Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil (58 page)

“I’m sorry.”

“Okay. Do you want to talk about it now?”

He did, in a detailed narrative, with relief and some enthusiasm in his voice. While still living in Massachusetts, he noticed ads in a giveaway paper at the mall’s drugstore. He called one, telling himself he was curious if it was real, incredulous that an illegal activity could be solicited openly. He hung up on hearing a woman’s voice ask if she could help. That fascinated him, the way the prostitute answered. “Hello? Can I help you?” He phoned four more times, he estimated, cutting the line on her greeting. Eventually he answered, asking for details. She described her body in numbers, said what she would do (some of her offerings were in code words he didn’t understand) and named her price. Her blunt manner wasn’t a turn-off; it was his own reaction that appalled him: he was eager to try her. The only thing about the whore’s sales pitch that daunted him was the cost—one hundred and twenty-five dollars for an hour. There were a few weeks of temptation before he tried one and there was another month or two, when he moved to Westchester, before he found another giveaway paper, made calls, and settled on seeing “Tawny” regularly. I asked if he was concerned about AIDS. “Oh no. They’re clean and also they make you use a condom. Even when they give you head.”

I offered no comment or judgment. He seemed to be deliberately draining sex of passion as well as emotion. Also, there was anger in his actions. That was immediately clear, at least to me, when I asked Gene to describe how it became a regular habit.

“I didn’t go a lot at first. But since I started seeing you last summer, and especially since we talked about how little sex …” He interrupted himself with an irritated outburst, “I’m sick of begging my wife. Instead of begging I just go and get what I want.”

“And you like blowjobs.”

That was hard for him. He swallowed and answered grimly, “Yeah, I like blowjobs. I guess that makes me a creep.”

“A creep? I think it makes you a normal, ordinary man.”

“Why am I going more and more since I started seeing you? You’re supposed to make me better. I’m getting worse.”

“Well, for one thing, you didn’t talk about it. You didn’t deal with it here.”

“That’s true.”

“And there’s also the possibility that you’re doing what you want, that you don’t want to have sex with Cathy, that you like having an accommodating partner with no emotional complications.”

Gene stared at me angrily, but what he said was, “No, I don’t. I feel bad about it. I feel like a loser. If I’m doing what I want, why does it make me feel bad?”

“If you’re not doing what you want, why are you doing it?”

“Because I’m a loser.”

“Maybe that’s what you want. To feel pleasure and then feel like a loser afterwards.”

[I did not offer a full analysis of the visits to prostitutes. I did not tell him outright, nor lead him to what I suspected, namely that this was another avoidance of expressing anger, secretly punishing his wife without risk of counterattack or rejection. There was also the rebellion and anger at me, for making him face his sexual deprivation. Each time we met and he didn’t tell me that a twenty-two-year-old girl had been bobbing her head on his erection the day before, he no doubt felt a secret victory over me, that I was not all-knowing, that he was not merely the mild-mannered Gene Kenny, but a competent man who knew how to get what he wanted when he wanted. Why didn’t I probe this area? It’s a paradox of therapy. I didn’t because Gene wanted me to for the wrong reason: to punish him for his anger and his self-gratification. I chose to expose the cause: his need for pleasure; and the neurosis: his fear of seeking it openly.]

Our talks stayed on the surface, a cool, somewhat superficial review of his behavior, rather than searching for underlying conflict or motive. We had moved from character analysis to reports of action and effect. In a sense, the therapy was over. He wanted me to coach him, to cheer him on, to be an eavesdropper as he wrestled with the self he had known all his life, in particular the inclination to thwart his own desires. If Gene asked me to supply a judgment, such as going to whores is bad, I declined. When he said he wanted to wait until Black Dragon was under way before asking Stick for a raise, so that he would have more leverage, I said, “I don’t think he can replace you anytime.” Rather than explore the rationalization, the power of his fantasy of punishment by Stick if he made any demand, or its origin in his relationship with his parents, I emphasized the here and now. The notion was simple: force Gene to act more confident than he felt, hoping that behavior would tow feeling.

[How is this different from behavior modification? First, because of the years of analysis that preceded it. Second, I never dictated any action, I merely cut the ropes of fear.]

