The Big "O": A Romantic Comedy (15 page)

“Yes, Roberto,” Isis replied, “I will definitely call you.”

“I'll look forward to that,” he said and she felt her entire body and being thrill.

Inside of the university psychology lab office, Juliette faced Dr. Smith her mentor and thesis adviser. In his 60s, Juliette admired him, his research, and all related publications, greatly.

“The first draft is brilliant. Consider this preliminary approval. You can, of course, expect that the committee will make change suggestions, but you are very, very close,” Dr. Smith said.

“I can't tell you how relieved I am,” Juliette said. Her face was a bit pinched and the tiny lines around her eyes seemed to be more obvious today. The strain of her work, stress from dealing with Victor's ongoing drama, and the challenges of everyday living, were all beginning to show.

“I can imagine,” Dr. Smith said sympathetically.

He was a tiny little man, his wrinkled overly large head reminding her, unexpectedly, of peeled, carved apple shrunken doll heads, which she had seen as a child at a faire.

As sympathetic as he was, it was impossible for Juliette to imagine that Mr. Smith had been ruffled, exhausted, out-of-sorts, feeling constantly unprepared, while completing his graduate degree requirements, the way that she did lately. She only showered if she were going out in public. She made the minimal effort in the maximal number of life areas.

She felt like a tightness today, an anxiety which she couldn't shake, on top of the normal graduate student haze which she found herself submerged in on a daily basis. Then she remembered.

“Dr. Smith?” Juliette said, just as the man opened a journal, which was always her cue that their appointment was over.

“Yes?” he said politely.

“I have a favor to ask. Obviously, I know that my research phase is over… but I have this friend, with an exceptional child, a bizarrely exceptional toddler, and I was hoping--”

“Bizarrely exceptional toddler?” Mr. Smith said, his interest entirely piqued. Juliette knew then that baby Max, just like that, would get a top-notch workup for free.

D
OWN IN Victor and Juliette's basement, which seemed mustier and dustier, each time they met up there, Max and Edwin sat on the couch. Victor paced.

“There is danger in life of being seduced by quantity over quality,” Edwin said awkwardly, unable to get the words out without coughing, nearly choking, on them. Max felt bad for Edwin and seriously appreciated that his friend was willing to forge in head on.

“What the fuck are you talking about, man?” Victor said and came to a stop. He stared at Edwin, his eyes bulging a bit, his face red and sweating just a bit.

“Let him talk, Vic,” Max said. Victor shot Max a bird and glared at Edwin.

There
is
a difference between qualitative and quantitative,” Edwin said firmly.

“I know this shit, Edwino. My wife, who is practically a fucking doctor already, explained this to me… as it is highly relevant to research and researchers,” Victor said pointedly.

“How do I say it?” Edwin asked Max.

“Uh… Man, it was… she… you're… the quantity was, uh, there, but the quality… was not,” Max sputtered out. He felt a sense of relief the minute that his unintelligible sentence was out.

“Really?” Victor squeaked out, after a long moment, and looked back and forth between his two friends.

Edwin shrugged and Max nodded. Victor stared at them and then, figuring it out, ran from the room. Max and Edwin stared awkwardly at each other.

“He can't cry around people,” Max said by way of an explanation.

Max and Victor sat in the bizarre yellow-gold 70s flashback light of the basement, staring at the lamp which cast the weird golden glow, sitting on the horrible dusty furniture, wishing they were somewhere else, waiting for their friend's return.

Edwin finally pulled out his mobile phone and checked email.

Max thought about his next appointment with Dr. Charles. He had homework that he hadn't done.

He was supposed to try and remember the first in life, presumably in childhood, time that he had felt intellectually inadequate.

The thought of doing the exercise made him very uncomfortable so he'd been putting it off.

He felt behind the curve in every life area, right now.

He'd thought that helping Vic was going to make him feel confident, like a good friend, and that it wouldn't take too long. Turned out, it was taking ages.

He had shit to do.

Every day that passed he was aware that he was spending less time with his wife and child than ever, almost no time on his business, except he had managed to get some editing done and some social stuff with Emily. Still, book sales were dwindling. Except maybe they weren't. He'd gotten a confusing email record of a direct deposit in his inbox which suggested sales and thus royalties were up. Apparently something that Emily was doing was working and working well. It was mind-boggling.

Several minutes later, Victor finally came back, eyes and nose a bit red, as if he had a cold.

He stared wildly at Max and Edwin. They tried to hold his gaze but found that their eyes slid away, inadvertently, as if their eyeballs had minds of their own.

