Empathy (5 page)

Anna came home from the temp agency early. They had promised to send her out but they didn't. What was wrong with her? It used to be that stockings, heels, and combing her bangs forward were the only prerequisites for employment. Now she had to know Word Perfect, too. Feeling inadequate and inappropriate, she splurged at the newsstand and then made a beeline home, running the gauntlet of beggars and people handing out circulars, business cards, and discount flyers. She clutched their offerings to her chest and ran up the stairs.

The first thing Anna saw at home were three roaches hanging out by the dish drain. Vengefully, she put out the
Combat
and waited. Those assholes at American Mutual were too much to take. Thank God she didn't have to go back there. In three days she had typed up all the correspondence pertaining to a group of workers with asbestos poisoning trying to sue the company. Then there was the puny executive who cornered her at lunch.

“How can you live with yourself knowing that you're fighting poor people who are dying from asbestos?” she'd asked.

“Most of them were heavy smokers,” he said, satisfied, and then asked her out for the second time.

Later in the office the old Italian guy who had worked for the company for twenty-four years was moaning and groaning about some fag who'd moved in next door.

“What do you care?” Anna said, trying to be sweet about it. “He's not bothering you.”

“Not bothering me?” the guy said, offended. “He's a big queen
How would you like it if some butchy woman was in your face all night long?”

There was no one to take it out on but the roaches. Now, as she walked through her apartment, there were black plastic squares in every room protecting her from vermin. But actually this gave her no comfort because she did not know how
Combat
worked. She had no assurance that it did not operate on the same basis as radiation, another invisible substance.

It was time to relax. But how? Anna had given up bicycle riding because her bikes got stolen every two months, and the price of bike locks was hovering somewhere near the cost of health insurance. She couldn't bear to watch television. She couldn't listen to most of what was on the radio because of the way the music constantly rhymed. But everyone has to give over their mind to some electronic field. Everyone needs someplace to surrender. Anna liked magazines. They were glossy machines. The only technology that she could fold. She read them on a regular basis because they were absorbing. Each one came out on a specific day of the week and was good for an hour of absorption.

Anna took off her shoes and left them standing in the middle of the room. She carefully rolled down her stockings, knowing that the slightest scratch would cost her. Damn it, they caught on a toenail. This was so humiliating. It made her sick to death of herself. Anna read
People
magazine. Why was gossip more interesting than the world? It had something to do with marketing, of that Anna was sure. It had something to do with the organized promotion of a Fake Life. As far as Anna could see, marketing seemed to happen to everyone: drug dealers, beggars, people with careers. It was an unacknowledged public embarrassment. That's why
People
was her private pleasure, not to be enjoyed on the subway in front of others. This week's photo had a picture of some guy. She glanced at the face but it was meaningless to her. The names on the cover were: CHRIS EVERT PRINCE RAINIER ZSA ZSA CHAPPAQUIDDICK

She was not interested in any of this. Thank God those names were timeless. They involved no commitment. It was like saying “but,” “that,” and “which.” Prince Rainier was daily life.

More important than the stories were the advertisements because
People
's articles tried to homogenize while the ads wanted to grab you. One said REORIENT YOUR THINKING. It was from Nissan. Behind the car was a glossy blue sea. The sea reminded Anna of those window displays with shreds of tin foil fluttering in the breeze of an electric fan. It wasn't sexy. The Japanese were people to admire grudgingly, but never strive to be. They weren't sexy. They didn't appear in their own ads. The car was enough.

Anna skipped to the video section, tried the movie section but had to skip it after reading one word. What were they talking about? She couldn't understand why they thought something was important. She couldn't understand the values. There was nothing in this magazine that she saw in the mirror. No person, gesture, slogan, or hairstyle looked like her. In fact, there was no magazine on the entire newsstand rack that had her in it. The ones that said they did didn't have good pictures.

Anyway,
People
had great titles, like “Mummy Dearest,” where Anna could get the idea without having to read the article.

Stop it
, she told herself.
I'd better stop paying too much attention or I'm going to get alienated all over again
.

Time to eat, but what?

She could go get a bowl of soup. She could afford it. But there's that problem of restaurants being depressing plus going out on the street when she knew it would smell of macaroni and cheese. No, no restaurant. It's just not worth the money except once in a while when she's ready to hang herself. No restaurant. Chris Evert. Chappaquiddick seemed like a diversion. More nostalgia.

Even the free handouts on the street had nothing to do with her life. She wasn't going to see Sister Rosa, faith healer. She didn't need artificial nails. Cheap therapy, now that might do some good. She
didn't want a free Chicken McNugget with every three Big Macs. There was nothing left to do but go to sleep.

That night Anna had a strange dream. When the radiator knocked, she changed, but it wasn't waking. It was a half space filled with revelations. Each one about the dream. The dream.

