Chapter Fred
Fred
“My father sent me to a private clinic on Long Island,” Dane said.
“You think such places can’t exist. I mean, when you read about sadistic doctors in books or watch medical thrillers.
When Law & Order SVU episodes show medical abuse based on real-life accounts…
You wonder, How can this happen? Doesn’t anyone working there know?
See? Do something? Aren’t people supposed to report these doctors?
Aren’t there rules? Laws? Who’s in charge? How does this happen?
“It happens. The medical world has an underbelly and the health insurance field has an underworld. My father and Dr. Porto were running all kinds of schemes to game the Medicaid system, most of them in PHS’s mental health facilities.
Like a place in Dutchess County that was falsely represented as a residential facility for Medicaid-enrolled children.
Really it was a juvenile detention center with no medical doctor or licensed psychiatrist on site.
That’s just one of many appetite-ruining things you can research for yourself. ”
“Noted,” Liko said, his stomach in a knot.
“Dr. Porto ran a private clinic on Long Island to ‘treat’ intersex children.” Dane made air-quotes around treat. Then his hands dropped into his lap and he was quiet a long moment.
“I want to make this part of the story as concise as possible,” he finally said.
“You only tell me what you can,” Liko said. “You want to write it down and have me read it, that’s fine too.”
“Maybe some interpretive dance,” Dane said absently.
Another long beat. Liko held perfectly still.
“It was like… You know how some families send their gay children to conversion therapy? This was conversion therapy for intersex kids, but with a lot of drugs and a lot of non-elective surgery. Mostly cis boys who had experienced botched circumcisions, and it was decided they’d be better off living as girls.
They could be conditioned to be girls. Porto would do surgery, start pumping them full of hormones, and… ”
A muscle flickered in his jaw. His hands opened wide, then curled soft on his knees again.
“So I end up in this place and… You gotta understand. All my life, nobody ever explains what’s going on.
I’m fourteen years old and I’ve never heard the word intersex.
Or chimerism. Cancer is what I hear. I’ve been brainwashed into believing I’m sick.
Conditioned to crave approval and fear displeasing authority.
I’m not a rebel. I’m a kid in a private clinic, thinking all this is happening because I have cancer.
I have no agency. No information. No honesty.
No other family members to appeal to. The one sister I can barely remember ran away years ago.
My mother is in jail. I don’t know how to reach any of the staff at my house.
Or any of the teachers I like. I have no one who can help me.
The only way I’m getting out of here is if I go under the knife.
The only way my father will bring me home is if I be what he wants me to be. So I did.”
Liko felt legitimately sick now. “Dane, my man, this is a lot.”
“I know. I appreciate you hanging in to listen. You have no idea how much.”
“I’m staying. I’m in. But I think I need a drink.”
“Whatever you’re having, bring me one.”
The gin was kicked, so Liko mixed two vodka tonics and brought them over. “You all right? Don’t wait for me to tap out if it’s too much.”
“I’m okay,” Dane said, taking a long swallow.
“It’s actually worse if I leave off in the middle of this part.
I have to see it through the storm, bring the story back into harbor, so to speak.
Anyway. I woke up from the surgery and my chest is all bandaged up, which I expected.
But I also have this long incision on my stomach.
Porto tells me he took out a cancerous tumor, which was the thing giving me all the pain.
Which, let the record state, was the one time he was minimally honest with me because it was the ovary he took out.
But then the chest bandages came off and I was… ”
Dane looked over, mouth slightly agape. “To this day, I can’t find a good word for how I felt. The labels I use now are retroactive. The kneejerk reaction was I’d been sterilized. Which doesn’t apply at all but the feeling of it was real. Sterilized. Neutered. Dehumanized. Mutilated. Ruined.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Porto took off my breasts and left nothing. Just erased my chest entirely.” He traced remembered lines on his T-shirt. “Two big ugly scars. They weren’t even symmetrical. One went up and down this way, the other kind of skewed this way. The stitches were something out of Frankenstein.”
“Porto didn’t… He didn’t do any reconstruction?”
Dane shook his head. “It looked, I shit you not, as if someone had taken a kitchen knife and sliced my chest off. You can analyze it however you want, but I think my father wanted revenge for me stabbing him. A constant reminder of what I did to him and if I wanted reconstruction to look like a boy, I had to be a good boy.”
