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January 26, 2018 - Booked Solid by Terri Schlichenmeyer

Cover of One of These Things First by Steven GainesOne of These Things First
by Steven Gaines
c.2016, Delphinium Books
$14.95; 196 pages

Elephants, rhinos, hippos, and giraffes.

Skyscrapers, mammoths, and Jupiter. Sequoias, Sasquatch, blue whales… and mice. One of these things is not like the others, and in One of These Things First by Steven Gaines, you’ll read a story that’s equally unique.

On a “brilliantly cold afternoon” just months after his fifteenth birthday, Steven Gaines did something that would change the course of his life: he snuck through a storeroom in his grandparents’ Brooklyn undergarment store, wrestled a heavy door open, broke two windows with his fists, and sawed his forearms across the broken glass.

His attempted suicide was shocking but perhaps, in retrospect, not surprising.

For years, he’d suffered from nervous tics, obsessions, and compulsions that he believed would stave off certain disaster. Touching something twice was good, twenty was better, and neither endeared him to others: he was bullied, embarrassed, and isolated by self-claims that he didn’t “feel well” enough to attend school. Kept home to recuperate, many of his afternoons were instead spent hiding in boxes at the garment store and learning about grown-up things by eavesdropping on customers and store employees, who insisted that Gaines would “come to no good.”

That was humiliating but a dawning knowledge that he was a “homo” was much more distressing. It was downright disgraceful, in fact, and so Gaines cut himself badly, and ended up in a hospital with a referral to a regional psychiatric facility. When he heard of Payne Whitney, a private hospital where Marilyn Monroe once stayed, Gaines begged his grandfather to pay for an institution upgrade.

He was granted his wish—but only for six months.

On a late winter day in 1962, Gaines entered Payne Whitney. He was scared but it was something he’d asked for, knowing that he was trading one shame (homosexuality) for another (being a “mental patient”) but hoping that it might stop his obsessions with counting, and with other boys. At the very least, it was a chance to escape his home life and to consider who he was.

He entered the facility as a fifteen-year-old boy. That fall, he left, a different person.

What would you get if you took a little bit Brighton Beach Memoir, added a dash of Cuckoo’s Nest, and stirred? You’d have a coming-of-age story that’s golden.

You’d have One of These Things First.

Email Terri Schlichenmeyer

‹ January 26, 2018 - View Point by Richard Rosendall up January 26, 2018 - CAMPshots Gallery 1 ›

Past Issues

Issues Index

  • November 16, 2018 - Issue Index
  • October 19, 2018 - Issue Index
  • September 21, 2018 - Issue Index
  • August 24, 2018 - Issue Index
  • August 10, 2018 - Issue Index
  • July 27, 2018 - Issue Index
  • July 13, 2018 - Issue Index
  • June 29, 2018 - Issue Index
  • June 15, 2018 - Issue Index
  • June 1, 2018 - Issue Index
  • May 18, 2018 - Issue Index
  • May 4, 2018 - Issue Index
  • April 6, 2018 - Issue Index
  • March 9, 2018 - Issue Index
  • January 26, 2018 - Issue Index
    • January 26, 2018 - Speak Out - Letters to Letters
    • January 26, 2018 - The Way I See by Steve Elkins
    • January 26, 2018 - In Brief
    • January 26, 2018 - CAMPmatters by Murray Archibald
    • January 26, 2018 - CAMP Out by Fay Jacobs
    • January 26, 2018 - CAMP Feature by Chris Azzopardi
    • January 26, 2018 - It's My Life by Michael Thomas Ford
    • January 26, 2018 - CAMP Chorus
    • January 26, 2018 - CAMP Stories by Rich Barnett
    • January 26, 2018 - Women's FEST Update
    • January 26, 2018 - Biggs Museum by Brent Adams Mundt
    • January 26, 2018 - Last Summer at Bluefish Cove
    • January 26, 2018 - Eating Out by Fay Jacobs
    • January 26, 2018 - CAMP Sights by Arnold Berke
    • January 26, 2018 - View Point by Richard Rosendall
    • January 26, 2018 - Booked Solid by Terri Schlichenmeyer
    • January 26, 2018 - CAMPshots Gallery 1
    • January 26, 2018 - CAMPshots Gallery 2
    • January 26, 2018 - Volunteer Spotlight by Monica Parr
    • January 26, 2018 - Volunteer Thank You
    • January 26, 2018 - Before the Beach by Kim Butler
    • January 26, 2018 - Straight Talk by David Garrett
    • January 26, 2018 - The Outfield by Dan Woog
    • January 26, 2018 - CAMP Dates
    • January 26, 2018 - CAMP Arts by Doug Yetter
    • January 26, 2018 - We Remember
    • January 26, 2018 - Out and Proud by Stefani Deoul

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