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or, see what my home page actually looks like::::: 
I don’t really use gas station bathrooms, not unless it’s an emergency of the worst kind and a last resort all at once. I went today as a special trip, just to the bathroom and not anywhere else. I needed to do a little… mmm.. philosophizing and thought it would come off more authentic if I did it from the toilet of one of those places. Still, I nearly ruined the moment by spreading sanitary liner on the toilet before sitting down.
I had bought a package of Camel Lights cigarettes just for the occasion but hadn’t picked up matches. You know, gas stations will pretend they don’t have ‘em until you actually fork over the cash for cigarettes at their place. I had to walk the two blocks to my car and light it off my dashboard. By then I’d lost a lot of gusto and was feeling a lot less rugged. Nonetheless, I stuck to the plan. I had come to sit here and think about my nights and how I was no longer really sleeping because when I did, when I tried it, I woke up feeling far emptier than I had the evening before, emptier than if I hadn’t slept. I’d become to feel like I was losing something of myself during those terrible nights, nights from which I awoke to find myself swaddled head to toe in my covers, flailing miserably against their weight- and for a few minutes of groggy terror, thinking I would die there if I couldn’t reach fresh air immediately. I never remembered having any dreams to speak of during that time.
I am a psychologist, schooled at UPenn and currently practicing in Cambridge, MA. There’s certainly a market for it and my two partners and I are constantly overbooked. Which makes my presence in this gas station at 11:33 AM utterly inexcusable. In Providence, RI nonetheless, good hour’s trip down 95 if I was lucky and didn’t hit the lunchtime traffic. I guess I thought it was part of the temporary rugged persona to run late, for I’d last looked at my watch around 10:15 and said ‘hell with it.’ I had a client scheduled for noon though and believe me, I needed the distraction she’d provide.
Despite my attempt at repentance by going seventy all down 95 I was significantly late by the time I arrived at the office. Ms. Grady looked at me patiently from the waiting room, not a sign of annoyance, not a sign of displeasure. I stared at her. "Do you realize that I was nearly thirty minutes late to our appointment?" "Yes." She frowned a bit. "You don’t have time for me to waste like that. "Yeah, I’m pretty swamped. Finals and all…" She knew what I was driving at and was reluctant to go there. "So wasn’t it rude of me?" "Um, I didn’t really mind. I had my geo text book." "So what if next week I was a little later because I knew it wouldn’t bother you." "Then maybe I’d have to start scheduling my appointments for one because you’d obviously be unable to keep a noon commitment." Ms. Grady smiled like she’d really rather not discuss it. "What if I told you you’d have to take noon and promised I’d show up on time and consistently didn’t." "I guess I’d stop coming." "Would you talk to me about the problem first?" "Yeah, I guess so. Probably." She was lying. "Would you?" "I don’t know." A lame shrug. "It’s not healthy. Tell me what you’re feeling. Remember, you promised to work on this."
She talked, I listened. We decided to start working with medical hypnotherapy, which I’d worked on for a time in Manchester. (I wanted the excuse to do ‘junior year abroad’.) Also, I thought it would be kind of an interesting approach to curing patients-something I, unlike many of my peers, consider the point of therapy. Always hope to cure and get them out of therapy. I’ve got attention span problems and there were always more patients. So yeah, I was Manchester schooled. I still get newsletters from the program there and the last one discussed the Japanese philosophy of hypnotherapy at length. Apparently they think it can improve your sex life and bring your inner child out to play… permanently if used by the wrong shrink.
She scrambled up on the Freud couch I mostly keep for show and was watching the crystal before I even starting moving it near her face. Mostly I told her to focus on the light moving off the edges and she did the rest herself. My school taught that anyone who doesn’t want to be hypnotized isn’t going to be able to do it, and that most of those that volunteer are the types to talk themselves mostly into it; all you have to do is wave something around and mutter mumbo-jumbo. Somehow, every time I do it I have to question the seriousness of my job.
I told her she’d awaken when I said ‘corn’ again and then for giggles told her. "You like pickles. You really like pickles.. You want one constantly." It seemed harmless enough. Then to the important stuff… "Sarah, do you hear me? When I clap my hands you will answer." I clapped, gently. "Yes." She mumbled. "Good… Sarah, you need to stand up to people. You need to be honest. When someone upsets you, tell them." I repeated the last part just to hammer it in. "When you are angry, let it out." Ad nauseum. I advised her to break up with that jackass boyfriend of hers too, before calling her ‘corn’ back. She blinked and sat up, asked when she’d dozed off, and slipped me a check. I probably shouldn’t have done the pickle thing. Awfully dumb.
