JOEY
“LET’S TALK ABOUT INTIMACY.”
“Let’s not.”
“I want you to go back to the beginning,” my psychiatrist said calmly. “Back to your earliest memories.”
“Intimacy.” I glared across the room at her, feeling beyond irritated. The shit this woman asked me. It was beyond the pale. “The fuck has intimacy got to do with anything?”
“A great deal,” she replied, offering me a reassuring smile. “Let’s start off with your earliest memory of being held.”
“Sexually?”
“Let’s start off with emotionally,” she instructed. “Do you remember a time in your life when your parents held you?”
“My parents.”
She nodded. “Your mother, for instance.”
I stiffened. “This is fucked up.”
“Just go with it,” she coaxed. “Have I led you astray yet?”
“No,” I reluctantly had to admit, while I tried to think back to when I was a kid. “I remember my father hugging me.”
“Let’s evaluate on that, shall we?”
“As in?”
“As in tell me about that memory.”
“I think I was about five or six?” I offered, struggling to hold the memory in place. “It was before we went into care for those six months. And I’d scored the winning goal in a match.”
“A hurling match?”
I nodded. “He was so fucking excited about it, that he picked me up and threw me in the air.” I rubbed my jaw and blew out a pained breath at the memory. “Took me to the shop afterwards and bought me a pound’s worth of penny jellies.” Frowning, I said, “I remember thinking ‘if I can keep winning, it’ll keep him happy, and he’ll stop hitting my mother’.” Shrugging, I added, “So, I kept winning.”
“Did it work?”
I gave her a hard look. “What do you think?”
“That’s very interesting.”
“How’d you figure?”
“Because your mind didn’t automatically return to your mother.”
“Because I don’t remember her hugging me.”
“That’s a heartbreaking statement to make, Joey,” she surmised, scribbling away on her clipboard.”
“She was good to Shannon,” I offered, feeling that familiar urge to defend her, even from beyond the grave. “The boys, too.”
“But not you.”
I shrugged. “We had a different kind of relationship.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I don’t think she looked on me like a son,” I admitted gruffly. “More like a teammate.”
“A teammate.”
I nodded.
The doctor was quiet for a long moment before changing it up by saying, “Tell me about the first time you had sex.”
“Why?” I glared at her. “Are you looking for tips?”
“How old were you?”
“I don’t know. I was in third year at the time.” Frowning, I scratched my jaw and thought back. “I think it was a couple of months before my fifteenth birthday.”
“You think?”
I shrugged in response.
“That’s very young.”
Again, I shrugged.
“How did it make you feel?”
“Not good.”
“Because you weren’t ready?”
“Because I wasn’t in control.”
Her brows furrowed. “Tell me about the girl.”
“She was just a girl from school.” Leaning back in my chair, I pushed my hair off my face, and tried to focus on the memory. “We’d been scoring on and off —”
“Scoring?” she interjected. “I’m sorry, Joey, but I’m not familiar with the slang.”
“Kissing,” I explained. “It means kissing.” I paused for a moment before adding, “Shifting means kissing, too.”
“So, you and this girl were shifting.”
I nodded. “If we were both at the same party or disco, then nine times out of ten, we’d end up scoring with each other.”
“Did you have feelings for this girl?”
“No,” I admitted truthfully. “I mean, I didn’t dislike her or anything like that. She was a nice girl. We were friendly enough, but I didn’t have any real feelings for her. Not like…” I shook my head again. “She was just…there.”
“Aoife,” she filled in knowingly. “Not like the feelings you had for Aoife?”
“Have for Aoife,” I corrected, and then shifted in discomfort. “We were just friends back then. She had a fella. I told you this before.”
“Ah, yes,” she mused, flicking through her notes. “Paul the prick, if I recall correctly.”
I snorted. “Yeah.”
“Tell me about that night,” she instructed. “About the lead up.”
“You’re asking me to remember something that happened a million years ago.”
“Three and a half years ago, not a million,” she replied calmly.
“Three and a half,” I repeated with a chuckle.
“This is funny?”
“No, it’s just…” Shaking my head, I smirked to myself as memories of past conversations flashed through my mind. “It’s just something Aoife would say a lot.”
“When?”
“When asked about how long she was with her ex.”
Dr. B smiled before turning her attention back to her creepy quest. “The night you lost your virginity. Tell me about the lead up.”
“Jesus, this is awkward.”
“Humor me.”
“It was Halloween night,” I admitted. “The night Sean was born.”
“2001?”
“Yeah.”
“Please continue.”
“There was this underage disco being held in town, and I went with a few of the lads,” I told her, thinking back. “I had a run in with Paul the prick. He was getting handsy with Aoife at the time.”
“And that triggered you?”
“It did more than trigger me.”
“Keep going.”
“I fucked off with a few of my friends, did a line of coke – actually, I did a lot of lines.”
“All cocaine?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I had a thing for oxy at the time.”
“The pills.”
“Yeah, but I preferred to crush and snort them.”
“For a faster, more intense release.”
I nodded, shifting around in my seat, as the familiar hunger roared to life inside of me. “Anyway, I was off my head, and I remember her taking me around the side of the building.”
“Aoife?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Danielle.”
“And what happened next, Joey?”
“I was just…” I frowned, trying to piece it all together again. “I was kissing her, and then she was unzipping me, and had her hands on me.”
“On your penis.”
“I didn’t mind,” I replied with a nod. “I mean, it was nice. It felt nice. It was just… more of a surprise than anything.”
“Because she was touching you intimately?”
“Because I was off my head at the time,” I admitted before adding, “Because I wasn’t even seeing her in my mind.”
“Who were you seeing?”
“Aoife.”
She jotted something down on paper before saying, “Keep going, Joey.”
“She had me pinned to the wall, and I remember trying to lift my hands up to calm everything down, but I just… I couldn’t move them. And then, she was, ah, then I was sitting on the ground, with a condom on my dick, and I was inside her.”
“You were inside her.” The doctor frowned. “Would it be more fitting to say that she was on you?”
I shrugged in response. “It was just… a very confusing fucking night.”
“Because you didn’t consent.”
“I was hard.”
“Having an erection is a perfectly human reaction to stimulation.”
“Pretty sure I came, too.”
“Again, ejaculation is the body’s response to stimulation.”
“Yeah, well.” I threw my hands up and laughed. “I went back and willingly fucked her a least a dozen more times over the years, so it mustn’t have been that bad.”
The doctor didn’t laugh. “But you weren’t willing that night. And even if you were, you were intoxicated and incapable of giving consent.”
“Can we not?” I said, tone warning. “I’ve already heard this spiel from Shannon, and I’m not buying in, okay? I’m not a victim. I wasn’t fucking raped. I got high and I fucked around. It happens.”
“Are you open to acknowledging the possibility that you were taken advantage of?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not a victim.”
“Can I suggest something?”
“Go for it.”
“If your sister came to you with the same scenario, some random boy from her class at school had taken her virginity in the same way yours was taken, how would you react?”
I stiffened. “Don’t.”
“How would you feel about that, Joey?”
“Murderous.”
“Because?”
“Because it wouldn’t be right, dammit!”
“But it’s okay that it happened to you because you’re a male?”
I opened my mouth to answer her, but nothing came out.
Fuck.
“I…” Shaking my head, I hissed out a growl. “I see what you’re doing here, doc, and it won’t work.”
“You have been let down and taken advantage of in terrible ways,” she continued. “I understand why you refuse to consider yourself a victim, and whether I agree or not, I respect your narrative, but I need you to accept that what happened to you was not acceptable and a serious breach of trust and consent.”
