One of These Things First
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Narrated by:
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Steven Gaines
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By:
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Steven Gaines
About this listen
From New York Times best-selling 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 15-year-old gay Jewish boy's unexpected trajectory from a life behind a rack of dresses in his grandmother's Brooklyn bra-and-girdle store to Manhattan's infamous Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, whose alumni includes writers, poets, and madmen as well as Marilyn Monroe and best-selling 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 giant, empty movie theater, his portal to the outside world; a shirtless teenage boy pushing a lawnmower; and a pair of tormenting bullies whose taunts drive Gaines to a suicide attempt.
Gaines also takes the listener behind the walls of Payne Whitney - the "Harvard of psychiatric clinics", as Time magazine called it - populated by a captivating group of neurasthenics who affect his life 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 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 listeners who love stories of self-transformation, One of These Things First is a fascinating memoir in the vein of Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted and Augusten Burroughs' 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.
©2016 Steven Gaines (P)2016 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before really going belly-up.
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Really disappointing narrator!
- By Jessica Williams on 01-21-12
By: Wally Lamb
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I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This
- A Memoir
- By: Nadja Spiegelman
- Narrated by: Nadja Spiegelman
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers - French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly - exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja's body changed and "began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand", their relationship grew tense.
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Aweful
- By Haley Abreu on 07-05-17
By: Nadja Spiegelman
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Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
- By: Juliann Garey
- Narrated by: Dan Butler
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In her tour-de-force first novel, Juliann Garey takes us inside the restless mind, ravaged heart, and anguished soul of Greyson Todd, a successful Hollywood studio executive who leaves his wife and young daughter and for a decade travels the world giving free reign to the bipolar disorder he's been forced to keep hidden for almost 20 years.
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Psychosis or Syphilis?
- By Vira on 04-02-13
By: Juliann Garey
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Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.
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Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
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The Great Failure
- A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Original Recording
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"The Great Failure is a boundless embrace, leaving nothing out. I wanted to learn the truth, to become whole. If I could touch the dark nature in someone else, I could know it in myself." So begins Natalie Goldberg in this candid exploration of her life. Here, Goldberg makes sense of primary relationships between father and daughter, teacher and student, and exemplifies the accomplishment available when creating daily writing practices.
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If you have been let down by anyone. Listen
- By Mia on 04-19-18
By: Natalie Goldberg
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Fairyland
- A Memoir of My Father
- By: Alysia Abbott
- Narrated by: Alysia Abbott
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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A beautiful, vibrant memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and 80s San Francisco with an openly gay father. After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation - few of whom are raising a child. Steve throws himself into San Francisco's vibrant cultural scene.
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Great representation of the time
- By AvidReader22 on 06-07-19
By: Alysia Abbott
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Charms for the Easy Life
- By: Kaye Gibbons
- Narrated by: Kate Fleming
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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A family without men, the Birches live gloriously offbeat lives in the lush, green backwoods of North Carolina. Radiant, headstrong Sophia and her shy, brilliant daughter, Margaret, possess powerful charms to ward off loneliness, despair, and the human misery that often beats a path to their door. And they are protected by the eccentric wisdom and muscular love of the remarkable matriarch Charlie Kate, a solid, uncompromising, self-taught healer who treats everything from boils to broken bones to broken hearts.
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So Lovely!
- By Doodle slave on 01-04-17
By: Kaye Gibbons
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The Wednesday Sisters
- By: Meg Waite Clayton
- Narrated by: Julie Dretzin
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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For 35 years, Frankie, Linda, Kath, Brett, and Ally have met every Wednesday at the park near their homes in Palo Alto, California. Defined when they first meet by what their husbands do, the young homemakers and mothers are far removed from the Summer of Love that has enveloped most of the Bay Area in 1967.
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Loved it!
- By Denise Wallace on 06-26-09
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Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
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The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
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Breaking Night
- A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard
- By: Liz Murray
- Narrated by: Liz Murray
- Length: 14 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls' home. At age 15, Liz found herself on the streets when her family finally unraveled. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep. Then, when Liz's mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny.
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unbelievably inspiring
- By Amazon Customer on 03-17-12
By: Liz Murray
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Little Girl Lost
- A Foundlings Novel
- By: Wendy Corsi Staub
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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May 1968 - On a murky pre-dawn Mother’s Day, sinister secrets play out miles apart in New York City. In Harlem, a church janitor finds a newborn in a basket. In Brooklyn, an elusive serial killer prowls slumbering families, leaving a trail of blood. These seemingly unrelated lives - and deaths - are destined to intersect on a distant, blood-soaked day. October, 1987 - Reeling from shocking personal discoveries, two strangers navigate a world where nothing is as it seems.
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Not Up To Staub's Standards
- By Gracie on 12-29-18
What listeners say about One of These Things First
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- escoocoo
- 07-24-18
Delightful!
I thoroughly enjoyed this delightful (relatively short) autobiographical piece read by the author. Entertaining, interesting, amusing. I loved that it took place (mostly) in Brooklyn NY. I think The fact that Steven Gaines and I come from similar backgrounds and are close in age probably added a great deal to my enjoyment. Not a prerequisite, though, not by any means.
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- alici
- 11-27-18
Enjoyable!
Not what I expected, but definitely worth the listen. This book was insightful from the child male prospective, enjoyed.
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- Jo Ann
- 08-07-18
Pulls at your heartstrings
The background story of his life in a time where being different and the stuggles and difficulties he had to go through growing up.
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- Florida Man
- 07-18-18
It's an interesting look into this man's youth
This book was a nice reminder that there are people who are actually more neurotic than I am. This poor kid. I guess I never really thought about what it must have been like to be gay in an era where it was considered a mental disorder. What a relief that this seems to have changed a great deal in public perception.
I like listening to the stories about his crazy family and the odd balls in his neighborhood. I also found it strange that while his father seemed to be a jerk in some ways he was actually very supportive in others. I don't know many fathers who would take their child daily, for 2 weeks, to where a show was being taped, in the off chance of glimpsing a star. Or who would remain in poverty to send their child to psychoanalysis.
Anyway, it's worth the listen.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Edmund
- 07-10-18
Loved it.
Picked this up on the Daily Deal. Had not expected to find it so interesting/enjoyable. One of my two favorite books this year - keep thinking about it. And the author reads it himself . . . always a bonus.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Tosch Ranch
- 08-06-18
A MUST READ (hear)
Gaines delights in transporting listeners to the very bowels of his NYC past then catapults you into his hilarious and unique world of his stint at Payne Whitney mental hospital. His writing is chalk full of fantastic characters and lively discussions and revelations. Gaines reads this book and I couldnt imagine it any other way. He is a story teller! I got this on sale and honestly, I would have gladly paid full price for this work of art. There isn't a dull moment. A must get!
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- J. Michael
- 01-10-20
good story
I liked learning about the psychology used in earlier times. I had not understood how being gay was a disease rather than just the way one is. This helped me to understand a little more
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1 person found this helpful
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- Sharlotte
- 06-29-18
You'd have to be crazy if...
you don't find this book interesting! What stories, and well told! I'm glad I just happened to stumble on this while browsing Audible's choices.
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- Toni R.
- 06-29-18
Great listening.
Loved this book. The author made me feel I was actually in New York and at all the places he grew up in and not only to care about him but the people who were in and out of his life.
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- Etoile NEOhio
- 05-13-22
Interesting
Coming of age when being gay was considered a mental illness, when psychiatrists thought they could "change" people into being straight, was a terrible, heartbreaking time. It makes this book painful to read in spite of the upbeat take the author seems to have on his life now.
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