JESUS NATION SEX REBEL, mini-chapter 34

34. AN UNEXPECTED INTRUSION

Eve adjusted her own shocks downwards. But not K’s. His face reacted sharply; it was now drawn, like hers.

She felt awful for K, and tried to use her upset to imagine his discomfort. His erection lost some of its firmness. She continued with a few more images, his erection bulged again, and she zapped him again, this time ready for her own shock. She studied his face, and tried to place her mind in his, as he watched the naked men and their prominent penises on the screen, and was excited by them, only to be rudely shocked.

Sweat rolled down K’s face. Another shock, and he lost his erection entirely, as she could tell from the loss of blood pressure registered on the meter. Eve judged that it would take a month or two before she could mix the shock therapy with alternative mood therapy -- beautiful music, fragrances, and pretty pictures of naked females and of hetero couples having sex.

She heard a noise outside. The door opened, casting the light from outside into their darkened room. Most irregular. She’d never been disturbed like this, here where she sat in privacy with a patient facing the screen, side by side, her right hand at the keyboard controls, his lower-body nudity screened from her sight.

“What’s going on here?”

The loud voice of a young man. Arms waving.

“Who are you?” Eve asked, keeping her voice even. The young man was of medium height, with tousled hair, a flap of it hanging over his forehead, obscuring one eye. He wore a neat blazer and gray slacks. He looked like a perfectly harmless middleclass young man in his twenties, except for the fury that distended his mouth.

“I am this man’s lover,” the young man replied.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to stop this hoax.”

Hoax? This was a new one. Not everyone in the United States Under God believed that homosexuals deserved a chance to be cured, or that when they underwent therapy it actually worked. There was a widely held opinion that homosexuals simply acted out their “cure” as if it were successful, and then went back to their nefarious doings as soon as they were declared free and clear and certified as such by a panel of experts. The usual attack word, though, was not hoax, but “fraud.”

Eve looked briefly at K. He stared at the young man, and then looked away. His face bore a grim, silent expression. She thought she saw the flicker of a plea in his eyes.

“This is no hoax,” she said. “I am a Bureau Certified Therapist. This man is my Registered Patient.”

“He shouldn’t be.”

“He came here of his own free will.”

“Oh, no, he didn’t. There is no free will in this set-up. It’s all coercion. Psychological coercion. Mental terrorism.”

“What business of yours is this man’s treatment?”

“I love him. He loves me. You are trying to destroy our love.”

“Love?” Even Eve did not expect the word to jump from her mouth with such a negative spin on it.

“You are engaged in the most diabolical practice I can imagine.”

“Your love is diabolical. Love is a fiction, and yours is a bad fiction.”

“Our love is innocent, and you bear a guilt before God for casting doubt on it.”

“Look here, what makes you think you can come in here and insult me, and intervene with a perfectly legal and humanitarian practice?”

“It’s my human right to stop this nonsense.”

“Let’s be precise. How do you propose to stop it?”

The young man pulled a gun from his belt. A small, dark, fat, evil-looking snub-nosed piece of metal.

“With violence.”