Psychology and Other Stories (35 page)

Out in the street, Strickland confided, “I like being happy.”

Q. Could Mr. Burger be cured by means other than drugs, or will he always have this problem?

A. He can, I believe, like any of us, be helped to realize that emotional arousal, including various forms of anger, has a mediating, cognitive element, and is therefore capable of being sublimated or redirected. He could, I think, with the aid of a skilled therapist, be led to adopt a task-oriented or problem-solving attitude instead of an ego-oriented one. I'm sorry: to answer your question as briefly as possible, I would say that yes, absolutely, he could learn to not take things personally, to control his anger—to use his brain.

Q. And how long would that take, Professor?

A. It is difficult to say.

Q. And how many times would he blow up, and how many more people would he be likely to beat to death before he had learned to as you say not take things personally?

Mike and Roz and their friends waiting to be seated at The White Grape.

Antonio DiRosa coming in with his group, asking Roz, Is it a long wait?

Roz looking at him meaningfully with moist eyes, and with moist lips saying, Depends what you're waiting for. Roz looking at Mike defiantly.

The maitre-d' saying, Ah, Mr. DiRosa! Your party's table is ready.

Mike clenching his fists, gritting his teeth.

DiRosa, passing by, stopping to whisper, I'm gonna fuck your wife till she screams.

“Huh?” said Mike, passing him the joint.

“Nothing.” Strickland puffed at it with an air of responsibility. Then he sat back.

“It's like,” he said, “I can feel my peristalsis.”

“Totally.” A shrewd look came into Mike's eyes. “It's like a total proclivity, right?”

They were in a once-sumptuous hotel room, but the white carpet and leather furniture looked like they hadn't been cleaned since they were installed. There were a few other people in the room but they appeared to be asleep, despite the loud music.

“Proclivity?”

“Yeah, you know what I mean, like a proclivity to swear.”

Strickland blinked. “You read my report.”

“So that's like a, a proclivity to swear, that's like, what, I say fuck a lot, is that it?”

“Hell, it's not a judgment, Mike. Of course you swear a lot— relative to myself and other people of my particular … cultural and socio-economic background. But if I'd lived the life you've lived, no doubt I'd probably cuss a lot too.”

“Man,” said Mike, “you don't know shit about my fucking life.”

Mike jumped up and punched a street sign.

“Sometimes I feel like I'm not even anywheres,” he said. “Like I'm not even, like there's not even … anything. You know what I mean?”

Strickland considered, then said, “When I hold my eyes open it feels like the wind is blowing right into my skull.”

“Man,” Mike said, “you should shave that fucking beard off. It makes you look like a fucking A-rab.”

“That's quite a statement, coming from a man of … of a minority group.”

“You mean a nigger?”

“No.”

Mike laughed at him. “See, I can be a racist but you can't get away with it. Actually I'm not a racist—some of my best friends are ragheads!”

After a moment, Strickland laughed too.

“I'm not even really a nigger,” Mike said. “My old man was a fucking wetback.”

He smashed a street sign thoughtfully.

They were in another bar. Mike returned to the table.

“Okay, so she wants to play it that way? Okay.”

“She does, huh?”

Mike whistled restlessly for a minute. “Man,” he said, “I promised myself I was gonna get all the fucking pussy I can while I'm still in the world.”

After a long pause, Strickland said slowly, “I think my wife is having an affair.”

“Man, what you fucking looking at?,” Mike muttered. Then he shouted it across the bar: “Man, what you fucking looking at, man?”

“What are
you
looking at?” came the reply.

Mike rose, as if lifted by a crane. “I'll look at whatever the fuck I feel like, my friend.”

“Oh my,” Strickland giggled.

“I'm not your friend and if you want to look at my woman then you can take a fucking photo.”

Mike started across the room with the poise and footing of someone crossing a rope bridge.

“Mike …”

“Maybe I'll buy one,” Mike suggested. “She sell them after her strip show?”

“Fuck, man, you better back off, man.”

“Yeah? Or what.”

“I'm just telling you now, you better just about back the fuck off, man.”

“Mike, come on, this is stupid.” Strickland looked to the woman for support, but she was watching the argument with the disengaged engrossment of a referee.

“You think you can tell motherfuckers what they can and can't look at, motherfucker?”

“Now you're getting in my face and that's something I don't like.”

“All right, both of you, this is silly, childish—”

“Yeah, what about this, you like this?”

Mike shoved the guy.

“That's ENOUGH!,” Strickland screamed.

They looked at him.

“I mean, I mean, what are you doing, Mike? Have you forgotten that you're out on, I mean out on fucking bail?”

