Almost Royalty: A Romantic Comedy...of Sorts (9 page)

I knew after I told her what I thought she wanted to hear that her eyes would be glowing. And then she’d say “Do you know how much I’m appreciating you right now?”

This was a problem. Her response completely repulsed me.

But she had a whole range of activities that completely repulsed me.

Tell her, “No, I’m repulsed and feel like bitch-slapping you when you do this,” and it was three more years in therapy.

Respond with “I feel so warm when you do this,” and you could see the parole board reconvening to consider your early release.

And along with the lying came the language.

There was a special therapy language which I began to understand through Group, a language mainly spoken by the inhabitants of Planet Therapy.

The key phrases were:

(1)
“I don’t feel heard”
— “I don’t feel heard” meant that the therapy veteran was not persuading anyone of her point or was losing an argument. A smart therapy vet would generally follow that line with a temper-tantrum or a crying jag mixed in with some unintelligible rumbling about “my mother,” some mucus, and a nose blow. Endless boxes of Kleenex, the designer ones with little flowers on them, were strategically placed around Roberta’s office.

(2) “
I don’t feel seen”
— “I don’t feel seen” was something Roberta would say right after she had said something so remarkably stupid that I had shot her a “You Moron” look. A therapy vet—such as Frank—would generally use this line during a time when their behavior was completely irresponsible, like during those 72-hour periods when Frank would lose himself—and his wages—in a 24-hour casino off the 710 Freeway or at the nearest Indian Res.

(3)
“Work
” as in, “This is our work” or “Look how much work she/‌he is doing.” I realized that Roberta—or therapists in general—referred to therapy sessions as “work” because they got paid very well for it. And maybe early on, I thought there was some connection between therapy “work” and becoming successful in “work.” Work—something I got paid for—which was a result that I desired. But as I put in my time on Planet Therapy, a question about the kind of “work” we were doing began to evolve: For my “work” to be completed, was I expected to become a mini-version of Roberta and parrot Planet Therapy speak without thought?

(4)
“I take responsibility for it”
— “I take responsibility for it” was the one phrase that could be used to exonerate all behavior from bestiality to premeditated murder. It was a therapy incantation. Once said, it was as if the reprehensible behavior had magically disappeared or self-corrected.

Too many times in Group, I saw someone admit, “Yes, I got drunk and slept with my daughter’s boyfriend. But I take responsibility for it.” Unfortunately, it never quite worked for me because I never understood how that magic phrase was equivalent to correcting the horrific behavior, especially when the person who had just uttered their “responsibility” line didn’t actually seem to feel guilty or even remorseful.

And that’s when I would get in trouble. Because after the person would utter the hallowed, “I take responsibility for it,” I would—according to Group—be judgmental. I would ask, “How? How do you take responsibility for it?”

Roberta didn’t like that. She really didn’t like that. She seemed to always add an additional six months to my Therapy Sentence by adding to the chorus of screaming Group members.

“Courtney,” she’d say, “can’t you see how much work she’s doing? She just took responsibility for getting drunk and sleeping with her daughter’s boyfriend.”

“How? How is she taking responsibility for it,” I’d ask. “Don’t you think what she did is disgusting?”

Roberta would always give me an icy glance and say, “That’s very judgmental.”

“Ok…” I’d ask, “but has she apologized to her daughter?”

And Roberta, without missing a beat, would always respond, “That’s irrelevant to our work here.”

I knew which lie I was supposed to tell. I was expected to say “Yes” when asked, “Can’t you see how much work she’s doing?” But occasionally I would forget and be honest about my feelings. In those moments, I would reply, “No, I really don’t see how much work she’s doing.” Then Roberta would reward my honesty by throwing me out of Group for an alleged violation of the Implied Therapist-Patient-Group Agreement.

Of course, there was also Roberta-Speak, a sub-dialect of therapy so obscure that the ancient language of the Incas would have seemed accessible by comparison.

“The Group is feeling a primitive pain.”

“You’ve lost the way back to your emotional home.”

