I sat on the sofa and Tom sat next to me and put his arm around me. I wanted to hide in the shade of his body and stay there until the session was over but Dr. Conley wasn't going to help us unless we both participated. I used Tom's right thigh as an armrest for my left arm and I gripped his knee with my hand. Usually, I would have been terrified with worry over how uncomfortable Dr. Conley felt seeing us sitting close together, but I was sure Tom needed to be with me the same way I needed to be with him so clinging to him didn't seem like a big deal.
Dr. Conley watched us for a few seconds then he began the session with a question. "Is there anything in particular you guys want to talk about?" Neither of us responded. "What about you, Tom? Why are you here today?"
"I'm here to support Sam." Tom's hand rubbed my shoulder.
"Okay but since this is a group session would you be comfortable answering a few questions?"
"Sure."
"Sam recently had an incident at a hospital and he told me you were there. How did you feel when you found him in the bathroom?"
I felt Tom's body tense and I felt him take a deep breath before he tried to answer, "I don't really want to talk about that."
"Because it's too painful?" Dr. Conley prodded. I noticed he was more direct with Tom than he usually was with me and I wondered if it was because he saw Tom as stronger than me and more capable of handling direct questions. I didn't want to be seen as some fragile person who couldn't deal with certain things.
Tom looked at me and I said, "It's okay to tell him. I can handle hearing whatever you say." My last words were directed to Dr. Conley but I don't think he got it.
"Are you sure?" Tom asked.
"Yes."
Tom moved his arm from around me and gently pushed my arm off of him as he moved over and leaned forward. I felt hurt that he didn't want to touch me anymore but I told myself he didn't mean anything by it and I made myself smile even though I wanted to curl up in a ball on the sofa and scratch my legs until they bled. I stared at the back of Tom's head and hoped Dr. Conley wouldn't notice that I was fighting the urge to lose it. Then I thought maybe I was more fragile than cared to admit. A simple movement that was probably perfectly innocent was sending me to the brink of hysteria.
Tom leaned forward even more. "It was the second worst thing I've ever had to see. I didn't understand how Sam could do that especially when he knew about my past." His voice was breaking up. "I saw the blood and all I could think was that I'd lost him just like Isaac. At least with Isaac I didn't know there was something I could do, but with Sam I did everything I could think of and I saw him like that and I knew I had failed again." I watched Tom put his arm up to his face and wipe his eyes.
Dr. Conley was quick to ask, "Who is Isaac?"
"Isaac was my older brother. He um, had a lot in common with Sam. People weren't exactly nice to him. He felt alone and sad and he thought the best way to deal with it was to end his life."
"He committed suicide?"
Tom shook his head. He wiped his eyes again and then he sniffled, sat back and put his arm around me. He pulled me close to him. "I'm not losing this one," he said.
"Do you consider Sam a replacement for Isaac?" Dr. Conley seemed to be asking Tom every hard hitting question he could think of.
"Of course not. I didn't want to kiss Isaac."
Dr. Conley wrote something down. "So the difference between Sam and Isaac is that you loved Isaac like a brother and you love Sam like a lover and like a brother?"
Tom looked at me again and it felt good to have him turn to me first and check in with me before he spoke. He gazed in to my eyes and said, "I love Sam in every way you can love a person." Then he looked at Dr. Conley. "That's why it's hard to think about what happened. How could I move on if I lost Sam?" Tom looked back at me. "He's everything to me that he says I am to him."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that since the day I met him, I wake up in the morning thinking about when I'm going to see him again."
"So you're as attached to him as he is to you?"
He hesitated and then said, "I wouldn't say attached. I think we're two people who enjoy each other's company and who happen to be madly in love with each other even if Sam doesn't fully understand the depths of my love.
"Would you care to elaborate?"
"About what?"
"About what you think Sam doesn't understand."
"I love him and I want to protect him," Tom glanced over at me then quickly turned back to Dr. Conley, "but sometimes it feels like he doesn't want me to really love him."
"Yes I do!" I protested. I thought Tom and I had reached a place in our relationship where we both understood how much we meant to each other but his words claimed something different.