“Oh
yeah
, you mean for
killing
that fucker?”

“Come on,” said the woman, “forget this shit.”

“Watch your back,” the man muttered as they left.

Mike laughed and clapped Strickland on the shoulder. “Dan my man! You see that fucker's face?”

“I mean, what do you want to go and get all worked up for? How am I supposed to … What are you thinking?”

“Aw shit, man. Come on now, don't be like that. That was some fucking A-1 shit right there, admit it. Admit it.”

Mike shook him by the shoulders till he smiled.

In the cafeteria, Strickland, hungover, said, “And can I get a salad instead of the fries?”

“Sure, but it costs a dollar.”

“That doesn't make any sense. The side salad costs less than the side fries.”

“Man, I just do what they tell me.”

“Yeah,” Strickland muttered, “that's what they said at Belsen.”

The anxious young man said, “And I can't even drive anymore because of the yellow lights. I know it's stupid, but whenever I stop for one I feel like I should have gone through and whenever I go through I feel like it was really too late and I should have stopped. And green lights are no good because they could turn yellow at any moment so I'm constantly re-evaluating whether—”

Strickland rubbed his neck and said, “I've got an idea. Why don't we jump straight to the relaxation exercises we've been working on.”

Strickland looked in the mirror and touched his beard.

Someone said, “The main thing is you don't treat sex like a big deal, or make more of a secret of it than any other thing that they don't understand yet.”

“But you can't deprive them completely of television—it's ostracizing.”

“Milgram, Asch, Schachter … All the best experimental work has been done with stooges.”

“My twelve-year-old boy now. Our bathroom light switch is outside in the hall, and Alfie and his little pal would turn off the light when his fourteen-year-old sister took a shower, so of course she has to come out in the buff, which is the point. Well, when Frank and I had had about enough of her caterwauling I told her: That's enough now, open that door, and I hauled the two little hoodlums in by the ear and I said: There! Get a good eyeful! That's a perfectly ordinary female naked body and nothing to get so excited about, is it? And to
her
I said: And that's a perfectly ordinary couple of twelve-year-old boys with a perfectly natural and ordinary curiosity and nothing to get so riled up about, is it? You're not the bloody queen.”

“I don't know, maybe we've handled ours with kid gloves.”

“Oh but you
gotta
handle kids with gloves!”

Strickland, beardless, went to the punch bowl.

Trace said, “Oh, all over the place. I collect them.”

Martie said, “And they're all polar bears?”

“I love polar bears. I love how white and fluffy they are.”

Strickland went away from the punch bowl.

*

Someone said, “It's the only time in your life when you get to stand in front of a roomful of people who are guaranteed to know less than you. I can tell them
anything
—and they have to believe it.”

Someone said, “I know that guy! You mean the Resto-Rage guy?”

Martie said, “I guess that's what the newspapers call him …”

Someone said, “Childhood is just an example of Stockholm Syndrome.”

Everyone laughed.

Nigel said, “I don't get it.”

Everyone laughed.

Strickland said, “That doesn't make any sense. I thought Stockholm Syndrome was when you gradually over time started to sympathize and identify with your abductors. But with children the process is exactly the reverse.”

No one laughed.

Trace said, “Sit still. See if you can keep your eye open while I lick your eyeball.”

Martie was watching them from across the room.

Strickland laughed and said, “Yuck!”

One of the women cried, “Let's pick keys already—I want a goddamn drink already.”

Trace pressed herself against Strickland and said, “What do we do?”

Strickland said, “Just make sure you pick last.”

The women lined up and withdrew keys from a convoluted Chinese teapot.

Trace said, “Oh, you go ahead, dear.”

Martie said, “No no, that's fine, you first.”

Nigel said, “Wait a second. Who's actually left? Just Dan and I?
Well, we can't very well let you and Martie go home together, can we heh heh?”

Strickland grabbed the teapot and turned it upside down. Nothing came out.

“I knew it.”

Nigel pushed his glasses up his nose and said, “Guess we forgot to put our keys in, hey pal?”

Strickland punched him on the chin.

Nigel took a step back.

“Ow,” he said. “What was that for?”

Strickland looked at his wife, then left the room.

Trace said, “Where's he going?”

Nigel called, “Are you okay to drive, buddy?”

Martie went to the window and said, “Don't be stupid.”

Strickland drove.

“Glasses up with their ring finger?” he muttered.

“I'll have a little chat with Mr. Daniel.”

But the bartender didn't recognize him.

“A little chat with Mr. Daniel, please.”

“Mr. Daniels, you mean.”

“No,” said Strickland, “there's an apostrophe.”

Strickland parked on an embankment and looked down at Los Angeles.