Jesse is a new patient. she sits in my waiting room nervously and looks nervously at me as i approach. "ms. milner?" "Yes." She smiles with convincingly faked confidence as if to abstract her problems to herself and to fool me. I pretended not to see her shaking hands, and ushered her into my office with the greatest courtesy. "So, what brings you to me of all people?" "Well, I really like my current sh-doctor, but I have heard you know cognitive hypnotherapy and well, you’re really the only specialist in this area." I marveled at how what had essentially been a whim has turned into my ‘specialty’. "Ah ha… well what is your problem?" "Um, avoidance behavior, um, and I guess I am sort of afraid of people. I’ve been diagnosed with social phobia." She looked at me to see if I understood and then went on the explain: "It’s a form of panic disorder." "I know." I couldn’t resist mentioning. "Um… so…" She looked like she was going to have a panic attack right then and there. I decided to give her room to breathe, to stop staring at her so intently. I walked across the room and pretended to rifle through some medical documents. "On any medication?" "Xanax, Prozac, um, Ritalin." I flipped through a manual, not much different from a car manual, actually. It discussed the parts of the body and told you how to fix the things that were broken through the administration of potent drugs. I personally had tried all the meds. Jesse was on and had learned an important lesson: xanax and cocktails = bad idea. I read silently from the book:
"Xanax Tablets contain alprazolam which is a triazolo analog of the 1,4-benzodiazepine class of central nervous system-active compounds. An interesting drug…" "Yeah." She grinned ironically. "Social Phobia: Although this disorder is often thought of as shyness, the two are not the same. Shy people can be very uneasy around others, but they don't experience the extreme anxiety in anticipating a social situation, and they don't necessarily avoid circumstances that make them feel self-conscious. In contrast, people with social phobia aren't necessarily shy at all." She surprised me by shouting: "Exactly!" just as I finished reading, nearly causing me to upset a cup of tea on my desk. "Oh, heh, so you agree, I am correct in assuming?" "Yeah, people never believe I have social phobia or they don’t understand what it is so I say I am shy and they don’t believe me because I’m not shy, really. When I am comfortable around people I’m pretty outgoing." Her words tumbled all over themselves and when she finished she blushed and began to fidget."
We discussed her particular brand of social phobia for a while. As she spoke, I studied her, this adorable girl with the face full of metal jewelry. She was growing her hair long and it was just at the stage where it curled up around her ears, which were each pierced about five times. Most of the anxiety patients I have either go to pains to make themselves look different, or to make themselves blend in depending on which they think will give them the advantage. Jesse was cool, you could tell, but she suffered from the tendency to blurt things out, often exactly the wrong thing at a given moment. She actually asked me on this first session if I’d try some hypnotherapy on her. "It’s not that I trust you, it’s that I have to interview for a job that’s really important to me on Monday, and if I mess it up I’ll absolutely never forgive myself. I considered not turning in the application at all but, well, it would make a great resume addition and…" She lowered her voice and peered at me from under her bangs. "…I, um, really want the work."
She was rambling. I ramble all the time. I removed the crystal from my desk and showed it to her. "Really?" "Yes, you focus on the light it refracts and, well, it would help to trust me. I realize that’s a lot to ask from a socially anxious person." She nodded emphatically. "Can we begin?" I sort of shrugged. Call me a disbeliever, but sometimes I’m just not too sure about why I do this. I guess if I believed in it more I wouldn’t have let a client talk me into hypnotizing her on the first appointment. Generally a poor idea, according to my teachings. You have to really know a person before you put them to sleep like that. It took a long time, maybe thirty minutes (and cost me a lunch break I probably didn’t deserve). She was a tough one because she just couldn’t seem to relax, and then began to get frustrated, then zonked out just as she was complaining to me that she couldn’t. I took a step back and then spoke to her softly: "Jesse, you are sleeping right now. When I say ‘corn’ you will awaken. Jesse, do you hear me?" "Yesss."
"Good. You are not afraid of people – " I broke off, whether I ought to have phrased the idea that way. As I leaned back away from her it seemed to me that she looked hazy, that her entire face was shrouded in colored vapor, thin enough that I figured I was imagining it, and glanced at the crystal to be sure it wasn’t a mere trick of the light. The crystal was back on the desk where I’d unconsciously placed it. I looked again. It seemed as though I was looking at her through colored glass or smoke, there was something odd and pale between me and her. I backed off further and received quite a shock from what the spectacle looked like from the parallel to her– tendrils stretching down from the vaguely humanoid form hovering above Jesse into her body. It looked like a very faint smoke, faint enough that I was starting to believe it a weird effect produced by shifting dust in the room. I reached over to touch it and yelped at the temperature, certainly not hot enough to be steam, but maybe hot enough to boil. I had by now backed off and tried to seat myself next to the girl without disturbing the cloud, which had since a minute ago risen several feat.