He stared at me for a second. "I don't mean in the `I love you and I want to be with you' kind of way. You want me to love you that way. It's just that you don't want me to love you the way I should. Most of the time you frown or put yourself down when I do something good for you or compliment you. You don't understand how I can love you so much or why, and I want you to stop questioning it. I don't question why you love me. I don't point out that there are guys much better looking than I am who would look better standing next to you. I accept that maybe it's possible for you to see me the way I see you. Maybe you find yourself loving me more and more each day. I can't tell you how good it feels to look at you and know that you love me and that I'm the reason for the smile on your face but sometimes I feel guilty because your smile makes me so happy and I know behind your smile, there's still a place in you that's not smiling. I want all of you to smile at me. I don't know why my love isn't strong enough to light up your life the way you light up mine." His left arm reached for my face and then pushed the hair away and tucked it behind my ear. "I don't want to think about what you did. You know I can't deal with losing you or even the thought of losing you. You mean too much to me."
For a moment, it was just us in the room. "You said you knew I wasn't trying to kill myself."
"I did know, but it doesn't change how I felt when I saw you like that. What if you don't know how to stop hurting yourself? What if one day you accidentally kill yourself? How am I supposed to go on living?"
"I'm not going to kill myself. Not even by accident."
"You can't promise me that. I've been doing research and you could do a lot of things. You could cut too deep on your leg and accidentally cut a major artery or you could hit your head the wrong way and"
I cut him off. "Is that what you're worried about?"
"I'm not worried. I just can't stop thinking about it."
Normally I would have laughed but he was serious. He was obsessing over losing me. Every time he looked at me he must have seen another worse case scenario and wondered how much time we had left before I accidentally ended it all. I wanted to tell him no one ever died from cutting, but I figured he probably knew more than I did. "Don't live in fear of something that's never going to happen. I'm not going to ram my head in to anything any time soon and I'm not going to chop my leg off either."
"No more cutting?" he asked.
I looked at Dr. Conley. I knew better than to make a promise I couldn't keep, but I wanted Tom back, so I did exactly that, "No more cutting."
"And no more hurting yourself in any way?"
"No cutting, no burning, no starving, no making myself sick, no more hurting myself. I won't even rip off my hangnails." I lied with an ease that frightened me. I couldn't promise I was done, especially not when thoughts of hurting myself still crept in to my mind. I was telling Tom what I believed he needed to hear in order to get over the shock of seeing me with blood dripping down my face. I gave him a false sense of security and a false assurance that I wasn't going to do the very thing I was fantasizing about doing. If he wasn't sitting next to me, I probably would have dug my nails in to my leg, but I knew Tom would notice even if Dr. Conley didn't, so I kept eye contact with Tom for a few minutes and then I gave myself a mental pat on the back because Tom was giving me one of his old looks.
Tom pulled me in to a hug, which was awkward because of our positions. He whispered in my ear, "I know you can't promise all that and mean it right now, but thanks for saying. Maybe one day it'll be true."
He let go of me and sat back. I was quiet while I figured out what to say and how to say it. I was still thinking when I blurted out the one thing that was bothering me the most, "You didn't try to feed me today." I found Tom's eyes and I stared in to them as I said it again, "You didn't try to feed me. Why didn't you try to feed me?"
"I figured Charlie was taking over the food patrol. Besides your face looks fuller so I can tell you've been eating." He said fuller' I heard fatter' and I forced myself to remember that Tom would never call me fat. He thought I was too sensitive to even use the word in a joking way, so he couldn't have meant fatter when he said fuller, but he could have meant plump. "When I saw you this morning, you looked more handsome than I remembered. Your clothes seemed to fit you better and they weren't black for change. You looked normal and healthy and happy when you smiled at me and I wanted to keep you that way. I didn't think bugging you about food was the right approach."
"I miss that approach." I didn't tell him that I always considered his comments as coded references to his love for me and that him not caring what I ate was as good as him saying he no longer loved me.
"Well I promise to do it tomorrow." He kissed me on my lips then I think he remembered we weren't alone because he slowly turned to Dr. Conley and waited for his reaction. Dr. Conley looked at Tom then me then Tom again. He sat there looking at us and we sat there looking at him. We were waiting for him to say something but he didn't say anything. He watched us watching him. Tom stopped hugging me and we settled in to our original positions with me nestled close beside him and him with his arm around me. "What should we talk about now?"
Dr. Conley glanced at me then asked Tom, "Is there something else you want to talk about?" Tom shrugged his shoulders. "What about you Sam? Tom has had his turn, is there something on your mind?"
