Pee-Shy Read online

  Advance praise for Frank Spinelli and Pee-Shy

  “This is one of those horrific, true stories that Dr. Spinelli so courageously reveals. With raw honesty he makes us understand that monsters do exist and a child’s innocence is precious. His story is one of too many, but maybe this one will help open our eyes a little more and shine a light on a taboo subject that many choose not to see or believe.”

  —Whoopi Goldberg

  “Pee-Shy is a devastatingly heartbreaking look at life after childhood abuse, with wit and piercing insight that can only come from a place of brutal honesty. Dr. Frank Spinelli’s quest to bring his abuser to justice, at the risk of his own recovery, shows a courage rarely encountered. That he does so to save others from suffering is beyond admirable—it’s inspirational.”

  —Josh Kilmer-Purcell, author of The Bucolic Plague : How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir and star of The Fabulous Beekman Boys

  “Passionate, enormously insightful, and deftly humorous, Dr. Frank Spinelli’s memoir recounts a riveting, frightening, and often amusing story of growing up gay in the 1970s amid the shame and fear of childhood sex abuse. Pee-Shy is a story of searing importance, one which no one should have to endure, but one in which humor and grit helped a young man find justice. Provocative, intense, and funny, this book is a page-turner that makes you think, cry, and laugh.”

  —Michelangelo Signorile, author of Life Outside and Sirius Radio Host

  Please turn the page for more advance praise for Pee-Shy!

  “A suspenseful page-turner that repeatedly made me laugh and cry. Spinelli poignantly recounts his childhood sexual abuse as well as a courageous struggle to come to terms with that experience as an adult. Pee-Shy is a powerful dose of non-sugar-coated reality, skillfully written with wit, humor, and much human feeling. Anyone wishing to see how one takes control of one’s life and moves beyond victimhood status should read it.”

  —Jack Drescher, MD, Emeritus Editor of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health and author of Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man

  “His first-person narrative illuminates the psychological, medical, familial, and legal aspects of this pressing social problem as no academic approach could do. We are fortunate that Spinelli possesses the extraordinary courage that justice in this realm requires.”

  —Kenji Yoshino, author of Covering

  “Frank Spinelli joins the ranks of courageous survivors of boyhood sexual abuse who have gone public about their trauma. The book, both evocative and chilling, makes us rethink how as a society we deal with those who hurt our vulnerable children.”

  —Richard Gartner, PhD, author of Beyond Betrayal

  PEE-SHY

  FRANK SPINELLI

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  For Chad

  Table of Contents

  Advance praise for Frank Spinelli and Pee-Shy

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1 - Careful What You Wish For