"Jesse, can you understand me?" "Yesss…" came the reply, sounding just like Jesse, just like normal Jesse. "You do not fear people, you are a completely confident woman." The cloud seemed to shift, to reform as I said this; parts of it were through the ceiling. Thinking maybe Jesse was dying and I was watching her ghost, I yelled out "CORN!" and jumped back away from her as, with a whoooosh! The colored cloud went back into her and she rolled over, yawning. "A shame I had to come out of that, It’s the best I’ve slept in weeks." She murmured, pouting like a small child. I just stared at her, and as she moved to a sitting position she did look a bit disoriented. I nearly leaned over to ruffle her hair and when I caught myself about to do it became horribly embarrassed about the mistake I’d almost made. Somehow I wanted to touch her, which was unfair to my current girlfriend and to her as a patient. She mechanically wrote me a check; it was obvious that she was still exhausted. Oddly enough, I found myself still seeing her as though she had a ring of color outlining her entire body. I shook my head warily and waved to her as she left the room. I made myself lie down on the couch, so exhausted was I from prolonged fitful sleep. It was a light day during most of the local school’s spring breaks and I had no client for another hour. It was peaceful there, watching the cars murmuring down the street, honking their horns, the warm breeze washing over my face. Several times I gave myself a jerk to keep from nodding off, and eventually succumbed to the urge- just for a little while.
I didn’t wake up for the next client and apparently she knocked and knocked before giving up and sitting in front of my office door with her head in her hands. I found her like that while I was still catatonic, and didn’t have the good grace even to apologize, but only to look down on her and mutter: "Oh.. you there?" She gave me a dirty look and rose to stand silently in front of me. Her presence was really bothering me, I couldn’t remember her name, and I felt annoyingly dizzy. I backed into the office and she followed, looking at me really oddly. I sat down in front of my computer and automatically clicked on the telnet icon, hit "light.net" and watched my email open… password ºN03c®@º#. There was a letter from my girlfriend, Kate. I opened it, glancing distractedly at the patient who was by now standing uncertainly in the office doorway. Yes, an email from Kate.
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 17:29:44 -0400 From: Kate Brohn To: ‘the butch on top’ <robert@light.net> Subject: RE: Hot monkey love… Hey sexy brotha…. What’s up anyway? I hope you weren’t woken when I got up for my 6:00 jog. It was great though, and despite the fact that I’ve been getting plenty of exercise since I started dating you, there’s just something pleasant about being outdoors so early in the morning. Oh well, I’m rambling and you already know my outdoor philosophy! So, did you really like the strap-on? Pretty surprising, huh? I ordered it from a company called ‘GoodVibrations’; they’re so great because they ship in really anonymous packages. Pretty funny, that mailman must think we’re psycho because of that time I opened the door in my underwear. I guess maybe we are, huh, mister 6? So I am at work totally slacking off as usual. I think that says something, y’know, when you have a job you just can’t motivate yourself to work on, no matter what. I need to start looking again. Anyway, I hope you actually did sleep, no nightmares this time. All my love, Kattin Kate Brohn ------------------------------ Ghastly Visions voice: 401.864.0559 fax: 401.864.6850 kbrohn@ghastly.net -----------------------------
I smiled at the woman in the doorway and motioned for her to enter. "Ah, Ms… um, sit down, ma’am." "What the hell? If you don’t mind me asking?" "I haven’t been feeling well and I took some bizarre cold medication. I’ve been feeling odd since then." "Oh, what did you take?" "Ah.. something by ‘Nature’s Finest’. Something herbal." "Well, perhaps you’re allergic." I smiled again and turned back to my machine. "Justtt…. a….. minute."