"No." I wanted to talk about Charlie, but I didn't want to do real therapy in front of Tom. Discussing our relationship had tested my limits enough for one day and I wouldn't have done it but I feared I would end up back in the psych ward if I let Tom treat me differently. In a sense, I didn't want to expose any of myself to Tom, but if I had to, I wanted it to be a part of me he'd already seen. Talking about our relationship had left me feeling newly exposed and I wasn't ready to be completely naked in front of him. Tom didn't need to listen to me trying to work through my psychological problems or trying to make sense of my changing family dynamics.
The session and the silence went on for about fifteen minutes and then Dr. Conley put his pen down and closed his notebook. "Well that will be it for today. Tom, would you please wait for Sam outside?"
"Sure." Tom smiled at me before he left the room and I could see he was feeling better.
Dr. Conley took a deep breath then asked, "Did you get your questions answered?"
"Yes. Thank you."
"You're welcome. You know the two of you will need more than one session, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Okay. I didn't want there to be a misunderstanding about what happened here." He paused. "You started something good and I'm glad to see you're making progress."
"Thank you. I even have a friend other than Tom."
"You do?" He seemed happy for me.
"Yeah, his name is Matt. He was my roommate in the hospital and now he goes to my school." Dr. Conley wasn't smiling anymore. "His foster mother brought me here and they're both sitting in the waiting room. I know he's one of your patients, if that's what you're worried about."
"It's not that. I just find it interesting the two of you gravitated towards one another." He picked up his pen and opened his notebook. "How are your medications working?"
"Better than I thought they would. I felt alright most of the day."
"Great! We'll leave it at that dosage then and I'll see you Friday."
"Okay."
I opened the door and Tom was leaning against the wall, waiting for me. He pulled me in to his arms and kissed me on my cheek. "Are we better now?"
I laughed. "Therapy doesn't work that way. It takes more than one session to be better. I've been going for years and I'm still not fixed."
"Don't talk like that."
"I didn't mean it the way it sounded. I wasn't trying to put myself down. I was trying to make a joke. It just didn't come out right."
"Fine. I'll let you slide this time, but no more jokes like that. At least not for a while."
He squeezed me then released me and we went out to the waiting room. Tom tried to convince Mrs. Washington to let him drive me home but she told him she couldn't because my mother expected her to bring me since I was in her care. Tom was not happy at all. He almost begged her to change her mind. I was surprised when she continued to say `no' even after he gave her his best wounded puppy face. I never could have said no to that face but she seemed immune to the effects of the look. He finally gave up and settled for walking me to her car. We held hands as we walked to the car and he opened my door for me and kissed me on my forehead. He made sure I was in the car and comfortable with my seatbelt on then he closed the door and waved to me before he walked towards his car.
Matt teased me about my Prince Charming all the way to my home. I mostly smiled and blushed and laughed. Mrs. Washington enjoyed a few laughs as well and told me I was lucky to have a boyfriend who was such a gentleman. I had a few moments where I felt like I didn't deserve Tom but I countered those moments with his words. Tom thought I deserved him. He thought he was lucky to have me. He didn't know why I loved him but he knew he was happier because I did and I felt the same way when it came to him. I didn't know why he loved me, or why he was willing to put up with my mental problems, but I was happier because he did and I was determined to make my life better so I could be someone who deserved his love.
Mrs. Washington insisted on coming inside to meet my parents. She ended up meeting the entire family and being grilled by my mother about what I did. I was surprised my mother cared, then I remembered again that her concern was not for me, but for her reputation because my behavior was a reflection of her. Matt took a seat next to Charlie and practically sat on top of him. Eventually Matt was sitting in Charlie's lap and Matt was spilling the beans about Tom being at my appointment. I winced and Charlie clinched his teeth and gave me a look to let me know we would be talking about that when Matt left.
I wasn't very talkative. I listened to the two conversations going on around me and then I thought about Tom and wondered if I could sneak off and call him since everyone was distracted. I stood and walked towards the kitchen, but Charlie stopped me and asked questions about where I was going and why I was going in the kitchen. He picked Matt up and followed me. I was forced to actually go to the kitchen. I went to the refrigerator and took out some juice. I got two big cups for Matt and Charlie and a small cup or myself. Matt and Charlie were hungry so Charlie made them some ham and cheese sandwiches. The sandwiches looked good and I imagined they were tasty but it was too late for me to eat something. Charlie had already messed up my exercise routine and I was eating more during the day so I definitely didn't need any evening snacks to add on more calories and eventually more pounds. I could see myself getting fatter by the minute, but Dr. Conley and the pills were helping me cope with the weight and Charlie's watchful eye was making sure I didn't do anything to reverse my weight gain.
