It was lunch time already, and my body was still screaming to every move I made, but it was time to go into the cafeteria and I managed to sit next to Kurt again and to ask him that question that was almost jumping out of my mouth. I needed to confide, I needed a friend and I needed not to feel like the only�insane�person in there. I needed someone who could understand. Someone who could help me. I needed�Kurt.�

He turned to me, as distractedly as ever, and seemed almost surprised to see me standing.�

He didn’t answer.

I grabbed the tray and the muscles in my arms trembled dangerously, remembering the electroshock from a few hours before. Kurt put a hand under my tray supporting mine with one hand and his own with the other. His eyes darted worriedly to my expression and then returned to his impassive expression, as if he had just remembered something.�

“You should have stayed in bed longer," he said, taking back his arm when he was sure that my hands had stopped shaking. Sweat was covering my forehead and it slipped in drops all along my back, pushing me to the edge of insanity. I was broken, it was like moving a broken machine. Difficult and useless.�

“I was awake. I won’t heal in a day and you said I should come down as soon as possible.”

He snorted, biting his lower lip nervously and clearly avoiding looking at me.

“Yeah, you should have been able to… It doesn’t matter. Forget it.” he answered and turned to the white-dressed women the were serving bowls, though I couldn't see what was in them from where I stood.�

“Why are you here?” I repeated and he turned slightly in my direction, always avoiding my eyes, but I could see his clearly. The resignation, the pain like a blind bolt, the bitterness, bright like neon signs. Signs that warned about danger, the eyes of a hurt person, a person that – once attached – I wouldn’t be able to leave. I knew myself, I knew my attitude. I had a thing for the others’ weaknesses. I liked fragilities and Kurt was a wall, trying to hide them, but I could see them. That was driving me crazy.�

"Because it’s the right thing to do." he answered, as I grabbed a dish – which contained a watery-colored steak and some gummy salad that made me want to vomit. Did they want to starve us? Were we as low-quality as the food?�

We sat one in front of each other again and, for a few minutes, we ate in silence. I felt the stare of one of the doctors burning into the back of my head. They were all waiting for us to do something incredibly reckless or unforgivable or�sick while we were distracted.�

"The right thing?" I demanded then in a low voice, I wasn’t able to let my mind forget that topic.�I wanted to understand, I�had�to understand.

Kurt lifted his eyes from the dish and looked at me as if I were torturing him. He was begging to change the subject, and maybe I should have done that.

"Please, help me understand what you mean. It’s important," I murmured, leaving the fork and the knife on the table, because I had just realized I really didn’t want to eat. The photos I had seen that day, the doctors’ faces and the eyes that had flashed in front of me, kept appearing in my mind. My stomach had just decided to go on strike.�

"Why is it so important?" he asked, lowering his glance as much as possible and stabbing a piece of steak in his bowl.

I bit the bullet because my back had just decided to hurt particularly badly. The pain burned all along my spine as if somebody was putting vinegar on my fresh wounds.�

"Because," I said through my teeth, "I don’t understand why we have to be here. Are we really sick? My parents said that if I won’t heal, I’ll go to hell and the world is going to hate me. I want to heal, I�want�to see them happy, I want everything back to the way it was before, when I was a kid and nobody cared about what I loved. Why are you here? Can we even be healed? How can someone your age have been trapped here? How did we end up here? I- I-"

"I’m here by my own choice," he interrupted me and my jaw dropped in shock. I was definitely not expecting that answer. How could you go into a place where they despised your identity, where they took you and tortured you until you couldn’t help but hate yourself for what you were, for how the world saw you and where they taught you how much it could hurt to be different?

"What… How…" I gasped, but I didn’t know what to say. To me it was inconceivable. When I had come out to my family I had hoped they would understand, that they would love me anyway, or that they would at least have had the decency to accept me. Things had gone a lot worse, and the whole family had fallen to pieces, that’s why I ended up in St. Louis while they stayed at home, praying for me. The situation was so horrible that I almost cried just thinking about it.�

"I did it for my dad," he explained, keeping his eyes on his food, as if I wasn’t in front of him.

"So he sent you here?" I asked, realizing I had a knot in my throat which I could add to the list of my physical pains. I was falling to pieces.� I was crumbling.

I could still see all the projected men. The images projected on my eyelids when I blinked. I could never forget them. And I�liked it,�I knew that.

"No,�I�asked him for permission to come here."

I couldn’t stop staring at him. I couldn't breathe. I was frozen.

"But… why?"

He set his fork on the table pushing the dish away as if the very thought of eating made him sick. He looked to his side for a second, and that he turned to me, riveting me with those eyes that I had seen clearly after the torture. That had brought me in my room and put me to bed. Two eyes that now were glowing with pain.�

"Because in my town they were all whispering behind my back. �Some idiots trashed and destroyed my dad's garage. They called him day and night to tell him that his son was a fuckin’ fag, that he should be ashamed of me that I was a monster. They spraypainted “gay” into the side of his car and it took him days to fix it. And he wouldn't even let me help him. So I asked to be brought here. To try to heal.

"At the beginning he didn’t want to – he knows as much as I do that this isn’t an illness, that it's something I was born with – but I begged him to let me. So I could pretend to be cured. So I am far from home and those homophobic assholes will stop tormenting him almost more than they did to me."

"So you’re healing?" I asked, trying to look away, but that particular shade of blue was occupying all my sight.
He smiled bitterly.

"Do you really think you can be healed of loving someone?"

I lowered my eyes, disheartened and confused at the same time.

"And what will you do once you get back home? It will be the same as it was before. You can’t run forever." I told him – maybe I shouldn't have – but all the electroshocks I received must have shorted my brain or something. I couldn't control what I was saying anymore. There were no more filters.

"I’ll pretend to have healed," he answered easily, not looking at me directly and looking to his side. Light washed over his face and I could see the tears sparkling, but refusing to drop from his eyes. He would have never let them fall.�Ever.

"What? But you can’t… you can’t live a miserable life just to please the others," I stuttered in shock. I felt sick, �like I was about to throw up. Was it possible that the only life we could live was that? To lie? To live miserably?

God, no.

I wouldn't let myself believe it.

"I�can do it. I just have to decide it. It’s not so important," he answered, and I could stop myself. I instinctively leaned a hand on his, I don’t know why.

It was a big mistake. His�eyes widened, big as saucers, and his face constricted in a grimace.�

He had no time to say anything because some arms took me and lifted me from the chair, dragging me outside while Kurt watched with a scared face.�

What did I do? What did I do wrong?

The brought me into a little room. They were two tall men and they shut the door behind them flinging me into a corner. I looked at them with terrified eyes.

"All affectionate gestures are expressively forbidden in the clinic," ordered the one with dark eyes and glasses. If it wasn’t for that particular thing, I would have said they were twins but I was too busy being scared to worry.

"I… I don’t…" they pushed me against the ground again.

"Forbidden!" repeated the other, and the next�second, they were on me. From that moment I decided to switch off my brain and just scream.