Page 81 of Shades of Henry
Lance fought the temptation to roll his eyes. “Why? You used to seeing a lot of train wrecks in porn?”
Stevenson’s homely features, his sagging jowls and eyes surrounded by wrinkles, became sober almost immediately.
“Yes,” he said. “Some fairly well-adjusted guys, one guy who told me, ‘Hey, I’m so over therapy but you seem nice,’ and a bunch of other guys who came to me with eating disorders and then quit porn and came back and said, ‘You know, it’s weird, I can eat a whole cheeseburger now. Go figure.’ But yeah. Maybe it’s because your boss has decent health insurance so I catch a lot of you before you go nuclear. But since I sort of got known for treating you guys, it’s been….”
“Interesting?” Lance supplied, arching his eyebrows, as if he was talking to a colleague.
“Hard,” Stevenson said instead. “Because you’re all young, you’re all bright, and you’re all beautiful. And getting you to see that is so difficult.” His eyes wandered someplace far away. “It’s worth it,” he said after a moment. “But not easy.”
Lance grunted. “Tell me about it.”
Stevenson cocked his head. “No, son, that’s your job.”
Lance swallowed. “Look, my eating disorder is… pretty standard. I was a roly-poly kid, and I got tired of hearing about it, so I leaned up. Then I took this job where you can see a tic-tac against my stomach if I eat it close enough to a scene, and I got pretty good at tossing my cookies. I’m… I need a calorie diary and a nutritionist and, well, basically to quit porn and to settle down and make my life about not tossing my cookies. Am I right?”
“Wow. It’s like you’re a medical professional or something.”
Lance rolled his eyes, and in response, the doctor pulled out a bag of… knitting?
“In this heat? Are you kidding me?” Lance could feel the stickiness from outside still oozing on his skin.
“It helps me not strangle cocky young assholes who think they know my job,” Stevenson said irritably. “Now tell me some more about how you’ve got your eating disorder licked.”
Lance let out a breath and closed his eyes. “You’re right. I don’t. I really don’t. I just….” He laced his fingers behind his neck and decided to talk about what was really bothering him.
“My boyfriend got out of an eleven-year abusive relationship,” Lance said, becausethatwas the thing that had been chewing on his heart on the way over. Bulimia, yeah, yeah—Lance was functional, but Henry’s denial scared him. “The guy had him over a barrel too. Either they keep fucking in the closet, or the asshole would wreck his military career and out him to his family.”
Stevenson put his knitting down. “This is new.”
“Yeah.” That was aces. Lance loved it when he was a medical anomaly. “Well, my guy said stop, and the asshole said go—and he did exactly what he wanted and kept fucking going.” Stevenson sucked in a breath, and Lance plowed on. “And my guy won’t even say the fucking word. He took a dishonorable discharge to get away from his brother-in-law—yeah, you heard me—and he’s been getting his shit together for the last couple of months. And he seems to be doing good. Great. Like… like he was just waiting to be free to see what an awesome human being he could be. Me and him, we watch over this group of porn kids—”
“My last patient?” Stevenson said, and Lance nodded. “He mentioned you both. Seems to think of you like parents.”
“Right?” Lance said, standing up so he could pace. “Like, neither of us want to just leave them alone—they… they seem to need some steadying, you know?”
“I am stunned,” Stevenson said.
“You’re a real sarcastic asshole, anybody tell you that?”
“It only comes out in a safe place.” Stevenson picked up his knitting again. “It’s my reward for dealing with people who will jump out of their skin if I breathe in too hard.”
Lance lifted a shoulder. “That’s fair.” He exhaled. “So yeah. When I leave here, I want the calorie diary, the newest treatment plan, all the mental games I have to play in my own head to get over my fucking self so I can eat a sandwich and not puke. I amdownfor that shit. But right now, before I even concentrate on that, before I can eventhinkabout that, I need to know two things.”
“Shoot.”
Lance looked over at him. He was knitting, but he was also gazing at Lance thoughtfully, so Lance thought he’d run with it.
“The first is, are we doing these kids a favor, hanging around, trying to find a way to not bail on them? Are we giving them false hope or screwing with their self-sufficiency? My heart says no—myheartsays they need us. But we all have shit we carry from our upbringing. My parents were like, ‘Hey, you are a truly self-sufficient being in your twenties, so if you want to continue contact, you need to stop being gay.’”
Stevenson let out a pained grunt. “Motherpusbucket.”
Lance’s eyes went wide. “Excuse me?”
“Sometimes the wrong people reallydoend up in therapy. I’m sorry. I’ve just… I hear that story alot,and I am never ever happy about it, and I will never get over it, either.”
A teeny corner of Lance’s soul began to warm up a little. “So does that mean I don’t have to?” he asked gruffly. “Me and my boyfriend—it’s okay if that still hurts?”
“Yeah, Lance. You had a support system for much of your life, and it disappeared. It’s okay if that hurts for a good long time.”