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 17:29:44 -0400 From: Robert H. Light <robert@light.net> To: ‘little kate’ <kbrohn@ghastly.com> Subject: RE: RE: Hot monkey love… Hello… Kate my god.. can’t Belife bC^C^Celieve (I ground my teeth and attempted to concentrate on my typing.) Kate, I can’t believe what my day has been like. My sleeping has gotten worse and I can hardly focus. I am ruining my job and my clients all probably hate me. I’m not being paranoid, I was late to my first appointment and now I have a woman sitting here shooting daggers at me because I was sleeping instead of seeing her at her appointment time and now I am writing email. (As if sensing me typing about her, the woman rose and stomped out of the room, rather theatrically actually.) Oh dear Kate, this email is positively incoherent… … what the hell am I going to do with this brain of mine? I read a story when I was little about a boy who would wake up with his pajamas ripped up and his nails caked with blood. He couldn’t figure out what was going on but his mother used to beat him for ripping his jams. I can’t focus right, the screen is swimming and the woman I was about to meet with just stormed out of the room in a huff. I am doing myself in. Love, love, love forever, Rob
I rested my head on my hands and sat there, in the silence of my office, with the white-noise machine buzzing around me and making me slower and dizzier and more depressed about my situation. It was lulling me to sleep and I knew that wouldn’t make a difference if I slept or not, for the feeling of having been awake for weeks persisted. It was maddening, and with each day that passed my control over my own mind and my behavior weakened. I became closer to what I’d describe as schizophrenic in a patient with every morning that the sun rose and I lay there watching it (I think, I was never sure whether I’d been dreaming or awake during those odd moments of consciousness(?) I decided to ring up one of my partners, to have them in here to examine me. I hadn’t nearly enough distance to diagnose my problem. The phone rang only once before Ben picked it up… such a cheerful guy, you could feel him smiling through the phone. "Right Robby? What’s happening, then?" "Can you come over to my office?" "You called me from next door to ask for a visit? Um, sir, don’t mind me saying so but that’s laziness par excellence." "Yeah, well if I’m doing such a stupid thing as this I must have a reason, right? Please come over." "Client die on your or something?" "Please." "Awright, I’m there." He popped in the door about ten seconds after that.
"Hey, so, no bodies and you just sitting there? What’s going on?" "Eh… can you analyze me, Ben?" "Feeling a little cracked? Well, it sure can rub off, sure can." "Please, Ben, I’m not in the mood." "Yeah, I have no client until three-thirty, I can do you. You aware of my fees?" "Aw shuddap." "Right. Anyway. Lie on the couch, please. I can’t feel professional if you’re behind the big desk and I’m sitting here like a kid at the principal’s." I moved myself, somehow to the couch and almost immediately dozed off but for Ben’s voice pulling me back into the room. "Robert, please try to focus on what I’m asking you. Something’s obviously wrong if you can’t hardly keep your eyes open while I analyze you like you requested." "Ermmm." "Haven’t been sleeping, huh?" "I’m not sure, that’s the problem. I feel like I go to sleep every night, I mean I’m not conscious from the time I get home to the time I leave in the morning to start my day. I sleep every minute I’m not in work and I’m so tired, Ben…"
I actually began to cry then, I was so overtired and messing up my life. Self pity utterly consumed me and I cried there in front of my partner, who didn’t really know how to respond to my outburst. "Aw, no-- Rob, you probably have mono pretty bad. Damn, I’m sorry. I got mono once in college and it was right before exams and I was too tired all the time to study. I forced myself not to sleep, figuring I could discipline the mono away, but by the fourth day into my exams I was a mess and had to leave school. Or you know, it could be CFS." He meant Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, an illness I’d always believed was psychosomatic, best treated by humoring the person and putting them on stimulants. Most of the time CFS was caused by a major life trauma of the sort that caused a person’s mind to shut down, to refuse to function for more than a few hours at a time. The bed became an addiction of sorts. I disbelieved that this was my problem because I couldn’t fathom suffering from a disease I didn’t believe in. "I’ll go to the doctor.. I need to. I just haven’t been sleeping right I suppose. Either that or my need for sleep has grown excessive." "Good idea, Robbo… I’ll call up the afternoon clients and cancel them for you. Get yourself to the doctor, sir. I sure wouldn’t want to deal with you as a psychiatrist while you’re in this state. Maybe prescribe yourself a little Xanax to get your nerves down… yeah, the drugs’ll do you some good, I think. Sometimes I pop a little Xanax myself. Never did me any harm." "Yeah sure, you’re nuts Ben. Why do people keep bringing up Xanax today?" "Not sure. You get out of here. Like I say, I’ll phone the nuts you’ve got lined up for today." "Bennet, when I’m not in the mood you’re not funny." "Whatever… I feel the same either way. Look… you. Doctor. Get back to me afterwards." "Yeah, sure…"
I stepped out of my office reluctantly, leaving Ben behind to do God knows what on the phone with my patients. He’s a great guy, this Ben…. But really, inappropriate sense of humor. A lot of the Psych. conferences used to recruit him to speak at their main assemblies because he was so energetic; eventually his odd sense of humor caught the attention of the wrong person. I recall he was making jokes about A.D.D. again and one of the corporate sponsors, like the company who puts out Welbutrin had A.D.D. I personally believe in the disorder as a symptom of contemporary culture, especially television. I suppose I’ve got a lot of opinions about the problems I treat. Anyway, I was feeling so wiped that I actually lay down across the hood of my car and rested for about fifteen minutes before driving to my doctor.