Convinced, she fell back asleep. Compared with memory this was gentle and easy to slip into. But the second time the dream had more power. In it she was astonishingly vague. Trying to think at face value without realizing how much that was actually worth.

I could provide a description of giving head,
she dreamed.
A head filled with breathtakingly beautiful images cannot pay attention to the radio or laundry, so bleed on me.

She woke with the breath of a ghost on her back. She was green orange. Her orgasm was square. A pink star, a spider web, a dancing star too and a point and a shadow. A sky below, a calico rose in the middle of her skull. A red mask. A red egg. A moonscape made of glass. Magnified tongue cells. Salted spongy things. Mountains of black. Gray hills.

As the sun came up Doc heard a little rustling from the kitchen. At first he assumed it was another family of mice to be hunted out and slaughtered. He resolved to set some little wooden traps and bait them with bits of rock-hard stale corn muffin. If the mice did not bite, the glue traps were next. Those wooden ones snapped their necks causing instant death without awareness. But the glue, though more efficient, caught frightened vermin squeaking away for help. Doc would throw them out the window hoping for total destruction on impact.

He heard the rustling again and then a thin whistle of wind, like some papers sailing onto his wooden kitchen floor. Further inspection revealed that some stranger, some unidentified person, had slipped a small pile of pages right under his door.

Attached to the first page was a short note.

 

Doc lay down on his couch, not even bothering to get dressed. He stretched out with two pillows and began to read.

 

ASSIGNMENT: Interpret your own dream using Freudian dream analysis.

Anna O.
Winter 1978
Freshman Seminar
Self, Culture, and Society
Professor Bertram Cohler

 

Freud claims that a dream is a symptom of a pathological idea. The dream is the “fulfillment of a wish” that is socially unacceptable.

 

In my dream, the most outstanding element was Eleanor and her power over me.

There were some inconsistencies in Eleanor.

This makes me think that she represented more than herself. I think she represented a group of people with whom I share physical similarities. I assume that to be woman-kind in general.

We see that what appeared in the dream as Eleanor was actually what Freud calls a Composite Figure upon which numerous trains of thought converge.

 

In my dream, the unacceptable Dream Wish, which pertained to my relationships with women, was recast into a situation full of sensual and powerful symbols.

Freud also notes that dreams are sometimes composed of two different fantasies that coincide with each other at a few points. One
of these points is superficial while the other is an interpretation of the first.

In my dream the superficial fantasy was being able to do what Eleanor could do. The underlying was finding solace in sexual relationships with women. It should be noted that a possible reason for such an ambiguous image as a setting sun might be because the thoughts at the base of this dream do not admit to visual representation.

The most important meaning for me, in the dream, is that after accepting these feelings and succumbing to Eleanor's power, my travels became effortless. In other words, my life became easier.

Even though I am only nineteen, I have seriously wondered if I could ever accept sexual feelings toward women without first making myself more feminine. This comes from a terror of masculinizing myself. Even though I know that women are better for me, I fear being told that I really want to be a man. It's an accusation that everyone seems to make.

So, if others thought I was more feminine than I currently am, they would stop accusing me of wanting to be a man. Then, I could have women's love more easily because I would not have to endure these kinds of assumptions. The fact that I had longer hair in the dream than I really do, confirms that I looked more feminine and therefore was able to relax and relate to Eleanor on a sexual level. But throughout all of these considerations, it is still the case that in no matter how many moments I may have wanted to conform to the social patterns of mainstream America, I have actually done nothing that would divert me from my present course of pursuit.

In conclusion, by using the psychoanalytic approach, it has been demonstrated how an unacceptable wish that was formed in the primary agency of the psyche was distorted by the secondary agency so that it could be rendered acceptable to consciousness. The second agency imposes cultural considerations upon a person's essentially a-cultural thought thereby showing that the particular person is also a social being, a product of culture.

By one-thirty the next afternoon, Doc was a nervous wreck. He paced and paced, opening and closing the refrigerator, rearranging all the food. Finally, at three minutes to the hour, he recovered somewhat and managed to slip delicately back into the office mentality.

Doc didn't believe in regular appointments. His patients only came when something was up. And even though Ms. O. didn't officially know the rules, something appeared to be definitely up. He hoped this would be more meaningful than most patient encounters. He hoped Anna O. would want to really discuss. Usually Doc just sat there while they talked about the unpleasant side of life. Then he did his bit.

Finally, at exactly two o'clock, he heard his door creak open and Doc saw a young woman standing in the threshold. She reminded him immediately of himself as a girl. She was a little pudgy, a little too soft. She had messy, romantic brown hair and noticed everything at once. She stepped into the room the same way he did, with a hesitant self-confidence. She had that kind of alienation that Doc recognized from years of therapy - somewhere between feeling exceptional and feeling like a clown. Anna came from the same kind of middle class that Doc knew oh-so-well. The kind that could pass up just as easily as down.