He's not even trying to hide how miserable he is.

He — isn't miserable. He's still Lev's friend, Lev still needs him, he can't be miserable. 

"Over the next three weeks, we'll be working on developing nonsexual intimacy with other men. In the last step, each of you learned what unmet needs you had that you inappropriately sexualized. In this step, we will learn how to meet those needs through appropriate, platonic affection."

Dolph raises his hand. "Uh, ma'am, what happened to Asher?"

"Asher chose to pursue a homosexual lifestyle and will not be joining us for the rest of the session."

He curls inwards, just barely. 

Christine provides a lecture on nonjudgmental and active listening! It is important to try to understand people from their own point of view. You should not be constantly thinking about what you're going to say next. Don't mock people or judge them; instead, try to figure out why their behavior makes sense to them. 

"Our first exercise will be a deep conversation about your feelings. Please pair up. I will give each pair a series of five questions to discuss; it's okay not to get to all of them. The exercise will not be beneficial if you are not honest; remember that everything you say in group is confidential. Try to practice the active listening skills I just discussed."

He doesn't think he's going to be able to concentrate no matter who he's paired up with. He — can't look to Asher; he glances at Lev. 

He gives Lev some space and pairs off with Dolph. 

Lev sits with Sasha. He's grateful that he doesn't have to say no to Marlo, and disappointed that Marlo doesn't want to talk to him. 

(You fucked up, you fucked up, he wanted you for sex and now you're never going to be loved again--)

He is radiating off waves of profound misery. 

The questions say: 

1. What is the one thing you would most like to change about your personality? Why?

2. Do you feel like certain things are missing from your life? What are they?

3. Do you think you’ve changed in the last year? How so?

4. When it comes to the future, what do you worry about the most?

5. Who do you consider your best friends? How has that changed recently?

"I like my personality the way it is but I guess being more organized would be helpful. You?" 

"I wish I were less scared of everything all the time."

He nods. "Do you feel like certain things are missing from your life, and what are they?" 

"I think we're supposed to like. Have a conversation. And not just answer the questions. --Hugs, mostly. And books. And the ability to spend time with little kids."

"I know I'm not going to be able to concentrate and I don't think you are either. Space and freedom and privacy and not having to hide." 

"I... like listening to you talk about things."

"Right now I feel trapped and miserable and I don't think I'm going to be great company but I can try to talk more and I'll answer questions." 

"Because Asher ran away?"

(He's looking at Sasha like Sasha is the most interesting person in the world.)

"Yeah. Because Asher ran away and because I didn't." 

"We probably don't want to talk about that"-- he hesitates-- "in group."

"You're not wrong. 

I can get you more books if you give me a list, I'll need to mail Nat something anyway." 

He looks not miserable. 

"I'd love that. Thank you so much for the books."

"It's not a problem, I'm not the one tracking down PDFs."

"...I'm glad you're here."

"...how come?" 

He attempts to figure out a way to express this sentiment that is appropriately heterosexual.

"I like getting to talk to you."

There.

"I like getting to talk to you too." Quiet, sincere. 

Lev is so good at appropriate heterosexual relating!

"Mostly what's changed in the past year is... realizing that even if my parents love me they still kind of screwed up as parents. And I don't hold it against them because they were trying their best, but probably if they were better parents I would have less of an anxiety disorder and I would be straight."

"What's changed in the past year is," realizing I'm a girl at least kind of, "realizing that... just because I started out one way doesn't mean I have to stay that way. And I got to teach the freshman the Bacchae last year, being on the teaching end rather than the learning end was new." 

"I don't even know what the Bacchae is."

"It's a Greek tragedy, I've heard people say it's Euripides's best but I don't know his other work enough to say, and the drama kids at my high school used to put on a section of it every year at Showcase but it got banned I think six years ago because a bunch of Christian parents were concerned about it. Since then we've been teaching it to each other outside of class — I mentioned I spent a couple months freshman year sneaking out to a field on Saturday nights to learn a pagan ritual? That's what I was talking about." 

"Are you sure it wasn't an elaborate conspiracy to get kids interested in the classics? --Sorry, I don't know if that's mockery."

"It's totally fine, I can never tell how much I'm sincere about the ritual itself and how much I'm sincere about the ritual we've built up around it and how much I'm joking — the Christian parents were sincerely trying to get it banned, though, the drama teacher and half the English teachers have been complaining bitterly about them ever since." 

"Why? I thought Christians liked"-- he waves a hand vaguely-- "Greece and Rome and all that."

"Maybe sometimes, but not when their kids are onstage streaked with mud enacting a ritual to Dionysus. They mostly terrorized the English department in other ways, I don't know why they thought trying to get The Scarlet Letter off the curriculum would go over well but they did." 

"...In the interests of science, did they also try to censor 1984?"

"And Animal Farm, and The Color Purple." 

"I don't know what the Color Purple is."

He glances around. "— I'll ask Nat to put it on the next flash drive." 

"Probably don't, I'm trying to avoid triggers."

"...the reason I didn't want to explain here was just that it's kind of heavy but you're not actually wrong. I won't." 

"Sorry."

"You don't have to be, giving you books you don't want to read doesn't help anyone. Better that I know." 

He's aware that that isn't really the point. 

"I really liked the psychology books you gave me."

"I'm glad. 

Is there anything else you would want to read, if I could get it?" 

"Uh. I made a list of stuff that was cited in the books that I wanted to read but I'm pretty sure I can just get them when I'm back at home?"

He nods. 

"When it comes to the future, what do you worry about the most?" 

"Well, right now it's mostly staying homosexual."

Not dying? Sasha doesn't say. Not homelessness or starvation or cancer? Not getting hit by a bus? Staying gay? Are you sure?

"That — makes sense," he says. "I think I'm most afraid of being trapped." 

"What do you mean?"

"That I made the wrong choice and I'll never be able to make the right one and I'm going to be living in a box that doesn't fit for the rest of my life and I'll never have freedom or privacy ever again." 

"That... makes sense. I worry about that sort of thing a lot. But freedom and privacy aren't really the things I'm scared of not being able to have."

"Yeah. That's not always my biggest worry either, it's just kind of salient right now. 

What are the things you're scared of not being able to have?" 

Every muscle in his body seems to be tense. 

"...I'm scared I won't be able to have kids. Or do right by them if I do."

...oh, honey. 

So that's how Christine got to him. 

