right here. For the purpose of the visit, you wrote cancer, and – if you squint you can read ‘intimacy issues’ as well. You wrote it down, but why erase it? Embarrassment? Facing a problem openly is commendable. But then you ruined it by ducking in and out of the proverbial rabbit hole.”

Robin sat in silence, clenching his fist. “Perhaps I ought to have done the decent thing and pretended I never saw it. But I am hardly a decent lady. This will, of course, stay between us, but I get the feeling that whatever prevailed upon you to write it down won't. So, prick up and tell me what’s wrong.”

“Prick up?”

“Oh I’m sorry, is it erectile dysfunction you struggle with?”

Gwen watched Robin’s face flush a deep shade of crimson. “Apologies if that’s your issue.”

“Furthest thing from the truth,” Robin responded haughtily.

“I’ll take your word for it,” Gwen remarked, resisting the urge to roll her eyes at Robin’s faltering machismo.       

“But tell me what kind of issues you have been having.”

Robin groaned and began fixing his cardigan and anything else he could think of to avert her gaze.  

“Out with it. Quicker you’re into it, quicker you’re out of it. The truth will set you free. Whatever hackneyed cockamamied thing you need to hear to spirit this confession along,” Gwen nudged, as she gestured circling her hand like a conductor to que him to speak.

“Funny you mention negging someone out of your life,” Robin started before pausing uncomfortably. He fidgeted in his seat, wincing as the formerly sweet smell of ylang ylang had begun to make him nauseous. “You have to promise to not think less of me after telling  you this story.” “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think of you at all,” Gwen deadpanned. “Why would I care about you and why would you care what I thought? We don’t know one another. You could leave this office, and I wouldn’t think of you another time” she added. “How refreshing,” Robin responded dryly.

“Well, I found myself particularly aroused of the flesh one Sunday,” Robin began sheepishly. “Please just say horny,” Gwen interrupted, as she held up her hands pleadingly. “If I wanted to listen to the Songs of Solomon, I would go find a smutty bible college’s karaoke night and listen to closeted lesbians sing Sufjan Stevens or Leonard Cohen.”

“Fine. I was horny. I’m horny all the time, and I can’t do anything about it,” Robin exploded, as his skin almost seemed to burn. “I’m so close to being desirable, but I’m fucking not. I have this big fucking scarlet letter metastasizing in my colon. No one knows from looking at me, so we indulge in the loveliest foreplay. But foreplay only works if you mean to go through with it. And no one wants to fuck someone with cancer, so I neg. I’m just an asshole with blue balls and cancer,” Robin stopped.

Gwen viewed the defeated looking man with kinder eyes, trying to elevate him out of his self-pity.  “It’s just like how I treated that surgeon,” he mumbled, trying to let it out without Gwen hearing what he was saying. “What happened with the surgeon?” she pried.

“I met up without knowing what he looked like?” “Sight unseen?” Gwen interjected sarcastically, “I can’t imagine anything wrong with that.” “He was six feet with nice abs,” Robin countered as he shrugged his shoulders. “More horniness than sense – you’re lucky I don’t care enough about you to judge,” Gwen chuckled, winking cheekily at Robin. “He rounds the corner to my place, and he’s rather unfortunate looking.” “Serves you right. Always ask for a face pic,” Gwen responded knowingly. “You know the lingo.” “You’re hardly the first horny man I’ve met with. You could say I’m something of a ‘fag hag,’” Gwen announced proudly, smiling with self-satisfaction.  

“But you were saying, he rounds the corner and he’s not at all what you pictured.” “Explains the lack of the face pic,” Robin said wincingly. “Then and there, I’m like ‘just man up and let him suck your dick. Be done with it.’”

“You’re a real Saint Sebastian,” Gwen interjected, side eyeing Robin. “All heart – really.”

“Can’t even be the hero in my own story.”

“You need only be the protagonist in your own story,” Gwen counseled. “We only acclaim heroes because we don’t know the real story. But just about any protagonist is worth compassion. Especially if their story is honestly told.” “So what? You had a hookup that went south. The only thing to blame you for is not insisting on receiving a picture of his face.” “I think he blames he me,” Robin laughed sardonically. “He blocked me after leaving my place.

