"Write down the plate numbers of the Caddy and the Lincoln. I memorized them." I recited them and Timmy wrote the numbers and letters on the back of an oil-change receipt, which I stuffed in my jacket pocket. On the way back to Albany, neither of us had much to say.

17

Roland Stover's apartment was in the basement of a frame house with flaking gray paint on one of the marginal blocks of Morton Avenue across from Lincoln Park. The entrance was from a narrow alleyway between his and the nearly identical house next door, and although the May afternoon was bright, by five-thirty darkness had all but set in down in Stover's depths.

"Oh, we can definitely tell you all there is to know about those two," Stover said with a sneer. "Paul Haig and Larry Bierly were a couple of unrepentant buttfuckers, and they both got what they had coming."

"You wouldn't believe what a disruptive influence those two were in Dr. Crockwell's program," Dean Moody put in. "Larry especially. All that time he was there pretending to want to be sexually repaired like the rest of us, and he was a secret deviant! That big buttfucker was just toooo much."

Stover was hulking and wild-eyed, with an erratic crewcut, bad skin, and a Wal-Mart name tag on his white dress shirt. Moody was slight and fluttery and full of manic intensity that must have struck terror in the hearts of the parents he had sued for turning him into a homosexual. After all Mr. and Mrs. Moody had been through, it must have been small compensation that they had gotten to go on Montel.

"Repentance is the way of the Lord," Stover said, jabbing his finger my way. "But never once did those two buttfuckers ask forgiveness for their transgressions. Even in the beginning, I had my suspicions about those two. They said they were unhappy,

and they said they were confused, and they were this, and they were that. But never once did those two admit that they were abominations in the eyes of the Lord, abominations to be cast out!"

I said, "Dr. Crockwell's treatment approach wasn't religious in nature, was it? I was under the impression it was more scientific. Secular, anyway."

"Well, yes, that is true," Moody said. "You see, Roland here is an extremely spiritual person, so he tends to see things that way. I'm trying hard to become more spiritual myself. He's helping me. I'd always wanted to get in closer touch with my Lord and Savior, but there were certain things in my life that stood in the way."

I said, "You mean like buttfucking."

They both nodded eagerly. They were seated together on a tattered old plaid couch, Stover's large arm stretched out along the back of the couch behind Moody's little permed hairdo but not, so far as I could see, touching it.

Stover said, "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death.' Leviticus."

"I suppose it's a big theological question," I said, "as to who shall actually put the buttfuckers to death. I take it that in your view, Roland, it's a dirty theological job, but somebody has to do it. Or have I misunderstood your position?"

"That is an important question," Stover said, poking a thick finger my way again. "And if the liberals didn't control the media and the Supreme Court and the special interests, we'd have capital punishment in this country for sexual deviants. I've read that down in Washington there are buttfuckers under every rock who have Bill Clinton in their pocket and under their thumb. In fact, you might as well just paint the White House lavender."

"Mincin' Bill Clinton," Moody said, waving a mocking limp wrist.

"Clinton is gay? I never heard that."

"Oh, honey, where have you been?" Moody said. "No, really.

Gennifer Flowers was one of his beards, and so was that other one."

I said, "I suppose you arrived at this conclusion based on the president's initial position on gays in the military."

"Oh, no," Moody said. "It's not just that. I've seen copies of depositions from men who have slept with Missy Clinton. You can send away for those."

"Well," I said, "this explains a lot."

They both nodded sagely.

"Tell us about your study on deviance," Stover said. "Did you say on the phone that you're doing a deviance survey for Dr. Crockwell?"

"Yes, I am. He couldn't provide me the names of any group members, of course. But Larry Bierly did, and I'm grateful that even though you hate Larry's guts you're still willing to participate in the study."

"Will you be asking questions about our former sexual practices?" Moody said.

They both looked expectant, but I said, "No, it's treatment programs that I'm most interested in. I'm doing a study on comparative methods of treatment for deviance."

They both said, "Oh."

"I'd like to hear more about Dr. Crockwell's program from the patient's point of view. The dynamic of the group you were in interests me especially."

They both looked bored. Group dynamics was not what they hoped to discuss with me.

"The group part wasn't all that great," Moody said. "I mean, it was important—learning guy things and all. But for Roland and I, the individual treatment Dr. Crockwell had to offer was what really turned things around for us."

"What did the individual treatment consist of?"

"Aversion therapy, it's called. Where the incorrect sexual conditioning that was done by our parents is corrected by punishing wrong sexual thoughts and rewarding right ones."

"Zapping the demons," Stover added. "Casting out the evil spirits."

"Electric shocks were used?"

"Yeah, everybody went over to Dr. Crockwell’s three times a week," Moody said. "You could do it two ways. You'd get wired up with electrodes and look at slides of naked women and hot guys. If you were on automatic, you'd get zapped whenever the picture showed humpy guys but not when it was tits and pussy. Or you could do it yourself—zap yourself when guys were on and you started getting hard. If you stayed stiff, you could turn up the dial till it really hurt a whole lot, and that usually did the trick."

"It's remarkable," I said, "that so simple a procedure could actually reverse sexual orientation."

"It's not just the therapy," Moody said. "It's a deep commitment, too, to normalcy."

Stover added, "The Lord would have made Adam and Steve, not Adam and Eve, if he had meant for men to fuck each other in the butt."

"Are you ever tempted to backslide?" I asked. "No pun intended."

"Once in a while," Moody said, looking troubled. "Dr. Crockwell told us this would occur in some patients. But Roland and I have figured out ways of dealing with that."

They both looked at me uncertainly.

I said, "How?"

"We look at dirty pictures together," Stover said. "Or once in a while videos."

I said, "I guess that falls under the heading of giving the devil his due."

Stover looked at me suspiciously, and Moody wasn't sure he liked the sound of that either.

I said, "How do you create the electric shocks? I hope you're not risking death or serious injury with a toaster or anything like that, guys."

"Oh, no, no," Stover said. "We use a safe device like Dr. Crockwell's. The one we have is called a Lustbuster. You can get them