Copyright 2001 by Morris Rosenthal
The doorbell rang at exactly 8:30 A.M., and Carol Weinberger, Ph.D., advanced with a sigh to let in her first patient of the day. She halted reflexively at the small mirror in the hall to check her professional smile, then remembered again that it was Friday and relaxed. It's just the male, she joked with herself, and opened the door.
"Good morning Doctor Weinberger, I brought you some donuts." Eric tentatively presented the pink and white bag, like an eight year old bringing an apple to the teacher.
"Donuts! What a surprise," she fulfilled her end of the weekly ritual, "Have a seat in my office and I'll bring us some tea." The kettle was just beginning to whistle in the kitchen, and the cups and teapot were arranged on the antique copper serving tray. She filled the teapot with hot water, and added two bags of Red Rose to steep. Her final housemaid chore of the session was to pull the snug, quilted jacket down over the teapot. Eric would do the pouring, he was quite polite that way.
Eric had been Carol's first patient when she had opened her private practice the previous Fall, and in some ways, her favorite. The only problem was that he had developed a serious crush on her at the first session and failed miserably to hide the fact. It hardly made sense to suggest that he was experiencing transference so early in their association, but she tried anyway. Eric proposed a radically different Jungian theory, that they were 'made' for each other. One thing led to another and before she could stop herself, she was explaining to him that she was a lesbian, and why. Eventually he had to remind her that it was his session, but she was left with the distinct feeling that he was waiting around for her to have a change of heart. Over time, she found it less distracting the attention shown by her female clients, so she let it slide.
"What do you have for me this week," she asked, unable to keep a hint of regret out of her voice. She liked to get the obligatory poem out of the way first thing, before she was fully awake. His poems made her very uncomfortable at times, since she preferred believing that there was a reasonable chance the car would slow down when she hit the brakes. The first verse or two were normally harmless enough, but she could be sure of what was coming. Listening to Eric's poetry was reminiscent of waiting for the other boot to drop.
"A definite improvement, I hope," he replied, "Listen,"
Galloping Gertie
Her hands tightened on the chair, as she silently willed him to stop. For a fleeting moment she wished that she possessed in reality the mind control powers that her 11:00 AM patient attributed to television evangelists. "Stop reciting," she thought at him, but somehow it came out, "Send your tax deductible donations to PO. Box 2243, City of Christ, Texas."
Carol let out her breath like a deflating balloon, and looked at him sadly. Eric met her gaze momentarily, then cast his eyes down seeming to notice the tea things for the first time. The design on the insulating coat was a white elephant, with the protruding spout making the trunk. They listened together to the soft, familiar sound of the hot water pouring into ceramic cups. He started to hand her a cup and saucer, but it rattled so audibly that he abruptly returned it to the table, just within her reach. No matter how much sleep he got during the day, his hands always shook in the morning after his third shift job as a security guard. The disturbed surface of the tea immediately brought to her mind one of his hurricane odes where a poorly designed hotel collapsed on hapless honeymooners.
His file was full of such poems, a collection of which the University of Massachusetts Mental Health Coordinator had sent her when Eric opted to choose an outside therapist. Due to payroll cutbacks, Health Services was encouraging students to select outside help, although they paid a fixed rate below the industry standard for insurers in the area. Eric was living in Northampton during his junior year, and was inclined to have as little to do with the University as possible. Fifteen minutes after Carol screwed the discreet bronze plaque to the wrought iron gate of her newly purchased Victorian, Eric had rung the doorbell.
Eric Levy was an average looking university student in his mid-twenties. A bit thin maybe, and dressed in the near rags affected by many students in the community, but pleasant looking enough, and talking about a university payment voucher. Carol had just moved to the Northampton community after an internship at McLeans to open her private practice. She hadn't planned on taking on any male clients, but it seemed like an omen, his timely arrival. Also, she reminded herself, she had spent all of her savings on the house down payment, and the bank had still required that her father to cosign the note, bringing a whole set of Freudian conflicts to the fore. She couldn't turn down a paying customer.
Eric wasn't interested in therapy at all, though he tried hard to cooperate to please her. All the same, she enjoyed the change in pace he presented. The majority of her clinical experience had been with battered women and victims of sexual abuse, heartbreaking work. Since moving to the Happy Valley, her caseload included more and more women traumatized by custody fights over favorite plants and cats, which was just as depressing in its own way. All Eric needed was to control his peculiar form of self expression, at least enough to stop it from drawing the attention of the university authorities. It wasn't a matter of choice.