“So, you let him suck your dick?”

“Thankfully no. I unlocked the door to my apartment, and his hands were already practically down my pants. He has me against the window putting on a show for an empty office building across the street. He starts stripping my shirt off and then his… And then we’re just two bare chested men staring face-to-face.”

“Brokeback in Boystown. It’s got a certain ring to it,” Gwen chuckled impishly.  “Hardly a novelty in that part of town.”

“If only,” Robin sighed sarcastically. “Monkeypox was going around, and he had folliculitis on his chest. I freaked out like he had leprosy. It was a real boner killer for me, so he left me with a limp dick, although quite relieved.”

“Wow! A bullet dodged.”   

“Probably more for him than for me,” Robin remarked.

Gwen smiled; at first amused and then somewhat sheepishly so. “Look,” she began, “the stars have all the cosmological meaning of scattered nonsense. Psychoanalysis is much the same. Still, some things are so manifestly obvious that even psychoanalysis can’t muck it up,” Gwen admitted with barely concealed disdain. “I will not have you lay back on the couch and tell me about your mother, but I like I said… sometimes even stupid shit works.” Robin nodded uncertainly, as he tried to figure out what she was implying.

“I think it all comes back to Mr. Six Feet with Abs,” Gwen started, trying to parse out the explanation simply. “You fear that people will reject you the same way you rejected him.” Robin nodded, his eyes darkening as he imagined that encounter through the other guy’s eyes – the embarrassment, the rejection, the frustration, the anger, the blue balls, and finally the sadness. Gwen observed Robin as he eyes flashed sadness and fear, revealing a boy treading the waters of his own emotions now betraying him as he internalized one thousand rejections in a single moment.

“Remember what I said about how we don’t root for the protagonist,” she questioned gently, trying to lead him out of his myopia. “Yeah, you have compassion for them,” he half whispered. “Well, your fear is valid,” Gwen said candidly. “There are virile studs out there who wouldn’t want to be with someone who was sick. That’s not wrong of them. That’s nature, my dear. Homosexuals don’t fuck to procreate, but they do tend to take survival of the fittest to its logical extreme.”

Tears poured from Robin’s right eye as he struggled to even lift his head and face Gwen. He remained silent and admired the white and gold tiled coffee table in front of him. “I want white everywhere,” he wept bitterly. “I want to be surrounded by white padded walls I can crash into, bite, scream at, cry on, fuck. I just have this itch that feels like it’s going to destroy me.” Robin choked on the other venomous words that threatened to spill out of his mouth.

“That’s cancer, I’m afraid,” Gwen mumbled.

Robin’s head rested in his tear soaked hands.

“Take heart,” Gwen said consolingly, “if they won’t fuck your cancer-ridden colon – I shouldn’t think you’d want them fucking your clean colon either.” “They’ve probably done me a favor,” Robin responded, half crying, half sobbing. “You’ll waste a lot less time this way,” Gwen sighed. “Just what the doctor ordered, a tidy social calendar,” Robin agreed.

“Next best thing to a clean bill of health,” Gwen deadpanned.  

“Well Mr. Robin, I can tell you this – you’re not nearly as bad as you think you are, and you are nowhere near as good as you are going to be,” Gwen replied warmly. She continued, “we can discuss your fear of dying, as I’m sure the first five therapists tried to do. But I think you fear a disease that will take your health, your friends, and everything else along with it.”

“Yeah,” Robin admitted meekly.

“You’ve got a lot of room left to grow and we clearly have a lot to discuss, so were you thinking same time next week?” Gwen asked with a wink, as she extended a hand to help him up. Robin nodded. As he was about to pass through the door, he turned back, “What a queer thing it is to die.” “Queer indeed,” Gwen whispered to herself. She watched Robin disappear and then ferociously scratched out the words “intimacy issues” until all that remained was a garbled mess of black ink. She smiled as she overlooked her handiwork and combined it with her notes and placed them into a manilla envelope titled Robin III.