So here I am, having made time during the…, to actually make up a session, instead of letting my deficit accumulate until…

I must thank again the su--…those close to me for their support. Today, I spent my therapy session basically outlining the story of my screenplay for my ther--…for Reinhardt, and she broke the therapeutic fourth wall (and felt very guilty for it) by saying…well, to comment on the complexity of the characters. Which was like manna from heaven for me, who longs for some kind of support, good feedback, dick sucking, but who is so hesitant to share anything with anyone until it (the whole) is finished and polished (cf. the episode from several weeks ago with my uncle). But today for the first time I think, I saw the whole thing, more or less. I could look down on the story and see both the beginning and the end (sort of). Much of the detail of the end is still foggy, but…

Which brings me to the question that I ended therapy on today. It was so helpful just articulating aloud my thoughts about the story that I wondered why I didn’t get off my fucking ass and get a partner. I mean, I have so hated the idea of working with someone…and it’s no secret why: because 1) my…well, vanity: a desire to claim all of the glory for myself; and 2) a fear that I will alienate that person with The Asshole.

Have I discussed The Asshole here? The Asshole is a correlate to The General, whom I think I first distinguished in your office. I’m talking now about the strands of sound in my head that make up the noise, single voices within the cacophonic chorus of my thoughts and inclinations. So The General…no…yes…The General was the first one. And early on in my sessions with Reinhardt, I started distinguishing a couple more voices. Now, I want to take a moment and distinguish (that word again) what I’m talking about from, like, Sybil. I’m not talking about fuckin’ split personality shit, whatever. I think you get what I mean. I mean…well, talking about these various colors to the thoughts in my head as personalities is helpful, much as referring to God is helpful (cf. my painfully brilliant analysis of…my stellar ideas about the nature of God a couple weeks ago). So there’s…and the names, as I’m sure does not surprise you, are pretty self-explanatory. The General, as you know, gives orders. But not just orders. He’s fuckin’ yelling from the helm of some big old tank in the fury of battle. I mean his orders are barked, shouted, bullets flying, “on your…”…no…like…“You will go over that hill, soldier!” I don’t know. It’s kind of necessary to describe not only the personality of the…what?…voice, but also of the soldier on the ground, to whom I, I now realize, am always giving short shrift. I mean, that soldier there is cowering…

NO! It was The Critic, wasn’t it? That was the first one to be described. And so reimagine the soldier caught between one voice that is giving, barking in a horrendously loud and booming and insisting voice piercing through the cacophony of war and bullets whizzing, barking orders; and the other voice that is mercilessly, with constrained tight high-pitched and disgusted tone criticizing the poor soldier’s every footstep, every twitch of every muscle, every decision. Picture that situation and you’ll pretty much have me to a ‘T’ with respect to my work.

But The Asshole. The Asshole is in many ways the most authentic ‘me’, that part of me that wants what it wants and doesn’t care who I fuck over in order to get it, doesn’t care about who I offend or hurt, who I yell at or for what stupid and unpredictable reason I do the yelling. The Asshole is an asshole. But you probably also get that, in the very naming of that voice, I have posited a countervoice, which corresponds to the ‘me’ that most of the world sees, that part of me that is trying to funnel the desires and impulses and the uncaring expression thereof through the lens of custom and acceptability. I’m sure there are probably some very basic psychobabblical terms for all this, but you can shove those right up your stinking asshole.

That was The Asshole talking. See?

So The Asshole. The Asshole is very much a presence in my life with Persis, and at the risk of drastically oversimplifying what is undeniably a complex situation, The Asshole is one of the reasons why we live such a relatively embattled life together. Me and Persis, that is. Because I allow to be expressed with her things that I would never let out on, say, a friend that I cared for. Why would I subject someone I love to such abuse? And yet that is one huge marker of my intimacy with Persis, my ability to take off all the masks with her. In some ways. As I said, this is complicated; because the presence of each other’s Asshole, I think, makes it very difficult for us to be intimate around each other in other ways. Obviously, with two Assholes in the room, there is no space for vulnerability or tenderness. There is, however, undeniably an honesty that, for my part, exists nowhere else or with anyone else in my world. A mixed blessing. Is it a blessing? I don’t know.

But I hesitated for a long time bringing The Asshole out in therapy, and indeed I am still unable to allow him to be absolutely present. It is because I like Reinhardt too much, and I feel like, even if this perception might be the first one to be challenged…well, I feel like her liking me is important to the positive course of my therapy. And of course you would say, “Why does …”, “What does whether or not I like you (or she likes you) have to do with why you are here?” And my answer to that is that she and I now and you and I then were engaged in a collaborative exploration into what makes me tick. And I really feel like that is a shared journey (Oh God, I’m sounding so newagey tonight, it’s making me want to barf), one that whether or not…

Thinking…

…whether or not I actively enlist the support of the therapist, is taken together. So I can have a therapist who is having to work very hard at keeping the countertransference out of the room, or converting it real time into some useful refined product; or I can have a therapist that is really desiring the best for me because he or she genuinely wants the best for me. Now, I am battling the critical part…The Critic…who is assaulting this very touchy-feely, innocent, ingenuous part of me by saying, “…

Well, basically I feel like this thing that I’ve just said is something that I could spend a whole session pulling apart (not in a destructive way, but an analytical way), because I’m not sure that I have accurately stated the role or the…I’m not sure that a good therapist would actually fit neatly into this either-or situation. But the important thing to get is that this either-or is real for me and is a big reason why I actually fear the appearance, the emergence of The Asshole in therapy: because I am afraid that I will so alienate the therapist that I will be left all alone with no one to help me.