“You’ve violated:

(1) the Implied Therapist-Patient Agreement;

(2) the Implied Group Agreement;

(3) the Implied Therapist-Patient-Group Agreement.”

What did any of this mean?

Don’t think that I didn’t try to find out. During many sessions with Group, I would confess that I didn’t understand what any of this jargon meant.

That was a mistake.

Group would respond with a series of snickers. Roberta would consider my confession an act of aggression, and always say, “It means whatever you want it to mean.”

Testosterone Poisoning

“You’re not the best-looking woman I’ve ever slept with,” said Dr. Ted. “I know you think you are. But you’re not.”

Dr. Ted and I were having coffee at one the four unavoidable coffee franchises on San Vicente Blvd. This franchise actually knew that its coffee sucked and had just attempted to retrain its baristas. This was definitely an interesting choice for a conversation starter. But I had no idea what he was talking about.

“You know there are these actress-models, well, they’re out here for a while, and maybe they’re 27, 28… sick of waitressing and know they aren’t gonna be a star… I’m beginning to look pretty good to them,” said Dr. Ted, “because I’m a doctor.”

“Yes you are, Ted,” I said. “You’re a doctor with a leased Mercedes. How’s that working for you?”

Ted looked at me.

“I’ll bet I’m even beginning to look pretty good to you,” he said.

I was hoping we could have a friendship. Guess not.

It appeared that Dr. Ted had a bad case of T.P.—better known as Testosterone Poisoning—that lethal combination of money, career success, and newfound entitlement which transformed former male dorks into pure monsters.

Dr. Ted had classic Testosterone Poisoning. He had clearly been a kid who hadn’t had a shot at the popular girls and burned with resentment thinking how “he’d show them.”

In L.A., a town where being male and straight made him very eligible, he was having some success with women. What made him stand out from the rest was that he was: (1) educated and finished with his education (i.e. some poor woman/‌partner would NOT be required to put him through med school by waitressing at Norms; (2) currently employed with a visible means of support other than parental hand-outs; and, (3) unless he succumbed to professional burn-out or some latent desire to be an Olympic Curler, he had a definable career path that did not include the unlikely careers of rock star, movie/‌television star, or Calvin Klein underwear model. Of course, those
ER
and
Grey’s Anatomy
writers who had first been M.D.s always made you wonder if there was a secret passion to be a screenwriter—currently in remission—that was hidden under that M.D. veneer.

But when I first met him I felt sorry for him. He had a really red face, like a newborn baby. He had acne scars, deep pits covering four inches on each side of his face, from jaw to cheekbone. His eyes were tiny, mud-brown, and hidden behind the thickest uni-brow west of Zagreb. He wore glasses, heavy glasses, with thick lenses. His hair was a coarse, unruly, dark brown/‌black that required a glob of styling gel and 30 minutes with a blow dryer to control. His clothes, striped colored pants and a bright colored T-shirt, were too tight, indicating a fight with his weight, a fight he had clearly won and lost, gaining and losing the same 35 pounds over and over.

He had a very low voice and mumbled when he spoke, never looking me in the eye, because one eye didn’t seem to go straight.

“What?” I said.

He had come over one night when I was packing up to move out of my apartment. I was listening to music.

“I like this music,” he said.

“You like Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra?” I said.

“Yeah. Can I come in and listen?”

“Sure.”

We sat and listened for about two minutes.

“I really like this…” I said.

But before I could get to “part” he had grabbed my arms, pulled me toward him and lifted my shirt.

“You want this, don’t you.”

I jumped backwards.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Stop playing games. You know you want it.”

“I think you have me confused with someone you met… in your head.”

“You can’t deny that you sense the attraction. You send me these signals—you like me all right, I can see it in your eyes—and then you won’t touch me.”

“Those are generally the opening lines for a statutory rape conviction. Has this ever worked for you? Really?”

Ted let go of me and sat down.

“Sometimes. Girls still go for that ‘gonna be a doctor’ thing,” he said.

In an alternate universe.

But then again…

“I might have some vile friends who would go for your ‘doctor’ thing,” I said.

