I’m getting very discouraged. Although Weiskopf said that I am unlikely to experience a major recovery (well, that’s not exactly what he said, but that’s I guess what I took from it) from my current wave of blue until some of the underlying psychosocial issues are resolved, I can’t help but think that the rest of the world cannot be going through their lives like this. It’s funny; I bought a copy of that photography book by Sebastiao Salgado, the one with the pictures of miners in Brazil, so that I could look at it when I felt particularly inept when it came to my writing, just to remind myself that it could be worse. But now I seem to have turned that logic on its head by saying that, if in fact the rest of the world (i.e., those coal miners) felt the way I do on a day to day basis, there would be a much larger suicide rate among (I say this off the cuff; I don’t know what the suicide rate among Brazilian coal miners is) those people then there is because they indeed are the bottom of the barrel (this is sounding very classist, but what the fuck…one of the things I got from what’s her face – R. R. – is that I am always categorizing and preanalyzing what I say (not that this is new at all; of course I’ve always known that I do that)…but I guess I realize the degree to which that intense self-consciousness arises out of fear of what my interlocutor(s) will think of me…(and that brings up the conference in San Diego that I just went to…but that’s for later if I get to it). And that I am always pretending to be this superintellectual hyperselfconscious guy because I am simply afraid that what I say will be ridiculed, will sound stupid, and that I think is the thing that I fear most…that I will sound…or that I am…stupid. I mean, I know I’m not stupid…but I want to be among the elite, and not being…or the thought of not being (I think again of this conference) makes me very very anxious.

Anyway, the coal miners. I am now using them as selfevident proof that I have some sort of disorder, which I had a little bit of insight on, by the way… It’s something that’s been dawning over a period of time…the awareness that when I’m in those really bad places, when I’m walking down the street or whatever, and all I can think of is how nothing nothing nothing I am and that I might as well die and I’m getting satisfaction from the imagined shock to my body that would occur if I were to shoot myself – this is interesting…it’s not just the idea of being dead, perhaps not even principally, it’s the punishment that I would receive. But again, this is only ever images, never concrete steps. But in any case, when I’m in that space, I have the illusion that I am actually thinking, that my thoughts have a course and a conclusion. And this is one of the things that makes me hold on to them: the idea that they are going somewhere. But I’m beginning to realize (and it’s a subtle thing, it’s like…trying to monitor the actual text of my thoughts, and realizing that I don’t really think in sentences, in text…I don’t know, maybe I’m just stupid, below average, maybe everyone knows this about themselves) that my thoughts are not actually going anywhere. They are a kind of Möbius loop, where they seem to progress from one idea to another, always ending up in the same place: namely, that I am worthless and going nowhere. And I’ve started to realize that…and I say this like it’s some big revelation, but I can’t say that these aren’t ideas that have been put to me before, or even that I’ve had before (here I go categorizing again), but right now they seem to click. Anyway, this idea that my thoughts are not actually going anywhere, that they are simply infected by a particular hue… And being in San Diego reinforced this because I started feeling the same way about a completely different landscape as I do in Ecksville [what I’m trying to say is that I recognized that the thoughts I was having in San Diego, specific to things that were happening to me there, were essentially the same thoughts I have in Ecksville about an entirely different set of things, suggesting that the things themselves do not matter at all, and that the only thing that does matter is the matter between my ears]. And it always seems to happen around the same time of the day, too, the worst of it, between, like, 3pm and 7pm. Anyway, so once I accept that these thoughts that I feel forced to follow because they are supposedly going somewhere, leading me to a rational conclusion, are in fact static in any meaningful sense, that they’re always only leading me to one place, and that is to that imagined explosion of punishment and destruction that I wreak upon myself in my head…once I accept that, then I can ignore those thoughts and try simply to ride them out like a bad trip. And this again reinforces the thought that I have that something is really not right with my head, because I am doing an awful lot of riding out these days, and I don’t really see any light at the end of the tunnel where my life is concerned. Childcare will continue to be hard for a while, my profession will continue to be vague and embattled for a while (or, depending on my frame of mind, forever), and my marriage is not going to become a haven of peace and comfort overnight, certainly.

So I want a new drug. Or more of what I have. I don’t know. I still have a problem with taking all of these medications; now I want to pile more on top. Seems like…I don’t know…as I said, I’m discouraged.

So the conference this last weekend. It was the Lavender Law conference, given for law practitioners and law students as a sort of update on the state of the law as it pertains to – as I guess the going term is right now – LGBT folks. And I walked away from the conference thinking a couple of things:

1) I am indeed very interested in the legal issues confronting LGBT people, and the strategies for tackling those issues.
2) I am probably not as smart as I think I am. Or at least, I am incapable of convincing people that I am as smart as I am.
3) I want to demolish the foundation of law on sexuality (see #2 for an implicit assessment of how likely I think it is that I will be able to do that).
4) LGBT lawyers are scared right now, for good reason, but I’m sure that that timidity may be hampering the long term striving for equality.

(I must apologize. I am practically falling sleep, but I won’t likely have much more time today to write this. If it is disjointed…here I go excusing and categorizing again… Anyway, I find that my eyes are closing occasionally as I’m typing. Maybe that would be like hypnosis…)

I’m thinking I should just go take a nap. I don’t have the energy to do this. Perhaps I will continue late tonight.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, back again, a little rested. I’m trying to eliminate some of the substances from my life. Maybe I’ve already mentioned that I’ve been thinking about doing this. Anyway, so I got disgusted with the idea – this was in San Diego – that I was smoking on a regular basis, so I stopped that. And I’m working on cutting out caffeine, which may explain the sleepiness. And both of them may explain how bad I’m feeling. I don’t know. It just seems unfair that… I mean, couldn’t I go through my life and do nothing and just feel okay about it? Do I have to feel bad, like looking into my future is like biting into a lemon?

So I’m discouraged. And I guess I don’t have much to say other than that today. Discouraged that none of the medications seem to be working, and that none of those “psychosocial issues” appears to be getting any better.

Anyway…the conference…






There’s something I’m not addressing, which is sitting on the…at the front of my mind.






