I had just left a party at my friend Jeff's and was walking home, because I was drunk. I had only gone a few steps when I sort of hazily became aware of a presence next to me. At the time it felt natural to only sort of hazily be aware of someone being next to me, because I'd been that way since about nine o'clock in the evening, but then I started to wonder if it was more because it was Jesus.
My mind was too sluggish to be really startled. I had kind of a delayed startled reaction. By the time I realized I was startled I had already moved on to not caring that the guy next to me had a beard and robes. In fact I knew right away that he must be Jesus. Pretty right away.
"Hello, Ben," He said.
"Hi," I said.
"How have you been doing?"
"All right, I guess." I pushed against a telephone pole for balance as I walked past it and wondered if I'd been doing that with all the telephone poles, because I couldn't remember.
"Things have been difficult lately, haven't they."
I looked at Jesus. I wondered what to say. I was still wondering this when I noticed I was already talking. "I'm sad about Mom," I said.
"I know." He walked quietly with me for a while and I was upset because I was trying to focus on Jesus but frankly it was requiring a lot of my concentration to make sure I kept my balance. I thought about apologizing to Him for being so sloshed but I wondered if that was stupid. Then a car turned into the road in front of me, which I hate. I was upset at the car.
"Ben?"
"Yeah?" I couldn't believe Jesus was still talking with me.
"It will be all right. There will be a place for her. And there will be a place for you." He laid His hand on my arm.
"I know," I said. And God I really wanted to say something nice to the guy but it was hard to push it through the question of whether this was weird or not. Then after that He was gone, and I fished around in my pockets for half a minute before realizing I'd already forgotten why I wanted to do that.
"Shit," I said.
Friday, January 13, 2006
Wednesday, January 4, 2006
Experiment; Googlism.com: The Bird
the bird is starting to boss you
the bird is orphaned
the bird is the word the wild turkey didn't return to illinois until the late 1950s
the bird is
the bird is no longer there
the bird is transferred to a new keeper the registration document is returned to us with the transfer details filled in at the base of the form and a new
the bird is treated correctly
the bird is tame
the bird is chaotic in the sense that its dippy behavior is regular but not predictable
the bird is under anesthesia
the bird is eating approximately the same amount every day
the bird is held firmly between the index and middle fingers of the hand
the bird is spotted some tens of times every year
the bird is repeating some of the gossipy conversations he learned when he eavesdropped on the customers
the bird is in a box
the bird is a substance with a low vaporization point; it evaporates easily
the bird is truly orphaned or is it a fledgling who is fine where it is
the bird is sent out to a lab for identification
the bird is like a rudder
the bird is called the quetzal
the bird is rescued
the bird is in the cage or box then it should be removed to a warm place
the bird is a warm
the bird is orphaned
the bird is the word the wild turkey didn't return to illinois until the late 1950s
the bird is
the bird is no longer there
the bird is transferred to a new keeper the registration document is returned to us with the transfer details filled in at the base of the form and a new
the bird is treated correctly
the bird is tame
the bird is chaotic in the sense that its dippy behavior is regular but not predictable
the bird is under anesthesia
the bird is eating approximately the same amount every day
the bird is held firmly between the index and middle fingers of the hand
the bird is spotted some tens of times every year
the bird is repeating some of the gossipy conversations he learned when he eavesdropped on the customers
the bird is in a box
the bird is a substance with a low vaporization point; it evaporates easily
the bird is truly orphaned or is it a fledgling who is fine where it is
the bird is sent out to a lab for identification
the bird is like a rudder
the bird is called the quetzal
the bird is rescued
the bird is in the cage or box then it should be removed to a warm place
the bird is a warm
In the Tissue Box
The bird is eating approximately the same amount every day. This was fine when it was just brought in, bleary in a tissue box, but now it's starting to worry me. Well, worry is a strong word. I take note. Jamie would be worried. Little girls are easily attached to little birds. When I was her age and found a dying baby bird under a hedge, I picked it up and put it in the woods to see if a wild animal would come eat it.
A part of me wants this little robin to die, just so Jamie and I can have a "teachable moment." It seems a horrible thing to admit. But both my parents are likely to pass on within the next year, and how could a four-year-old understand? How could I even hope to do the job I'll need to do? I've been waiting for the question, "Daddy, will you die?"
"Not for a long time" is what a magazine article counseled me to say.
That isn't really what I want to say, though. I vacillate between the truth in my heart, which is "No, I'll always be with you" and "Yes," flat-out Yes, which is also the truth. Is it selfish of me to feel unable to dilute the truth? What is it that makes me want to raise my hatred of equivocation over the needs of a preschool girl?
Selfishness lingers. Sometimes I feel I don't have the strength to slay it, or the nobility to transcend it. Sometimes I only hover beside it, and watch it breathe.
A part of me wants this little robin to die, just so Jamie and I can have a "teachable moment." It seems a horrible thing to admit. But both my parents are likely to pass on within the next year, and how could a four-year-old understand? How could I even hope to do the job I'll need to do? I've been waiting for the question, "Daddy, will you die?"
"Not for a long time" is what a magazine article counseled me to say.
That isn't really what I want to say, though. I vacillate between the truth in my heart, which is "No, I'll always be with you" and "Yes," flat-out Yes, which is also the truth. Is it selfish of me to feel unable to dilute the truth? What is it that makes me want to raise my hatred of equivocation over the needs of a preschool girl?
Selfishness lingers. Sometimes I feel I don't have the strength to slay it, or the nobility to transcend it. Sometimes I only hover beside it, and watch it breathe.
Sunday, January 1, 2006
The Future of Sportfishing
The coast of Ireland wasn't the same as when Rory was a boy. He was eighty now, and he could remember all the way back to when they used to haul in five fish a day. Now people were lucky to get one in a month of sportfishing, and that too little to keep.