“Fuck me,” Victor finally said.

Max took a deep breath and launched into the first part of his prepared diatribe.

“This is a positive,” Max said firmly.

“How? Exactly how is this a positive?” Victor practically shouted.

“When you know what's wrong, you can work to change it,” Edwin interjected helpfully.

“It'll be like getting an M.B.A. in pleasing your woman,” Max added.

Victor punched the wall.

Edwin, finally exasperated beyond his tolerance, stood.

Max got up and approached Victor as if to hug him but instead punched Victor lightly in the shoulder.

“You've got to pull yourself together, man,” Max said.

“You could give up,” Edwin said and Max frowned until he realized that Edwin was using a strategy and by the look on Victor's face that strategy was going to work.

Victor felt a burst of rage as he stared at Edwin. He wanted to react with anger and punch the guy or tell him off yet he could see the intense kindness on Edwin's face. The guy just wanted to help him. He stared wildly at Max. Max, who had his own shit going on for sure, looked haggard, exhausted, and was obviously stressed beyond belief.

Victor's eyes blinked a few times and he had an epiphany.

It was incredible, both of these guys had their own shit to deal with, probably serious shit and here there were in the damned trenches with him. He couldn't ask for better friends.

And his wife, Juliette, she'd indicated that she wasn't going anywhere. She figured that they would work this lack of orgasms for her thing out. She obviously trusted him. He thought back to how hard it had been for him to propose. He'd had to dig deep, to look at shit he would rather not look at, to almost become a different person. Somehow, Edwin's statement brought it all home for him. He could give up, but he wasn't going to. No, he was rising from the goddamned ashes and figuring this shit out.

“Give up? Give up? Fuck that noise. I'll give Juliette the Big “O!" if it's the last thing I do!” Victor said defiantly.

Max sighed with relief. He would escape here in time for his counseling session. He glanced at Edwin and saw him with new eyes. The guy was clever, in a quiet understated way. He had nailed it by saying exactly what Victor needed to hear.

Edwin already on a call and Max was lost in thought, mentally calculating whether or not he could get to therapy without being late.

Inside of a bookstore, Victor nervously browsed books on sex, relationship, and sex and relationship. He decided that they either looked cheesy, like stupid fluff, that wouldn't help a moron, or weird and creepy. He decided to peruse the sex toys, including a blow up doll.

He might be desperate enough for weird and creepy later, but right now he should focus on technique. If Juliette didn't have time to practice then he would have to make a special friend.

Victor felt a little hysterical looking at the packaged blow up doll. It's not cheating, is it, he joked to himself, if she's entirely synthetic?

Inside of the peaceful environment of his therapist's office, Max faced Dr. Charles.

“What if my baby's too smart?” Max asked.

“Tell me more about that,” Dr. Charles replied and Max was grateful that she didn't raise her eyebrow and her tone wasn't weird. It was soothing, how generic Dr. Charles was during a session. She was highly intelligent, and exuded caring and warmth, yet she asked questions or made comments in an utterly detached, smooth, calm way that invited clarification while it somehow enhanced his emotional security.

Max squirmed a little. Dr. Charles didn't make him uncomfortable yet examining his own consciousness, his thought processes, his reactions to reality, and so forth, did. Therapy was making it clear to him that he had issues. He held illogical beliefs and had made, and sometimes still made, bad decisions, which led to poorly thought out actions, based on jumping to conclusions or emotion.

“I guess I mean that, what if my child thinks that I'm an idiot because his IQ is maybe forty points or more higher than mine? What if he's so super smart that he does greater things that I do? What if I don't earn as much money as he will eventually? What if I embarrass him?” Max asked. As he asked the questions he felt a flush of warmth in his face and new that his cheeks had gone red. He felt so overly warm that he speculated that he might be getting hives. Extreme emotion, when he was a child, had sometimes caused his chest and face, almost his entire upper body, to flush bright red.

“What are you feeling?” Dr. Charles asked.

Max knew what she meant. She had explained Gestalt, and body awareness, and how powerful it was to connect his emotions and mental experience with his physical experience of reality. She said it was staying grounded, a way of keeping himself together. It was, for him, tougher than a hard workout. He found that he generally like to float along, more in his head, planning for and thinking of the future, taking action toward his dreams and goals, and not really feeling or being too aware of the present.

In a previous session, he'd discovered that he mostly only like to be present during experiences that he identified as pleasant, such as going to the movie, holding his wife's hand or making love to her, playing with his child, working out, and so forth. So, it took everything in him to pay attention to the body and emotional and mental discomfort that he was currently feeling.