  CHAPTER 2 - An Old Fixer-Upper

  CHAPTER 3 - Kitten Tartare

  CHAPTER 4 - Second Time’s the Charm

  CHAPTER 5 - Confessions of a Priest Stalker

  CHAPTER 6 - The Cop and the Kid

  CHAPTER 7 - The Blame Game

  CHAPTER 8 - Out Like a Lyon

  CHAPTER 9 - Airplane Jeopardy

  CHAPTER 10 - Wheels Are in Motion

  CHAPTER 11 - Something You Should Know

  CHAPTER 12 - Sunday Dinner

  PART II

  CHAPTER 13 - Evel Knievel versus Billy the Kid

  CHAPTER 14 - Charmed by a Fox

  CHAPTER 15 - A Boy Like Me

  CHAPTER 16 - Camp Creeps

  CHAPTER 17 - Look Me in the Eyes

  CHAPTER 18 - Boy Bonding

  CHAPTER 19 - Making Tender foot

  CHAPTER 20 - Becoming a Monster

  CHAPTER 21 - Sleaze Torso

  CHAPTER 22 - Beyond Betrayal

  CHAPTER 23 - Where Nobody Dared to Go

  PART III

  CHAPTER 24 - Taking the Plunge

  CHAPTER 25 - Choo-Choo Charlie

  CHAPTER 26 - Altitude Sickness

  CHAPTER 27 - Alaska in Colorado

  CHAPTER 28 - Live for Right Now

  CHAPTER 29 - Autumn Perspective

  CHAPTER 30 - Hunting Rabbits

  CHAPTER 31 - The Mirror Cracked

  CHAPTER 32 - Home for the Holidays

  CHAPTER 33 - Just the Way They Are

  CHAPTER 34 - Fade to Black

  CHAPTER 35 - Stroke in Evolution

  CHAPTER 36 - Vertically Challenged

  CHAPTER 37 - Surprise Witness

  EPILOGUE - Beverly Glass

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright Page

  PROLOGUE

  BILL CAME BACK TO ME IN A DREAM during the winter of 2008. I saw myself as a little boy standing in the doorway of my parents’ home with my nose pressed against the screen waiting for him. As soon as his red truck appeared, the one with the storage shed built on the back that looked like a little house, I bolted outside. A warm spring breeze caressed my face as I raced across the lawn. Just as I reached the car, I woke up.

  Alone in bed, I could still see his bearish face, the receding hairline, and those soft blue eyes as clearly as if he was sleeping there next to me in the dark. Soon more memories seeped out from the crevices of my brain, and it was 1978 again—the year I turned eleven and was first introduced to Bill. Over the years I tried to forget, but I can still see his bedroom with the drab wood paneling on the walls, the gunmetal-gray desk in the corner, and that iconic poster of Farrah Fawcett over his bed. Too many teeth, was my first impression when I saw it. I was nervous then. Why wouldn’t I be? I had been called to my Scoutmaster’s home for a private meeting. I never expected to be taken up to his bedroom, especially when I saw his old mother sitting stone-faced in front of the television downstairs.

  Then suddenly, a growing uneasiness developed in my groin, and I knew that I would have to pee soon. That was easier said than done. I tossed and turned, postponing the inevitable for just a few minutes more.

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1

  Careful What You Wish For

  IT WAS A CHILLY, rainy day in June. I was standing in the foyer of my parents’ home dripping wet and shaking in my Doc Martens combat boots. My mother was holding the ladder as my father changed light bulbs on the enormous chandelier that hung over the dining room table. When my mother noticed me, she let go of the ladder and firmly planted her hands on her hips. “What happened?” she asked.

  My father wobbled unsteadily. “Hold the ladder,” he ordered.

  But my mother had something more important to deal with now. “What happened?” she asked again, inching menacingly toward me. My father climbed down the ladder. Together they stood in silence, waiting for me to explain why I was home early from college.

  I remember exactly how I looked that day: blue-black dyed hair, tattered Billy Idol T-shirt, rosary beads around my neck, vintage oversized herringbone coat, and my trustee boots that I wore almost every day even in the summer. I was a parent’s worst nightmare, and all because I was cursed.

  For many years, I thought my life was plagued by bad luck, or what my Italian family called il malocchio. Growing up on Staten Island, I lived in fear that I had been cursed. Even my mother said I had no luck because nothing came easily for me. As a little boy I was bullied at school for being a sissy, and in high school I embraced this feeling of alienation by dressing completely in black and listening to punk rock. In
college, I continued my rebellious ways and cut class to draw in my notebook and write bad short stories in the student center. After failing chemistry, I lost my scholarship to New York University.

  The day I saw that F next to my name, I felt this peculiar sense of detachment because I had never flunked a class before in my life. Leaving school, I walked in a daze to the diner across the street and ordered a Spanish omelet, but I couldn’t eat a bite. It took hours for me to get up the nerve to go home. Once I got back to Staten Island, I walked all the way up the hill to my house in the rain. As soon as my parents saw me dripping all over their white marble tile, they knew something was wrong.

  “I failed,” I said.

  Then they began hurling questions at me in rapid fire. How did this happen? What were you thinking? How will you get into medical school? And my favorite: How could you do this to us?