And of course this is what I fear about having a partner. Besides the glory issue. I’m afraid…because remember: my Critic is very strong. That Critic has very clear points of view and very strong feelings about why what he thinks is best is best. In many ways, the functions of The Critic and The Asshole overlap, the only difference being that…

How to put this?


The Asshole is almost always speaking in the context of a frustrated desire, or a desire that, but for the actions of the Asshole, is threatened to be frustrated. So, like, he…well, “Pass the salt, Goddammit!” The assumption is that if he didn’t ask that way that the salt wouldn’t get passed.

But The Critic, though he may well speak in a voice that is similar to the Asshole’s, his goal is not the attainment of a desire; it is the…the fulfillment of a standard? The attainment of a particular grade of perfection? … Hard to parse. The Critic insists on perfection. The Asshole insists on satisfaction.

So I’m…

And I should say one other thing, which is that I am really a great collaborator. I know from my experience directing, editing, wherever I have had to (and that ‘had to’ is crucial) cooperate with people to achieve a shared end, I know from these experiences that I know how to inspire the highest contribution and to elicit the most honest conversation about…well, obviously the creative role of a director and an editor are different, but I feel like I’m exceptionally sensitive to the role requirements in a creative endeavor such that I am able, whatever my own personal role, to maximize my contribution to a high quality end product.

But again the distinction here is in the ‘had to.’ Because when I’m writing, I don’t envision myself as ‘having to’ work with anyone in order to achieve a shared goal. No one shares my goals, and fuck anyone who claims to. It’s My goal. Who is anyone else to come in and tell me, or presume to have even an opinion on why I should do this or that before I’ve sent the product out the door?

And so I worry about joining together in a sort of creative marriage with someone because I feel like I will have to sacrifice the ability to express either The Asshole or The Critic. No, that’s not what I mean. I mean that if I allow myself…and this perhaps gets at another part of my personality, The…what’s the name of that reptile that changes colors? Shit, I don’t know…I’m blocking it. Chameleon! The Chameleon. It’s that part of me that has no voice but just enables me to meld into whatever situation I’m in and fulfill my particular role. Anyway, I cannot both be a Chameleon and an Asshole, so I will either have to sacrifice what I want to the greater good of the creative community (the partnership) or risk destroying the creative community in order to achieve and express exactly what I want to without regard for another person’s feelings or perspective.

Now, the voice in the back of my head (let’s leave it uncharacterized and just take that as a cliché) is saying, “Wait a sec. There is always sacrifice for the sake of the creative community. There is never any getting away from it once the work is shared with anyone.” And that’s true, of course, if one intends to do anything with anything that is not destined for a desk drawer or the top shelf of the closet. But isn’t there something to be said for a phase of the process where the artist, the craftsman, satisfies himself? Without regard for considerations of the market or civility? I don’t know. Maybe Roger Vann would say there isn’t. And I think of him because I think of that day that we (he and I) had lunch at the mall and he kind of pitched me his idea for a TV show based on a kind of American School in some third-world country, or something, and I had the sense that he was sort of proposing that we work on it together, sort of an overture to a partnership (this was before he had anything like a script or an agent to show; this was like at the very beginning), and my response to it, insofar as I remember it correctly, was not even at the level of liking the idea (and it’s hard not to bring to bear the things that I have since learned about the requirements of television) or not; it was about whether I wanted to work on it with him. And it wasn’t even about him. It was about whether I wanted to work on anything with anybody. And I didn’t. I absolutely didn’t want to have a…, to work with a partner.

And now I look back on that and I wonder if I was a fool, and I think that maybe, given my experience articulating my story this morning in therapy to someone, anyone, having a partner to bounce things off of on a regular basis in an atmosphere of mutual trust and support would be the absolute best possible thing that could happen to me right now. The only tricky part is that it would have to be someone whose work I respected enough that I would not have fears of dissolving the relationship by virtue of my honest response to his work, because I could not censor myself that way and really feel like I was being myself in the relationship. I’m not saying there’s no place for constructive phrasing. But I am saying that I would never want to work with someone whose instincts and tastes I so distrusted that in order to seem not to be an Asshole I should have to be a liar.

Anyway. This all evolves. My time’s up. This has felt like a particularly trite session. Good-bye.