Charlie had removed my scale from my room and hidden it somewhere. He took it out and weighed me twice after I came home. He did it the way they did when I was being treated for my anorexia. He made me face away from the scale and he didn't tell me what it said. He didn't have to though. I could look in the mirror and see I was getting fat again, but I didn't have the time or even the real drive to do anything about it. The old me would have snuck in mini workouts while Charlie was sleeping, but the new me was more focused on getting better or at least appearing to be better. I was doing everything for Tom. Tom equated a heavier me with a healthier me and I knew a healthier me would make Tom happy. I wondered how fat I would have to get before Tom started thinking I was too fat.
Charlie offered me half of his sandwich and I refused. He put the sandwich on a plate and handed it to me. "Eat."
I took the plate and sat it on the table. "I ate already."
Charlie looked at Matt. "He ate a cookie like three hours ago," Matt reported.
Charlie looked at me. "So you haven't eaten. At least take a bite. You used to love ham and cheese sandwiches." Charlie was right about my former love of ham and cheese sandwiches and somewhere inside of me a knight was stabbing at the tiny voice in my head and telling it that it was wrong.
I had to think fast. "I don't want to take your food. What are you going to eat? You'll still be hungry."
"I'm always hungry plus I already ate dinner but if it makes you feel better," he grabbed a bag of chips out of the cupboard and filled the other half of his plate with regular potato chips, "I'll eat this too."
"But"
"Sam just take a bite. You need to eat if you want to gain some weight."
"I've gained weight."
"You've gained five pounds. That doesn't count. I can gain five pounds in one meal."
"I've gained five pounds?"
"You need to gain a few more pounds if you want to be a healthy weight."
"How much more? Am I not fat enough yet?"
"Fat?" Matt asked. He started laughing. "I think one of my thighs weighs more than you do. Oh! Fat!" He looked me up and down. "Next you'll be telling me you're ugly!" Matt took a bite of his sandwich. "You know you're not ugly, don't you?"
I didn't know that. I had heard it from him and from Tom and from random girls when I dressed like a normal boy, but I didn't know it as something true. I thought they had special glasses on when it came to me. They acted like I was good looking but I wasn't, at least I didn't think I was. I was fat and ugly yet they wanted to convince me otherwise. They wanted me to see something that I couldn't see, though I desperately wanted to see it. I would have loved to look in the mirror and see what they claimed they saw when they looked at me. Seeing what they saw would be a moment I'd kill to have; just one moment where I was okay with being me.
Charlie said I had gained five pounds but when I looked in the mirror I felt as if I had gained thirty. I didn't want to talk about me anymore, so I grabbed the sandwich and took a bite, hoping that would move the conversation to something else. My plan worked. Charlie started talking about how much I loved sandwiches when I was younger and how I used to make sandwiches for everyone all day long. He said I hadn't made him a sandwich since I started my whole weight obsession and he really missed my triple decker three meat club sandwich. I smiled because I remembered the sandwich well. I would fry some bacon and then warm some slices of turkey breast, slices of ham and some slices of bologna while I toasted three slices of bread and put butter on them when they were done. I'd put mayo on one slice of toast and then put a couple of slices of each sandwich meat, then a layer of Swiss cheese and some lettuce then I'd put spicy mustard on one side of a slice of toast and smash it down on the meat. Next, I put my secret ingredient, a thin layer of grape jelly, on the other side of the slice of toast and put the rest of the meat on it, followed by a layer of American cheese, the bacon, some lettuce, a few tomato slices and the last slice of toast with mayo on it. I'd smash the sandwich down one last time and cut it in half then I'd fix two plates. Each plate had a half a sandwich, a spear pickle and a lot of plain potato chips. When everything was done, I'd call Charlie and give him his plate. Charlie would take his plate and retreat to wherever he came from. We didn't talk much back then and I never allowed him in the kitchen when I was making sandwiches, but I always made a sandwich for him or gave him half of my sandwich if it was a triple decker.
"Do you remember that sandwich?" Charlie asked.
"Yes. I can't believe you remember it though."
"Are you kidding? I loved your sandwiches and you always fixed me one. It was strange because you wouldn't talk to me, but you'd fix me a sandwich and you'd call me to come get it. As hard as I try, I can't seem to make that sandwich the way you made it. What was your secret?"
"I can't tell you that."
"Come on, we're older now, you can tell me. Maybe I can make myself one and finally get it right. Every time I try to make one, there's always something missing. I can't get them to taste the way yours tasted."