See, I can’t mention the word suicide to anyone. Persis tells me not to talk like that. I wouldn’t dare bring it up around my parents…I don’t mean bring it up…I mean say the word. And I almost can’t…almost won’t say it to you.

It’s this critical faculty again, the part that wants to characterize and modify everything I say…and it’s making me afraid that you will be angry at me for talking about it, saying the word.

And what’s hard for me, what makes me feel trapped and gagged…is that I want to talk about it.


I’m thinking.


I want to say that I don’t want to do it. And I truly believe that I would not. But this is where I go when I start to feel like this, and this I’ve mentioned to you before. The idea of not feeling, not being conscious…that feels good. It isn’t so much wanting to die…though I resist saying this because I am now hyperconscious of the characterize-and-modify impulse – but given that you are actually a person, one who has a duty of care, and not just a piece of paper, a screen, I feel like you need to know this, that I am not at any stark precipice. But I would really love to be unconscious for a while, but then the knowledge that simply being unconscious won’t help... Dying won’t either, given what I want, and what I’m not getting out of my life right now.




Thoughts.




I feel stymied, unable to truly speak freely; because this (you will think) is yet another inadequacy of this medium: that you cannot sit in a room with me and…determine where I actually am in regard to this.

I’m not about to harm myself. I’m not.

But I really, really don’t like my life right now, and I don’t see how it’s going to get better in the near term.





I sit and stare.





Back to the conference. There was one interaction…no, it wasn’t just one…it was the whole feeling of being there, and not really belonging. And the experience I was going to mention, in which a professor whom Persis knows…but much less well than I thought she did…really was pretty rude and dismissive when I introduced myself to him as Persis’s husband…it came to symbolize what I imagine people would say to me if they knew the truth about who I am, and the life I live: “You don’t belong here. We don’t need your help. You think you are one of us, but you are not.”

That and the fact that I am really uncomfortable around that many gay people. Then again, I’m uncomfortable around that many people at all, unless I’m on stage.

What a waste of oxygen I am.

See, the way in which being unconscious for a little while might help is that to the degree to which this is a chemical problem, maybe by the time I woke up it would have passed.

My only joys right now are Burt, who is also (in having to care for him) the source of one of…one of the greatest sources of angst right now…and watching movies, which is the closest thing to benign unconsciousness of my life that I can achieve. Pot is no longer reliable. Booze is fattening and has a nasty morningafter. Sex is a function, not a joy…

I want to call Weiskopf, but I am afraid he will tell me there’s nothing more he can do.

Persis back from her third trip “abroad,” which in the age of parenthood means anything more than a half hour drive away. My turn is on Thursday, when I go to San Diego for a “Lavender Law” conference: it’s a GLBT law thing that I’m sort of attending to test the waters, and see if that environment is as exciting to me as I think it might be. I hope it is, but I’m half afraid that I’ll be turned off by the pompous intellectualizing. I don’t know if the tone is going to be really legal or legal-academic or what; I’m sure there will be people from all walks of queer activism attending. I’m kind of getting into this idea of pursuing a JD/PhD; I love the vaguely horrified look that people get when they think of the time and intensity involved. That’s why I want to take it…or to pursue it, rather, because I think it will be intense and long and hopefully transforming; I want to have that happen to me after this time spent languishing intellectually in the entertainment industry. Of course, I don’t want it to happen to me yet, but…and now I’m setting myself up to be disappointed if the writing actually does work out. I figure that, based on my experience, the course of my life, that’s the only way anything is ever going to happen to me: if it’s contrary to what I want to happen.

Burt is great. It’s so wonderful to have him curl into me to be held. Yesterday, we took a little nap together and afterward, after we got out of bed and were starting to get going again, we ended up just sitting in the hallway, him curled up on my lap. That feels so amazing.

I’m liking Ruth Reinhardt. As I said, she’s much different from you, and I’ll get to that some more, but the bottom line is that seeing her is helpful. She talks more than you do, as I mentioned last week. And that makes her feel somehow less special or valuable to me. Somehow, I associate a person’s worth – a therapist’s certainly, anyway – as having an inverse relationship to the amount they talk. So you felt special and mysterious and good as a therapist partially because you were of relatively few words. It kind of fed into my desiring distant men (more about that I hope, because this weekend my father came to visit and I learned/relearned/reexperienced some interesting things about him). But now here’s this relatively accessible woman I’m seeing, and as a result, I feel like the help she’s giving me could come from anybody, like it has nothing to do with her, and I feel that because she talks as much as she does. I don’t really understand that. Except insofar as I have always felt more powerful and more, I think, myself when I’ve been withdrawn and more silent, when I only speak when it is necessary. Why do I value silence and distance so much?

The things I learned about my dad:

1) The compulsive strain in me, the one that made me a good assistant editor, the one that makes me very detail oriented, I clearly get from him; and the way he expresses it these days is by doing dishes.
2) My dad seems to have not really thought about how kids learn, about what they are ready to learn; he approaches grandfathering (and I concluded, perhaps erroneously, that this is also how he approached being a father, though my feelings about him as a kid (insofar as I recall them) had no element of consciousness of inadequacy)… So it’s kind of like I experience him as having forgotten how to be a parental figure (to Burt) [in the time] since he was raising me. It feels like he’s gotten worse at it.
3) My dad is so suited to Babs because he needs more distance in a relationship, and he kind of acknowledged – or more accurate would be that he, unbidden, entertained the possibility without shunning it – that there was something broken inside of him that made him unable to love someone the way my mom needed/wanted someone to love her.