"You're a great teacher, and you're one of the most patient people I know, it's hard to imagine you not."

He is aware that he's missing the point. 

"I mean. Gay men don't really want to have kids, usually. And even if I did-- kids need a mother and a father, and they need stability, not-- parents who have orgies. And."

He can't finish the sentence. His face is tight.

He's fairly sure he knows anyway. 

"...I wouldn't know how many people want to have kids, everyone I've ever dated was in high school." He would love to dispute the point about queer people not being in stable monogamous relationships, but, well. 

"I'm in high school."

"— right, but the straight people I know mostly don't want to have kids either, I don't think it's a queer thing I think it's just a high schooler thing." 

"I guess." He looks like he really wants to pull his knees to his chest. "I don't want to rape my kids."

"It's not like the people who do that trip." 

"But if you're sexually broken in one way you're more likely to be sexually broken in other ways too."

Christine, listening in, is pleased by the amount of emotional intimacy Lev and Sasha are sharing.

"Yeah. I'm queer and kinky and slutty and one could make the argument that those are connected. And I'm still not going to rape anyone because why would I do that." 

"I don't know! When I started being gay I started doing a lot of things I thought I wouldn't do!"

"...how worried should I be." 

"You shouldn't be because I'm going to become straight."

"Lev, I'm not worried about the decisions you're going to make in the future, I'm worried about whether you're okay right now." 

"I'm fine."

He is, visibly, not fine.

"...okay. I'm going to try to not worry about you because you obviously don't want me to. 

Who are your closest friends, and how has that changed over the last year?" 

"Well, I didn't have any friends, and then I was friends with Marlo, and now I think I once again don't have any friends."

He doesn't sound particularly upset about any of this, but maybe it's just hard to see against the background misery.

"...he keeps giving you these little worried looks when he thinks neither of us are looking, I'm pretty sure he's still your friend. 

My best friend is still my sister." 

"...Really?"

"Really. I think he's trying to give you space, but — oh, now he's doing that tiny little adoring smile. He cares." 

It's — good to see Lev happy. 

(He can have that, can't he? He shouldn't get in the way of Lev recovering but he can watch Lev smile from across the room and that's fine, that's not —) 

Christine says, "Excuse me! I hope you've all enjoyed your conversations, and of course you can continue them over dinner and during free time. But before you go I'd like to take a few moments to discuss masturbation."

O....kay?

This should be an experience. 

"Some people have ethical objections to masturbation, sexual fantasy, or the use of pornography. If you do, some of this advice may not be appropriate for you. However, many people find the judicious use of masturbation, sexual fantasy, and pornography plays an important role in their recovery. Regular orgasms may be a protective factor against homosexual behavior, because you are less sexually frustrated. Has anyone heard of the concept of operant conditioning?"

Lev has!

Marlo has too, and very much hopes that this isn't going where it sounds like it's going. 

Clayton: "Miss Parker, is it when you reward yourself for doing something and then you want to do it more? Or punish yourself and want to do it less?"

"Exactly. Through deliberately fantasizing about women or even using pornography, you can associate women with sexual arousal. Many people find this a useful way to achieve heterosexual functioning. If you choose to use pornography, I recommend softcore pornography or videos of women masturbating. Heterosexual pornography can lead to attraction to penises, and it should be obvious why lesbian pornography is not appropriate."

.....well, that certainly was an experience. 

He nods seriously. 

"Of course, for obvious reasons you can't put this advice into practice at camp. But some of you may want to consider it as part of your recovery going forward."

Lev can sneak into the bathroom.

Sasha would sneak off to the bathroom, but without Asher it would just feel — kind of empty. 

He curls up and tries to sleep and... succeeds a little bit. 

Lev spits in his hand and starts to touch himself and tries to think about girls. Kissing a girl and feeling her breasts press up against him and touching her hair and--

(--Raine's dress riding up around her hips and her dick straining against her panties so that you could see the tip poking out through the top--)

--and a girl's dress riding up around her hips and her panties wet because of how much she wants him and, probably cunnilingus is going a bit far for the first time but he can think about being inside her, warm and wet and the sounds she would make--

(--the sounds Raine made when his mouth was on her dick, making out with Asher while her dick was in between their mouths and hearing the little whimpery noises she made--)

--the little whimpery noises the girl is making, because he's inside her, because she loves him and wants him and likes having sex with him--

(--Marlo inside him, feeling full and stretched out, that worshipful reverent face that Marlo makes when he's inside Lev, being desired and wanted and loved, being precious to Marlo, someone Marlo values--)

--nope, it's a strapon, it's someone with a strapon fucking him because he's thinking about girls, he's being fucked in the ass by a girl and she has a strapon and it is perfectly heterosexual and--

(--bent over a table in a dark club with his ass up in the air, come dripping out of his ass from all the guys who had fucked him before, ready to be taken by any guy who happens along and wants him, ready to be used, fucked by strangers whose names he doesn't know and whose faces he's never seen, fucked for hours straight and then left empty afterwards because the only thing he's good for is sex--)

he finishes.

What the fuck was that. 

That... was not a kink he had had before.

He goes to bed and tries not to think about how much he hates himself.

He doesn't reach out to Lev. It — wouldn't be right, wouldn't be helpful, Lev made his choice, Lev doesn't want him to be too close. 

But he can't actually stop himself from paying attention. 

He stops, looks at Marlo, takes a step towards him, and sits with Sasha at breakfast.

He's just — paying attention. So he'll know if Lev needs anything. 

He's doing right by Lev, it shouldn't hurt so much —

He puts maybe a quarter of a breakfast's worth of food on his plate and eats maybe three bites of it, all told. Drinks a lot of water. Does his best to make conversation with Lev. 

"...You're not really eating." 

"No," he agrees. "I'm not." 

"You should... probably... eat?"

Great. This is so not how you do an intervention for an eating disorder.

He takes a bite and chews and swallows mechanically. He puts his fork down. "I know I should, it's just that everything tastes like rubber and sawdust and I don't. Want to." 

"I wish I could get you Ensures. They're supposed to taste like sawdust and they're fast to drink."

"...I'm not sure that would help, things that are meant to taste like sawdust still do taste like sawdust. And I kind of like being hungry."

"Oh. Uh. Okay."

At least being worried about Sasha is a break from self-hatred!

"Not, like, in a self-flagellating way, I don't really do self flagellating, just — everything gets kind of floaty and my head feels clearer and it's. Good." 

