8. Couples Therapy 1

Dana sat on her couch and Julian sat on his. They had their laptops at the ready, but Dana had just gotten home from work and changed out of her work clothes. She usually peed while wiggling out of her nylons. She multitasked. Sometimes Julian would stand in the doorway and chat while she did all of this, but tonight, with his laptop parked at Amy, he sat there and kept reading. His discovery of “Tells All” was very fresh. He was reading about her wish to find an off duty writer for a coffee date. She was going on in her amusante way about needing some sprucing up around her head. It was clear that she wasn’t talking about her hair. She was thirsty for “intellectual conversation” that didn’t involve either airplanes or fingernails. He could think of at least ten things in that category without even having to think very hard.
“Julian!”
“Dana!”
“How was class?”
“Oh, it was actually very good. We’re still discussing TA.”
“TA. I assume you mean Transactional Analysis and not tits and ass.”
He passed her on the way out the door. The routine at chez Gray was to wait for Ms. Feminita to get home, to wait for her to pour her first drink of the evening before pouring his. She did her Bacardi with Diet Coke on ice in a plastic wine glass. He took his neat in a Tom and Jerry jelly glass, two fingers. He liked to keep the rum in the freezer. It hit the spot that way. He made his way back to the evening’s debriefing with his wife. As an off duty writer, she wore sweats and a ratty old t-shirt. Her allure remained undimmed. Maybe enhanced.
“So, Dana, where are you in the Berne saga. Or are you all burned out.”
“Well, we had a rippin’ discussion tis morning about the ego states and “I’m OK, You’re OK.” Then, well, this afternoon I had Psych 2, and they’re doing Kinsey. Followed by faculty meeting.”
“I get confused. And Kinsey, that’s some T and A.”
Dana chuckles. Her husband is always riffing.
“I know, sweetie. I’m all over the place with the classes myself. You might think about dropping in on a faculty meeting yourself sometime. You are, you know, on the faculty. I think they worry about you.”
“Aw. How touching. They worry that I might be corrupting the innocence of youth. They worry that I might be working on another novel rather than the Postmodern Reconsideration of the Reconsidered Modern Post. Post mortem. Something like that.”
“Well, if you sold a novel…”
“We cold both quit?”
“We could, perhaps, but I like my classes.”
“So back to Berne.”
“Or Kinsey.”
“Too bad Berne and Kinsey didn’t mash it up.”
“That’s too rich. The Berne-Kinsey report. ‘Are we doing the child again tonight, Eric? Oh, I just love it when you call me Erica.’”
“Games?”
“Fun and games.”
“Yeah. Speaking of fun and games, I ran into Walter the other day.”
“Walter. Refresh my memory.”
“Well, Walter is the guy that expressed interest in reading your novel.”
“Is Walter a publisher with a checkbook?”
“No, but he’s an agent.”
“Oh yeah. I remember this now, it’s all coming back to me. He does literary and little. He is looking for something with some sex in it. You told him my novel had lots of sex in it. Gay, Straight, Lesbian, Bi. Bye.”
“Not bye. Hello. He said he wants to read the frickin’ book.”
“Well, I’ll send him a PDF.”
“No, he wants hard copy.”
“Does he want the red pencil?”
“No. He’s got his own red pencil.”
The Bacardi started to have its effect, and the Gray/Feminitas were loosening up.
“Okay. I’ll fire up the laser and print one out.”
“Can we get back to Kinsey-Berne?”
“We can.”
“You wanna be on top?”
“I was on top last time.”
“This is adult-adult.”
“It is? It should be. I thought it was adults only.”
“The word games. What level of game is that?”
Now that a meaningful debate topic had presented itself, Dana Feminita paused, thoughtful.
“That’s what I love about you Julian. Just when I think you’re going to sputter out, you uncork a good question. That’s why you should pay attention to the doings at Blue Ridge. Not thinking so much that you get so little out of it. Rather, think that you could add so much to it.”
“Word games.”
He sounded his note again.
“Word games,” she echoed. “You could look at the specifics of the game. If I say to you, ‘Julian, you should go to the faculty meetings!’ …
“…which you are now doing with some force!”