This is all so interesting, and I realize I’m not being terribly specific about it, but it conjures up an image in my head of a much different person than the one I’ve had in my head for so long. So perhaps – and this sounds a little trite, because isn’t this what becoming an adult is all about? – the person that I thought my dad was, the person I’ve really continued to see him as, is a fiction wrought by my child’s eyes’ inability to perceive and identify certain characterological traits; whereas those same traits, brought again to bear in his (or any parent’s) interactions with a grandchild, are now readily identifiable to me. The frustration is that…I want to know who my father is and always has been. There is no room in me to hold the idea that he has changed, that he was exactly the warm, present, and expert father that I remember him to be (until he unexplainedly left us); and that he is now this changed person, removed, loving but limited, holding the rough edges of the world at a distance. I desperately want him to have been the same always because then, I guess, I sidestep the question of, “What made him change?” Was it me? Was it Babs? Was it my mom? And how do I undo that? How do I make him go back to the father that I used to have? I’ve felt this almost crushing disappointment with my parents, both of them, as I’ve seen them interact with Burt. This sense that both of them are more plastic, flatter, more human than I remember them being with me. And I know, of course, as I write this that it really is far more likely that they have always been the way they are now (or a reasonable semblance thereof) than that they somehow, in the last fifteen, twenty years (or in my dad’s case, last thirty), forgot how to parent and have become the awkward…as I said, plastic, flat… This is a perception that bears some discussion. The quality, the activity of them being more human…The perception of them as more human [in the sense of being prone to imperfection], is an intellection, an excuse, really, for the perception that I have of them as simple, more predictable. More stereotypical. [I’m trying to say here that calling them human has the function of normalizing, and thus allowing to go unexamined, the anxiety-producing difference between how I perceive them now and how I perceived them as a child.] I’m having trouble with this. I see them parent and I want to slap them, to shake them, and say, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!!! Why can’t you be with him the way you were with me? Not this stupid, posing, stiff and artificial way that you’re being. Not this way that makes you seem like you‘re doing those things that you imagine, from reading in books, that you should do as a parent. Why don’t you respond to him, as an individual, the way you responded to me as one, the way you took my needs as mine individually, which required special attention and ad hoc responses, rather than this calculated way in which you’re interacting with him?” I want to punish them, to say, “No! This is how you do it you stupid old man/woman!” And to show them how to interact with him individually, subtly. Persis is constantly wanting to tell people how to speak and to interact with Burt, and while I agree with this to a point, I really feel that to a large extent, people are who they are, and telling them constantly how to behave around someone is simply going to make them feel gun-shy (this has in fact happened in my mom’s relationship with Burt due to Persis’s haranguing) and reserved and afraid that they’re constantly going to do something that is perceived as “the wrong way.” Instead, as I told Persis this morning, you should limit your comment to the important things (like my asking my mom not to fake cry in order to induce Burt to do something – something that I mentioned a while back, and is actually an example of something that I remembered about the way my mom parented that I wanted her to not do around Burt, rather than what I‘m talking about, wanting them to be more the way they used to be [with me] around him) and then just let them be themselves, knowing that no one is going to be you to Burt, no one is going to behave exactly like you, a parent, and that these people love him and will treat him well, and that even my grandmother I remember with a different sense than I do my mom. Nana didn’t behave exactly like my mom did; I don’t have the sense about my grandparents that they were what Persis would like Burt’s grandparents to be: exact proxies for us. But now what I’m trying to say is that even though I believe this, I recognize and share that desire to pound them into line, to make them act the right way… I just have, I think, a healthier perspective on how to handle that desire than Persis does, a more realistic one.

Anyway, back to the main point, this idea that I’m learning who my parents really are. And I don’t want them to ever have changed, and I want much more to be able to put their current behavior in the context of a continuum, that it was basically this way, only I loved them more, more unconditionally. The latter actually makes more intuitive sense, but my desire to be able to see them as more or less constant (whether I end up liking the way they’ve parented or not) is still an important, basically irrational desire.

What am I afraid of? What if they were these idealized parents who then morphed through inactivity into these cardboard cutouts? Again, I return to the desperate desire to identify what made them change, but it’s more than that. It’s…


Thinking…




It has to do with wanting to understand history, almost; and somehow, I’m very anxious when I think of not being able to understand them, to think of them as these stable sets of parental qualities. If they have changed I will never understand anything. If they have changed then I will never know them. If they have changed then they are gone forever and I can never get my parents back. If they have changed, then I am alienated forever from a childhood that I feel good about, or at least that makes me happy and I think of happy things when I think of it, the period before my dad left. I really feel like that was this edenic time; and I don’t know whether I’m more afraid of entertaining the idea that it really wasn’t – which I know intellectually – or of actually accepting that that edenic time is gone forever and that I will never get back or see the parents that I knew then during that period.

My parents have been replaced by aliens. They have been killed, and the ones who are in the world now are of another species that only knows how to act human, not to be human.

And this makes me think of my parents dying, which I am more and more conscious of. They each are showing signs of age, are having old-people problems: arthritis, osteoporosis, joint pain. My dad is going to need to have a hip replaced at some point. And these are not the parents that I knew, the energetic, healthy, faster than I am…I’m faster than they are now. I move around more…Although, realistically, Burt pretty much moves around more than I do, too.

And it makes me think about what happens when they really go. I want to get them back, my edenic parents, before they die; and I am afraid that I will either not get them back, or that they have already died… I think that’s what the opposing fears represent to me: if they have changed since I was a kid, they can change again, and I am afraid that I will not be able to make them change before they die; and if they have been the same since I was a kid, then those ideal parents never really existed, and the picture that I have in my head is a lie. And the sad, sad thing is, of course, that both of those things that I am afraid of are true: to the extent that they have changed, I will likely not make them change back; and to the extent that they haven’t changed, my image of them is a lie.

But I feel like this image I have of my childhood is like this last vestige of happiness that I have to aspire to. Without it, I have no hope of ever achieving anything like it, which I have been implicitly trying to do my whole life. To give that image up would require a major, major reorganization of my views on relationships and families, and basically make me feel that there is no such thing as real, lasting happiness in the world.

N.B. I have given in a little to my editorial impulse and added clarifying details where I felt appropriate. They are all [bracketed and italicized], and occur after the fact. I have also changed, without notation, punctuation for clarity and emphasis.