"Maybe you can find that in some way that's... safer?"

"One, how many ways are there to find that feeling that I have access to at camp. Two, everything still tastes like rubber and sawdust." 

"I don't know."

Well, the camp has mental health professionals. Probably Christine is handling it.

He talks to Dolph and does his best not to be too nervous about his one-on-one with Christine. 

In the afternoon, Christine says, "In this session and throughout the program, we will practice therapeutic holding. Touch starvation is a very common cause of homosexual behavior, particularly among men. People need nonsexual physical affection from people of the same sex, and when this need is unfulfilled, it can become sexualized. You will hold a person for fifteen minutes, then switch to a new partner. Over the course of this session, you will eventually end up holding everyone in the group."

He should probably want this less than he does.

On the other hand, maybe it's just a sign of how touch-starved he is.

Sasha is deeply skeptical that hugs from his fake sister are somehow inadequate but alright, this won't be torture.

He'd curl up in Asher's lap if Asher was here, but Asher isn't; he looks over at Lev. 

He shouldn't look at Lev — give him space, don't — but he doesn't stop himself in time.

He can't resist the urge to walk over to Marlo. "Do you want to--"

"Of course." 

He isn't sure how much contact is supposed to be involved in holding someone but — he has the chance to cradle Lev and bury his face in Lev's hair and he isn't going to not take it. 

"Very good," Christine says, "it's important not to decide that touching other men is gay."

Lev... is definitely having some gay feelings about what's going on right now.

But he's supposed to touch Marlo, it's supposed to feel good, it's supposed to feel like for the first time since Sunday things are actually okay--

Holding Lev, feeling Lev relax, feels — good. Right. Golden, pure. 

He moves them towards a chair, sits down and pulls Lev into his lap, keeps cradling him. 

He feels warm and glowy and happy and safe and for the first time in days it feels like things might maybe turn out all right.

This is probably a sign that it's helping.

"I love you," he doesn't say.

"I love you," he wants to say, and doesn't. 

"I've got you," he says instead. 

"You do! I am definitely not going to fall off this chair."

That's not what he meant. He holds Lev closer, puts pressure on the parts of Lev's back that have tension, and doesn't say so. 

Eventually, the fifteen minutes are up, and Christine says, "Switch."

Lev can't stop himself from glancing hopefully at Sasha.

He gets up from where he was curled up against Clayton's side and goes over to Lev and pulls him down to the floor, wraps his arms around Lev's shoulders. 

His entire body is pressed against Sasha's body. Sasha smells good and his skin is warm and soft.

It's not quite as good as it was with Marlo but it's still really nice.

Lev is soft and so good and he gets it, he knows Sasha's — everything — he doesn't feel okay but he feels maybe a little bit closer to okay. 

Lev's dick is totally aware of what happened last time his entire body was pressed up against Sasha's and it wants to be prepared in case it happens again.

...the way Sasha's holding himself doesn't change. From his body language, anyway, he might not have noticed. 

Lev is trying to calm down. Unfortunately, his traitorous brain keeps producing thoughts like "maybe Sasha isn't responding because it's happened to him so often that he's used to it" and "Sasha has sucked a lot of dick, I wonder if he's sucked off someone whose name he doesn't know" and just the image of Sasha kneeling before a line of guys and blowing all of them.

He is pretty sure that responding like this to therapeutic holding is another thing that makes him sick and broken. 

He rubs Lev's back and tucks his face into Lev's shoulder. "You okay?" he says, quiet. "You're really tense." 

Oh god he knows.

"Sorry. Sorry. I. Sorry."

"No, hey, it's okay, you don't have to be sorry, I really am just worried about you and the thing worrying me really is just that you tensed up." 

He's so nice. 

Why is that hot.

Why is everything about Sasha hot. 

He tries to figure out a way to say "I'm fine, it's just that I'm really attracted to you and that freaks me out" without attracting the attention of Christine or, worse, Marlo, and eventually settles on "I'm just a little freaked out."

"Alright," he says, and keeps rubbing Lev's back. 

Sasha is so good.

(--his mouth is right there and you could kiss him-- what if he touched you and looked at you affectionately and told you that he loved you and he wanted to be with you for the rest of his life-- what if he pulled you into an alley and shoved you onto your knees and fucked your face and came on it and everyone knew and no one cared because that's just what gay men are like--)

His pants are really uncomfortable.

Sasha ignores how hard Lev is, because there's no way to not ignore it that won't make everything horrifically awkward, and hums into Lev's shoulder; Lev might recognize the tune to Shalom Rav. 

Why is Sasha so good. 

He is very relieved when Christine says he's time to move on. For the next three people he tries Therapeutic Arms Wrapped Around Their Shoulder instead.

He curls up very small and lets Marlo and Dolph and Andre respectively hold him however they want to. 

After group, Christine gestures for Marlo to follow her to her office. 

"I assume Lev has spoken to you."

"Yes. He has." 

There are — a number of things he isn't thinking about. 

"What do you think about that?"

"...I think that if what he wants is to recover, doing right by him means giving him the space to let him." 

"What are the obstacles in the way of you doing that?"

"...I can't actually not pay attention to him, I've been trying." 

"Why do you think that is?"

Because I'm in love with him and making sure he's safe and happy and okay is the most important thing I could possibly be doing, he doesn't say, but he can't think of anything to say instead. 

She waits for a while, then says, "on a scale of one to ten, one being the least and ten being the most, how committed are you to recovery right now?"

"It's — important to me to do right by Lev, and if that means recovery that means recovery and if it doesn't it doesn't." 

"Why might recovery not be doing right by Lev?"

"I just mean that I don't know." 

"It seems to me," Christine says, "that if you recovered it would be easier for you to participate with Lev in his recovery. You could support each other. You wouldn't necessarily have to avoid him."

"I'm going to avoid him for as long as he seems to want me to either way." 

"...I sense that you don't particularly want to stop being attracted to him."

"Not particularly, no, but I also don't particularly not." 

A long, extended, awkward silence. 

"I gave Lev a questionnaire measuring red flags that a relationship may turn abusive. Your relationship scored as very high risk."

He raises an eyebrow but doesn't say anything. 

"Getting very involved with each other very quickly. Escalating rapidly to a high level of commitment-- I believe you talked about kids after only knowing each other for a few weeks? Spending as much time with him as possible instead of encouraging him to maintain other relationships and enjoy activities unrelated to you. Encouraging him to end important relationships, such as those with his family, which leads to isolation. Black-and-white thinking-- your partner is all good and perfect in every way, which can lead to thinking he's all bad whenever he makes a mistake, which can result in extreme anger and even violence."

