The Downward Spiral

Courtney and I sit across from each other, the faint hiss of steam from the coffee machine punctuating the growing discomfort. Her eyes flick nervously toward the swatting woman at the window, trying to kill invisible insects with a rolled-up newspaper. I shrug, avoiding the confrontation. Courtney sighs and presses forward with her rambling.

"Ivan, what do you think about Nate? From our class?"

Nate. He's everything I'm not--loud, opinionated, well-connected. "I think he talks too much about himself."

"Exactly!" She grins, her lips curling with self-satisfaction. "He needs weed. And counseling."

I want to laugh, but I feel that familiar knot in my stomach, the one that churns whenever the topic veers toward anything outside my carefully constructed bubble. I haven't been able to articulate my discomfort lately, not even to Courtney, who is probably the closest thing I have to a friend. But that's still not saying much.

The woman at the window swats again, her face contorted with panic. Courtney rolls her eyes, then turns her attention back to me. "So... gay, huh?"

I blink, caught off-guard. "Yeah."

She nods as if this is a fact she's been waiting for me to confirm, then shifts the conversation to something easier--the Frot website. "I get that you don't like anal, but it makes most gay men happy, you know?"

Her casual dismissal grates. "It's not for me. I'm celibate right now."

Courtney smirks, barely hiding her condescension. The world feels tight, shrinking around me, and my mind swirls with fragments of old conversations and new fears. My mother's voice echoes in my head: "Gay men who do anal should be exterminated." It's like a mantra she whispered, convinced it would save me. And it was always followed by her silence afterward, the kind that left scars more than words ever could.

"I think you're overthinking it," Courtney says, breaking into my thoughts. "Just embrace yourself. Be free."

She makes it sound so easy.

I'm at the bottom of the spiral staircase now, in a place that feels as surreal as the conversations Courtney and I have been having. "Butch Godlewsky--Psychotherapist." The sign looks out of place, almost cartoonish against the burgundy carpet.

Inside, Butch greets me with a handshake that feels too casual. He's not what I expected--he's too relaxed, too comfortable in his own skin. As he listens to me, his face remains blank, almost amused.

"So, you've never done anal," he repeats, like he's confirming my order at a restaurant. "Well, you're a heteroclite homosexual then! It's just part of who you are. Maybe you should try anal?"

The word "heteroclite" bounces around my mind like an accusation, like something broken or off. I shift in my seat, trying to find an anchor in this conversation. "But... I don't think I want to."

"You were born this way," Butch presses, his tone now almost patronizing. "The sooner you accept it, the happier you'll be."

"I don't know... I think I'm too neurotic." The words feel weak as they leave my mouth.

He leans back in his chair, examining me like a puzzle. "Sounds like you're not embracing yourself. Your mother's voice is still in your head. Maybe you need to mellow out, take more of that marijuana, and learn to express your true feelings."

True feelings? The ones I can't even articulate to myself? The therapist's words don't feel like answers--they feel like another layer of confusion added to the pile.

I leave the office and wander aimlessly down the street, the remnants of the conversation rattling inside my skull. The world outside feels no less surreal than Butch's office or Courtney's endless chatter. The people passing by, the clamor of the city, it all feels distant, like I'm moving through it without really being a part of it.

Maybe I am overthinking it. Or maybe, just maybe, none of this is real at all.

The paranoia was creeping in again, suffocating my thoughts, twisting reality into a nightmarish fog. I had taken too much of the marijuana, trying to forget that earlier conversation--the one that left me feeling exposed, judged, and utterly isolated.

The man had laughed in my face when I suggested that there could be a balance between the homosocial intimacy of traditional societies and the modern Western world's view of male-male relationships. He dismissed me with a smirk, like my beliefs were naïve, old-fashioned, or worse, dangerous. My words about Frot, about men's intimacy not needing to be sexualized or constrained by society's definitions, were met with silence. He had no response. But his face said it all.

And now, I couldn't stop the spiraling thoughts. What if there really was some grand, hidden conspiracy? A vast network of offenders, deniers, and victims, all feeding into the same sick, twisted cycle? What if the abuse I had always suspected--those repressed memories that gnawed at me in the dead of night--was real?

I thought about the book, Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse. Each page felt like it was peeling back layers of my own psyche, exposing wounds I didn't even know I had. I couldn't stop thinking about Freud's early work, about how he had stumbled upon the prevalence of child sexual abuse. If it was as widespread as I feared, maybe I, too, had been caught up in it as a child, unable to remember.

I imagined men in suits--respectable, powerful, charming--leading double lives. By day, they were upstanding citizens, loving husbands, doting fathers. But at night, they became something else. I pictured a pedophile ring so vast and so secret that even those who participated in it could publically denounce pedophiles without anyone ever suspecting their involvement. The hypocrisy was nauseating. Could they really live with themselves? Could they wear those masks so convincingly that not even their closest friends or family would suspect?

My mind wandered to darker places. Medical reports, pediatricians discovering children with telltale signs of abuse. The world didn't want to believe, didn't want to see. And maybe that's why these abusers kept getting away with it--because society was more comfortable with denial.

The more I thought about it, the more desperate I felt. I needed answers, so I made another appointment with Butch, the therapist. But I should've known that seeing him again would only make things worse.

The dream came first. The waiting room felt like it had swallowed me whole, and I drifted into a half-sleep. In the dream, Butch led me to a cold, sterile warehouse, and there they were--giant, human-sized insects wearing masks. The sight was grotesque, their emerald green "faces" blank and insectoid. Just as they were about to remove their masks, revealing what lay beneath, I jolted awake, heart racing.

Butch's voice was the first thing I heard. "What's wrong, Ivan?" His tone was mockingly concerned. "As long as your identity is rooted in ressentiment, you'll never be free."

He didn't understand. No one did. "It's a vast conspiracy! A pedophile ring that stretches across the world! Men with double lives! They--"

Butch cut me off, waving a hand dismissively. "You're suffering from a drug-induced psychosis. I would ascribe much importance to these thoughts.”

I blinked, struggling to make sense of his words. "You meant 'I would not ascribe too much importance,' right?

He gave a slow nod, as though it hardly mattered. "Sure, Ivan. Relax. Just relax, bro." His voice dripped with artificial calm. He extended his hand toward me, and in my haze, I took it.

"We'll take the elevator together," he said, his grip tightening. I tried to pull away, but it was too late. He led me outside, where a van was waiting.

Before I could react, he shoved me into the back. As the doors slammed shut, his voice echoed in my ears, cold and detached: "You messed with the wrong psychos, bro. You can't hold us down."

The last thing I saw was the world fading to black as the van sped off into the night.