Can’t get comfortable. I feel like I have a nickel stuck somewhere inside my back, [to the] right of my spine and just above my pelvis. Can’t get it unstuck, no matter how much I twist and crack and stretch. It’s been there forever, I think. Like my fifty-year-old neck. Did I tell you about the time I went to an orthopedist and he told me that? Since I fell on my head when I was in high school? Off the rings in gym class. Thankfully on[to] a padded surface. (I think of saying, “Thankfully, depending on your perspective,” but I refrain from doing so.) I am uncomfortable a lot. I have a rash on my left forearm. It will not go away. It is not overly offensive. It is red and a little raised, as if I were a little allergic to some pepper that someone shook onto me. Last month, before I came to see you, it was acid stomach, heartburn, reflux. It was specific to the time, an hysterical phobia of sorts. It has bothered me before, but never like it did last month. It was clearly a response to stress. My gut was percolating up acid into my esophagus and streaming out these noxious, almost liquid farts that really smelled up the house. I don’t mind them. Burt doesn’t. Persis does. Not that I’m ever fart-free. But last month it was really bad, and when I came to Platte and I recounted my symptoms to my mom and Bill we all concluded that it was psychosomatic. Then those symptoms disappeared largely, not entirely, but now I have this rash. It itches occasionally. One day perhaps I will get it checked out. Not today.

Today I am free from Burt for a few hours. Persis is on her second of three weekend trips, having left me last weekend as I told you with him alone for four days, and this weekend for two. Next for three. Then I get to go to San Diego to a conference on gay and lesbian etc., law issues. There is a Fedex truck outside my window that I am ignoring. I hope you are satisfied. Poor Burt. He has to be without one parent for four weekends in a row. I worry about him. Sometimes…not recently…I have thought that it was okay that he was stuck with Persis as a mother because he had me as a father, and I doted on him and made up for whatever congenital lack of loving ability Persis had. And that perhaps I would teach her little by little how to love gushily and unrestrainedly, if not me…and I’m certainly not talking about me, that would be too much to hope for…then Burt. She loves him. Yes, I know that. Now I am wondering about how unfortunate he is to have me as a dad. (The Fedex guy left the package, so I am not feeling so bad. It is undoubtedly my waterproof shoes that I ordered from L.L. Bean. Using Persis’s money, I guess. Everything these days is with Persis’s money.) He tried this morning to brush my teeth as I am always brushing his [this is Burt, of course; not the Fedex guy]. When I do so [when I brush his teeth], he kicks and struggles, bends, stretches his head out of the way, cries. But I put the brush in as gently and efficiently…yet efficiently as I can to get his four…eight teeth, both sides, and a once-over on his gums. So I wanted to oblige him when he tried to brush my teeth, so as I was taking a dump, I bent forward and allowed him to put the toothbrush in my mouth, for which I was rewarded…no matter how far away from the tip of the brush I tried to keep my mouth…with several sharp jabs to the soft tissue at the back of my throat. These did not feel good, so I cut that off (inside me feeling bad, since he does not have the strength to cut me off when I am doing the same, no matter how uncomfortable it is for him. And also because Penelope Leach’s book suggests mutual teethbrushing as a way to get your kid to maybe reconcile himself to it…I’ll do yours if…you can do mine if I can do yours.) Then Burt took the toothbrush and tried to stick it in between my legs toward my penis, which had recently ejected a stream of urine freed by the passing of the turd. And so (and I find myself being intentionally graphic here…that description of the freed urine, for example, was not actually necessary) instead of gently telling him no, as I would usually do, because of course I do not mind when he is playing around my penis, it wasn’t that, it was just that he had jabbed me in the throat twice and I was not happy about that, and perhaps even the fact that I was not proud of the fact that I was able to stop him from brushing my teeth while he could not do the same, perhaps that thought made me mad at myself, which increased my feelings of frustration at not being able to be perfect or perfectly fair in addition to having been stabbed with a toothbrush twice, and instead of saying gently ‘no,’ that-- No, that’s not how it happened, I remember now. He tried once to put it between my legs and I said, “No, don’t put it there (fearing that he would pick up some urine on the tip of the brush), because people put that in their mouths.” Then he tried to do it again, and although I know [I wrote ‘no,’ then changed it upon review; an interesting slip under the circumstances] it is practically the toddler’s job to do exactly the opposite of what the parent says, several times recently (including, as I now recall, this morning) Burt has done just that and although I know better than to hold it against him, I lose my cool and become basically like him if he were frustrated, six feet tall, and much stronger. Which is to say that when Burt tried, after my gentle warning and explanation, to reinsert the toothbrush between…in the space framed by my thighs, my pubis, and the front of the toilet, I lost all patience and instead of allowing the toddler his little game, I pursed my lips as if to strain or to restrain a bark and yanked – and I mean pulled with all my strength (all possible strength, in any case, as was necessary to accomplish the task, and I felt, to demonstrate to Burt that the taking was by force and out of irritation) – the toothbrush from his hand.

Now this is what I wanted that gesture to do (and I feel here like I am not so much relating to you as a therapist, but rather as someone who is reading what I write [this arising out of your encouragement of my writing], and so trying to convey to you an episode that this morning conveyed to me (and I feel the advance spores of tears rising in my eyes as I write this) the imperfection of me as a parent, my inability to actually be the parent I want to be and thus to provide Burt with the foundation of love and caring and tolerance and encouragement that I so want him to have. [What I am trying to say here is that I am presenting this to you – this experience, not the writing itself – more as a finished product, rather than something to be processed…though, of course, I am not opposed to further processing, and as I have always said, the writing itself is processing to a large degree.]) I wanted the gesture to: 1) communicate to Burt that his violation of my instruction deprived him of the right to be consulted in the removal of the toothbrush from his hand; and 2) to show him that I was not happy with him for his having violated my instruction thus. But the other purpose, unstated in those principal purposes, but which perhaps had more to do with the actual purpose behind [or better, the motivation for] the gesture, was to provide an outlet for my frustration: a brief, short sharp shock of violence, force, that would expiate the rising tension that I felt within me – tension created by the fact that we were late to daycare, that he had hurt me a little, that I was already present to my imperfection as a parent in not being able [or willing] to let him brush my teeth, and finally ignited by his directly disobeying a gentle request. So the gesture, really, had nothing to do with teaching him anything; it was my expressing openly and physically my frustration in a way that felt permitted. [This is really misleading. My assessment of this gesture as ‘permitted’ is not a calculation that occurred at the time. The gesture’s content arose as my need to express frustration collided instinctively with my awareness of a societal negative expectation of physical violence It was the result of aggression constrained by custom.]

