“It doesn’t feel as simple as that, Doctor,” I said carefully. “I really think that I might be.”
“But were you not listening to me?” he asked, smiling at me as if I was a complete ignoramus. “Amn’t I after telling you that there are no homosexuals in Ireland? And if there are no homosexuals in Ireland, then how on earth could you be one?”
I thought about it, trying my best to locate the logic in his argument.
“Now,” he continued. “What makes you think that you’re one of them anyway? A dirty queer, I mean.”
“It’s pretty simple,” I said. “I’m both physically and sexually attracted to men.”
“Well, sure that doesn’t make you a homosexual,” he said, opening his hands wide in a gesture of acceptance.
“Doesn’t it?” I asked, a little baffled by this. “I thought it did.”
“Not at all, not at all,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ve just been watching too much television, that’s all.”
“But I don’t own a television,” I said.
“Do you go to the pictures?”
“I do.”
“How often?”
“Once a week usually.”
“Well, that will do it. What was the last picture you saw?”
“Alfie.”
“I don’t know that one. Was it any good?”
“I liked it,” I said. “Mary-Margaret said it was disgusting and that Michael Caine ought to be ashamed of himself. She said he was a filthy article with no respect for himself.”
“Who’s Mary-Margaret?”
“My girlfriend.”
He burst out laughing again and sat forward, refilling his pipe and lighting it with a series of stop-start puffs as the tobacco flamed from red to black and back again. “Would you listen to yourself, Tristan,” he said. “If you have a girlfriend, then you’re definitely not a homosexual.”
“But I don’t like my girlfriend,” I pointed out. “She’s judgmental and critical of everything and everyone. She’s always telling me what to do and orders me about like I’m a dog. And I never look at her and think she’s pretty. I can’t even imagine wanting to see her with her clothes off. Whenever I kiss her, I feel like throwing up afterward. And sometimes I look at her and just wish she’d meet someone else and drop me so I wouldn’t have to be the one to do it. Also, she has this weird smell. She says washing too often is a sign of pride.”
“But sure we all feel that way about the women,” said Dr. Dourish with a shrug. “I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve wanted to slip something into Mrs. Dourish’s hot chocolate at night so that she wouldn’t wake up in the morning. And I have access to everything I’d need too. I could write a prescription for poison and there’s not a jury in the land would question it. But that doesn’t make me a homosexual, does it? How could it be? I love Judy Garland and Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. I never miss any of their pictures.”
“I just want it to stop,” I said, raising my voice in frustration. “I want to stop thinking about men and be just like everyone else.”
“Which is why you came to see me,” he replied. “And I’m glad to say that you’ve come to the right place, because I can help you.”
My heart lifted a little and I looked across at him hopefully. “Really?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” he said, nodding his head in the direction of the small package he’d placed on the desk between us. “Pick that up like a good man and open it.”
I did as instructed and a small syringe with a long, pointed needle, about the size of my index finger, fell out.
“Do you know what that is?” asked Dr. Dourish.
“I do,” I said. “It’s a syringe.”
“Good lad. Now, I want you to trust me, all right? Give the syringe to me.” I handed it across and he nodded toward the bed. “Go over there and sit on the edge.”
“I thought that wasn’t for patients?”
“I make an exception for degenerates. And take your trousers off first.”
I felt anxious about what was going to happen next but did as I was told, letting my trousers fall around my ankles and sitting where he had told me. Dr. Dourish approached me, holding the syringe in his right hand in a rather threatening way.
“Now take your underpants off,” he said.
“I’d rather not,” I said.
“Do as you’re told,” he said, “or I won’t be able to help you.”
I hesitated, embarrassed and nervous, but finally did as instructed and tried not to look at him as I sat there, naked from the waist down.
“Now,” said the doctor. “I’m going to call out some names to you and I want you to react to them in whatever way feels natural to you, all right?”
“All right,” I said.
“Bing Crosby,” he said, and I didn’t move, just looked at the wall ahead, thinking of the night I’d gone to see a re-release of High Society with Mary-Margaret in the Adelphi Cinema on Abbey Street. She’d been disgusted by the whole thing, asking what kind of dirty tramp would divorce one man for another and then go back to the first one on the day of her second wedding. It showed a lack of moral conviction, she claimed. Which was not her standard at all.
“Richard Nixon,” said Dr. Dourish then, and I grimaced. There was talk that Nixon was going to be running for President again in 1968 and I hoped that he wouldn’t. There was something about seeing that face in the newspapers every morning that put me off my breakfast.
“Warren Beatty,” he said, and this time my face lit up. I had loved Warren Beatty ever since I’d seen him opposite Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass a few years earlier and had been first in line for Promise Her Anything when it had opened in the Carlton the year before. Before I could contemplate his beauty any further, however, I found myself leaping off the bed in unexpected agony, tripping over my feet as my trousers conspired to take me down, and I fell to the floor, writhing in agony and clutching my groin. When I finally dared to take my hands away, there was a tiny red mark on my scrotum that had not been there five minutes earlier.
“You stabbed me!” I cried out, looking across at Dr. Dourish as if he was insane. “You stabbed me in the balls with your syringe!”
“I did indeed,” he said, bowing a little as if he was accepting words of gratitude. “Now get up here, Tristan, so I can do it again.”
“I’ll do no such thing,” I said, struggling to my feet and weighing up whether I should punch him in the face or just make a run for it. I must have been a comical sight standing there in the middle of his surgery with my cock hanging out, my trousers hanging off me and my face red with fury.
“You want to be cured, don’t you?” he asked in a benevolent, avuncular tone, ignoring my obvious distress.
“I do, yes,” I said. “But not like this. It hurts!”
“But this is the only way,” he said. “We will train your brain to associate feelings of lust toward men with the most intense pain. That way you will not allow yourself to feel these disgusting thoughts. Think of Pavlov’s dog. It’s a similar principle.”