The Dean of Students had received dozens of complaints from engineering students and faculty about his disruptive questions in class and his prolific output of widely distributed disaster poetry. He had his supporters in the English Department, where he had completed his B.A. five years before, but even the hardiest advocate of free expression found something overly morbid in some of his verses. Job opportunities for holders of four year degrees in English literature were as limited in the Nineties as they were in most decades, so after a few years of kicking around, Eric had returned to the university for electrical engineering in the Fall of 1998. He scratched out his first poem while taking a break from failing a thermodynamics exam, on which he receive a nine out of a possible one hundred. Mimeographed copies of the following untitled verse later appeared taped to doors and walls all over the engineering building.
Some lightning detective work, which from a technical standpoint only violated two Constitutional Amendments for a matter of microseconds, found that the original had been printed in the engineering computer lab from Eric's account. The poem earned Eric a mandatory 'evaluation' session with a university psychiatrist and a prohibition on posting any poems on school property without prior approval of the Dean of Students. He continued writing poems which were widely circulated through e-mail by fellow students with a taste for the macabre. These quickly found their way to the Dean of Students, who turned them over to the University's Mental Health Clinic. At the end of the Spring semester, Eric was informed that he wouldn't be allowed to return for his Senior year unless he agreed to seek psychiatric counseling and to restrain himself from circulating his poems. Although he was sure he could beat them in court, he never quite got around to talking to a lawyer. He started seeing Carol in September, and decided that he liked therapy just fine.
Carol was certain that persuading Eric to stop writing the poetry would be the wrong approach. Compared with, say, sniping at professors from the roof of the library with a semi-automatic rifle, it provided harmless outlet. She also had an ingrained respect for any creative activity and was sure that disastrous conclusions to his poems were simply a manifestation of his frustration with the engineering course work. The trick would be to provide him with an audience to keep him out of trouble.
In the first session, she suggested to Eric that he read his poems to her, in lieu of giving them to fellow students. He agreed readily, and although they had made no headway on the accumulation of mangled limbs and orphaned children, the cessation of their circulation was a sort of victory. Eric was able to continue at the university, and they continued to pay her like clockwork, ninety days after receiving each bill. Their friendship grew as they continued to conduct the sessions, both feeling an obligation to put in the time in as long as the university continued to foot the bill.
They sipped their tea in an embarrassed silence, and Carol nibbled at the chocolate covered donut that she allowed herself each week, making it last as long as possible. Eric continually stole glances at her attractive face, the thin high bridged nose and wide mouth dominated by her large brown eyes. She wore her frizzy, dark brown hair in two long, girlish braids that she flipped behind her back for their meetings. Despite a complete lack of makeup, at twenty-nine, she looked at least five years younger.
"It's based on truth, you know," he said finally. "There really was a 'Galloping Gertie', on the Tacoma Narrows in Washington." She continued gazing at him sadly. "Nobody was killed or anything, just a lot of property damage," he offered hopefully. She smiled a little, more at the tone of his voice then at his words. He decided to move to what he hoped would be a safer subject.
"I've been thinking about what you said, about my being stubborn and all, and I decided that you're right." This drew a blank look from her, so he elaborated. "I mean about my continuing at school just to show I'm not a quitter."
"I don't think I said exactly that, Eric." She frowned like a disappointed parent. "Have you gotten your grades for the semester yet?"
"Yeah, the last one was posted yesterday. I got an A, three C's and a D. The A was in E.E. lab, though, which doesn't really count since my section met on Friday afternoon. The student assistant who runs it was so embarrassed that everything is always broken by Friday, that he gave everyone A's just for showing up."
"There's nothing wrong with C's, and a D is still passing." Carol had gotten a B+ one time as an undergraduate and had considered killing herself. "Are you still on track to graduate this year?"
"Sure, if I continued, but that's what I was talking about. You know, the stubborn thing. I don't want to be an engineer. It's just that after I started, I couldn't figure out how to stop."
"Have you done anything about this yet?"
"I went yesterday to talk to the coordinator in the English Department, and he said I could take up to three graduate courses next fall, and apply for admission to the Ph.D. program for the Spring."
"I know that you did very well as an undergraduate in the English program, Eric, but you didn't want to continue then. Are you sure that you're not just trying to become a professional student."
"I don't think so, what do you mean?"