This was an observation that escaped most of the fishermen these days. They were ecstatic whenever they did get a fish. That's what ignorance did to you. Lowered expectations had brought the joy back into being a sportsman. It had also kept the objective situation from improving. This was the way it was! One fish a month. The young things out there on their foils, sixteen, eighteen, twenty years old, that's what they'd grown up with. Plus, there were other things out there, unnatural things in the water that didn't belong there. Stuff that was taken for granted now.
Rory didn't use a hydrofoil. They were ungodly noisy. If you want to catch fish, you need to be quiet. Rory still used an old wooden rowboat, with carbon muffler oars. He and Willis went out every Sunday morning to catch fish. Willis was also eighty, or thereabouts.
"Bad weather today," said Willis that morning.
Rory nodded.
They pushed the boat into the water and rowed out on the pewter bay. The sun hadn't come up yet and what light there was seemed to come from nowhere, no source, but there was enough for them to find their way all the same. They got out far enough into the bay that the little boat began to rock slightly. Willis unscrewed his thermos of coffee.
Rory looked out at the ocean. "Let's head out a ways."
"Storms, they said."
"When?"
"In the morning."
"It's not stormy now."
Willis shrugged.
"We want to catch fish, we've got to get out of this bay. The only thing we're going to catch in this bay is plastic."
Willis took his time drinking half the thermos of coffee, screwed the top back on and picked up the oars again, and they rowed out into the sea. By the time they got there the water already had more chop on it. The little boat bobbed up and down. The sun had risen but couldn't be seen; the sky was all cloud, from north to south.
Rory set his pole up and slid his fingers into the bag of bait. The squid was still cold, half-frozen, squid from Japan, shipped in just for crazy sportsmen like them who just had to keep fishing, damn the drain on their bank accounts. He pierced the squid with the hook and dropped his line in the water. Willis put on a lure.
"What are you doing that for?" Willis was stupid with lures. Anything Willis thought was pretty, he figured the fish would too. He figured the fish thought like he did. Rory didn't give either of them that much credit.
Willis shrugged. "I bought it, might as well use it."
"You've never caught anything here with a lure. Here, use my bait."
"I have too. There's plenty of stuff in here'll go after a lure."
"Have it your way." Rory leaned back in the boat and looked up at the sky. The storm was coming up, sure enough. The breeze that hit his face was wet, and stronger than when they'd set out. He sat there while Willis jerked his line about, reeled it in, cast it again. He looked like a fool.
When the chop got high enough to rock him back and forth in the boat, Rory wedged himself in and gripped the gunwales. He figured the sun was high by now, but the day was no lighter. Willis had given up jiggling the lure around and had wedged himself in the bow with his coffee. Fishing was being out on the water as much as it was catching a fish, but even the prettiest storm, wild and real like a black and white photograph brought to life, could leave you feeling a little green. When the rain started Willis looked about ready to head in.
"Not yet," said Rory. "Wife'll be after me about why didn't I stop in at the store if I come home early."
After twenty minutes the storm was starting to come into its own, blowing cold rain in their faces from all directions, so of course it was then that one of them finally got a bite on the line.
"I'll be damned, Willis," said Rory. "There IS something that'll go after those lures."
Willis was already cranking on the reel. The pole was bent nearly double. Rory grabbed the oars.
The big fish began pulling them out to sea, hauling the boat through the heavy chop, and Rory didn't dare slow them down too much for fear of snapping Willis's line. He knew Willis wouldn't let it go. The old fool had too many years of experience in him to mishandle a big catch like this. The fish zigged and zagged, but kept them on a course away from land, which Rory noted. Still, even if they wasted hours rowing back through the wind and chop, it'd be worth it for their first catch in weeks.
"This is a good one," shouted Willis over the wind, his old fingers working like lightning to let out slack then crank on the reel again.
"You bastard," said Rory.
It was ten or fifteen minutes until their catch slowed at all. Its course became more meandering, at times drifting back toward shallow water. Rory was glad. The cold and wet was seeping in, and the row in would be wearisome. The wind made it hard to keep his hood up.
As Willis reeled in the final yards of line it was apparent that the fish would outrank most of the rare beauties they'd caught so far. His pole was still doubled, even though the struggle had stopped. Rory got the net ready. The boat was bucking on the waves as Willis's catch came up in the soupy water high enough for Rory to see its pale bulk. It was huge.
"Get it over the side! Don't pull us both in now!"
But as Willis reeled in the last of the line, he stopped, scowling. Then he reached for his knife.
Rory tried to stand up high enough to see, gripping the gunwales in the howling wind. Willis cut the line and Rory saw through the murk the pale outline, the seeping blood where the hooks of the shiny lure had pierced flesh, before it sank down again unseen. He collapsed back down into the back of the boat in disgust, glancing at the shoreline that now lay darkly distant through the worsening storm. That was it.
"Bloody mermaids," said Rory.
This was an observation that escaped most of the fishermen these days. They were ecstatic whenever they did get a fish. That's what ignorance did to you. Lowered expectations had brought the joy back into being a sportsman. It had also kept the objective situation from improving. This was the way it was! One fish a month. The young things out there on their foils, sixteen, eighteen, twenty years old, that's what they'd grown up with. Plus, there were other things out there, unnatural things in the water that didn't belong there. Stuff that was taken for granted now.
Rory didn't use a hydrofoil. They were ungodly noisy. If you want to catch fish, you need to be quiet. Rory still used an old wooden rowboat, with carbon muffler oars. He and Willis went out every Sunday morning to catch fish. Willis was also eighty, or thereabouts.