Gene’s prediction about Stick moving up the schedule for Black Dragon was accurate. At the barbecue, Stick asked Gene to help him with the cooking. While assembling trays of chopped meats and chicken, Stick admitted he had lied in his estimate to the marketing and sales VPs, as well as to the Dragon Team, so that when they needed more money than was budgeted, as he knew they would, he could offer a quicker finish as the inducement. And Stick confessed to a darker motive. Another group, led by Copley’s main rival at Minotaur, was at work on a machine slated to be their next new product. Were Black Dragon to be ready as soon as January 1990, it would knock out his rival’s machine. If Stick’s accelerated schedule became known at this stage, his rival and the marketers in the company—the men Copley hoped might one day name him CEO—would disapprove: Minotaur couldn’t sell both machines simultaneously.

Excited and flattered that Copley confided in him, Gene overlooked the manipulation and deception involved, satisfied to be an intimate. And, thrilled to be at a gathering with no one else at his level (the other guests included only Minotaur management) Gene became convinced if Dragon worked Stick would promote him. On top of all these delights was a bonus. Gene met Stick’s twenty-six-year-old daughter for the first time. He brought her into his account of the splendid afternoon repeatedly: “Then Halley said something great. I can’t remember exactly how she put it, but …” he went on to paraphrase her observation. They were cynical, one a smart crack about her father being so ruthless he used to cheat while playing Candyland with her. “She’s really beautiful,” Gene told me. “I mean, she’s
incredibly
beautiful. And so fucking smart. I couldn’t believe how smart she was.” His open enthusiasm was unusual; as an isolated interest, I paid it little attention. She was the daughter of a man he more or less worshipped, for one thing. And he was switched on sexually in general, full of anger at his rejecting wife, made more confident by the illusion of successful sex “Tawny” provided, as well as by the glamour and excitement of the event itself. He was giddy—Gene even spoke admiringly of Stick’s barbecue sauce.

“What about the raise?” I asked.

He went deaf, a familiar defense. “What?”

I repeated the question. Again, he said, “What?”

“You said you were going to ask Copley for a raise,” I elaborated to improve his hearing. “Did you bring that up?”

“It was a party,” Gene protested.

“Sounded like you had a long business talk in private while making burgers in the kitchen. You could have brought it up then.”

Gene scowled, raised his right hand to his thick eyebrow, and stroked it thoughtfully. “Cathy told me not to.”

“She was in the kitchen?”

“No,” he almost groaned the word. “Before we went. I told her what you said I should do and—”

“Hold it. I didn’t tell you to ask for a raise.
You
told me you wanted to ask for a raise.”

“You know I could buy a book for this kind of stuff.
What You Want and How to Get It.”

I laughed, delighted. “You’re right. Assertiveness training. We can go on
Donahue
together. Gene, I’ll be the first to admit that we’re no longer doing traditional therapy. Anytime you want to stop is fine. Anyway, I’m surprised at Cathy. I thought she feels Stick is taking advantage of you.”

“Yeah, but, after all, I’ve worked for Stick for seven years and this was the first time he had us to his house. She thought it was rude to ask him for money the very first time he had us over. I mean, she didn’t know he was going to have a private talk … you know, and I had promised her I wouldn’t bring it up so …”

“Did you want to bring it up?”

“Yeah I did.”

“But you didn’t because you had promised Cathy not to?”

“Okay, I’m a schmuck. I have to have Mommy’s permission.”

“See? That’s why we’re not doing traditional therapy anymore. You already know the answers. You know you need Mommy’s permission and I’m sure you remember that Don didn’t ask the gallery owner to pay him for the shelves.”

Gene smiled. “I wish I could throw up on an art book right now,” he said. He conceded he ought to discuss his salary with Stick. In fact, I wasn’t especially concerned about his work relationships. Stick had trusted Gene to be Black Dragon’s project director and Gene seemed to have little trouble with the men under him. Perhaps his experiences as an unfairly treated employee taught him to manage subordinates well. More likely, the comfort of having authority allowed him to assert himself, and his gentle nature inspired others to be independent and creative. Gene often praised the kid hackers under him, commenting that they had all the ideas, he merely got out of their way and occasionally checked their homework. “I’m like a kindergarten teacher with a classful of geniuses. I just make sure they don’t eat the crayons.” His desire to wait until Stick admitted the importance of Black Dragon—as he had at the barbecue—before asking for a raise seemed to me to make good sense. That he didn’t seize his first opportunity was no crime.