This brings me to another thought I have been having. The wisdom of the times is that physical punishment, corporal punishment is verboten. The American Academy of Pediatrics book describes the time out that one gives, should give, in times when one might otherwise give a slap or a spank. And that timeout involves a picking up of the child, turned away from the parent, and placed [placing him] in an empty crib with nothing to do for a period of time. Now this is all very nice on its face. There is no nasty violence, no loss of control by the parent, no lesson that violence is acceptable as a method of punishment and correction. But look at the alternative. What the time out is, essentially, is psychological rather than physical torture, so to speak. It deprives the child of control (you pick him up), love (you have him turned away from you and leave him…), and stimulation (…in an empty crib). He is essentially being placed in solitary confinement and subjected in a minor way to psy-ops on the part of the parent. Now, when one talks about torture (much in vogue these days), one is not only speaking of beatings; one is also speaking of the psychological torture that…well, you know what I’m saying. Blah, blah, blah, the bottom line is that I am questioning whether the current vogue is actually more humane, since its intention is to momentarily deprive the child of actual needs, rather than just to hurt him a little, get his attention, and modify his behavior. Now, that said, I really do get, on a visceral level, the ickiness of corporal punishment. If I get squeamish grabbing a toothbrush away from Burt, imagine what I would be like if I decided I wanted to spank him. How could I ever look his judging eyes in the eyes and pretend that I respected myself? Whenever I do something like the toothbrush thing (and what I am saying to you is that it happens often enough that I feel very bad about my self as a parent) I feel like Burt looks at me and judges me and knows that I am imperfect and mourns the day he was born to me as a dad and longs for the day – envisions it – that he is finally able physically to free himself from the bonds of my infantile oppression. We switch places.

Interesting. Of course, as I’ve told you, I was spanked as child. And these thoughts that I have imputed to Burt are all thoughts that I have had at various times – presumably though not when I was just shy of 18 months old.

Anyway, so what should I do in moments like that? When I fall short of my parental ideals, know it, and know even as I apologize to Burt for having lost my cool, that I am certain to lose my cool again? I am certain to repeat the sin, much as I would like not to, and so how can I truly repent? The truth is…do I actually desire to stop? Because…and I’m not proud of this...I like that feeling that I get, that release as I grab that toothbrush and yank it away and assert my dominance over this little recalcitrant critter trying to poke my penis with his little tool. It feels good…momentarily, at least. So do I actually want to stop? “Burt, I want to talk to you about what just happened. I yanked the toothbrush away from you in a way that was not very nice. What I should have done was told you that I was taking it away, why I was, and then removed it from your hand as gently as I could…presuming of course that you would not have let me, and so by gently I actually mean peeling your fingers from it one by one with all due care. Then I should have said, ‘Thank you,’ as we were instructed to do in our Mommy & Me class. But here’s the thing, Burt: I am an imperfect person, an imperfect parent. And there are some times when I do things that I’m not proud of, and in the grand scheme of things I don’t actually intend, want to do them, but I get carried away by my emotions in the moment and things happen that I soon regret because they are not the kind of things I would like to teach you to do, nor the kind of things, as a said, that I think a good parent should do; so I apologize for those. But here’s the other thing, my boy. This is going to happen again. And again. And again. Because, let’s be real here: as much as I want to be the perfect parent, you know and I know that anger is one of my problems, and things happen when I get angry that I cannot control. Now, you needn’t fear excessively; I am not talking about actually hurting you, I hope (though, since we’re being honest with one another, let me say now that in these moments to which I am referring I do, for a split second, want to do something to you that will force my instruction into your thick little skull…like knocking [nudging, really] you backwards [into a pratfall], as I did yesterday when you stepped repeatedly on the box of cereal despite my having told you not to). But I am talking about these little bursts of childish, primitive rage that must instantly be expiated, and after which I essentially return to being nice daddy, regretful of the show of outofcontrolness that just transpired. So, yes, these things are likely to happen, sure to happen again, because that is one of my faults as a person, and even if God willing I am able to understand and master that side of me one day, that mastery will not occur in one day, and so I must beg your indulgence as I continue to inflict these indignities upon you. So why don’t we do this: instead if my spending all this time apologizing to you every time I do something childish and brutish, why don’t I just apologize now to you for all of those times that, despite my best efforts of course (without which, naturally, this whole apology would be mere words), I am unable to control the IncredibleHulkish rage that rises within me and I express it in some forceful way that I would not have you follow as an example? Okay? So I’m sorry for all those times, I wish I were perfect, but I’m not, even though I try; and I will at least give you the benefit of identifying for you those times, so you at least know exactly what not to do, okay?

“Now give me the fucking toothbrush, you little…”

Wow, I so wanted to talk about the fall colors here, my missing Platte, my being afraid today to take up the writing again. But I guess there’s no time left. I know I still have to figure out when I’m next in Platte, because I would at least like to get a chance to discuss with you what I want to do with these notes and that blog idea. It still lingers. Best wishes…

Good Lord, between my second meeting with Dr. Reinhardt and Kol Nidrei this evening, and now this, I will have had about all the introspection I can stand.

See, this is one reservation I have about going back into therapy, and I know this is something I should bring up with her, and I will, but I worry about contemplating my navel too much. I mean, I think I know what’s wrong with my life; I just don’t know how best to make it better, and I don’t know if therapy is the best way to deal with that, or if just waiting it out makes more sense. This is undoubtedly something you have heard before, very likely from me, but it worries me, especially in conjunction with the money issue…which gets into what Dr. Reinhardt correctly identified as a brutal combination in my life right now: not being productive (insofar as providing for my family is concerned, and sometimes insofar as doing anything is concerned) and not having sex. I feel emasculated, not so much…well, that’s too trite a word. I feel like a nobody, a nonentity, just a guy taking up space.