"I never encouraged him to end his relationships with his family. I didn't approach the subject of children. I recognize that he has flaws. I'll admit that I enjoy his company and wanted to spend as much time with him as I could, rather than encouraging him to do activities he hated with people he felt isolated around." 

"It was one of the reasons Lev decided to try to recover."

"And I'm not going to try to dissuade him from recovering." 

"Perhaps you are simply not ready to recover."

"Perhaps." 

He can't think of anything else to say. He isn't sure whether he'd say it if he could. 

Then they can sit in awkward silence until she dismisses him.

And at that point he'll go. 

The next days are — hard. He gives Lev his space, doesn't lose that constant awareness of where Lev is and what he's doing and who he's talking to. 

He misses Asher. (He misses feeling like he had people he could talk to. Like he wasn't alone here. He misses having someone who — maybe didn't understand, but tried anyway.) 

He plans out a bracelet made of braided wire, works on it during free time. He hides all of his needles and all of his thread and doesn't embroider at all. He looks at his old photos with his computer screen turned towards the wall. 

He doesn't eat. 

He does his best to open up in group. The second time they do therapeutic holding, he makes sure not to touch anyone in any way where they could feel it if he got hard. He touches the ball once when he's playing football, mostly because Asher's gone and so Marlo occasionally has to share the ball with someone else. He's getting good at car repair, although he hasn't stopped hating it. He reopens his SAT prep books, which had been gathering dust, and spends every night studying. He fell behind, he can spend every spare minute studying and then he'll catch up. He sneaks into the bathroom at night to jerk off and almost manages to fantasize about women, but before he comes he's always thinking about faceless men whose names he does not know.

It's not that bad. He used to feel like this all the time. It can't be worse just because he knows what he's missing. 

And Thursday after dinner Christine says, "Please see me in my office."

There's only a few possible things this could be about. Sasha goes to her office. 

Christine has a lot of questions for him! What are his eating habits on a typical day? Does he drink water instead of eating? Does he feel full after eating only small quantities? Does he "feel fat"? Does he constantly check his appearance in the mirror, or avoid checking it? Has he experienced irritability, or difficulty concentrating, or social withdrawal? Has he been dizzy, or had dry skin, or felt very sensitive to the cold?

He describes his eating habits on a typical day, and then notes that the last few weeks have not been typical. He does drink water instead of eating. He doesn't feel full after very small quantities of food, but does feel like he doesn't want to eat anymore. Why would he feel fat, he is objectively tiny. He doesn't avoid mirrors at home but he avoids them here. He hasn't been able to concentrate on anything since Sunday. He hasn't had dry skin or been very sensitive to cold but has been dizzy. 

"I believe you may have the beginnings of an eating disorder. Fortunately, we have caught it early. If you work hard on your treatment I hope you will be recovered by the end of therapy. If not, I will recommend that you stay at camp for an additional three months."

"Given that I only developed an eating disorder after I was forced into coming here, keeping me here for extra time seems like a strange way to handle it." 

"I believe that your eating disorder may be linked to your homosexuality. Eating disorders are particularly common among homosexual men. Homosexual men tend to seek self-worth, validation, and approval through their sexuality, which makes being less attractive particularly upsetting. It is compounded by the fact that, because homosexual men have difficulty with experiencing selfless love due to their sexual brokenness, they're particularly likely to objectify each other instead of treating each other as full people. I do not think your eating disorder will go into remission unless you treat your homosexuality."

"Is there literally any problem I could have that you wouldn't think was linked to my homosexuality?" 

"If you were hit by a car, I would not think it was caused by your homosexuality!" She grows serious. "But homosexuality is one sign of pervasive trauma and serious unmet emotional needs. It's not an accident that homosexuals are at higher risk of every kind of mental problem and are more likely to engage in self-destructive behavior."

"Yes. It's almost like living in a world that hates you and having to hide important parts of yourself from most if not all of your loved ones is stressful."

And it sure is weird how the person who runs an ex-gay camp thinks the only way to treat a problem that was caused by the ex-gay camp is to stay in ex-gay camp, he doesn't say, because it doesn't seem like there'd be much point. 

"It feels to you like your eating disorder isn't caused by your homosexuality," she says, "but by other people's responses to your homosexuality."

"If my eating disorder was caused by my homosexuality I would have had one since I was thirteen, when in fact I started developing an eating disorder when I was forced into ex-gay camp and isolated from the people I didn't have to hide from." 

"You started having an eating disorder when you started dating an extremely conventionally attractive man, and it worsened when he abandoned you here."

Oh fuck you. "I have dated conventionally attractive men and been dumped by them before, and Asher cared about the way I look less than anyone I have ever dated. I developed an eating disorder when I was no longer able to control what I look like." 

Christine is very calm. "I sense some hostility and defensiveness."

"Yes. I'm pissed off that you're attributing my problems to the only person I've had since I got here who actually helped with them." 

"How did he help?"

"He got it. Or, sometimes it didn't make sense, but he'd listen and he never judged me, he never thought I was wrong or evil or broken for wanting to be what I wanted to be and he never tried to make me anything other than what I was." 

SHe's not going to cry. 

"Being accepted as you are is very important to you."

The 'and this is the emotional need you have inappropriately sexualized that turned you gay' remains subtext.

It had better remain subtext. 

"Yeah. And for some reason, I don't think keeping me in a place that wants to chop off the bits of me it doesn't like is going to help." 

"You want to recover from your eating disorder, but you're not sure that I will be able to help you."

"I'm not just not sure that you will. I'm very sure that you won't." 

"Are you willing to give therapy a chance?"

"Asher never tried to change a thing about me. You told me I had to change my name because you didn't like it." 

"It sounds like you're very resistant to therapy. What do you think will happen if you continue to be resistant?"

"It sounds like you don't think I have a reason to be so resistant." 

"It's not about what I think, Alexander, it's about what you think. What do you think will happen if you continue to resist therapy?"

"I don't know what will happen if I continue, but I think if I stop resisting I'll want to jump off a bridge.

And my name isn't Alexander." 

"If you do not successfully graduate from this program, I will recommend that you continue with ex-gay therapy during the school year. There are several excellent programs which combine academics with ex-gay and eating disorder treatment. I think you would like to see your friend Natalie? And perhaps email Asher?"