He took a deep breath, focused upon breathing normally, and attuned to his mental thoughts, the physical and kinesthetic sensations that he was aware of, as well as anything that he could identify as an emotion. Emotions, the subtleties of emotion, were tough for him. He was pretty much a guy who either liked or disliked things, people, and experiences.

In the past, he hadn't really attended to the complexity of his or other people's emotions. But, for the first time, he believed that knowing what was going on inside of himself might prove of value. He really, really wanted to deal with what he had generically begun to refer to, at least to himself mentally, as his issues.

“I feel warm,” Max said, “and embarrassed because as I say those things out loud I realize that, if I teach my kid to respect and appreciate other people, little Max isn't likely to judge me. He'll take me as I am. I'll just be his dad. He'll be focused on his own goals and dreams, understanding life, and living, being a person, and I'll be one of the people in his community. It's not like I have to live up to some insane goal of perfect human or incredile father. I just need to be myself. Work hard, be a good husband and father, and do my best. When things don't go my way I have to try a different approach and work harder.”

Max was stunned at the incredible relief he felt making those statements to Dr. Charles. He felt lighter. On the verge of tears, Dr. Charles next words pushed him over the edge.

“It seems like you've been very hard on yourself, however that came about, whether it was modeled to you by your parents or whether being that way has been a sort of success strategy for you, to get yourself to push yourself. What would happen if you were less judgemental of where you were, or might be, at and kinder to yourself? Could you be incredibly kind to yourself and still make life progress?” Dr. Charles asked.

Max had a breakthrough as he broke down and cried. Dr. Charles gave him room to be with his emotions. He became aware that some childlike part of himself had never really believed in him. He'd always felt like he had to be tough on himself to get himself to perform.

The realization that he had placed all of these judgements on himself, like a farmer using a stick to beat a donkey, to get the donkey to work hard, or go faster, or try to do better, was a shock. He almost laughed out loud at the realization that his unconscious idea, about beating up on himself, to get himself to perform, was quite ludicrous.

He shared his awareness with Dr. Charles. She was very encouraging to him and seemed quite pleased that he was making progress becoming aware of his thoughts and emotions, while remaining connected to his physical experience.

She smiled and said that it had been her experience, with humans of all ages, that positive support and realistic goal setting were a much more effect means of encouraging life success than abusive or controlling attitudes and language.

For the last bit of the session he did forgiveness work, which kept making him cry, around how mean he had been to himself and sometimes other people. Not like Victor mean, how he swears and acts all aggressive and sarcastic and funny. He never means to hurt anyone's feelings and he's really only joking.

Max realized that he had been subconsciously, or maybe threshold of consciousness, mean, by belittling his own efforts, making a big deal out of the disparity between Emily's IQ and his own, when it really didn't matter. He was five inches or so taller than his wife and that didn't matter. It was a fact. His height was a fact. His IQ was a fact. Certain things about him were facts. He could strive to change some things, he realized. For the first time in life he understood that Serenity Prayer thing, about changing the things you could, accepting the things that couldn't be changed, and having the wisdom to know the difference. The first thing that he really wanted to change, for the better, forever, was his attitude.

What an obnoxious husband he'd been, at least for the last little while. Without meaning to specifically, he guessed it was because he had thought it was normal, he had always been in competition with Emily while at the same time wanting her to excel. It was really a no-win situation, wanting to one-up her yet expected and wanting her to beat him, at whatever.

After his counseling session ended, he went to Astro Cafe, a place I never frequented, to mull over the epiphanies that he'd had during therapy. He sipped a hot tea, which he also never drank, and looked around the place. It was pretty neat. It reminded him of Star Wars, almost. All glittery and futuristic and new to him.

He made a silent toast to new things, new ideas, and new ways of being. Sometimes soon, he decided, he would have to tell Emily what he was up to. She had always been a wonderful person and wife. He figured that she would understand. She would forgive him.

What was weird was that, as the glow of his recent realizations naturally dissipated, Max found himself thinking about bills. He checked his email and online bill payment accounts and, as if he couldn't help himself, got caught up in a spiral of negative thoughts and fear. The next thing he knew he decided he had better get to work, right away, before things went from bad to worse.

And in an instant, his peace and commitment to trying a new approach was replaced by fear and anger at how much time he'd spent working on things other than his business today. With a gulp of his hot drink, he tossed the cup and hurried from the coffee shop.