“Yeah?” said Ted.

One friend. The only friend who would think that dating a doctor would raise her position on her Eco-Chain.

Marcie.

“There’s this weird guy, you know, Ted,” I said.

“The med student,” said Roberta during a session, “he really admires you—didn’t he ask you to show him the CDs you liked?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He’s a resident now. But I don’t know about the admiration.”

Roberta looked at me. “Does it make you uncomfortable when someone expresses their admiration for you?” she said.

Ugh. I hated this particular line of Roberta’s questioning, because I knew that Ted has no admiration for me. But if I told her that, this would start a year of “work” with Roberta on my low self-esteem. The easiest way out was to find a middle ground. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”

“What’s making this so difficult for you?” said Roberta. I wanted to tell her that what was making this so difficult was that she was completely wrong about Ted.

I looked Roberta in the eye and attempted to convince her that I was seriously considering her analysis of Ted. “Well,” I said, “we were listening to the music. And then he put his hand down my shirt and pulled my breast out. And I shoved him away.”

Roberta was silent.

“I think he’s kind of an asshole,” I said.

“You’re awfully judgmental. He appreciates your ripe womanhood,” said Roberta.

Ted calls.

“Here’s something that may interest you, Miss Know-it-all,” said Dr. Ted, the resident. “The administrator of my residency kinda likes me, so she started watching out for me. She told me who to suck up to, when I was getting into trouble, what jobs are opening up—that kind of stuff. So I pulled her into a closet and nailed her.”

“Wrong,” I said.

“What do you mean?” said Dr. Ted.

“I’m not interested. But for the sake of argument, was she into it?” I asked.

“It happened so quickly I don’t think she knew what hit her. But she won’t dare talk about it. She’s married.”

And later.

“Now that I’m a doctor, there’s this nurse I work with who likes me,” said Dr. Ted.

“Yeah…” I said.

“So I asked her if she wanted to go out with me.”

“That’s good. Is she nice?” I said.

“I dunno. So we went out to eat like it’s a date, you know, nothing expensive, just pizza. And I had one of my friends, a buddy, meet us. So she’s really excited because she thinks it’s a date. Like, she’s on a date with a doctor, and he invited his friend because she’s special or something. And we all get really drunk. And then we went back to my place.”

“We?” I said.

“My friend. The nurse. And me,” smirked Dr. Ted.

“I don’t think I want to know what happens next.”

“Sure you do.”

“No, I don’t. You have a bad case of Testosterone Poisoning.”

“What?”

“I’m going to hang up now. If you think that you need to talk with someone about this, find an online friend with a web-cam who’ll be yours after your credit card clears PayPal.”

As I hang up the phone, Dr. Ted barks out a term which I pray, for once, that my excellent long-term memory will allow me to forget.

The Zen of Fraud

I remember a time when the news was about distant people whom I would never know. I liked that time because I could pretend that those distant people had great lives and heroic qualities that made them seem so much better than me.

I remember one story I heard about the first family of American politics: They all spoke French at the dinner table. That seemed so incredible, so special, so amazing to me. Later, when they all grew up to bad marriages, tragic accidents, drug addiction, and squandered privilege, it made me sad. I missed the time when I thought that they would escape the disappointments which defined my life. I missed the time when I thought that they lived in a special world. I missed the time when I thought that they were better than me.

I missed my innocence.

So when I discovered that the dermatologist who had worked on my face with a laser was the star of an article entitled “Doctors and Demerol,” it wasn’t entirely surprising.

Who was real anymore?

Who actually was what they were hyped in the press to be?

Who delivered on those incredible publicist-planted stories?

The Zen of Fraud, a term uttered between my friends when the most highly publicized success story turned out to be the worst possible nightmare, was, once again, the most truthful description of my dermatologist.

I had come to the dermatologist, Dr. Laser, for a little problem which had bugged me forever. I had lived with this problem for my entire life, and since the age of eleven—for 24 years—had visited ten different doctors for ten different treatments. Each treatment had been a complete failure.