  I wasn’t shocked by their response.

  Ever since I was a little boy, I always dreamed of being a small town doctor. It began when I was eight years old and my parents bought me a doctor’s bag for my birthday. Unlike their previous gifts—baseball mitt, toy rifle, Tonka truck—which were completely useless to me, here were the most peculiar instruments I had ever seen. Much like Felix the Cat, my favorite cartoon character, I now had my very own lucky bag of tricks.

  Looking back, I know that il malocchio had nothing to do with it. I wasn’t cursed. I was sexually abused at age eleven, and all the “unlucky” events that followed stemmed from being molested. But that was something my parents never talked about, like premarital sex or abortion. Then, in the midst of all their shouting, I realized I needed professional help—the kind my parents should have provided for me when I was a little boy.

  My best friend, Victoria, referred me to an art therapist named Olga Koniahin, an edgy woman with an auburn Mia Farrow pixie who wore long skirts with bold prints and lots of jewelry. I met with her on Tuesday nights in a small office in the basement of her house, but I kept this a secret from my parents, knowing that they didn’t believe in therapy. Telling family secrets to a stranger for money was considered foolish, especially since we had priests who heard confessions for free.

  My sessions with Olga were the emotional outlet I needed. Within a matter of months, she concluded that being sexually abused had left me traumatized. This was complicated by the fact that I was also struggling with being gay. My rebellious behavior as an adolescent was a reaction to the shameful feelings I suppressed at having succumbed to my Scoutmaster—a man I’d grown to trust—and the unresolved anger I harbored toward my parents for the way they reacted after I told them. For years I suppressed these emotions, and throughout high school I denied my sexual impulses. Once I started college, these conflicting emotions became too much for me to manage. Losing my scholarship, according to Olga, was a cry for help.

  Week after week, I marveled at how Olga was able to make sense of my life in such a short period of time. She felt I needed an outlet to express my feelings. I told Olga I liked to draw. She suggested I paint “in order to begin the healing process.” I started off small at first and then moved on to bigger canvases. I presented each to Olga so that we could discuss its hidden meanings, and then I stored them away in my own little studio in the basement of my parents’ house. I left a little piece of my unfortunate past in every painting, and over the course of the next three years, I graduated from college with Olga’s help and eventually went on to medical school.

  My parents were delighted that my life was back on track. Of course they took all the credit for my progress, but they were also conflicted, knowing that I was about to move out of their house for the first time. My mother never got over the NYU fiasco. If she had her way I would have commuted every day to medical school, but I was determined to prove them wrong. So for the next four years, I lived like a Jesuit priest, dedicating myself exclusively to my studies and remaining completely celibate.

  That all changed once I moved into Manhattan to begin residency in 1996. My cousin Alex took me to my first gay bar, called Uncle Charlie’s. Within a matter of months, I was dating men and partying in dance clubs on the weekends, high on life and something called Ecstasy and carrying on as though I was making up for lost time. Except once residency was over, I wasn’t so interested in dancing in a sea of shirtless men, and I was faced with the bigger problem of finding a job.

  Lying in bed, jobless and single, I wondered where life was going to take me next. Then it occurred to me that I needed to rediscover the strength I’d gained with Olga, because I wasn’t going to find love or a job in a dance club. Luckily, I was offered a position in the HIV clinic at Cabrini Medical Center, and eventually I was promoted to clinical director. Meanwhile, I built up a private practice seeing patients in a very small office, which I dubbed the rat cage since it was located in a basement. Over the next six months, I saved up enough money to put a down payment on my very first apartment on West Twenty-third Street. Now I was a homeowner. It appeared as though my life was going in the right direction again.

  Later that same year, I began dating a Russian named Ivan, who lived one block away from my new apartment. Fascinated by his background, I immersed myself in his culture, studying Russian for Dummies and reading novels by Tolstoy. He was very regimented and spent hours at the gym. Each night, I’d meet him after his workout and we’d eat sashimi at a local Japanese restaurant. Ivan was very strict when it came to his diet, and he hardly ever ate carbohydrates. On weekends, he treated himself to a glass of red wine. That was his only vice.