The regular visits to “Tawny” were another matter. They worried me. Not out of prudery. Gene’s marriage needed more intimacy, especially romantic intimacy, not less. And his fear of acting manly was hardly improved by choosing what is, in effect, an infantile sexual relationship. Gene’s description of the visits to “Tawny” could be seen as regression: the male is stripped, excited, soothed, and sometimes bathed by an au pair, supplying attention in place of the preoccupied mother. Gene obviously thought he had solved his problem with Cathy. She didn’t want sex so he would get it for a fee elsewhere. He continued to see passion as one-sided (that Cathy might want sex was never considered) and satisfaction as unemotional—it didn’t matter that “Tawny” couldn’t care less about Gene, just getting her one hundred and twenty-five dollars.

[I could have corrupted Gene’s enjoyment of “Tawny” by informing him that clinical studies of prostitutes reveal the overwhelming majority were molested as children, usually by a male relative, and that their true sexual orientation is lesbian or at least their sensual side is so blocked by rage and self-hatred they don’t enjoy physical passion. He probably wouldn’t have believed me—I’m sure “Tawny’s” performance of liking Gene was excellent. And such a revelation would have been a sneaky attack on Gene. I was more interested in revealing his behavior than destroying the illusion of hers.]

Gene did ask Copley for his raise that very afternoon. I heard the story three days later. To Gene’s surprise, Stick agreed without an argument that he deserved a salary of one hundred thousand. There was no anger, no mockery, no emotional rejection at all. “You’re the best man I’ve got,” Stick said. Days later, Gene still flushed with pleasure as he repeated the compliments. “I just don’t have it in the budget,” Stick went on. “I’d have to tell them about our secret plans to explain why you deserve it. They think you’ve got a year to bring Dragon in. But in six months, after it’s done, I’m going to propose you become project coordinator for the entire company and then we’re talking a lot more than 100K. Maybe even a quarter million plus stock options.” Stick went on to elaborate his vision of their future: once Dragon was a hit, he would become CEO, Gene the VP of R&D, and together they would expand the company’s product line.

“That’s gonna mean getting more people, more bright people,” Gene said.

“That’s why I need you, Gene. Nobody is better at picking talent and getting it to work than you. Those kids out there would throw themselves on a burning circuit for you.” Repeating Copley’s praise, Gene was thrilled all over again. He let the flattering words reverberate and then caught my eye. “He actually said that,” he added.

“I’m sure,” I said. “And I’m sure it’s true.” I waited.

Gene took a long satisfied breath, smiled at me, and seemed to have nothing further to say.

“So you didn’t get the raise?” I finally had to ask.

“He can’t now. You see that, don’t you? I mean, you understand?”

“I understand what he said.”

“Oh!” Gene sat up, reminded. “And he also promised a big bonus, a real bonus, if Dragon makes it. He said something about my getting a piece of its net profit.” Gene shook his head at the thought, awed by the size of this promise. “I mean,” he mumbled, “that would be millions.”

“What did Cathy say?”

“I didn’t tell Cathy. I told Tawny,” Gene laughed at himself. “Probably shouldn’t have. She might raise her rates. Got me a bonus, though. She did—” he stopped himself, glancing at me self-consciously, and continued in a louder tone as if to drown out the previous phrase. “Anyway, when I got home, I told Cathy we had to have sex more often. And she said I was right! I couldn’t believe it. She actually apologized—”

“Wait a minute. Slow down.” Gene adopted his typical pose of the attentive schoolboy: hands in lap, eyes downcast, waiting patiently for the lecture. I almost laughed. His reaction, I must admit, made sense. I
had
sounded like a scold. I hesitated before continuing. What should I do? The slow way would help him only after the events were long past. Hadn’t I decided to experiment, to abandon established method? Wasn’t this direct approach my Prozac, my magic pill of self-confidence and clarity? “First, even though it’s just a detail and you didn’t mean to tell me—what did Tawny do after you told her you might become a millionaire?”