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Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith and Family. Garrard Conley
Читать онлайн.Название Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith and Family
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780008276997
Автор произведения Garrard Conley
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство HarperCollins
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.
It was seven o’clock in the morning, but the air-conditioning was already at full blast in the Hampton Inn lounge. According to my schedule, I had two hours to shower, dress, eat, and travel to the facility, but my mother and I were drawing out the minutes, dragging our forks lazily through the scattered mess of cold eggs on our plates, my hair dripping dry, the varnished wood of the table machine-pressed, its edges sharp against my forearms. The world that morning seemed harder, as if overnight someone had removed a thin translucent film from the atmosphere, a soft focus I had taken for granted when my mother and I used to come to Memphis for weekends of shopping and movie binging, the city alive and glowing then, pulsing beneath our shoes. Two full days at Love in Action, and the city had already lost its shine, the back-and-forth trips between the Hampton Inn & Suites and the facility revealing only a gray stretch of interstate, its traffic beaming hot in the sunlight, each of its oversize suburban houses yawning with their water-timed green tongues.
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