I will go into this with her next week no doubt. She’s okay. I will get value from her, I think, and I don’t have the stomach right now to go looking for the perfect person, especially since you seemed to say that it was slim pickings in Ecksville as far as you could tell. Of course, if I were interested in pursuing the analysis route, I could always ask her if she knows anybody with space in their schedule. I don’t know. She talks more than you do, and I notice that I get more direct synthesis from her, more aggressive boiling down of my rants into useful themes…or tensions, or whatever. And that is helpful right now, when I need very much to have spelled out for me exactly what is missing in my life and what I should or shouldn’t do about it. Of course, I don’t really mean spelled out for me, although obviously that is a fantasy…just having someone tell me what’s going on and how to fix it. But I think you know what I’m saying…she’s been helpful, in a more…I’m trying to think of how to put it…I wanted to say in a more immediate way than I’m used to, but therefore in a way that feels a little more superficial maybe…even though it’s not. I don’t know…having to work for the insights makes them so much more orgasmic.

I need to start going to synagogue more regularly. I was in a bleak mood this afternoon, went into Kol Nidrei, and realized another thing that is missing in my life: gratitude. And to throw another cliché in here, I have so much to be thankful for. And putting oneself in the seat in synagogue where you are forcing yourself (if you’re really thinking about what you’re saying, which God knows I do too much) to put yourself in a position of supplication relative to an entity that has created you and everything around you. It’s not the image of God that I carry around with me every day, but stepping into that space, reexperiencing prayer not as a request for something, but an expression of gratitude for everything…it shines a little light into my mucked up soul.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me anymore. I don’t feel right, my psychiatrist says medicine probably won’t…will probably only do so much with all the psychosocial issues going on, Reinhardt is obviously skeptical of medication (I got a glimmer of this, and must follow up on it), I panic at the thought of having the marriage that I have right now for the rest of my life. I feel blank and sad and gray and no one and just one of those average faceless people who are going through their lives, muted and numb, just hanging out and bearing their troubles until they finally die.

I’ve been smoking a little. I’m not drinking much of anything…maybe a beer a day…I’ve basically given up pot after the Rosh Hashanah experience…did I tell you that? That I went to temple Rosh Hashanah morning stoned. And it was fine while I was there, but afterward, instead of keeping the critical voice at bay, it came out in, like, full force. Until I woke up the next morning I was in a space of not being able to get myself shut of the idea that I really was worthless and untalented, blah blah blah. So pot is not going to be a big part of my life anymore, until I can get my head in a better place, and certainly unless the setting is right.

I think my brain chemistry has changed. I think moving and the shock to my system and the reactive depression have changed my brain chemistry such that I no longer respond to the same chemicals the same way. Depression does change brain chemistry, as I imagine you know. Anyway, maybe this last move has destroyed my ability to indulge in pot as a regular escape…that really makes me sad, because it was so helpful…and has made set and setting much more important than it every was before. Like with LSD. Is this just me, or is this what getting older is like? My mom had to stop smoking because it started making her too paranoid. I really mourn that escape. It was gradually going that direction, in some ways. I would get a little too aggressive at is was wearing off. And that made me start to doubt the value of the drug. Anyway…

I think Reinhardt will be able to talk about things in the way I need for her to. What do I mean by that? I …She was able to discuss a billing issue that came up and have it be an important focus of the session, and to process what happened in a way that felt perceptive and sensitive and…you know that quality that I love about you, that is one of the things that makes you (or I suppose anybody) a good therapist, is to be able to hold these awkward feelings up and look at them without becoming swept up in them. I know this is what the training analysis is about…I think…maybe I’m full of shit…but anyway, she was much better at that than that woman I told you about who wouldn’t…who freaked out when I asked if I could take off my shoes.

And she’s able to relate to my missing you in a sensitive way, and not get personally involved in that either.

But her room’s a little too warm, and she talks a little too much, and she doesn’t give the sense like you did that you were every so often landing a big one instead of little jabs all the time. And her office environment is different, and the billing is weird. I could tell you about all this, but it hardly seems to matter.

Persis was away this weekend, as I told you, and she came back and we were both really trying hard to cooperate with the other and avoid the trouble spots. And I was very disappointed to see that it was my irritability that would always end up breaking the peace. If it weren’t for the fact that I have a hair trigger these days, I think we would be getting along much better…which isn’t to say that there aren’t valid complaints I have…but this is something that I really don’t know how to get under control. I saw some information on testosterone deficiency that made me think maybe I should get a hormone panel taken, since I’m diving into all these medications.

The medications are kind of working. There’s a little glow on the edges of the picture, but the whole thing on the whole is still pretty dark. I listened to a radio program called Speaking of Faith, which I don’t think we get in Platte, but which is a really good weekly hourlong discussion of faith and ethics and issues. There was a program called “The Soul in Depression” that I found very helpful to listen to, because it was like, yup, that’s me, that’s what I feel like…checking off the boxes.

Let me give you a link for that show, in case the...what?…extremely weighty value of my recommendation should propel you uncontrollably to seek the program out. That’s a fantasy I have…that when I say something’s good, that people go listen to it, or see it…anyway, pardon me a moment…





http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/depression/index.shtml



Oh, I guess we do get it in Platte, on Sunday evenings. Not exactly primetime. Oh well. I don’t know if you…aw fuck this, if you have any interest in it you’ll listen to it and if not…maybe you’ll just go play basketball or something.

I can’t get over that feeling that seeing you play basketball would make me feel very aggressive toward you. It’s like there’s this colleague of Persis’s here who everyone says is bound for bigger places. He’s this scrawny guy with a really sexy wife. Both are Ivy League graduates, and she works in Capitol City. I really like her a lot. But this scrawny guy…ew…and listening to him talk about his precious fucking ideas…”Oh, Phillip, that’s so interesting, oh my God, you’re so smart, Phillip.”…Puhleeese. Anyway, one of the first times that I brought Burt down to Persis's office so he could nurse, Phillip was in shorts playing pretty serious basketball with some of the students. Made me hate him. I would love to bed his wife, just to show him that I’m not a nonentity, just because I’m fat and don’t play basketball and bring my son down there to nurse. That babysitting is sometimes the most productive…I mean, significant thing I do all day. And he’s writing about -----, blah, blah, blah. I hope…Aw, what use is this?