"My name," he says, and he's fairly sure he's crying, "still isn't Alexander." 

"Of course, Alex. --I really am on your side here. All I want is for you to be able to have a happy and healthy life."

He's definitely crying. "Sasha. My name is Sasha. I will put away the needles if you want me to but please just let me have my name." 

"Perhaps we can find some compromise that works for both of us! Alyosha would let you honor your Russian identity and isn't a girl's name in English."

"Alyosha is not a nickname for Alexander. And even if it were, everyone I know calls me Sasha." And she's already compromising, already feels like she's going to break. 

"You're very rigid. You should learn how to be more flexible."

"....you can call me Alyosha if I can call you Crystal." 

"Perhaps we should set aside this issue for another session. Would you like to learn more about the effects of undereating on your body?"

"Sure." 

They do!

His homework is to keep a record of what he eats.

SHe agrees to do it. 

It's not so bad. Sasha can just agree to be called Alyosha next time, it's not hers his but at least it isn't Alexander and it'll look like she's reconsidered being so stubborn. (SHe's already giving up being called by her his name, by the right words, she's already giving up so much, and it isn't rigid to ask people to use your fucking name — this isn't productive.) 

Sasha sneaks off to the bathroom that night, because fuck, why not. 

Lev's head is tossed back and his hand is between his legs and he's making soft whimpery moaning noises. 

(--tied up and blindfolded so you can't even know who's using you and you couldn't stop them even if you wanted to, not that he wants to-- he's lost count of how many cocks have been in his mouth and his ass and his hands--)

— he shouldn't — it's not a good idea, it's — 

— he closes the door behind him. It clicks. 

He looks up. 

He shouldn't. He really really shouldn't. But all he can think about was how good Raine's mouth would feel.

He looks at Lev and doesn't say anything. Takes a step closer. 

Lev drops to his knees and his hands are undoing Raine's pants.

"Raine, you're so beautiful."

He shouldn't —

— but Lev uses her name, and that's — that's so, so good, it took four words for her to feel okay again and that's — she doesn't want to let go of that. She leans back against the wall and puts her wrist between her teeth to keep herself quiet. 

All he can think about is the feeling of Raine's dick in his mouth, the softness of the skin and the way it slides, the way Raine smells. It drives away the self-hatred and the fear and the misery. He isn't thinking about being used or about sex with strangers. He feels loved.

He pulls off and rests his cheek against Raine's thigh and says, "I love your dick-- uh, sorry, do you want me to use a different word for it, because you're kind of a girl--"

Oh he's perfect. 

"Dick is fine," she whispers, "cock is fine, clit is fine — thank you —" 

Raine's gratitude sends a shiver through his entire body.

He returns to sucking on her-- clit?-- and pretty soon he's not thinking about much of anything at all except how he feels warm and safe and okay and loved.

She bites down on her wrist and puts her other hand in Lev's hair and lets her hips roll forward into Lev's mouth — it's so good, he's so good, his mouth is so warm and so soft and he calls her by her name and he cares about what words she wants and — right now it feels like maybe everything will be okay, like maybe she's okay, like maybe she isn't alone here — 

He's not alone, someone likes him, he makes Raine happy and that's the best thing he can imagine-- it feels like his entire world has been reduced to his mouth and lips and tongue and throat and to Raine's clit--

She's not alone she's not alone there's someone here who cares about her someone who wants her to be okay even if she has nothing else she has Lev — she swallows down the sounds she wants to make but sometimes a tiny broken noise slips through — 

When she makes a noise his hand goes back between his legs. He's trying his best not to make noises but his breathing is heavy and he hisses.

Oh god oh god oh god he's so good — she bites down harder on her wrist, tightens her fingers in Lev's hair —

You can't talk with someone's genitals in your mouth. It's a problem.

He tries to convey anyway that she's beautiful and she makes him so happy and he loves her--

— and she squeezes her eyes closed and tilts her head back and bites hard on her arm when she comes. 

He kisses up her thighs and her hips-- she's still wearing a shirt but he can stand up the rest of the way and hug her close and kiss her.

She kisses him and sits down on the floor with him and hugs him tight, rests her forehead against his and interlaces their fingers. 

"Can you finish me off--"

She wraps a hand around his cock and kisses him again, slower this time, keeps her other arm around his shoulders. 

Oh, now he can talk.

"Raine, you're so beautiful-- I love looking at you and talking to you and touching you so much-- oh, that's so nice, oh-- I love you-- you're so beautiful--"

"I love you," she whispers, "I love your smile, I love your voice, I love that you use my name, that you care about what words I want — Lev, I love how much you care, I love listening to you, I love touching you, you're so soft, I love your cock, I love your mouth, kissing you is so good, hugging you is so good —"

"Ah-- oh god--"

He finishes.

He should leave. He should run. 

But he's been miserable for so long and Raine is smiling at him and he wants to stay.

She licks his come off her hand and pulls her pants back on and puts her head on Lev's shoulder. "Love you." 

"Stay for a bit?"

He sounds desperate. He kind of hates himself for it.

"Course." She shifts in a way that it would not be incorrect to describe as a snuggle. "I mostly came out here to have some space to think anyway. 'Nd you're warm." 

"I can be quiet and let you think?"

(He does not want to be quiet and let her think.)

"Or you can think out loud at me, sometimes it helps. —you might want to pull your pants up in case someone hears." 

"All right." He does up his pants. "--You're a girl, right? At least sort of."

"At least sort of — if I got to choose what I wore and whether I had makeup on and how long my hair was, I'd look the way I did at Ron's house all the time." 

"So if I kiss you it's probably like. Progress in being straight? --Although Christine won't see it that way."

"I have no idea whether us kissing is straight. I call myself gay even though I'm kind of a girl and I only kiss guys? It's complicated." 

"Well, even if it's only kind of straight, that's definitely an improvement on the 100% gay I was achieving alone. --Also I'm biased because I want to kiss you."

"I want to kiss you too," she says, and does. 

When he's kissing Raine he doesn't hate himself.

--Which is maybe a sign that kissing Raine is filling unmet emotional needs and therefore it's gay? Goddammit.

"This is the first thing that's made me feel okay since Sunday," she murmurs when they pull apart. "I love you." 

Suddenly it is very very important that Raine be okay. And-- it's not like he's stopped caring about being a good dad someday, or about Christine telling his parents he's still gay, but-- those just seem really far away and unimportant when Sasha is sad right here.