“Oh my God.”
Dane gave a little laugh. “Sidebar. While I do have a massive praise kink, please don’t ever call me good boy in bed. I will straight up puke if I hear it in that context. It’ll kill the mood.”
“Jesus, Dane, what the fuck…”
“Anyway. Now that my breasts were gone, I thought Diane would be gone forever, too. I really thought they’d cut her out of me.
It’s when I learned she was my inner monologue.
I don’t know if you pay attention to the voice in your head that narrates you through life, and whether you notice if it’s your voice, a male voice.
But mine is female. It always has been. Diane lived in my head, just behind my blue eye.
She lived in the things my father couldn’t change.
And the trick to her staying with me was to pretend she’d gone.
Pretend I was cured. Pretend I was a boy and only a boy, and had no desire to be effeminate in any way. ”
“And they let you out?”
“Not right away. I had to be a good boy, start testosterone therapy and go through a lot of Porto’s conditioning bullshit. He was a sick nurture versus nature fuck…” Dane downed the last of his drink and waggled the glass in the air. “I’m getting another because this part is really unpleasant.”
Liko wasn’t sure he could take much more. He took a leak and stepped onto the porch for a few deep breaths. He prayed they were past the eye of the storm and heading out the other side. Prayed he could be a gentle harbor for the ship. Then he went back in.
“So,” Dane said. “All us kids in the clinic… They made us read or watch porn, then simulate sex with each other. We were paired off. Like partners. My partner was a cis boy being forced to live as a female. We’d be brought in a room.
Porto would make us take our clothes off and lie down together.
I had to get on top and thrust. The other boy had to take the submissive role.
Porto would make him get on all fours. I’d have to kneel behind and… You get the idea.”
“What if you refused?”
“Some parents signed a release form saying physical force could be used. It wasn’t my father’s weightlifting belt, but it was a leather...thing. Strap. It looked kind of Victorian.”
Liko drained a third of his drink. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to… I’m so fucking sorry, man.”
Dane was quiet a long time, one hand on his leg opening and closing into a fist. “That boy,” he finally said.
“The boy I had to pretend to fuck, while pretending he was a girl... Hold on, I can’t tell the story this way anymore.
I mean, I’m gonna use they/them from now on, because it’s what they prefer.
” He trailed off again, his expression twitching. Almost wincing.
“Take your time,” Liko murmured.
“They… Of all the shit I had to work out in therapy, what happened with them is the most haunting and lingering, the most unforgettable, the most resistant to resolution. Even when I was forgiven to my face, multiple times, it just doesn’t want to settle in.
I still feel responsible and guilty. Every time I see them, I have to bite my tongue to keep from apologizing again. ”
“You’re in touch?”
Dane nodded. “It’s Fred.”
“Oh shit.”
“One of my first counseling sessions, when the therapist listened to everything and said, quietly and simply, You and Fred were sexually abused in that clinic, I lost my mind. I erupted, completely enraged. Insisting no, no, I was the abuser. I sexually assaulted Fred, I practically raped him. I was a coward. Weak. I didn’t stand up to Porto, didn’t fight.
I should’ve let Porto beat me rather than keep doing it, you don’t understand…
” Dane sighed, deflating into the chair cushions.
“You were fourteen,” Liko said softly. A vision of Kyle at fourteen flickered at the edge of his mind, all big eyes and braces and gangly limbs. He squeezed his eyes shut against it.
“It took a really long time to believe I was a victim, too,” Dane was saying.
“You were.”
Dane glanced over. “Hey, no offense, but I need your word Fred’s part in the story doesn’t leave this room.”
“None taken,” Liko said. “And it won’t.”
“I think I’ll stop here. I’m tired.”
“You back in harbor?”
“Yeah.” He reached and laid a hand on Liko’s knee, jogging his leg back and forth a little. “Thanks again.”
“For?”
“The trust.” He leaned and kissed Liko’s cheek quick. Then stayed leaning, his face against Liko’s shoulder. Liko put a hand on Dane’s neck and they held still as the story’s ship rocked and bumped, looking for a gentle place to lay its head.