It was empty except for a couple of old women in rain caps (it wasn’t raining, oddly.) I sat and looked at the Rockwell paintings. And sat. And read about Monica Lewinsky in a back issue of Time. I’d gotten to the point where I’d actually started to believe I was reading porn when the nurse called my name. I blushed and put down the magazine cover first… it’s just Time. Dr. Whitehall examined my tonsils and took some blood. He was an old guy and didn’t particularly approve of me since the time he took off my shirt and found nipple piercings. Let alone when he saw my Prince Albert (if you don’t recognize the term, you’re better off not knowing. It seems to be the less squeamish people who know the names of the different piercings.) So, Dr. Whitehall, right…. He asked for my mother’s number when I was first referred to him. My mother for God’s sake. He called her too and asked her if she knew her son had a tattoo of an ankh on his back. (Seriously, it’s a design of mine based on the ankh, not really an ankh per se) It occurs to me that my body alterations tend to come as a surprise to people who don’t know a thing about my night life. Clients don’t want to know about that, trust me. I’ve run into a few while out clubbing or drinking in bars and they are always either horrified or delighted, depending on the age bracket. What they’re doing there is none of my business, however I’ve lost people as clients who somehow forgot that I was not only human, but that I might possibly suffer from a few neurosis of my own… not to mention my propensity for drag and exotic cocktails.
He told me they’d get back to me about the mono and asked me again whether I am sexually active. I mentioned my girlfriend to him for the millionth time. "Er, huh. You been involved sexually with any men since 1980?" "You’ve asked me that before." I tried to look like I was teasing him when it reality it was a bit more of a complaint. "Well, huh?" "As you must have written down before, somewhere. I’ve seen you do it. Anyway, yes, I was very sexually active in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s and yes I have been tested and yes I was tested before Lisa and no I have not been with anyone else since her." He raised his hands in protest. "Er, Dr. Light I wasn’t trying to imply anything negative about your behavior. In my day I was quite a success with the ladies … er, not the men though." "Well… times were different. Perhaps you were repressing your innate bisexual tendencies. It’s never too late." I gave him my ‘it’s time for the bill and you won’t believe what my fee is’ smile. He was taken greatly aback and chose to say nothing further to me than that he’d call me about the mono. It occurred to me on my way out that sleep deprivation was making me act like a teenager. "Baiting the old fellow… shame on me," I thought and snatched a mint from the receptionist’s desk. It was another thirty minutes before I started the car… I just seemed to want to sleep whenever I had down time.
The house was cool and empty, really empty. Lisa and I had just moved into the place and had hardly begun to decorate yet. It was a rather short term place while she finished her Masters at Brown. For that reason I was extremely reluctant to decorate at all, but she’d gone into a flurry of painting and picking out furniture. So far, due to my lack of interest, we had hardly anything. I fell onto an old divan and dozed. At some point I sensed Lisa entering, patting my head and heading off toward the kitchen. Time passed and so did she, again and again, touching my cheek, mumbling into my ear. I slept. It was something like this, a strange world:
A ship. High singing voices, low pulsing bass. Someone whispering ‘master’. I felt that everything around me was simply soft, the colors muted and vague around me.
I was aware of my heavy eyelids and the cramps in my hands. I reached out to brush something sticky off my face and tried to breathe against the water that surrounded me. I was sliding down through something, soft. The colors rippled into one another lazily and as I slid I felt it getting more and more difficult to breathe, as if I had descended too far into the earth for there to be oxygen.
It seemed abruptly as though my neck had snagged on a hook of some sort and I screamed in pain as my head snapped back against the… the… hmmm I began to claw at my own face and surfaced into my living room, crying like a child.
Lisa was bending over me rubbing my shoulders and looking worried. "Robert, you were… taking little gasping breaths. You were shaking, too and your face looked really funny. Remember that film about the dude who was just out of focus? I think it was actually part of a Woody Allen movie. Anyway, you looked like that guy… like a camera shot out of focus and yes, I am wearing my contact lenses and… um, sorry." During the course of this speech her face had grown increasingly red until I sensed an impending panic attack. I tried to sit up but the will to move wasn’t in me. I began to cry again, feeling empty, feeling threatened.
"It, Robert, it was like the light was going through a piece of stained glass onto you but it was all blurry like a Photoshop filter." Ah, I thought, nearly smiling, the metaphors of graphic designers. |