Is this how Marlo feels all the time?

--Fuck. He should really talk to Marlo. 

Lev holds her. "Is there a way I can make you feel okay without having sex with you?"

"...You use my words," she says, trying to arrange her sentences so they make sense. "You call me my name — I asked Christine to use my name — Sasha, I didn't tell her about being Raine obviously, but being called Alexander makes me want to cry — and she said maybe we could come to a compromise, she wants to call me Alyosha, and you just, use my name, like you hadn't even considered doing anything else. You care about whether I want you to call it my dick or something else. You call me beautiful." 

"It's your name, of course I'm going to call you your name." It occurs to him that Raine has hair and he can stroke it. "And you're so beautiful, it's hard to not tell you that all the time."

She sort of wants to cry again, but in a good way this time. "Thank you." She leans more heavily on his side. "Thank you." 

"...I don't know why but it's just. Really important to me that you be happy."

"You're a sweetheart." She nuzzles his shoulder. "And it's important to me that you be happy too." 

His muscles get tense when she says that.

"...are you okay?" 

"...I'm not sure you can get what you want. Maybe you could ask for something easier, like the moon, or one of my toes."

"...I don't need to get it. If you're not happy then you're not. But — one of the things I like about you is how you get when you smile, or when you're talking about something you're passionate about, I don't even care that much about math but I loved learning math from you because when you were teaching you looked like maybe you weren't so miserable." 

"I want to get you all the things you want. But I also want to get better and that means being miserable. For a while. I hope not forever."

"...if getting better makes you miserable, are you sure —" 

She cuts herself off and hugs Lev tighter. 

"I'm sick. I want sick things."

"Like what?" 

"I like... thinking about getting fucked by guys whose names I don't know and whose faces I can't see, lots of them, especially if it's in public. Thinking about getting used and degraded and objectified, and everyone knows, and no one cares because it's, it's normal--"

"...Lev, that's not actually a normal thing to have happen, but it's not even weird as a thing to fantasize about." 

"...Really?"

"Really. I have an online friend who draws porn for commissions, I have seen the kinds of things people ask for when it's anonymous, that is so not weird. I definitely have weirder kinks than that." 

It's gay, he shouldn't, it's wrong to ask--

"What are your weird kinks?"

"Being mind controlled. Being drugged so I'm all sweet and calm while someone does whatever they want with me. Being held down and forcibly injected with estrogen — I should really have noticed I was kind of a girl earlier, wow. And my kinks aren't that weird either." 

He's blushing.

"I like. The drugs one."

He's cute.

"I don't really know enough about drugs to pick one that would actually work so usually when I think about that one I set it on a fantasy world where I can decide the drugs work however I want because they're not real," and she says it like it's an admission, because she's pretty sure Lev will think it's funny or at least that he'll smile. 

"That's cute. --Before I came here I only jerked off to porn with like twenty thousand words of build up because I wanted to know that they loved each other."

"Oh my god you're adorable." 

Lev kisses her cheek. "Not as adorable as you."

She buries her face in his shoulder and curls up against his side. "I love you." 

"We can't do this more than once. Christine will know."

"Yeah. I know. 

We can still be friends, though, right?" 

"Of course. And maybe after camp we can, you know." 

She nods and moves into Lev's lap, stays curled up. "I do know." 

"And... maybe we can cuddle? Since we're supposed to cuddle for therapy anyway? And it would be weird if cuddles were only a good thing for my recovery in group?"

He almost adds "but if we kiss we'll have to stop cuddling," realizes that if he says that he won't get to kiss Raine and claim that it wasn't his fault and he was swept away by passion, realizes that if he is planning to be swept away by passion it definitely doesn't count as being swept away by passion, and clunks his head into the wall. 

"I would be happy with cuddling. It's — the thing that hurts isn't not having sex, it's everything else." She pauses, considers for a moment, and then kisses his forehead. 

Lev pulls her into his lap and kisses her, deliberately, as a free choice.

(Self-awareness sucks.)

She kisses him and then rests their foreheads together, interlaces their fingers again. 

"I love you." 

"What's the thing that hurts? I want to help."

"It's —

— the way I look and the way I would look if I could choose are completely different, and I can't move any closer to the way I want to look, I'm not allowed to decide how long my hair should be or to wear makeup or to wear clothes that feel like they're mine, I can modify my clothes but not only is sewing a feminine activity that I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to give up I have to constantly be wondering whether this embroidery project is too femme, too counterculture, too something, and if my current eating habits continue she's going to tell my parents she recommends that I go to another ex-gay camp during the school year so I don't even get to decide what I put into my body — and I'm not allowed to use a name that fits, or pronouns that fit, or even a name that doesn't really fit but at least it's mine, I mentioned she wants to call me Alyosha? And there's this massive important part of myself that I haven't explored yet and I can't explore because it's not safe and I have to hide it and Asher got it, or maybe he didn't always understand but when I told him being a boy didn't fit right he said 'then you're a girl, do you want to be my girlfriend' like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and now he's gone and I can't —" and she buries her face in Lev's shoulder. 

"You... can be... my girlfriend?" he tries.

She feels like she's going to cry and she can't tell if it's in a good way or a bad way. "I'd love to be your girlfriend. Thank you." 

"I can't do anything about the rest of it. Uh. I guess I can help you pretend to eat more food maybe? But I'm also concerned about how little you eat. But I don't think going to another ex-gay camp will... help. And maybe you get to decide what you want to do with your own body even if you decide on something that might make you really sick?"

"You don't have to help me pretend to eat more but I think it'll be easier to eat for you than it will be to eat for Christine." 

"I think you probably get to decide what you want to put into your body but also I am really worried about you and I would be... somewhat less crushingly miserable all the time if you ate."

"Yeah. 'I'm doing this because Lev is worried about me' will be a lot easier than 'I'm doing this because if I don't Christine will find out' or 'I'm doing this because I probably should.'" She nuzzles his shoulder. 

"It feels like-- all the things you want are so little and so petty. Who cares what name you use, or whether you sew, or how long your hair is, or whether you wear a dress? It doesn't affect anybody else. It's such a small thing."

There is an obvious implication. Lev has never, as a person, been particularly good at ignoring obvious implications. 

"Yeah. I just — feel trapped, and it feels like I'm having all of my options taken away for no reason except to give me fewer options. I know it runs deeper than that but — there's no reason for it to, not a good one." 

