« In Which We Have Scheduled Leonard Michaels For Psychotherapy »

from  Journal

by LEONARD MICHAELS

Evelyn's four year old son had a nightmare in which Evelyn appeared with a big knife stuck in her head. She has scheduled him for psychotherapy five days a week.

Billy phones, says, "Want to play?" I think about it, then say, "The traffic is heavy. It will take forever to get to your place. I can't stay long. I'd feel I'm using you. It's not right. I don't want to use you." She says, "But I want to be used." I drive to Billy's place. She opens the door naked, on her knees. We fuck. "Do you think I'm sick?" she says. I say, "No." "Good," she says. "I don't think you're sick either."

She was once making love and the bed collapsed on her cat, who was asleep underneath, and broke its back. Since then, she says, sex hasn't been the same for her. Then she dashes to the sink, grabs a knife, and looks back at me, her teeth shining, chilly as the steel, welcoming me to the wilderness.

Annette claimed Dr. Feller "worked hard" during their sessions. "I trusted him," she says. "So many therapists sleep with their patients." As if it were entirely up to him. That hurt my feelings. Later we met his girlfriend at a party. I was friendly, as usual, but Annette was furious, confused, depressed. I asked, "What's the matter?" She wouldn't answer, but then, in bed, unable to sleep, she announced, "I will confront him, tell him off." I ask, "Why?" She hisses, "I trusted him." I begin to wonder if I'm crazy. Dr. Feller took a fifth of my income. I feel a spasm of anger, but fall asleep anyway, imagining myself taking a three point shot from the sideline with no time on the clock. The ball feels good as it leaves my hands.

Margaret doesn't like oral sex because she was once forced to do it at gunpoint, in a car, in the parking lot next to the railroad tracks, outside the bar where the guy picked her up. I wish she hadn't told me. I hear freight trains. I see people coming out of the bar, laughing, drunk, going to their cars while she crouches in misery and fear, the gun at her head. How easy, if I had the gun at his head, to pull the trigger.

Schiller says, "When the soul speaks, then -- alas -- it is no longer the soul that speaks." William Blake says, 'Never seek to tell thy love/Love that never told can be." They mean the same as Miles Davis' version of "My Funny Valentine," so slowly played, excruciating, broken, tortured.

Afterward, afterward, it is more desolating than when a good movie ends or you finish a marvelous book. We should say "going," not "coming." Anyhow, the man should say, "Oh god, I'm going, I'm going."

Kittredge loves pretty women, but he is blind, can't pursue them. So I take him to a party and describe a woman in the room. He whispers, "Tell me about her neck." Eventually I introduce him to her. They leave the party together. Kittredge is always successful. Women think he listens differently from other men. In his blind hands they think pleasure is truth. Blind hands know deep particulars, what yearns in neck and knee. Women imagine themselves embracing Kittredge the way sunlight takes a tree. He says, "Talk about her hips." As I talk, his eyes slide with meanings, like eyes in a normal face except quicker, a snapping in them. Kittredge cannot see, cannot know if a woman is pretty. I say, "She has thick black hair." When they leave together I begin to sink. I envy the magnetic darkness of my friend. To envy him without desiring his condition is possible.

Sonny reads in the paper about a child who was sexually assaulted and murdered. She says quietly, as if to herself, "What are we going to do about sex?"

Leonard Michaels is the senior contributor to This Recording. He died in 2003. This is the third installment of his Journal. You can find the first two installments here and here.

"Rainy Nights" - Matthew Solberg (mp3)

"Nothing to Say" - Matthew Solberg (mp3)

"Saving Disgrace" - Matthew Solberg (mp3)