CHAPTER 1
Everyone's your cousin ...
First of all, everybody on the planet is a seventy-eighth cousin orcloser, according to The Guinness Book of Records, so everybodyis a cousin to everybody else. More specifically about my closefamily, my father's side was Italian, and my mother's side German,English, and Irish. My mother was a strong personality, and myfather was easygoing but sort of distant because he was busy withhis career as a general surgeon.
CHAPTER 2
I was very close to seven women—my mother,grandmas, and four aunts....
Basically, our mother raised me and my three siblings, but I wasvery close to both grandmothers, my father's two sisters and mymother's two sisters. I didn't really bond well with any older men asI was growing up, for some reason.
As I said, I have three siblings, and each one is a godsend in adifferent way. Unfortunately for me, one of my two brothers waskilled in a car accident last year. My sister was like the homecomingqueen: everybody thought she was pretty, she was popular, andintelligent too. One of my brothers was masculine, very athletic, andanybody knew that they had better not pick on me because he wouldpick on them. The other brother was the one who was killed in thecar accident. That guy had a personality that would make anyonelaugh. He had a very campy sense of humor, but still, because hewas popular, he helped me. So the three of them all helped me.
As I said, I was very close to seven women—my mother, grandmas,and four aunts—but not to any older men for some reason. I feltun-masculine growing up. I was sort of confused about which genderI was, and I did enjoy cross-dressing until about the age of seven. Ienjoyed wearing women's clothing until that time. The cross-dressingand gender identity confusion went away. I eventually decided thatI'm just sort of soft—not really feminine, just a soft male.
CHAPTER 3
I had reason to believe that there were two areasin the brain for sexual arousal....
Also, up until the age of eight, I had reason to believe that therewere two areas in the brain for arousal, one for gay arousal andone for straight, because I noticed that I would have two orgasmswhen I fantasized. Gradually between ages eight and eleven, myorientation switched entirely from being bisexual to being gay, andI wasn't happy about that, because I liked women better than menand, therefore, wanted to love women more, too.
When I was twelve, my obsessive-compulsive disorder began. Myfamily and I were visiting Disneyland in Southern California, andsuddenly I had a compulsion to swallow overand over again—anytimeI would think about the position of my tongue in my mouth, I wouldbe forced to swallow. I told my mother, and she said, "Oh, you'reprobably just thirsty," but that wasn't it. It was definitely someextraterrestrial space alien(s) (Earth-excludee(s) or reject(s); (seeexplanation below), that had possession of me and was/were forcingme to swallow against my will. I still have this problem as well asan obsession-compulsion with psychosomatic hand-shakiness andanother one with urinary and fecal incontinence, for which I wear anadult-sized diaper any time I leave the house.
Let's see, I was no good at sports. I was terrible in sports. Therefore,I wanted to be a brain, one of the gifted students. In terms of my highschool record and all that, I was. I was near the top of my class, inboth grades and standardized tests.
I actually had some minor sex play with another kid, and then I madehis life miserable when really I was the one who had enticed himinto it. So I felt really bad about it, and in later years I apologized tohim. He accepted the apology.
I had a really close girlfriend in high school who I thought was theeasiest person in the world to get along with. She didn't disagreewith anything. She happened to be Jewish, and she went on tobecome a rabbi and a PhD in Eastern religion. But when she heardsome other kids say that I was effeminate, she threw that back atme, because I hadn't called her all summer between eighth and ninthgrades. So then I said really cruel things to her that can't very wellbe apologized for. I just kind of counted this as bad luck. It's too badbut you can't correct it.
I was also confused about gender, not just about orientation—I wasconfused about whether I was a boy or a girl. I worshipped thesetwo brainy girls, Michelle and Hillary. They were both outstandingstudents, but I liked Hillary better, and she impressed me more withher portrayal in one of the Greek plays of "Electra."
I remember thinking in high school that I could be a good student inanything if there was some way of injecting pleasure into learning.After graduation, I went to Trinity College. During the summer of1972—when I was twenty-one—I was sitting and listening to anorganic chemistry lecture, and it was extremely boring. So I starteddozing off, and then it occurred to me: if you could take a brainwavepattern that indicated whether someone were paying attention andthen give that person pleasurable brain stimulation only if he or shewere paying attention (as indicated by their brain waves), you couldgreatly augment learning ability. I told the idea to my lab partner,who was sitting next to me, and he said, "Oh, that's very creative,"and I just knew that my life would never be the same after havingthat thought.
CHAPTER 4
Around 1978, I met my future wife....
I kept getting medical school rejections, although I did get oneacceptance to a school in India, and another acceptance to Grenada.In 1978, I met my future wife, who I thought was perfect for me,because she seemed to accept my orientation, which I told her aboutin advance. She said she wanted to have a family and children, butI told her I was too young. I was twenty-seven at the time, and thiswas 1978, and I felt I was too young! So I said, "Well, if you want tohave a family and children, just come looking for me in six years."I said by thirty-three I'd be old enough.
Then she came to do an elective at the same hospital where I wasdoing my clinical clerkships after about two years. I thought she wasperfect, because she wanted to go into psychiatry, and I thought shemight buy my ideas about having an open marriage.
So I thought she was perfect because she seemed unconventionaland interested in psychiatry, and her family lived only one hundredmiles away from me in the United States. It turned out not to be agood idea, because she was actually in love with the traditional ideaof marriage and family, and I wanted an open marriage and family.So things didn't work out. I felt bad, but you couldn't reconcile whatshe wanted with what I wanted.
CHAPTER 5
But that's the girl that I'm still involved with,the girl that I met in 1980....
My father died of pancreatic cancer before he had a chance to meetmy late ex-wife. I had met a young lady in 1980, Laura, and she wasextremely doting in attention and would call me ten times a day andsend gifts. They were very thoughtful, and then I had to tell her thatI was getting married to this girl who was going into psychiatry.She wrote a semi-nasty letter—it wasn't real bad. I read it to myroommate, and he didn't think it was too bad, but she obviouslywasn't happy.
But that's the girl that I'm still involved...