  Ivan was also a nester and insisted we stay at his apartment. Most nights he’d watch CNN from his white leather bed eating unsalted almonds from a bowl on his lap. He often talked out loud to the television, commenting on the news. Ivan had strong opinions when it came to religion, politics, and relationships.

  Several months went by, and we were sitting in our favorite Japanese restaurant. As always, Ivan took it upon himself and ordered for the both of us. “Just tuna and salmon,” he told the server. “No rice!” It never occurred to him that I might have wanted something else for once. In that moment, I imagined what my life with Ivan was going to be like—the two of us together, eating raw fish and no carbs.

  After dinner, still haunted by the revelation I’d had at the restaurant, I scanned Ivan’s studio with new eyes. Suddenly, it occurred to me that he had decorated his apartment to reflect his myopic point of view. Everything was either stark white—including the painted brick walls, the parquet floors, and his leather bed—or jet-black, like his leather couch and replicated Barcelona chairs. Unnerved, I walked around in a trance. Was it possible that Ivan was as black-and-white as his apartment? The one saving grace was that Ivan introduced me to Eric. Once we met, we became best friends.

  Eric was my age but looked much younger. He had wide-set green eyes, fair skin, and brown hair with blond highlights that he straightened with a flatiron. We both grew up in New York. Eric was born in Roslyn, Long Island, and I was from what he called the “other” island. In late November, Eric invited Ivan and me to a lovely dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steak House, where he held a position as director of sales. That night I met his partner, Scott, a tall, lean man with dark hair, who was much more reserved than Eric. They were both Jewish and had been a couple for over fourteen years. At dinner, we discovered our shared fondness for television shows, particularly popular ones produced by Aaron Spelling during the 1980s and ’90s, like Dynasty and The Colbys. Scott and I were also obsessed with entertainment award trivia. Throughout dinner he quizzed me on the Academy Awards (a topic I considered myself an expert on).

  “Who beat out Glenn Close the year of Dangerous Liaisons ?”

  “Jodie Foster in The Accused,” I said.

  “Very good, Frankie,” said Scott. Looking over at Ivan, he asked, “Where did you find this one?” Ivan just focused on his filet mignon.

  After dinner we walked down Fifty-second Street trying to hail a cab. It was late, and all the
Broadway shows were letting out. Ivan stood at the corner with his hand held out, cursing the cabs as they drove by while Eric and I huddled together, arm in arm, for warmth. “Do you remember the lyrics to The Electric Company?” I asked.

  Eric jabbed Scott in the ribs. “Frank apparently doesn’t know who he’s dealing with yet.” Then Eric pulled me toward him. “I am an expert on children’s television. So if you want to go toe-to-toe with me, you’d better be prepared to go the distance.”

  After too many cosmos, I was feeling up for the challenge. “Oh really?” I said. “Well, do you know the lyrics to The Magic Garden?”

  With an impertinent look, Eric said, “Do you want me to sing Paula’s part or Carole’s?”

  It seemed I’d met my match. Right there on the street, heading down toward Times Square, Eric and I began belting out the theme song. The louder we sang, the more irritated Ivan became. “You sound like a couple of hyenas,” he said as a cab finally pulled up to the curb. Eric and I ignored him and laughed so heartily that we could barely finish the song. That night felt magical: the glow of the neon signs seemed to loop around us like a tilt-a-whirl.

  Later Ivan scolded me. “You were acting like a child,” he said. “You should be more of a man.”

  Throughout my thirties, I spent most of my time trying to have it all—boyfriend, career, success—and feeling like a failure. Nothing changed because I hadn’t changed, and as I saw it, there was only one solution. I had to get off the ride. After a year and a half with Ivan, we broke up just before my thirty-seventh birthday.