Savage Love by Douglas Glover Read Free Book Online Page A

to be obliterated from memory: My mother’s hand on my shoulder is just like my father’s hand on Aganetha’s breast. He wet his p yjamas right down to the floor.
    Aganetha disappeared from Tobin’s life. He thought of her as a kite, but the string had snapped and she was drifting away from him. His parents never mentioned her. He thought, She is the only person I ever loved. She is my beginning and my end. His mother, if anything, seemed warmer, more attentive, toward his father, but in an anxious, frenzied, hysterical manner that he later described to his therapist as a theatre of martyrdom. See, she seemed to say, I am the perfect one for you because I will bear anything, tolerate every betrayal and vice. To Tobin, his father seemed ineffably distant, cruel, cold, powerful and perverse. Both his parents were so involved in their private drama that they had no emotion to spare for Tobin. He thought, he told the therapist, he was having a happy childhood.
    With Aganetha gone, life seemed like a dream to Tobin. He did not know why anything occurred or what was real. He began to wet the bed. It just happened, he explained to his mother. Someone else was controlling his bodily functions. Erections were inexplicable and usually accompanied some act of cruelty. He got erections when he threw rocks at the neighbour’s puppy Squiggles. He got erections when he found his mother weeping in the rose arbour. He got erections every time he passed through the rose arbour. One day he threw himself against the rose arbour, impaling himself on the thorns, an image of the Jesus he had seen in his children’s Bible. When the blood came, he had an erection. He remembered Aganetha’s breast in his father’s hand and had his first orgasm.
    He was suddenly twelve and enrolled in a special school. He couldn’t understand why he was there. He told the school counsellor about his love for Aganetha, whom he assumed was dead, murdered, yes, by his father, with the help of his mother. He knew where she was buried.
    â€œThis explains why you keep digging up the rose arbour,” said the therapist, reading from his notes.
    â€œI don’t know why I dig there,” said Tobin. “I am controlled by outside forces, my mother and father, I think. They have a remote control transmitter and there is a chip embedded in my skull. When I dig in the back garden, I feel peaceful.”
    â€œWhy do you stick pencils in your penis?” asked the therapist.
    â€œThat’s easy,” said Tobin. Then he fell silent. Then he said, “There is a button. If they press that button, my head will explode and I’ll be dead.”
    â€œDo you think your parents love you?” asked the therapist.
    â€œAbsolutely,” said Tobin.
    *
    After the special school, there was an away school, then the incident with the school nurse’s kitten, the fires, another school, the Internet pornography ring featuring first- and second -graders in the school washroom, shoplifting, juvenile detention. In group therapy at the Cedar Vale Centre, Tobin met a depressed girl named Rose who was addicted to several drug groups and had dabbled in prostitution. She was overweight, her breasts swung like giant pods beneath her sweatshirt, she had lank black hair and a crucifix tattooed on her forehead. She taught Tobin to hold his breath till he fainted. Nights, Tobin dreamed he saw his father kissing Rose in the rose arbour, kneading her chubby breasts with his clawlike fingers. He showed Rose a photograph of his father. She said she might have known him, or someone just like him, a double.
    Tobin said, “I can hold my breath till I’m dead.”
    â€œHave you ever been kissed?” asked Rose. When he did not answer, she asked, “Have you ever made love?”
    At which point Tobin fainted.
    He bought a crown of thorns plant with his pocket money and kept it by his bedside. He changed therapy groups and avoided