"You really liked the sandwich that much?"
"Yeah. I'd pay you to make me one of those."
"You would?"
"Yeah."
I didn't understand why he hadn't figured out the secret ingredient. "You know all you had to do was take the sandwich apart when I gave it to you and look at the ingredients. The secret ingredient would have been obvious."
He put his hand on his chest. "You wanted me to ruin my sandwich just to find out what I was eating? That sandwich was too good to be messed over like that."
I laughed and took another bite of my ham and cheese sandwich. "Maybe I'll make you another one some day."
"That would be nice," he said.
"So you two use to get along?" Matt asked.
"Sort of," Charlie said. "I use to talk to him, but he never really wanted to talk to me. I remember I tried to sit with him in the kitchen once and he got all upset and threatened not to make me any more sandwiches if I stayed."
I didn't remember ever doing that. I just remembered being alone in the kitchen a lot of the time and then meeting Tom and staying out of the kitchen as much as possible.
"So you wanted sandwiches more than you wanted to talk to me?" The words came out hurt sounding and that was not my intention. Just like my joke with Tom, it seemed my attempt at humor had gone awry. I forced a laugh but Matt looked uncomfortable and Charlie looked somewhat confused and somewhat hurt.
"You meant more to me than sandwiches, but for a long time sandwiches were all we had in common and then Tom came along and you stopped making sandwiches for me and you hardly had anything to say to me but you'd talk on the phone for hours with Tom and spend as much time at his house as Mom and Dad would allow. It was clear that you didn't want me as your brother, so I backed off."
I took another bite of my sandwich and a sip of my juice. Charlie was contorting the truth again. I wanted to correct him but I didn't want to talk about that topic either so I let his version of the truth stand even though he was wrong. I wanted Charlie as a brother but he never thought I was good enough to be his brother. He never hung out with me. He was always busy with his friends and I wasn't one of them.
"Alright, you two are getting too serious, let's talk about something else, like when am I going to get to taste this triple decker sandwich so I can see if it's as good as Charlie seems to think it is?"
"I don't know."
"How about tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow?"
"I could come here after school."
"I don't know if we have all the ingredients."
"We can stop by the store on the way home," Charlie said.
"Okay, I'll make the sandwich tomorrow."
"I want my own sandwich. Just for me," Charlie told me.
"Me too," Matt said, "I eat like a pig, not a dainty woman like you."
"Dainty woman?"
"You've taken like three bites of your sandwich while I've eaten a whole sandwich and Charlie has wiped out half a sandwich and a whole bag of chips."
"I eat slowly."
"You're trying not to eat, but I know the games." Matt turned to Charlie. "Don't fall for his tricks."
"I won't. I plan on sitting here until he finishes eating."
"I'm done." I stated.
Charlie looked at my plate and then looked at me. "No you're not."
"You just asked me to take one bite but I took more than that." I pushed the plate across the table. "You can have the rest if you want it."
He pushed the plate back. "I want you to eat it. I fixed ham and cheese because of you."
We had a standoff for a few minutes and I finally broke and took another bite of the sandwich. I was sure Charlie would make me stay in the kitchen until I was done and I had better things to do with my evening then sit across the table from him. I let him win yet another battle but I was still hopeful I would win the war. I was going to spend more time with Tom and Charlie was going to let it happen.
"Why did you hit Tom today?" I asked while Tom was fresh on my mind.
"It's a long story. Basically, he was being aggressive and I calmed him down."
"By hitting him?"
"No, by bringing him down a few notches. It's time he realized you're my brother first and his boyfriend second."
"Aww, Charlie's a little jealous," Matt teased.
Charlie smiled. "I'm not jealous. I don't mean it like that. I mean friends come and go but we'll always be brothers. That doesn't change."
I ate my sandwich while Charlie explained to Matt how I changed after I met Tom. My father came in the kitchen and told us Mrs. Washington was ready to leave. Matt kissed Charlie on his cheek and I caught my father make a face but he didn't say anything. I wondered what my father would say if he knew about what was going on with Tom or if he saw Tom kiss me on my lips.
Mrs. Washington gave me a hug goodbye and Matt slapped my shoulder and said, "See you tomorrow Buddy."
I went to my room with Charlie on my heels. He closed the door and asked, "Now what's this about Tom going to your appointment with you?"
Copyright Lustyville 2008
Please send comments to lustyville@yahoo.com and check out more of this story and my other stories at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lustyville and my website at www.lustyville.com