“In group, she used to talk all the time about Shony,” she said. “She was the kid of one of the men she was involved with but didn’t marry. For whatever reason, Walanda bonded with her, I think, as a reaction to the death of her son. That kid was her pride and joy.”
“I wonder why she didn’t bring it up in our sessions,” I said.
“It’s a motherhood thing, Duff,” Monique said. “She talked about it with other women when the topic came up. She didn’t talk a lot about it because it wasn’t a problem for her. At least not until all this.”
“I’m trying to remember if she ever mentioned the father,” I said. “It’s not easy keeping track of Walanda’s men.”
“You’re right, you just described every single guy she was ever involved with.”
“What about Webster-does that sound familiar in any way?” I asked.
“Webster?” she said. “That doesn’t ring any bells. I don’t remember any men with that name. You got me on that one.”
“Yeah, me either.”
Before Monique and I could do any more problem solving on Walanda’s mysterious ramblings, Trina buzzed me to let me know the Abermans were here for their couple’s session. The Abermans were one of the few Jewish clients we had, which was kind of ironic considering the name of the clinic.
Morris and Michelle had been married for seventeen years and they hated each other, which strangely enough seemed to be what bonded them. Their therapy sessions consisted of them bitching at each other, ignoring anything I said, and then leaving with absolutely no intention of changing anything at all about their lives.
I would like to say that the session with the Abermans would take my mind off Walanda, but it had just the opposite effect. Michelle was droning on about how Morris swam to the opposite side of the pool during adult swim at the Crawford Jewish Community Center and totally ignored her. I couldn’t blame Morris-hell, if I had to swim with Michelle, I’d try to break the record for holding my breath underwater.
I know I’m not supposed to allow it to, but the lives of my clients get to me. Not the Abermans’ chlorinated crisis-shit, that was all their own doing. Walanda never had a chance, and all psychobabble bullshit aside, what was there in her life to be hopeful about?
I stewed while the Abermans bickered. Morris had moved on to the pressing issue of Michelle’s refusal to attend Morris’s college debate team reunion. I decided we didn’t have enough time to tackle such an emotionally challenging issue this week and I politely ushered the lovely couple out.
Right after the Abermans, I had an appointment with Michael Osborne.
“Mikey,” as he preferred to be called, was a flaming gay guy who hung around Jefferson Park taking hits of poppers and engaging in anonymous sex with the crowd of gay men who frequented the park. There was also fairly consistent traffic of straight men that seemed to gravitate to the park to play an anonymous game of kielbasa hockey with guys like Mikey. Mikey spent a lot of time in women’s clothing and some of what he talked about in sessions was the idea of getting the series of operations to get transgendered. He wasn’t terribly committed to it, so it was never really pursued. Mikey favored leather skirts and they were usually of a color not found in nature like electric pink or purple, but it worked for Mikey-that is, if you liked a really hairy calf coming up from a stiletto pump.
Mikey got into treatment because he was forever getting arrested for his park activities and he always had some drugs on him. My concern for Mikey was that he was either undiagnosed with HIV or he was bound to catch it very soon. The goal of treatment was to get him out of the park and out from behind the bushes. His lifestyle excited him and he was addicted to all of it, not just the drugs or the sex-it was all of it together.
Mikey always made his sessions and he usually was fun to talk with. He played the flamer role to the max and with it came a terrific sarcastic sense of humor. Several times when he talked about how his family disowned him or his lifelong failure to sustain any kind of normal relationship he’d break down and sob. He cried so hard one day I hugged him and he shook and cried until he seemed exhausted. When he was done, he broke our hug by goosing me and then winking at me.
That was kind of a microcosm of who Mikey was. There were layers of hurt that he would get to and touch, but as soon as he could muster the strength, he would gather it and assume his role. It was the shell he’d retreat into to feel safe.
Mikey didn’t show for his session, which was very unusual for him. That would’ve given me time to get after some more notes, but I just wasn’t in the mood. That meant that for the day my bookkeeping took a few steps forward and a few more steps back, but I didn’t care. Honestly, it made me feel a bit uneasy, but not uneasy enough to stick around writing.
4
I got home just after six; I was exhausted and had picked up a cup of coffee on my way home. I live in a 1968, twenty-seven-foot Airstream Overlander trailer on some land out on Route 9R that belongs to Doctor Rudy. There’s nothing on 9R in either direction from my place, it is just a series of stretches of land east of the industrial section of Crawford. The area’s environmentalists insist that the fields on 9R are polluted from SGG Industries, a multinational corporation that used to be headquartered in Crawford. SGG made those hockey-puck-shaped disinfectant things that go in urinals and other plastics up until the mid-seventies when they moved to Bolivia. For twenty-five years, their sewage emptied into Cramer’s Creek, which runs about 250 yards from my trailer. I’ve lived on 9R for the last six years, and I still don’t glow in the dark and I haven’t grown a third ear in the middle of my back or anything. My environmentalist social worker friends insist something like that is coming real soon.
Airstreams are those shiny, silver, bullet-shaped trailers you still occasionally see on the highway, usually attached to pickup trucks and driven by senior citizens. My Airstream is named “The Moody Blue” after the last song Elvis had a hit with, at least while he was alive. Mine hadn’t been pulled behind a senior citizen in a long time. Rudy’s uncle died and left him the Airstream in his will and Rudy, a wealthy doctor, didn’t have much use for it.
The thing is a marvel of efficiency. Everything you could imagine is in it and most of it is bolted to the floor. I’ve actually built an addition onto it so both the living room and the bedroom would be bigger. I also stuffed an air conditioner into one of the small windows, though I had to plug a lot of insulation around it and use about three rolls of duct tape to jerry-rig the thing in there. Around the middle of August every year, in the middle of a heat spell, it usually falls out.
I was curious to see how my new Muslim brother had spent the day in his new digs. As I approached the door to the Blue, I listened and heard nothing, which I took as a good sign. I came in the door, flicked on the light, and there was Al, spiritedly chewing on the foam rubber that made up the inside of my couch cushions. The reason he was chewing on the foam rubber was because he had already chewed through the velour cover, which was now shredded and on the ground underneath him.
Al had eaten about a quarter of the way through the foam rubber when my entrance got his attention. He cocked his head at me, took a dramatic pause, and sprang to his feet. Sprang may be a bit of an overstatement, considering his legs are about three and a half inches long and his belly only allowed for about a half inch of ground clearance.
Seeing me, he clearly got excited, started barking his baritone, and sprinted to meet me at the door. When Al got within three feet of me, the excitement got the better of him and he hurled himself like some sort of long-eared, heat-seeking missile in my direction. I watched in amazement as this overweight canine went airborne and transformed himself into a black, brown, and white fur-covered projectile.
My amazement quickly changed into horror when Al’s front paws, which, by the way, looked liked he bought them used off a mastiff, came crashing in full flight on my nuts. My knees buckled, the coffee in my hand blew across my face and chest, and I fell back on my ass, hitting the back of my head against the door. As I tried to reach over to console and comfort my poor nuts, Al head-butted me as he walked the remaining length of my torso to lick my face.
Ahh… it was good to be home.
I forgot about the coffee and figured it was time to forget about this day being productive in any way. I went to the fridge and cracked open an ice-cold Schlitz. Al followed on my heels wherever I went throughout the Blue and