"There's actually no reason to make you cut your hair or go by a guy's name and definitely no reason to make you stop going by Sasha."

Obvious implication! Obvious implication!

Yeah. Obvious implication. 

"There isn't. There really isn't." 

"I want to keep cuddling you forever but if we're both tired tomorrow Christine will notice."

"Go back to bed," she says, and kisses his forehead and then gets out of his lap, "I need to take a shower. Love you." 

"Love you."

She smiles at him for a moment and then does actually get in the shower. 

(She shaves off all the body hair she possibly can — well, no, what's on her arms is totally inoffensive, but she shaves her legs and armpits and chest and —) 

She gets out of the shower and goes back to bed and sleeps better than she has since Saturday. 

In the morning he wakes up and goes immediately to Marlo. 

"Hi. Uh. Sorry I've been avoiding you."

"You don't have to be," he says, but he's already glowing. 

"No, I mean-- I'm your friend, it's not fair to you to avoid you, I could tell it made you unhappy and I did it anyway and I'm sorry."

"You should get to have as much space as you need." 

Then, quieter:

"...but I'm happy you're back." 

"You should get to spend time with your friend."

"...I'm glad we're still friends." 

He'd like to hug Lev. He does not hug Lev. 

"...do you want a hug?"

"Yes, please," very quiet, and he isn't the one to move forward. 

Lev hugs him.

(Marlo is so grateful for such little things from him and it makes him feel like a terrible person.)

Marlo hugs him back, presses his cheek into Lev's hair. 

He's very familiar with what Lev likes in hugs, by now. 

It's so nice.

"I trust you."

"I trust you." Squeeze. 

"If I say I don't want to kiss you you're not going to try to-- seduce me or convince me or kiss me anyway."

"Of course not — did someone try that —" 

"Uh. Sort of. That's not the point. The point is that you wouldn't so I don't have to try to avoid situations where you might."

"Of course I wouldn't." He's holding Lev more protectively now. 

You'd probably trust him even if he were going to abuse you, that's what abusers do, Lev's brain points out unhelpfully.

It would be nice if Lev were not continually struggling with self-doubt and uncertainty. 

"Let's go to breakfast."

"Yeah." He lets go, smiles at Lev for half of a second before he turns to put shoes on. 

Marlo looks so happy. 

Lev had gay sex and then immediately afterward he was a better person. This is a moderately inconvenient observation. 

Self-awareness, he reflects, is a curse.

He keeps smiling all through breakfast — he's aware that he's not being subtle, but it hardly seems to matter when Lev is right there. 

Marlo is so happy and it makes it hard to believe that he is doing something wrong.

He walks very slowly to the paintball field and says, "Christine says that our relationship might wind up being-- abusive."

"She said that to me too. But — a lot of the red flags she listed seemed like they'd only fit if you twisted them, it's true that I spent a lot of time with you but it's not true that I tried to stop you from participating in other things. 

If you want me to back off you can tell me so and I'll do it." 

"It made you miserable. I don't want you to be miserable."

"You not being abused is more important." 

"I think I'd rather have a chance of being abused than a certainty of you being miserable all the time."

"...I promised I was going to keep you safe. And even if I hadn't, you being abused would make me miserable." 

"Maybe you're doing some kind of eleven-dimensional chess manipulation thing but this really does not seem like the sort of conversation abusers have with their victims."

"I mean, I'm not saying I'm definitely going to stop talking to you for your own protection. Just, if you want me to stop doing something, tell me, I'll stop." 

"And I'm saying I'm going with the plan that has a chance of not making you miserable. Even if I might be abused."

He nods and doesn't say any of the things he's thinking. 

Is handholding straight? It's probably straight enough. 

He grabs Marlo's hand and squeezes it tight and says, "I love you."

He squeezes Lev's hand back. "I love you too." 

He's... happy. 

Christine was right about the importance of intimacy with other men. It's hard to get away from the electricity that passes through his body when he touches Marlo; he can't stop thinking about how nice it would be to feel Marlo's lips on his lips and Marlo's body on his. But that's just... a small part of it. Spending time with Marlo and Raine makes him better. He's happier. He opens up in group, even when he's afraid that everyone else will reject him, because Marlo and Raine won't. He can throw a football and sometimes manage to get it to the person he intended to throw it at, because Marlo taught him; he can make things out of metal, because Raine showed him how. He thinks about the fact that Marlo and Raine love him and considers the possibility that there might be something in him that is worthy of love.

When he jerks off at night he thinks about Raine-- her face, her lips, her hands, her body-- and even if it's not all the way straight it's straighter than he's ever been. He tries, experimentally, to think about her with breasts and a vagina and he still wants her desperately. 

(Maybe he can come home from camp with a girlfriend-- maybe if Raine wears enough makeup she'll look in her pictures like she was born a girl-- maybe he is going to be fixed.)

He thinks sometimes about the fact that he was miserable and making Marlo miserable, and then he sucked a dick, and then he was happy and made Marlo happy. It does not seem like this is what Christine would have predicted. He thinks about the fact that everything Raine is being denied other than sucking dick is hurting her for no reason. He thinks about the fact that Marlo loving him felt good and wholesome and pure.

He doesn't come to conclusions. 

He's — happy. 

He spends time with Lev, makes sure to spend time with Dolph and Clayton too; he offers to teach Andre how to throw a football but is mostly unsurprised when Andre turns him down. He learns metalworking from Sasha and math from Lev and makes little notes about trade school, about what he'd want to do afterwards, about things he should research — what kind of jobs can you get with metalworking, with welding, what skills from car repair are transferable to other things, what kind of salary should he be planning for — he isn't sure whether he'll have his parents' help or not. He opens up in group, does his best to show Christine that he isn't trying to fight her. 

He keeps thinking about how nice it would be to kiss Lev — he does his best not to have those thoughts, Lev doesn't want to kiss him, or at least doesn't want to want to kiss him which is close enough to the same thing for Marlo's purposes, but he does in fact have them. 

He quietly retires the dream of a house and a family. He has plenty of other dreams to replace it with. 

She's — not happy, exactly. 

She was right, it is easier to eat when she's doing it because Lev is worried about her and not because she's afraid of the consequences if she doesn't. She keeps track of what she's eating, figures out which things are more appealing than usual. She keeps shaving off all of her body hair; she likes the way her skin feels afterwards, soft and smooth. She finishes the bracelet for Asher and mails it to Natalie with a letter about how great the metal shop is and hidden instructions to mail it to Ron. She teaches Lev and Marlo metalworking, hangs out with Andre more so that Christine will see her spending time with people she hasn't had sex with. 