"You must see them around campus. Men and women in their mid-thirties who have been in school their entire lives. Changing majors when they get too close to graduating, joining up with every cause that comes along. Some people just enjoy the student life, always a goal and never any responsibility."
"You think that I should waste another year just for the sake of finishing?" he asked. He was surprised that he had read her so wrong, he'd thought that she would be pleased. All he really wanted was to cheer her up after the poem so she wouldn't start thinking about dumping him. The sessions were the high point of his week.
"I'm not trying to tell you that it's a bad idea, Eric. I just want you to really examine your feelings to be as certain as you can that you won't be sitting in another office four years from now, trying to figure out if you want to be a lawyer, or a psychiatrist," she added with a smile.
"Oh, I see," he responded weakly, "I'll have to think some more about it."
"Make a list," she urged him, thrilled to be firmly in the driver's seat for a change. "Try to remember why you didn't continue on to graduate school in the first place, and what's changed since then. Make another list of the reasons you wanted to continue in Engineering last Fall, and why you don't now. Bring them next week, and we'll go over them." She reined in her enthusiasm for lists in order to take advantage of his rare confusion to talk about something that had been bothering her conscience lately.
"Eric," she asked softly, looking at a spot somewhere between his shoulder and his left cheekbone, "Do you get any benefit at all out of our sessions?" She blinked once, and then she was looking him in the third eye.
He recognized the technique immediately, a seasoned veteran of the activist canvassing wars. His friend Brian asserted that the inverted triangle with Amherst and Northampton at the base corners and Springfield at the tip was the most heavily canvassed area on the face of the earth. Masspurge, Geenpeace and Clean Harbors were the regulars, closely followed by Pro-life, Pro-choice, Pro-Kennedy, Pro-Anyone-But-Kennedy, and a myriad of other professional foot soldiers in the signature and donation drives. It wasn't politically correct to be 'anti' anything anymore. Even the anti-war activists had given up their nom de guerre in favor of Pro-Send-Carter.
Seeing the third eye was a technique employed by many of the career 'Walk and Talk'ers' or 'Shit Marksmen' , as they were know in less polite circles. Rather than making direct eye contact, which could provoke an aggressive response in some individuals and intimidate others, the canvasser would fix their gaze at a point between and slightly above the victim's eyes, the third eye. It carried the sincerity of a direct gaze without any of the threatening overtones. Anecdotal research proved that it was best choice for most of the people, most of the time.
Instinct took over, and he countered her 'seeing third eye' with a brilliant 'ogling the axe murderer'. Ogling the axe murder simply consists of staring wide-eyed over your assailant's shoulder to convince them of a sudden danger from the rear. As employed in the canvassing wars, it serves to create a split second of inattention during which to slam the door in the activist's face. Any professional would be too embarrassed to ring the bell again after be caught so off guard.
His act was convincing, and Carol broke off her assault and rose half out of her chair to avoid the impending blow. Eric broke out laughing, and her temporary advantage was gone.
"That wasn't funny," she grouched, then laughed in spite of herself. "I've got to remember that one," she added ruefully, then practiced it a few times herself. He broke into fresh gales of laughter, as her intentional attempts to look startled fell well below the mark she had unwillingly posted moments before.
"The question stands," she repeated. "Do you really feel that I'm helping you?"
In response he pointed to her wall calendar, put out by one of the mammoth drug companies. June's picture was of several patients in a secure facility sitting with goofy grins in front of a television displaying a test pattern. The brand name of their mood enhancing drug was cleverly spelled out with Scrabble pieces on a board in the foreground of the photograph. While waiting for the tea the previous week, Eric had found a red magic maker and scrawled 'Laughter is the best medicine' across the top.
Her opportunity to be serious lost, she gave up all attempts at a professional demeanor and pulled her feet up on her chair. Poetry recital and other trivia out of the way, they had come to the meat of their Friday sessions. Discussing pro-basketball and where the best looking women in town worked. It might not be ethical use of the university's money, Carol rationalized to her girlfriend, but it was fun. Plus, as Eric would say when she pinned him down, she certainly wasn't doing any harm, so it passed the 'Chicken Soup' test. She knew plenty of medicating doctors who would have tried to put him on anti-depressants, or pro-non-depressants, by this point. Funny that the pharmaceutical industry had to start all their drugs with 'anti' she thought.
"I hear that the Celtics are looking to trade Walker," Carol led off..
"Never mind that," Eric came back, "Have you seen the new girl working at the Library?"