"Bad weather today," said Willis that morning.
Rory nodded.
They pushed the boat into the water and rowed out on the pewter bay. The sun hadn't come up yet and what light there was seemed to come from nowhere, no source, but there was enough for them to find their way all the same. They got out far enough into the bay that the little boat began to rock slightly. Willis unscrewed his thermos of coffee.
Rory looked out at the ocean. "Let's head out a ways."
"Storms, they said."
"When?"
"In the morning."
"It's not stormy now."
Willis shrugged.
"We want to catch fish, we've got to get out of this bay. The only thing we're going to catch in this bay is plastic."
Willis took his time drinking half the thermos of coffee, screwed the top back on and picked up the oars again, and they rowed out into the sea. By the time they got there the water already had more chop on it. The little boat bobbed up and down. The sun had risen but couldn't be seen; the sky was all cloud, from north to south.
Rory set his pole up and slid his fingers into the bag of bait. The squid was still cold, half-frozen, squid from Japan, shipped in just for crazy sportsmen like them who just had to keep fishing, damn the drain on their bank accounts. He pierced the squid with the hook and dropped his line in the water. Willis put on a lure.
"What are you doing that for?" Willis was stupid with lures. Anything Willis thought was pretty, he figured the fish would too. He figured the fish thought like he did. Rory didn't give either of them that much credit.
Willis shrugged. "I bought it, might as well use it."
"You've never caught anything here with a lure. Here, use my bait."
"I have too. There's plenty of stuff in here'll go after a lure."
"Have it your way." Rory leaned back in the boat and looked up at the sky. The storm was coming up, sure enough. The breeze that hit his face was wet, and stronger than when they'd set out. He sat there while Willis jerked his line about, reeled it in, cast it again. He looked like a fool.
When the chop got high enough to rock him back and forth in the boat, Rory wedged himself in and gripped the gunwales. He figured the sun was high by now, but the day was no lighter. Willis had given up jiggling the lure around and had wedged himself in the bow with his coffee. Fishing was being out on the water as much as it was catching a fish, but even the prettiest storm, wild and real like a black and white photograph brought to life, could leave you feeling a little green. When the rain started Willis looked about ready to head in.
"Not yet," said Rory. "Wife'll be after me about why didn't I stop in at the store if I come home early."
After twenty minutes the storm was starting to come into its own, blowing cold rain in their faces from all directions, so of course it was then that one of them finally got a bite on the line.
"I'll be damned, Willis," said Rory. "There IS something that'll go after those lures."
Willis was already cranking on the reel. The pole was bent nearly double. Rory grabbed the oars.
The big fish began pulling them out to sea, hauling the boat through the heavy chop, and Rory didn't dare slow them down too much for fear of snapping Willis's line. He knew Willis wouldn't let it go. The old fool had too many years of experience in him to mishandle a big catch like this. The fish zigged and zagged, but kept them on a course away from land, which Rory noted. Still, even if they wasted hours rowing back through the wind and chop, it'd be worth it for their first catch in weeks.
"This is a good one," shouted Willis over the wind, his old fingers working like lightning to let out slack then crank on the reel again.
"You bastard," said Rory.
It was ten or fifteen minutes until their catch slowed at all. Its course became more meandering, at times drifting back toward shallow water. Rory was glad. The cold and wet was seeping in, and the row in would be wearisome. The wind made it hard to keep his hood up.
As Willis reeled in the final yards of line it was apparent that the fish would outrank most of the rare beauties they'd caught so far. His pole was still doubled, even though the struggle had stopped. Rory got the net ready. The boat was bucking on the waves as Willis's catch came up in the soupy water high enough for Rory to see its pale bulk. It was huge.
"Get it over the side! Don't pull us both in now!"
But as Willis reeled in the last of the line, he stopped, scowling. Then he reached for his knife.
Rory tried to stand up high enough to see, gripping the gunwales in the howling wind. Willis cut the line and Rory saw through the murk the pale outline, the seeping blood where the hooks of the shiny lure had pierced flesh, before it sank down again unseen. He collapsed back down into the back of the boat in disgust, glancing at the shoreline that now lay darkly distant through the worsening storm. That was it.
"Bloody mermaids," said Rory.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Practicality rises from the ashes
I created this blog to encourage myself to just write, and not worry about the quality or the editing. Just write little things. But it pretty quickly turned into a rehashing of my writing life to date, involving snowball-like stories that get bigger and gather weight until I'm afraid to even approach them anymore. Or not like a snowball but a marble sculpture... once I realize it's looking nice I become too terrified to put my chisel against the stone any more, for fear I'll gouge some heinous irremovable dent in it.
Which is wrong on at least two counts, one being that my writing is looking all that nice, the other being that "dents" are permanent (what the heck is rewriting for)? but I still plan on weaning myself off the perfectionism with smaller pieces first.
I love Keith Wright. I need to finish that story, but no more of the "if you write, you have to write about that, you have to finish it" goading. So while I'm taking this breath I might as well say now (to the three or four spam-bots who are my only current readers) that the idea of not editing stuff sounds really romantic in theory, but is hideous in practice. What gets me most right now is the van. I'm not sure what kind of transportation we'll have 150 years in the future or whenever the hell I set the story, but it probably won't be vans.
I get myself into a trap with science fiction because I'm not really interested in writing about the science, I'm interested in writing about the people, and the wild possibilities of the future are just an excuse to explore little-taxed muscles of human nature. My story doesn't fit the definition of "real" science fiction, in which the story itself would be impossible without the precise inventuations of the setting. I meant to say "inventions and situations" there but what came out amused me.