You playing basketball… What kind of expression do you get on your face? Are you gentle, like you are in the office, gentle and precise and removed? Do you play outside most of the time, just stepping in, expressionless, when it’s necessary and making some great play? Or do you growl? Do you try and intimidate your opponents with a snarl that I’ve never seen? With the great mop of hair on your back? Do you foul them intentionally? Did you get that nose wound in a fight, for having knocked somebody down in the middle of Kettle Hills park…do they have courts there?…I fantasize that they do. You get into a wrestling, punching match with some oil and gas lawyer up on Ridgeline. You foul him, knocking him down, and he gets up and pushes you, and you wrestle each other, and maybe at some point the oil and gas lawyer in a Spokes jersey hurls that basketball right in your face. And it stuns you, and you reel back, dazed, bleeding from the bridge of your nose…from the ball? Did the lawyer who has a home office on Ridgeline scratch you? Or punch you? You can’t remember. But the ball in the face dazes you, knocks you back into that removed place, and you just stagger back, the analyst versus the oil and gas lawyer, two big wigs, reduced to little boys on the playground because they just needed to get out of the house and let off some steam. Do you move quickly on the court? Do you score a lot? Why, oh why do you like basketball? It crushes me. You cannot like basketball. All this time, I have not known you. It makes me sad. I want to be the guy who makes you bleed, because you like basketball. I want to show you that I’m not someone who just sits there on a couch and rants. I can kick ass too, you Wiltshire Park mother fucker. I played a game of broomball on ice a couple of years ago on my friend’s birthday and I was on fire. They said I had game. Yes, I got game you distant liar, you, you, you…

Time’s up.

I’ll have to interrupt in about half an hour; I have to go down and take dinner out of the oven. I’ve spent all day cooking for our neighbors. I’m half tempted to call it a waste of time until I realize that the only other thing I’d be doing is chasing Burt around. He’s gotten, is getting, more and more…or rather I should say less and less manageable by the day. I decided today that I can’t go grocery shopping with him anymore. The ambit of our “permitted” activities is steadily shrinking , until one day perhaps all we will have left to do together is sit at home and wait until he hits adolescence. The dinner fixing…I’m not sure if this is all really on point, but it’s swirling through my head right now. That’s one of the drawbacks of this format: you don’t have the time to sit and focus on what’s going on, or allow the exigent circumstances to fade in importance and instead to journey deeper into one’s own psyche. I just came up from the kitchen, I’m going back to the kitchen, and there you have it. But while I’m on the subject of kitchens, things between me and Persis have gotten better. I think I finally scared her into being nice. But anyway…I could go into what happened. Basically I got really mad at the way she was treating me and I declared that I was done trying to be a team, and made a lot of noises that were not …that were post-ultimatum, and rightly or wrongly I think that made her pay attention (FINALLY!). By “post-ultimatum” I mean that there was nothing she could do anymore. Anyway, where conflict is starting to arise today is that I’m doing this cooking largely for her. I mean, it’s our neighbor’s birthday and all, but it’s really she (Persis) who wants to put on this…well, not necessarily put on, but have them over for dinner and make our neighbor’s favorite soup: avgolemono. So I figure why don’t we make it a Greek theme, and so I get this idea in my head that I was going to make moussaka…which really would have been a disaster. Fortunately I settled on a similar recipe (pastitsio) that only…or that could be crammed into the time allotted…all for Persis. And then I intended to clean up the kitchen after I was done cooking, because there’s a lot of mess, and she’s usually the kitchen cleaner. So I wanted to do this for her, too. But as she and Burt are about to go out for a walk she says, “Make sure to do your Goldberg soon,” and I got mad because she was planning my day for me, but I really was surly because here I was trying to do things for her, and instead of acknowledging that, she ignored it and instead told me to do something else. That’s the sum-up. As I said, I don’t want to dwell on getting the tone of everything right…it’s just what’s in my mind.

So I called Dr. Reinhardt. I have an appointment with her on Wednesday. I’ll update you next weekend.

I’m torn about something. I really felt pumped after our session last week, when you encouraged me with respect to my writing. That night, coincidentally – I had some friends over and I was griping to them about my life, blah blah blah – my friend Roger suggested that I start a blog. Then I told him about these missives I’ve been writing, and I got some encouragement to post them in the blog, which is an idea that really excites me. The idea of having my innermost thoughts plastered on the internet for anyone who wants to to come look at is really exciting. It’s a fantasy that I’ve talked about: living a wide open life that people would take as an example. Of course, I have no control about how people respond to what I wrote, but I think on the whole I’m more typical than I’m afraid I am...I mean less fringe-y than I’m afraid I am, and that a lot of people out there would in theory get something out of what I write, even the dark and…the underside of me. But it brings up a couple of issues, one of which is what this blog would really mean to me, and I think that’s something I need to think about a little before I jump into it. The other issue is confidentiality. I would change the names of everyone, and I would very likely not tell the people closest to me that the blog was out there because – I’m thinking of my dad, here – there’s a lot of stuff I’m not so sure it would be good for him to read…and I’m not sure I want my mom poking around in my psyche, regurgitating bits and pieces of these pieces to me. But I think of Persis, and I’ve told her about this possibility, of the blog, and I am sensitive, even changing the names, to how she would feel having some of the things I’ve said about her on the internet, the name change notwithstanding, as I said. And then there’s what you would think, which unfortunately I can’t really find out until our next meeting, which is likely to be in November. I would also change your name, and I wouldn’t say anything that would cause anyone to think you sanctioned the blog. But then there’s the issue, should I at some point get into any legal trouble where for some reason people wanted to get into my shrink files, Daniel Ellsberg-like; and I wonder if my breaching the presumed confidentiality of our written sessions would open the door to everything I have ever told you. I don’t expect it all to come back to haunt me, but I think a measure of care is appropriate here. Anyway, all that said, I would really love to see what came back to me as a result of putting the stuff out there. I look back on some of it, and it makes me a little nervous, which is actually a good thing; it means I’m on the edge…my edge anyway.

It’s started to rain. So we’re hunkering down for a long insular gray winter. I’m looking forward to it. I hate it when it’s sunny.

