One Of These Things First

From New York Times{u2013} bestselling author Steven Gaines comes a wry and touching memoir of his trials as a gay teen ... (more)

From New York Times{u2013} bestselling author Steven Gaines comes a wry and touching memoir of his trials as a gay teen at the famed Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic. One of These Things First is a poignant reminiscence of a fifteen-year-old gay Jewish boy{u2019}s unexpected trajectory from a life behind a rack of dresses in his grandmother{u2019}s Brooklyn bra-and-girdle store to Manhattan{u2019}s infamous Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, whose alumni includes writers, poets, and madmen, as well as Marilyn Monroe and bestselling author Steven Gaines. With a gimlet eye and a true gift for storytelling, Gaines captures his childhood shtetl in Brooklyn, and all its drama and secrets, like an Edward Hopper tableau: his philandering grandfather with his fleet of Cadillacs and Corvettes; a trio of harpy saleswomen; a giant, empty movie theater, his portal to the outside world; a shirtless teenage boy pushing a lawnmower in front of a house on Long Island; and a pair of tormenting bullies who own the corner candy store and whose taunts drive Gaines to a suicide attempt. Gaines also takes the reader behind the walls of Payne Whitney{u2014}the zHarvard of psychiatric clinics,y as Time magazine called it{u2014}populated by a captivating group of neurasthenics who subtly begin to change him in unexpected ways. The cast of characters includes a famous Broadway producer who becomes his unlikely mentor; an elegant woman who claims to be the ex-mistress of newly elected president John F. Kennedy; a snooty, suicidal Harvard architect; and a seductive young contessa . At the center of the story is a brilliant young psychiatrist who promises to cure a young boy of his homosexuality and give him the normalcy he so longs for. For readers who love stories of self-transformation, One of These Things First is a fascinating memoir in the vain of Susanna Kaysen{u2019}s Girl, Interrupted and Augusten Burroughs{u2019}s Running with Scissors . With its novelistic texture and unflagging narrative, this book is destined to become one of the great, indelible works of the memoir genre. (less)