My story wouldn't be impossible in the present. It happens every day. It's just a story about a person who bases a decision on the sorts of things you're not supposed to base a decision on. No Matchlinx or moon required. It's rather similar to the writer's decision about setting, now that I think about it... I chose the moon because it's so much more infatuating a metaphor than, say, Arkansas. But if you're choosing settings for your story out of infatuation you're probably going to end up the same way our narrator does: in a situation that reflects your lack of internal direction.
The way our space program is going I figured 150 years was a minimum estimate for civilians on the moon. 150 years is a long time. Long enough to require some dedicated thought on what kinds of society and technology we'd have around us. Dedicated thought that somebody trying to write a character piece really wasn't interested in thinking, and it shows. But what if I were to put in the effort and construct a solid, believable world of 150 years' hence? Would it then become a story about the world and not about the characters? I don't want to overshadow what the story's really about. If I end up rewriting it I expect I'll focus on one element to put detail in -- say, by beefing up the Matchlinx concept -- and say as little as possible about the rest.
The other thing that I noticed that bugs me is the terrible repetitiveness of the story. Some of that can be forgiven. I started out thinking it'd be like Kendlin where there'd be a break in between each installment, so readers would need to be "caught up" at the beginning and would need a dose of foreshadowing at the end. But all that looks very silly when the installments are sitting right next to each other. There's so much foreshadowing I think I have foreshadowing poisoning.
The Kendlin stories are all right. The character doesn't really grab me. Maybe I'll write more and maybe I won't.
The "heaven is full" stories are terrible. I still like the idea of heaven being full, but I think I'll take a different treatment of it.
Enough for now.
Which is wrong on at least two counts, one being that my writing is looking all that nice, the other being that "dents" are permanent (what the heck is rewriting for)? but I still plan on weaning myself off the perfectionism with smaller pieces first.
I love Keith Wright. I need to finish that story, but no more of the "if you write, you have to write about that, you have to finish it" goading. So while I'm taking this breath I might as well say now (to the three or four spam-bots who are my only current readers) that the idea of not editing stuff sounds really romantic in theory, but is hideous in practice. What gets me most right now is the van. I'm not sure what kind of transportation we'll have 150 years in the future or whenever the hell I set the story, but it probably won't be vans.
I get myself into a trap with science fiction because I'm not really interested in writing about the science, I'm interested in writing about the people, and the wild possibilities of the future are just an excuse to explore little-taxed muscles of human nature. My story doesn't fit the definition of "real" science fiction, in which the story itself would be impossible without the precise inventuations of the setting. I meant to say "inventions and situations" there but what came out amused me.
My story wouldn't be impossible in the present. It happens every day. It's just a story about a person who bases a decision on the sorts of things you're not supposed to base a decision on. No Matchlinx or moon required. It's rather similar to the writer's decision about setting, now that I think about it... I chose the moon because it's so much more infatuating a metaphor than, say, Arkansas. But if you're choosing settings for your story out of infatuation you're probably going to end up the same way our narrator does: in a situation that reflects your lack of internal direction.
The way our space program is going I figured 150 years was a minimum estimate for civilians on the moon. 150 years is a long time. Long enough to require some dedicated thought on what kinds of society and technology we'd have around us. Dedicated thought that somebody trying to write a character piece really wasn't interested in thinking, and it shows. But what if I were to put in the effort and construct a solid, believable world of 150 years' hence? Would it then become a story about the world and not about the characters? I don't want to overshadow what the story's really about. If I end up rewriting it I expect I'll focus on one element to put detail in -- say, by beefing up the Matchlinx concept -- and say as little as possible about the rest.
The other thing that I noticed that bugs me is the terrible repetitiveness of the story. Some of that can be forgiven. I started out thinking it'd be like Kendlin where there'd be a break in between each installment, so readers would need to be "caught up" at the beginning and would need a dose of foreshadowing at the end. But all that looks very silly when the installments are sitting right next to each other. There's so much foreshadowing I think I have foreshadowing poisoning.
The Kendlin stories are all right. The character doesn't really grab me. Maybe I'll write more and maybe I won't.
The "heaven is full" stories are terrible. I still like the idea of heaven being full, but I think I'll take a different treatment of it.
Enough for now.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
The Uncanny Influence of Keith Wright, Part 7
The beginning of an obsession never feels like an obsession. The beginning of an obsession is absorption so complete that the obsesser has no perspective on his or her own lack of perspective. The first week, I didn't worry about being infatuated with Keith. I simply was.
After he left my office for the first time, I was flush with energy; I was happy, excited, and warm. I recall that I had other appointments that day but I don't particularly remember them. I do know that I was reasonably focused on them and the day completed like basically any other day. But the flight home after work was lost to my memory, one of those commutes that never imprints itself due to some unusual flightiness of the mind, in which you arrive at your front door and realize you navigated the last hundred miles in apparent total unconsciousness. My thought as I stepped into the house was to find out if this fellow could really be a state representative. I didn't doubt his honesty on that count; my eyes simply hungered to see it in print, so I went straight for the goggles. I never ate dinner that night.
On the internet, there is always one more link to follow, and my greedy mind swallowed each shred of information about Keith's life in a five-hour binge. And as the feeding proceded, my sense that I knew the man grew, but so did my alienation from him. It was the very act of devoting all my energy into the search that night that accomplished this; in my striving to consume him I had as surely made an object out of him as I had made a man. Yet, looking back, I don't believe it could have happened any other way. I don't believe any of this could have happened another way, from the moment I signed into the Matchlinx. I couldn't have stopped myself because I had no desire to stop myself. It never would have occurred to me. It had to happen.