See, but here’s the other thing… I’m now a little self-conscious because I’m aware that you have “blessed” my writing here. And I’m a little more conscious of how I’m doing it. Perhaps that’s not necessarily a bad thing as far as allowing my subconscious to come out (for example, the image of you blessing me…). But then if I’m blogging, the awareness of the publicness of what I’m writing necessarily alters the content, even if unconsciously. On the other hand…and I just thought of this. Blogging would be a way for me to continue this habit – writing to you – without having to send you the pieces. I could give you the blog address, and you would go look if you wanted to, you’d always be able to check up on me if you wanted to, but I would never know when you did. I’d fantasize about it, though, and maybe that’s something I bring up with Reinhardt. Doesn’t fall off the tongue like Goldberg.

Anyway, so this idea is fraught. But it’s exciting.

And now I feel like I’ve wasted my time here. Five minutes until I check on dinner, then I’ll continue.

I feel like I don’t exist. This is what I told Persis a few days ago, and it goes right to the center of my difficulties here. I feel like my professional identity is my identity, and that if I am not working, I am faceless. I feel like the work that I do is this meaningless, boring, chasing a kid around, and I’m never acknowledged for that. I asked Persis this week if she’d…she was on Burt duty at the time…if she’d prefer to be doing what she was doing right then or be back in her office working. She said, knowing no doubt what I was getting at, that she wouldn’t mind doing what she was doing if…what was it?…something simple…I’ve forgotten. Anyway, but I’m sure that was just a rhetorical evasion and that like me she would have much rather been in her office. And I move forward so slowly with my script that it’s hard to identify myself as a writer, really. My life here feels very colorless. I feel like the only times I light up are when people ask me about TV or movies, or when I’m able somehow to contribute to a conversation about law, which as you know genuinely excites me. Like, I watch America and the Courts on CSPAN every week, and I like listening to Bar review cassettes in may car, when I get ahold of them. I feel like I’m trying endlessly to prove to people that I am not invisible, that I do have an identity…but of course I am just perpetuating that illusion…that illusory intersection between identity and one’s job. How can I find identity in what I am doing?

Excuse me, I must see if the pastitsio is golden brown yet…44444444444444444444444444444445555555hhhh5AAAAAAAAAAWSza
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Well, so much for realism. It is now six hours later, a dinner party having intervened in my session. You didn’t mind waiting, did you? You may have noticed that Burt made it to my laptop before I could, and I thought it would be a nice touch to leave his regards.

Now all I can think about is the eleven year old across the street, her lithe little body, just blossoming, and how she asked to help with Burt’s bath and ran her hands like a gentle breeze over his tush and his penis. I envision her curious, venturing timidly out from her Catholic family shell. Burt doesn’t know how lucky he is.

Persis and I are definitely getting along better. It’s as if we have finally internalized all of the “Let’s do this” ideas we’ve had about improving our communication skills but that never really took. I hope it lasts; we’re both clearly trying.

I still wonder at the wisdom of…I was going to say continuing to invest so much energy in my relationship with her, but that’s ridiculous, because I know why that’s wise. Perhaps I should say that in Burt I have finally found a reason other than inertia to want our relationship to work out. I just hope…and this is one of those things that I offer up as a prayer to let’s call it God…that somewhere along the line I am in for some more good nooky. I suppose that’s what it comes down to. I’ve said it before. That feeling that I will never again be cherished or desired, nor will I cherish or desire. I’m too young to have that all go away, aren’t I? I mean, I understand that there are certain sacrifices one makes as one moves into adulthood and, should one be inclined to do so, committing oneself to a single longterm relationship; but does one really accommodate oneself to giving up entire classes of emotion? That seems a bit much, even to do for a child.

Burt is unbelievable. He’s a firecracker, adorable, I want to eat him up and all those clichés. I want to meld with him. I want to curl up with him forever. That’s the kind of love that I would be willing to forego sexual desire for. When I’m curled up with Burt, desire evaporates. I become the Buddha. Except not really because I actually desire to be with him, to stay with him, to fuse with him.

I no longer give a shit about the cats. This is significant because – I don’t know if I ever articulated this to you – but there was a time that I worried that I would not love my kids enough because I couldn’t imagine loving a nonexistent thing like a kid as much as I loved Scram, our cat. Truly. I said this with a touch of irony, perhaps knowing that having a child was a galaxy apart from theorizing one, but still not being able to grasp the specific feeling that might exceed what I felt for Scram, which really was and is quite strong. Except now I, like, forget to feed them, find it too much of a burden, am content that they roam the neighborhood and eat the neighbors’ cats’ food. I forget to give Scram the fluids that are saving his kidneys and extending his life, because sometimes it would mean getting up out of my chair and going downstairs and opening the front door and whistling for him, which seems like something above and beyond the call of duty, given what I expend over Burt. I secretly find myself wishing they would just die, so I would have fewer chores to do. Persis doesn’t really help with the cats at all; except for cleaning up the bulimic cat’s vomit. That’s a whole other story, but suffice it to say that I finally about a year ago issued an ultimatum that either Persis would have the responsibility for cleaning up the cat’s vomit (this isn’t Scram; this is Regina, the one we inherited from the previous owners of our Belmont Park house…another story), or I was going to put an ad on Craig’s list: “Beautiful jet black cat. Binges and vomits regularly. Otherwise a princess. Take her, she’s yours.” Anyway, Persis can afford to moon over the cats because she doesn’t lift a finger.

My time is running down. I just wanted to add a few other things about Burt that have happened recently. He has started giving wanton hugs. It fills me with joy to see him do it; makes me want to cry. Occasionally, like on the playground the other day, he just turned around and gave a big hug to the kid, a little older than he, he was playing with. Or the time in day care when he was sitting next to another toddler and just lay his head on his chest. He hugs our neighbors who play with him. When they were here for dinner, he would just occasionally walk up to one of them as they were seated at the table and hug their legs. He is precious. I take pride in that. I figure he’s had to have learned that from someone; not all kids do that to the same degree. I hope he goes through life giving wanton hugs. I should stop now. Happy October. Fall has fallen here with a cold, wet squish.