I didn’t think that the pain could be so strong, but the worst part was how I felt inside. To every photo that passed through the projector corresponded an electroshock. In�my mind,�the idea of being a mistake was growing strongly. What did I do to deserve that treatment? Was I really so sick? Did they need all that violence to heal me?

The sweat was dripping all along my chest, my back, and my forehead.

I must hate what I thought I loved. I couldn’t like it. If I did the pain would have stopped.

I felt the tears in my eyes, they burnt as if they were digging into my soul. It felt like nails were making holes into me from the inside, all that I was was falling to pieces. I was a sicko, a freak.

Yes, but I was born this way. I claimed and tears started rolling down my face. Kurt had said not to do that, he begged me not to cry. But it was too late, I couldn’t do it. It hurt so much.�I felt miserable. I was afraid, and it hurt.

The two doctors in the room eyed me accomplishedly and one of them took out some sort of rope.� Everything was foggy so I couldn’t really understand what was happening. It seemed like the world was slipping from my control while I was trying not to look at the pictures in front of me. I didn’t want to look if looking meant suffering.

One of the men held my jaw and forced me to look firmly at the continuous sliding of all those men. Their skin, their eyes, their hair… and I couldn’t stop watching. Then he took my head and lowered it so that I could see the pictures and leave my naked back undercovered and undefended.

And then I started screaming. They were hitting me repeatedly with the rope.�It scratched and burnt. I screamed but I couldn’t move. I was stuck, even while my back felt like it was exploding in flames. The electroshocks hadn’t stopped, and big tears were streaming down my face. My jaw hurt and my back was so skinned that it was bright red.
�
That had been the longest fifteen minutes of my entire life. When the doctors were done torturing me, I couldn’t even stand up because my legs were shaking too much. All that I could think was, why?

They told me to stand up, and I swear I tried, but my ankles and knees were trembling too much.�Even worse,�my back felt like fire with every movement.
�
“This has been your first session. We’re sorry to see you crying, Mr. Anderson, but you have to be strong. Weakness is the way to vice and back down. Weakness goes next to homosexuality. Be strong and you’ll heal soon, you’ll see .” He paused and I looked up, shaking�in pain, to look my torturers in the eyes through the curls that had fallen on my forehead. They’re expressions were emotionless and I wondered if they took classes to stay so cold to others' suffering. But maybe they didn’t even see us as human beings. Maybe we were just some of nature’s jokes that they liked to fix.
�
“Now, Mr. Anderson, take your clothes and go to�your class. From what we hear, it will be a very interesting one. Oh, and we hope you already gave your personal stuff to the secretary when you arrived, if you don’t, you'd better do it soon or at the next inspection, you’ll risk a heavy punishment. Anyway, don’t give up. There’s always a solution. You’ll heal, you’ll see.”
�
I�clenched�my teeth�and forced myself to stand up, suddenly risking to fall on the cold, tile floor. My knees burnt and my whole body felt like it had been immersed in hot lava. I felt sick, as if I was about to throw up. I forced my body to crouch and my fingers to take those anonymous-white pieces of cloth and put them on. It was terribly painful and when the T-shirt brushed my back I screamed and my knees gave out. It burned. It hurt so much that I thought I wouldn’t be able to stand all that. It was as if someone was scraping my skin repeatedly with sandpaper, I was going crazy.
�
Or maybe I already had.
�
One of the two doctors came near me and pulled the T-shirt down my back leaving a trail of pain all along my spine. The put my pants on forcedly while I surrendered to the pain. I almost fainted and I felt like the ground was disappearing from under my feet. They grabbed me under my armpits and – without making sure I could walk – they tossed me out there where the light hit me like a punch in the face. I couldn’t see. Everything was spinning around me, everything was falling down, everything was collapsing.
�
�
Every step scratched me violently as if the cloth was filled with needles. I could still feel the buzz of the electroshocks that had repeatedly hit me. It was worse than dying, I swear it was. I felt like a�zero, like a suffering animal, or even worse. I felt like I didn’t exist, I felt like I was only pain.
�
I tried my best to walk but then I collapsed to the ground without even knowing what was happening. It was all blurred. All I could see was white, it must have been the ceiling. Then two light-blue eyes, two enormous, bright eyes and nothing else.
�
It was total darkness but the pain didn’t stop. I couldn’t rest. Not there.

�

***
�
�
It smelled like lavender, I don’t know why it was the first thing I felt. I was lying on a bed with half-new blankets, I could feel the rough consistency of them that hurt my wounded skin.
�
Oh, now I remembered. The electroshock, the pictures, the fire on my body, the humiliation. The ground and then those eyes.
�
Where had I already seen them?
�
I opened my eyes and it felt as if I was ripping them. Suddenly, the light hurt me. I immediately realized I was in my room – the horrible white one I was assigned to – and I guessed the other ones were exactly alike. I tried to look around and when I turned my face my neck hurt and my back burnt. It was better if I keep on lying still.

Then, I noticed a note on the little table next to my bed. It had been written with a blue gel pen and – from what I could see –�in very�nice handwriting. It suddenly reminded me of the light-blue eyes and I quickly grabbed it, even though my spine whipped me mentally for that.

I read it with trembling hands and the taste of my tears still in my mouth.
�
They let me take you here, upstairs. I wanted to stay but the rules are clear, and I couldn’t. I hope you wake up soon. When you do, come downstairs, because you won’t be exempted from today's program. I’m sure it has been really hard to stand all this on your first day. They say everything should get better, but I still haven’t experienced this “better,” yet. Well, see ya.�Kurt.

I wiped a tear from my cheek. He helped me but he couldn’t stay there looking after me because we were just some stupid faggots that took advantage of every occasion.
�
That hurt. �That thought. That constant sensation of inadequacy. Those absurd rules created to keep us prisoners of ourselves until we would have exploded in some uncontrolled hate for what we were. Yes, that was obviously a cure.
�
�I could imagine Kurt, so beautiful, so cold. So helpless. It seemed like an uninterested person but maybe that was just the fa�ade that he had created to survive inside there. Maybe I should have created one, too. But what was the real Kurt like, then? I had only seen his mask.
�
What was he like?
�
I had to move and I shouldn’t have thought about that.�Human contact�was barely allowed in that place. I couldn’t enter into a clinic to cure homosexuality and have a crush for one of the patients. I just couldn’t. It wouldn’t have been possible and I would never be able to heal.
�
Could I heal?
�
Who knows.
�
I stood up feeling the wounds on my back burning. I had to be strong and create a fa�ade.
�
I had to invent the perfect mask for me, I was sure it existed.
�
But before that, I had to find Kurt. I had to thank him I had to ask him what else would happen. I had to talk with someone or I would have gone crazy. God, that place, those people, those colours…
�
Were we the monster or were they?