I was drunk on Keith. What a man! How devoted he was to the small farmer, how devoted he was to his wife, how brilliant, how funny he was when pressed for quotes. "The Committee for Business and the Environment is a five-legged giraffe with two heads, each of which controls two legs and vies for control of the fifth." "Politics is like a pomegranate orchard, only seedier and less useful." And handsome, of course. He had a sharp look to him that owed more to the expression in his eyes than to the actual lines of his face.
And I went to bed sated, for the time being. And I got up and went to work the next day, and the next, and he was little more than a pleasant tingle that stayed in the back of my mind throughout the week.
And I met with him again, delighted. It was the greatest good fortune that this man had come to my office. I was rapt, again. We spent almost all of that second visit telling stories... at least, he told stories, I smiled. I had the sense that the stories -- about drunken college nights, first jobs, his grandfather's death -- were no different in quality or substance from stories told by a hundred acquaintances over the years, and yet to hear the same from Keith was pure enjoyment. Maybe it was his silly and self-effacing jokes. Maybe it was that the whole time I was paying attention to him, I felt like he was the one paying attention to me. As if, instead of seeking therapy, he had come here just to chat with me, because he liked me.
And the reasons for his seeking therapy did dive below the surface for much of the time. Most weeks he seemed completely content to chat away the hour. Occasionally he'd swing into something more personal, and I was handed gems of some emotional clarity from somewhere inside him. And anytime he spoke about something he couldn't tell the other people in his life, I felt ridiculously privileged.
"Lysa has this friend, Jean, and when she comes over they'll huddle together snickering and give me a look when I come in the room. That just strikes me as juvenile. She makes me feel like I'm not welcome in my own home. I mean, come on. Right? It just annoys me." And then he'd be off and running into a story about skydiving. With every complaint delivered so naturally and generously, a little bit more of my professionalism peeled away. He liked me.
I have a special appreciation for the memories of that first month, before the shame set in, before the bitter discomfort set in. I was having great fun. I was having the time of my life and loving my job and not thinking about it. But then the leash began to grow taut, and the painful evidence of my attachment sprung to my attention.
Keith was changed in our fifth session. His essence, the him I thought of as him, was simply gone. His charm was absent. Suddenly we were therapist and client, not pals and confidants. He did tell stories -- many in the exact same vein as in weeks past -- but he no longer seemed to care about me the listener. Something warm in his eyes was missing when he glanced at me. Something in his body language was less engaging. I found myself scrabbling. There was a small panic stewing in my brain, a sensation I scarcely recognized. What was going on? Why wasn't I having fun? Why wasn't he paying attention to me?
None of these were questions I could ask. I couldn't even find a way to confront the change (What would I say? "Keith, is there a particular reason you're behaving more like a client than a a date today?"), though I did ask if anything was troubling him.
"No," he said.
I bit down on the "Are you sure?" Because I was suddenly not so sure myself. Why was I upset that he was behaving like a man meeting with his therapist? What had I thought his previous behavior meant? Why did I care more about his eyes crinkling when he looked at me than about what kind of a job I was doing as a psychiatrist? I wasn't falling for him, certainly. That had never happened to me. I hadn't even fallen for my husbands. Either of them.
The next week he was back to charm and animation, which my baser parts greeted with huge relief... and discomfort. I was now aware, barely. It was all downhill from here.
After he left my office for the first time, I was flush with energy; I was happy, excited, and warm. I recall that I had other appointments that day but I don't particularly remember them. I do know that I was reasonably focused on them and the day completed like basically any other day. But the flight home after work was lost to my memory, one of those commutes that never imprints itself due to some unusual flightiness of the mind, in which you arrive at your front door and realize you navigated the last hundred miles in apparent total unconsciousness. My thought as I stepped into the house was to find out if this fellow could really be a state representative. I didn't doubt his honesty on that count; my eyes simply hungered to see it in print, so I went straight for the goggles. I never ate dinner that night.
On the internet, there is always one more link to follow, and my greedy mind swallowed each shred of information about Keith's life in a five-hour binge. And as the feeding proceded, my sense that I knew the man grew, but so did my alienation from him. It was the very act of devoting all my energy into the search that night that accomplished this; in my striving to consume him I had as surely made an object out of him as I had made a man. Yet, looking back, I don't believe it could have happened any other way. I don't believe any of this could have happened another way, from the moment I signed into the Matchlinx. I couldn't have stopped myself because I had no desire to stop myself. It never would have occurred to me. It had to happen.
I was drunk on Keith. What a man! How devoted he was to the small farmer, how devoted he was to his wife, how brilliant, how funny he was when pressed for quotes. "The Committee for Business and the Environment is a five-legged giraffe with two heads, each of which controls two legs and vies for control of the fifth." "Politics is like a pomegranate orchard, only seedier and less useful." And handsome, of course. He had a sharp look to him that owed more to the expression in his eyes than to the actual lines of his face.
And I went to bed sated, for the time being. And I got up and went to work the next day, and the next, and he was little more than a pleasant tingle that stayed in the back of my mind throughout the week.
And I met with him again, delighted. It was the greatest good fortune that this man had come to my office. I was rapt, again. We spent almost all of that second visit telling stories... at least, he told stories, I smiled. I had the sense that the stories -- about drunken college nights, first jobs, his grandfather's death -- were no different in quality or substance from stories told by a hundred acquaintances over the years, and yet to hear the same from Keith was pure enjoyment. Maybe it was his silly and self-effacing jokes. Maybe it was that the whole time I was paying attention to him, I felt like he was the one paying attention to me. As if, instead of seeking therapy, he had come here just to chat with me, because he liked me.
And the reasons for his seeking therapy did dive below the surface for much of the time. Most weeks he seemed completely content to chat away the hour. Occasionally he'd swing into something more personal, and I was handed gems of some emotional clarity from somewhere inside him. And anytime he spoke about something he couldn't tell the other people in his life, I felt ridiculously privileged.
