Inventory of a Haunted House, No. 4
Queer Desire
Are you brave enough to spend the night in a haunted asylum? This is the question at the end of an article on the Randolph County Infirmary Asylum, an abandoned asylum in Indiana, that has now become a Halloween tourist destination. The tone of the piece is fear. Fear of the people who were hospitalized, many of whom may have died there. Such tours are not meant to bring understanding to how institutions mistreated patients with mental illness. Most people on these tours don’t know that homosexuality was considered a diagnosable mental illness until 1973. As Kai Cheng Thom says in the forward to Headcase: LGBTQ Writers and Artists on Mental Health and Wellness, “For all our words, we still struggle to speak of it: shame, the legacy of over a century of pathologization, stigma and psychiatric abuses, still clenches its bony hand around our throats.”
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) categorized repression of homosexuality or as it was officially called sexual orientation disturbance, as a mental disorder from 1973 to 1987. I was eleven years old in 1987. Shame had already taken root. Shame about my “husky” body. Shame that at school dances I wanted to slow dance with another boy. I wanted to hold his hand and ask him to go steady. This fantasy never became a reality. I cataloged my queerness with the other secrets I stored away.
Repression
Don’t tell anyone. An ex-boyfriend gave me this advice after my major depression, general anxiety disorder, and PTSD diagnosis. He said revealing them would negatively impact my writing career. People would see me as broken, unreliable, incapable of handling stress. The not so hidden message was that the shame and stigma surrounding mental illness in our culture would hinder opportunities because people wouldn’t think I could deliver on them.
Deadly Hugs
My father was in my bed, a twin bed that felt tiny. He strangled his arms around me as he thrusted his pelvis against my butt. There was the hardness of his penis against the softness of my pajamas. I’d been asleep when he started. I tried to wiggle towards the wall my bed rested against, it felt so close and yet I couldn’t reach it, couldn’t escape my father’s strength. My mother and my sister were in rooms on each side of mine. All I had to do was scream. But I couldn’t.
I freed one of my arms and struck his chest. He rolled out of my bed. Crashed to the ground. He stumbled across the hall to this bed and snored away as if nothing had happened. I pulled my blanket over my head, tucked it under my body on all sides as if this shroud could protect me. My brain did what my body could not, it repressed the memories of my father’s invasions. Locked them in a box.
Loss
I became a haunted house when I turned forty-two. My father’s ghost stood behind me on my left side. Always and only on my left side. I felt his hand hover just short of my shoulder. The agony, the dread that he could touch me at any moment felt unbearable. He had been dead for nine years and could still make me afraid to go to sleep or to be touched. I lost my laugh. Lost my affect. My brain became a dark movie theater that only replayed the repressed memories of sexual abuse. My imagination, the creative, writerly sections silenced. My brain exchanged my writing voice for the cloaked knowledge it had waited thirty-one years to reveal.
Queer Tenderness
The ghost of my father’s “hugs” made it impossible for me to have sex. I started dating a man at this time. I wanted movie nights and restaurant trips. I wanted distraction. We talked about my therapy sessions. He knew why I went to them.
One night we watched TV, an awards show, in my bedroom. We sat on my bed. He pushed his body against mine. Kissed my neck. My body tensed. I cried. He stopped. I felt ashamed. I shut my eyes. I didn’t want to see anger or hurt bloom on his face.
“It’s okay,” he said delicately. “Can I hold you?”
I nodded. He eased his arms around me, welcomed me into the warmth of his chest. He told me to let him know if I needed him to let me go. My body relaxed. I felt comforted. Protected.