She writes up a list of names that aren't girl's names in English and that she doesn't hate; most of them only fit those criteria by not being names at all. She eliminates the ones that sound like they'd be girl names if they were names (Moss, Birch, Sparrow, Snow) and the ones she doesn't actually like that much (Garnet, Indigo, Ember) and keeps the list to mull over. 

She takes showers at night and lets herself cry in them. She doesn't sleep with Lev again; she does cuddle him, during free time and when they see each other in the bathroom at night. 

She wouldn't call herself happy. But it's better. 

Lev notices that Raine's legs are shaved and doesn't comment on it but starts having a lot of intrusive thoughts about how smooth her skin would be and how nice it would be to touch it.

"Today in group we'll be doing a shame circle. We will go around the room and say something we're ashamed of that is not related to our homosexuality. If you share the trait, you will stand."

Christine is ashamed of not having a high school diploma. (Everyone stands.) Dolph is ashamed of not winning the championship this year. Andre is ashamed of not knowing how to throw a football. (Lev stands for that one.) Clayton is ashamed of getting into so many fights with his parents.

Raine is.... ashamed of not having focused as much as she'd like to have on developing skills she cared about? Raine is sort of confused about shame as a concept. 

Lev stands up for Raine's thing. (So do Clayton and Dolph.) 

"I'm ashamed of... not having qualified for USAMO yet? Uh, it's a math competition."

The fact that no one else has qualified for USAMO either is not as reassuring as perhaps it was intended to be.

Marlo is ashamed of a wide variety of things but the one he lists is not having supported his sister as much as he should have. (Raine stands up.) 

"Now we will go around and say something we're ashamed of related to our homosexuality."

Christine is ashamed of the strain her homosexuality has put on her relationship with her brother. (Dolph and Clayton stand.) Dolph is ashamed of buying a pair of girls' panties. Andre is ashamed of kissing a straight boy for a show and imagining that the boy was gay and into him. Clayton is ashamed of watching porn instead of doing his homework. (Lev stands.)

Marlo is ashamed of not having treated his girlfriend the way she deserves. 

"I have. Fantasies about men sexually objectifying me and humiliating me and using me. And I like them."

He sits down very quickly.

Raine stands up. 

He looks at her gratefully.

He can't help glancing at Marlo to see his reaction.

He looks — proud, mostly. He's smiling the same way he always does when Lev shares in group, That was brave and I'm glad I could give that to you. 

That's good. Marlo doesn't hate him. 

And he's not broken like you, he's not sick like you, it's okay for him to be gay because he's not--

It doesn't matter whether Marlo is sick like him because he's not going to sleep with Marlo anyway.

Raine is ashamed of, fuck, what is Raine ashamed of that relates to being gay. Not the sucking dick not the crossdressing — there have been sexual decisions she regrets but none she'd call herself ashamed of — you know what close e-fucking-nough. 

"I'm... ashamed of having slept with that one self-hating football player who still thought he was straight and took his self-hatred out on me, that was a really bad choice and I should not have made it." 

Dolph stands up.

"As we can see from this exercise, even some of our most-- specific-- "-- she glances at Alexander-- "shames are shared by other people. We often want to suffer with our shames alone, but true intimacy with other men means sharing the things we're ashamed of. Same-sex attraction only grows in a field of shame."

Christine can glance at Raine all she wants, she still made an effort to participate honestly. (She is deeply deeply dubious about same-sex attraction only growing in a field of shame, because as far as she knows she has never been ashamed of herself, but she's not going to start that conversation.) 

Alexander has his second eating-disorder therapy session on Saturday. Christine ignores all attempts to redirect the topic away from Alexander's eating. She goes over his record and praises him for eating more. The purpose of the session is primarily to agree on what the triggers and causes of Alexander's eating disorder are.

He is not going to agree that it was caused by his homosexuality and he is very sure that Christine is not going to agree that it wasn't. This session seems kind of pointless. He doesn't say that. 

"Lev's been helping," he says, instead of that. 

"I'm glad," she says. "Would you say a perceived lack of social support is one of the triggers for your eating disorder?"

"Depends on what you mean by a perceived lack of social support," he says, which isn't no. 

"If you feel like you don't have someone to talk to about your problems who will accept you, you might eat less?"

"...that's part of it," he says, because it is. 

"What else do you think is part of it?"

".....it's at least partially about control," he says, very carefully. "I don't get to decide what kind of clothes I wear and I don't get to decide what name I use, but I get to decide what I put in my body. Except for how now I don't." 

Christine notes down "sense of control." 

The chart Christine creates does not contain the word "homosexuality" and does mostly contain things Alexander agrees with at least a little.

...better than she'd expected. 

And on Sunday Alexander has his one-on-one.

"Have you thought more about the issue of names?"

"I have a list of things that are not girl's names in English that work for me!" 

She hands Christine the piece of paper; the list is Minnow, Rain, Ghost, Phoenix, Millay, Aiko, Lynx. She's a little dubious about Phoenix and Rain is of course a pipe dream, and none of them are boy's names, but hey, it's visibly putting effort into a compromise. And none of them are Alexander. 

"I'm so glad you decided to compromise! Would you be all right with Ghost?"

"My favorite is Minnow but I would not have included Ghost if I wasn't okay with it." 

"Excellent, Ghost!" She shuffles papers. "So, perhaps we should talk more about your relationship with Lev."

She nods and looks at Christine expectantly. 

"You said in a previous session that you're finding your relationship with him very helpful."

"Yeah. Eating because I felt like probably I should didn't work and eating because there'd be consequences if I didn't didn't work but it turns out that eating because my friend is right there worrying about me totally does." 

'It sounds like you're progressing well in developing nonsexual intimacy with other men."

"It does seem that way." Never mind the event that precipitated this friendship. 

"I'm sure we can all agree," she says mildly, "that it would be unfortunate if I had to tell Lev's parents that he is homosexually active."

"That would indeed be unfortunate." She wasn't going to have sex with him anyway, she's slutty, not stupid. She does not say this. 

"You are conflicted about your recovery, but Lev is committed to his. What do you think about that?"

"I think Lev's personal history and mine are very different. Unless I've misinterpreted the question, which I might have."