"Lysa has this friend, Jean, and when she comes over they'll huddle together snickering and give me a look when I come in the room. That just strikes me as juvenile. She makes me feel like I'm not welcome in my own home. I mean, come on. Right? It just annoys me." And then he'd be off and running into a story about skydiving. With every complaint delivered so naturally and generously, a little bit more of my professionalism peeled away. He liked me.
I have a special appreciation for the memories of that first month, before the shame set in, before the bitter discomfort set in. I was having great fun. I was having the time of my life and loving my job and not thinking about it. But then the leash began to grow taut, and the painful evidence of my attachment sprung to my attention.
Keith was changed in our fifth session. His essence, the him I thought of as him, was simply gone. His charm was absent. Suddenly we were therapist and client, not pals and confidants. He did tell stories -- many in the exact same vein as in weeks past -- but he no longer seemed to care about me the listener. Something warm in his eyes was missing when he glanced at me. Something in his body language was less engaging. I found myself scrabbling. There was a small panic stewing in my brain, a sensation I scarcely recognized. What was going on? Why wasn't I having fun? Why wasn't he paying attention to me?
None of these were questions I could ask. I couldn't even find a way to confront the change (What would I say? "Keith, is there a particular reason you're behaving more like a client than a a date today?"), though I did ask if anything was troubling him.
"No," he said.
I bit down on the "Are you sure?" Because I was suddenly not so sure myself. Why was I upset that he was behaving like a man meeting with his therapist? What had I thought his previous behavior meant? Why did I care more about his eyes crinkling when he looked at me than about what kind of a job I was doing as a psychiatrist? I wasn't falling for him, certainly. That had never happened to me. I hadn't even fallen for my husbands. Either of them.
The next week he was back to charm and animation, which my baser parts greeted with huge relief... and discomfort. I was now aware, barely. It was all downhill from here.
Thursday, August 4, 2005
The Uncanny Influence of Keith Wright, Part 6
"When does your current term in office end?"
"Next Fall. Not this Fall, but Fall of next year," Keith said, watching my face.
"Are you going to finish it out?"
Now there was a pause. "Well, yes."
"Have any plans for when the term's through?" There was a trafficless moment outside and it became quiet in our room.
"No... look... I don't know, I don't know what I want. That's why I'm here." He gave me a plaintive grin. There was some self-effacing pain in his eyes, and I struggled to judge what part was a patient's distress and what part embarrassment at the appeal. We were most of the way through my first hour with him then, and I already felt I knew him, but simultaneously felt that I could never stop learning about him. I was already hungry for all the things that made this astonishing presence tick. Here was a representative of the state government in my office, here was a tall and contained and winningly vulnerable politician looking me in the eye. Keith was a new species to me, an impossible mix of intelligence and maturity and idealism -- a man as willing to trust a brand-new therapist as he was to trust the computer system that pointed him here in the first place. I was giddy. But but he was still a person, and like all people he had particular ideas about his own life -- and I was still a psychiatrist with 20 years of schooling and practice, and at the end of his story I flowed into my role without needing to think about it.
I heard what he thought about himself when he spoke about his college sweetheart, about his inability to write, about his job at Raleigh, about his wife's drive. When he spoke about his current job, the pauses said more than the words did. I already knew where I would lead the conversation. Maybe Keith already knew too. People often know what they have to do with their lives, on some level. Sometimes they also know they need a little push to get them there.
"Tell me what you like about being a state representative."
"What do I like about it? I like that... I'm making the system of democracy real, I'm doing my part. I like that I have an excuse to meet and talk to so many different people every day. I like that sometimes I have a hand in actually helping out the little guy."
"And what don't you like?"
"And what don't I like." He rubbed a hand over the stubble of his jaw in a classic gesture of thought, yet the motion itself was thoughtless. "I don't like the phoniness. There's a stereotype of politicians being phony. Well, it's true. At first I swore I'd never fall into it. I saw all the other representatives changing their masks; they'd have sweet words for an old lady one moment and then turn around and tell a reporter something completely different. I didn't see how they could do that in good conscience. Now, what do you think I do?"
He stopped to take in an audible breath before he continued. "Of course I've gotten some good done. Every time I wrestle price controls on one more commodity back into the state's hands, I feel like I'm in the right place. But there's too little of that, and too much buttering up guys who are already filthy rich. But that's how you get things done here! And the sad part is, I'm good at it! And sure I enjoy it when I can talk my way into a deal. I'd rather win people over than force them into something. I want to please people. I've just gotten to feel so two-faced. Maybe it'd be different if I were more like Lysa." He'd stopped looking at me and was all eyes for the wall behind me now. "I had this one woman call me the greasiest thing in Sacramento. Another environmental activist. She saw how I'd have the agribusiness execs over for dinner and she'd also watched me pulling farmers aside and asking about their lives and their families. And she knew who Lysa was, and all it meant for her was that I'd go so far as to marry an activist for show. Like I'd conned Lysa too. As if everything I did and was was all for show, just so I could keep getting elected." And he looked back at me, his voice flattening. "Because state reps make big money, you know."
"The greasiest thing in Sacramento? Maybe I should have put a towel down on the chair."
"I know, right?" And he laughed, which made a splinter of warmth poke up in my chest. "Well, what do you think?" He leaned in over the table between us, focusing, the gaze of his blue eyes bolted to mine like iron. "If you... can bear to give up water rights for the next... two years..." And there was a heavy pause in which all he did was look in my eyes, and in which I had the time to notice that his hand was on my arm. I felt pinned to the chair. Whatever he'd said was only the background to his body language. I didn't even breathe, just watched him for a long second as he held his face in the most perfect representation of concerned earnestness I've ever seen a man wear. I was afraid I was going to blush again, entirely against my will. Then like a current a crackle of animation ran into his gaze, an impish squint took his eyes and he wiggled his eyebrows lewdly, pushing himself back into his seat. "Well, the state could be prepared to give you a tax deduction in the order of point-oh-five percent." He spread his hands. "If that's not sexy, I don't know what is." He smiled.
