During the first few minutes of group, I avoided eye contact with everyone. I folded my hands in my lap, my gaze fixed on an oval-shaped stain on the carpet. Marty filled us in on his mother’s hip operation, and Dr. Rosen did his routine of shifting his gaze from one person to the next.
“Did you leave me a message?” I looked up, and Dr. Rosen was staring at me. I nodded and felt light-headed.
“Do you want to tell the group about it?” He beamed at me like he did when Rory reported finishing a chapter of her dissertation. Around the room eager faces met my glance.
“I was upset and said some things that were not very nice—”
“Not very nice? Don’t minimize! You were vicious!” Dr. Rosen gestured with his hands and bounced in his seat. He rubbed his heart and closed his eyes like he was savoring a great meal. “We should all go into my office and listen to it.”
Everyone stood up. Field trip! It was my first time in his office since starting group and everything looked the same: the framed Harvard diplomas, the needlepoint, the uncluttered desk against the wall.
As Dr. Rosen held the receiver and punched in the passcode to his voice mail, Carlos whispered, “What the hell did you say?”
Dr. Rosen pressed the speaker button and there was my voice, shrill and clear. “You don’t give two shits about me! Marnie has EVERYTHING! What about me?” My voice went on for three minutes. The group huddled around the phone.
When my voice finally shut up, he clicked the phone off. “Can you celebrate this?” He enunciated each word as if I was new to the English language.
Celebrate anger? That was rarer than fighting. I have no memory of yelling at my parents for any reason. Not even as a teenager. We weren’t yellers. We were silent treatment people; we did huffy sighs and quiet seething. When my parents forbade me from attending Troy Tabucci’s New Year’s party sophomore year because they suspected there would be underaged drinking, I holed up in my room, making mixtapes of sad songs. When they told me that I had to go to college in Texas, I threw away the dog-eared Dartmouth brochure I’d been poring over for weeks. I used fake smiles, “I’m fines,” and gigantic binges like other people used Kleenex. But now this man was treating my rant like a Chopin sonata.
“Celebrate?”
Dr. Rosen’s eyes grew huge. “It’s beautiful!”
“It’s gross—”
“Says who?”
“The self-pity, for one thing—”
“I disagree—it’s honest, authentic, and real. It’s yours. And you shared it with me. Thank you.” He rubbed his palm over his heart. “Welcome to your anger, Mamaleh. This is going to help you.”
This was my first praise for the parts of me that were ugly, irrational, petty, reckless, spiteful, and spewing. I’d never heard of such a thing. If I were my therapist, I’d tell me to cut that shit out, but Dr. Rosen celebrated like it was Armistice Day with dance-in-the-streets, cancel-work jubilation.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re just getting started.”
15
For the first time in over a year, I woke up after a whopping eight solid hours of sleep. I wasn’t quite sure where I was, but I knew that there was a warm, buzzy feeling between my legs.
I’d had a sex dream. A graphic, steamy sex dream about R&B singer Luther Vandross. My main man Luther had caressed my face and kissed me deeply, his tongue filling my whole mouth. Then he did something with his tongue on my stomach—a circling-thrusting combo—that made me see beyond stars to other planets and galaxies. And when his soft lips circled between my legs, I mewled like a newborn kitten.
I woke up wet, hot, and satisfied.
On the train to group that morning, I hummed my favorite Luther Vandross song, “Here and Now.” Oh yes, Luther, here and now indeed.
As the train lumbered past the darkened gay nightclubs and funky boutiques on Belmont, I felt buoyant—as if I could float up to the sky like an escaped balloon. I was not nearly as dead inside as I feared. The dream was also proof that whatever part of my subconscious had brought Mr. Vandross into my bed and let his tongue roam over my body was alive. And she was hungry. This sexual anorexic was working her way to the buffet table. I’d dreamed and felt sex that was hot, wild, noisy, wet, and completely focused on my pleasure. Sex with no inhibition, no nuns with their threats of hell, no disapproving parents who wanted sex linked to marriage, no worries about being pregnant or being fat or not “doing it right.” There was my body, a gorgeous man, and pleasure.
Within the first ten minutes of group, I’d told them everything. “He was going down on me, and his back was smooth and muscular. I had an orgasm in my sleep.”
“How long did it last?”
“Have you ever seen him in concert?”
“Is he the guy who sang that duet with Chaka Khan?”
Dr. Rosen, who had been silently taking in this conversation, finally spoke. “The dream’s about me.”
You could hear our necks swivel toward him.
“Come again, Freud?” I said, laughing. “No offense, but you bear zero resemblance to a smoking-hot black guy who’s won a bunch of Grammys and is friends with Oprah. You’re… well…” I gestured to his tufted head, his cable-knit brown sweater, and his thick-soled brown shoes. “I mean, look at you.”
Dr. Rosen shook his head in that patronizing way. I scowled. If the dream was really about