I was left to stare for another few seconds. I felt a lightning pang of confusion, a sense of intellectual deja-vu that brought back the harsh discovery of my limitations at reading people. What part of the man before me was real, after all? That was the first moment I felt a sense of powerlessness with Keith, a sense almost of being a child again, unable to grasp more than token control over the events in my life. Yet quickly my instincts remembered who I was and what I was here for -- and for perhaps the last time, a part of me considered my client's needs independently of their relation to my own, and I saw him as a stranger and a man who needed a reaction.
I smiled back at him. "Now how could anyone refuse?" The confusion had vanished; I still trusted myself, and his apparent ability to assume earnestness didn't dilute the aura of vulnerability that still, somehow, hung about him, even as the architecture that separated my identity as a psychiatrist from the heated inner parts of me began to dissipate. More than ever I wanted to help him. "But self-hatred hasn't led to too many benefits, generally, over the course of history."
He bit his lower lip before he spoke. "That's why I decided to call in the big guns. I feel trapped. Sometimes I think about just taking off, flying to Europe, screw democracy and responsibility and everything else."
"Have you thought about quitting before your term is up?"
That made him raise his eyebrows. "I'd feel too guilty." He thought about it, his gaze roaming the ceiling. "I'd think the people deserve to have the man they actually elected in office. Besides, what would I do? I can't just hang around the house all day. In my bathrobe, eating Twinkies."
He made me laugh, though his voice held all the pessimism that remains the default for any new consumer of therapy. It's a tone some clients never shake. But I wagered Keith was a man of action. "Tell me again why you used to want to be a writer."
"I can't be a writer. I tried, I just don't have the patience for it."
"Yes, but remind me why you wanted to."
He twisted in his chair, scratched at his sock, a slight grimace slipping over his features. "I was a kid. I thought it was romantic. Visit interesting places, write stories to inspire people. The idea of someone reading something I wrote and having it change their life. Of course, now I know the life of a writer isn't quite that romantic."
"I know it was a long time ago, but it's not easy -- or even the right thing -- to brush off the dreams we had of who we'd turn out to be. You say you feel trapped and I think you're right. Part of being stuck in an unhappy place is that we lose the ability to realistically imagine life outside it." He watched me with a slightly furrowed brow. "You may not be able to imagine yourself as a writer, or as anything else other than a politician. But from an outside perspective... you have a lot of experience with business, and politics, and the environmental movement. You're also older than you were in college and you've probably developed a good deal more discipline. Somewhere like a news magazine or nature journal could be the perfect place for you."
And he laughed. All he said was, "I wish! I'll never have the discipline for that" and then he was off into a story about a chem exam in college. The last minutes of the session ticked away. I told him to think about the changes he might like to make in his life. And he set up another appointment.
But he seemed happy when he left, and later he told me he'd known I was right the moment I spoke, but it took him five months to believe it. And I told him it takes most people a lot longer than five months to work up the courage for that sort of a change in their life. And it does. He is remarkable. But Keith averred, and may still, that I was a genius -- for seeing his true character and what he was capable of, and for knowing so soon, and having the guts to tell him. He used the word more often than I prefer to admit. He even once told a friend that I made his dreams come true.
And I never, not once, told a soul of his effect on me. The year that followed that day spun itself out like a dream, and from where I am now, it may as well have existed just as completely inside my mind. I would become very familiar with the impossibility of knowing how much of Keith was "real" -- and, by the end, how much of myself.
"Next Fall. Not this Fall, but Fall of next year," Keith said, watching my face.
"Are you going to finish it out?"
Now there was a pause. "Well, yes."
"Have any plans for when the term's through?" There was a trafficless moment outside and it became quiet in our room.
"No... look... I don't know, I don't know what I want. That's why I'm here." He gave me a plaintive grin. There was some self-effacing pain in his eyes, and I struggled to judge what part was a patient's distress and what part embarrassment at the appeal. We were most of the way through my first hour with him then, and I already felt I knew him, but simultaneously felt that I could never stop learning about him. I was already hungry for all the things that made this astonishing presence tick. Here was a representative of the state government in my office, here was a tall and contained and winningly vulnerable politician looking me in the eye. Keith was a new species to me, an impossible mix of intelligence and maturity and idealism -- a man as willing to trust a brand-new therapist as he was to trust the computer system that pointed him here in the first place. I was giddy. But but he was still a person, and like all people he had particular ideas about his own life -- and I was still a psychiatrist with 20 years of schooling and practice, and at the end of his story I flowed into my role without needing to think about it.
I heard what he thought about himself when he spoke about his college sweetheart, about his inability to write, about his job at Raleigh, about his wife's drive. When he spoke about his current job, the pauses said more than the words did. I already knew where I would lead the conversation. Maybe Keith already knew too. People often know what they have to do with their lives, on some level. Sometimes they also know they need a little push to get them there.
"Tell me what you like about being a state representative."
"What do I like about it? I like that... I'm making the system of democracy real, I'm doing my part. I like that I have an excuse to meet and talk to so many different people every day. I like that sometimes I have a hand in actually helping out the little guy."
"And what don't you like?"
"And what don't I like." He rubbed a hand over the stubble of his jaw in a classic gesture of thought, yet the motion itself was thoughtless. "I don't like the phoniness. There's a stereotype of politicians being phony. Well, it's true. At first I swore I'd never fall into it. I saw all the other representatives changing their masks; they'd have sweet words for an old lady one moment and then turn around and tell a reporter something completely different. I didn't see how they could do that in good conscience. Now, what do you think I do?"
He stopped to take in an audible breath before he continued. "Of course I've gotten some good done. Every time I wrestle price controls on one more commodity back into the state's hands, I feel like I'm in the right place. But there's too little of that, and too much buttering up guys who are already filthy rich. But that's how you get things done here! And the sad part is, I'm good at it! And sure I enjoy it when I can talk my way into a deal. I'd rather win people over than force them into something. I want to please people. I've just gotten to feel so two-faced. Maybe it'd be different if I were more like Lysa." He'd stopped looking at me and was all eyes for the wall behind me now. "I had this one woman call me the greasiest thing in Sacramento. Another environmental activist. She saw how I'd have the agribusiness execs over for dinner and she'd also watched me pulling farmers aside and asking about their lives and their families. And she knew who Lysa was, and all it meant for her was that I'd go so far as to marry an activist for show. Like I'd conned Lysa too. As if everything I did and was was all for show, just so I could keep getting elected." And he looked back at me, his voice flattening. "Because state reps make big money, you know."
"The greasiest thing in Sacramento? Maybe I should have put a towel down on the chair."
"I know, right?" And he laughed, which made a splinter of warmth poke up in my chest. "Well, what do you think?" He leaned in over the table between us, focusing, the gaze of his blue eyes bolted to mine like iron. "If you... can bear to give up water rights for the next... two years..." And there was a heavy pause in which all he did was look in my eyes, and in which I had the time to notice that his hand was on my arm. I felt pinned to the chair. Whatever he'd said was only the background to his body language. I didn't even breathe, just watched him for a long second as he held his face in the most perfect representation of concerned earnestness I've ever seen a man wear. I was afraid I was going to blush again, entirely against my will. Then like a current a crackle of animation ran into his gaze, an impish squint took his eyes and he wiggled his eyebrows lewdly, pushing himself back into his seat. "Well, the state could be prepared to give you a tax deduction in the order of point-oh-five percent." He spread his hands. "If that's not sexy, I don't know what is." He smiled.
I was left to stare for another few seconds. I felt a lightning pang of confusion, a sense of intellectual deja-vu that brought back the harsh discovery of my limitations at reading people. What part of the man before me was real, after all? That was the first moment I felt a sense of powerlessness with Keith, a sense almost of being a child again, unable to grasp more than token control over the events in my life. Yet quickly my instincts remembered who I was and what I was here for -- and for perhaps the last time, a part of me considered my client's needs independently of their relation to my own, and I saw him as a stranger and a man who needed a reaction.
I smiled back at him. "Now how could anyone refuse?" The confusion had vanished; I still trusted myself, and his apparent ability to assume earnestness didn't dilute the aura of vulnerability that still, somehow, hung about him, even as the architecture that separated my identity as a psychiatrist from the heated inner parts of me began to dissipate. More than ever I wanted to help him. "But self-hatred hasn't led to too many benefits, generally, over the course of history."
He bit his lower lip before he spoke. "That's why I decided to call in the big guns. I feel trapped. Sometimes I think about just taking off, flying to Europe, screw democracy and responsibility and everything else."
"Have you thought about quitting before your term is up?"
That made him raise his eyebrows. "I'd feel too guilty." He thought about it, his gaze roaming the ceiling. "I'd think the people deserve to have the man they actually elected in office. Besides, what would I do? I can't just hang around the house all day. In my bathrobe, eating Twinkies."
He made me laugh, though his voice held all the pessimism that remains the default for any new consumer of therapy. It's a tone some clients never shake. But I wagered Keith was a man of action. "Tell me again why you used to want to be a writer."
"I can't be a writer. I tried, I just don't have the patience for it."
"Yes, but remind me why you wanted to."
He twisted in his chair, scratched at his sock, a slight grimace slipping over his features. "I was a kid. I thought it was romantic. Visit interesting places, write stories to inspire people. The idea of someone reading something I wrote and having it change their life. Of course, now I know the life of a writer isn't quite that romantic."
"I know it was a long time ago, but it's not easy -- or even the right thing -- to brush off the dreams we had of who we'd turn out to be. You say you feel trapped and I think you're right. Part of being stuck in an unhappy place is that we lose the ability to realistically imagine life outside it." He watched me with a slightly furrowed brow. "You may not be able to imagine yourself as a writer, or as anything else other than a politician. But from an outside perspective... you have a lot of experience with business, and politics, and the environmental movement. You're also older than you were in college and you've probably developed a good deal more discipline. Somewhere like a news magazine or nature journal could be the perfect place for you."
And he laughed. All he said was, "I wish! I'll never have the discipline for that" and then he was off into a story about a chem exam in college. The last minutes of the session ticked away. I told him to think about the changes he might like to make in his life. And he set up another appointment.
But he seemed happy when he left, and later he told me he'd known I was right the moment I spoke, but it took him five months to believe it. And I told him it takes most people a lot longer than five months to work up the courage for that sort of a change in their life. And it does. He is remarkable. But Keith averred, and may still, that I was a genius -- for seeing his true character and what he was capable of, and for knowing so soon, and having the guts to tell him. He used the word more often than I prefer to admit. He even once told a friend that I made his dreams come true.
And I never, not once, told a soul of his effect on me. The year that followed that day spun itself out like a dream, and from where I am now, it may as well have existed just as completely inside my mind. I would become very familiar with the impossibility of knowing how much of Keith was "real" -- and, by the end, how much of myself.
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