“I’m being the parent.”
“If I deflect with a word game, what game am I playing?”
“TA vs. T&A. Kinsey-Berne. Hmm. I gotta say Julian, you play word games at a fairly high level. It’s punning, which might be pathological in some contexts, but it’s also paired with the two paragons…”
“…of pop-psychology!”
“Right. Nothing sells like sex.”
“Right and nothing is sexier than role playing games.”
“Wrong. Anything is sexier than that.”
“Shit. We were doing so well!”
“Harris sold a lot of copies.”
“Not as many as Joe South.”
“Right, right! The students actually remembered that song…”
“…doesn’t surprise me. They turn out to be excellent musicologists.”
“But it doesn’t get at the degrees.”
“No, the song doesn’t. It has everything be games played in the face of death.”
“Death happens.”
“Not to you it doesn’t.”
“Yes, even to me. Even unto me.”
“What will I do without you?”
“What if you pre-decease me? What will I do without you?”
“What game is this? I don’t like it.”
“It the truth game.”
“The games we play are not the usual games.”
“We play intellectual parlor games.”
“There is no tissue damage.”
“Ah. There you go. You put your finger right on the horrible.”
“Stepped right in the shit.”
“I think the subtleties of TA are aimed at the pathological. You and me, we’re ok. I mean, I think I’m ok, and I think you’re ok. I think you’re great, but I feel fairly good, if not great myself. I think we work. I think if we hit a rough patch, we can work it out.”
“Life is very short and there’s no time.”
“I knew that was coming.”
“You, the parent, knew that was coming.”
“Yes. I, as parent, and you as adorable child, rewarded me with a quote from a marvelous old song. I saw it coming, and I welcome it into my mind.”
“Is it time for a refill?”
“It is.”
“Allow me.”
“I fret that we might be drunks.”
“I know that you fret about that.”
“The ‘alcoholic’ is a bona fide game.”
“Do tell.”
“Well, it’s a doozy. As near as I can figger…”
“… ‘Figger?’”
“Heh. I’m a bit fucked up. A bit. Let me stagger through Bernes on AA.”
“Stagger away, babe. I’m right behind you.”
“Well, he says, and I don’t (can’t) quote, that the payoff for the drunk is not simply the pleasure that alcohol induces…”
“…by the killing off of brain cells.”
“…of which, we have way too many… , Say. May I be allowed to continue?”
“You may.”
“The payoff is that the drunk gets to be scolded both by the internal parent, but by any external parent who are willing to do some scolding.”
“We don’t scold each other about our drinking, babe. We are all in this together.”
“Hi, Julian. I’m Dana, and I’m an alcoholic.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“You mean, ‘shut the front door.’”
“Continue, please.”
“Well, the ‘mess-making attracts attention.’”
“This is not just a drunk thing.”
“Nope. Plenty of mess making going on out there. But the payoff is forgiveness. The mess-maker aims at, banks on, forgiveness by the willing parties.”
There is a pause while Julian considers all of this. At length he says,
“This is what bothers me about TA. Calling all of this a ‘game,’ undermines its psychic potential. It is a trivialization.”
“Games are important. ‘Magister Ludi’ and all of that.”
“Granted. Games are important. But they have winner and losers.”
“Part of the importance.”
“Yes. But it’s just not penny ante.”
“Nope. Deadly serious.”
“AA is deadly serious.”
“Right. But Berne sees the whole thing as the perpetuation of the game.”
“Please. Babe. Love of my life. Don’t stop now.”
“They, that is AA, espouses that alcoholism is a disease. This absolves white of blame.”
“White?”
“Yeah. In TA, the back and forth is between white and black.”
“Yikes. That needs an update.”
“ Yeah. It is not politically correct.”
“It implies that Berne thought that AA was a crock.”
“I think that might be a valuable imputation.”
“I drink, therefore I am.”
“You’re drunk.”
“So are you.”
“Adult-adult. Match point.”
“I’m going up to bed. You coming, babe?”
“No. I’ll tuck you in, but I’ve still got unfinished business.”
So Julian followed behind Dana up the stairs to the bedroom. She padded into the bathroom and brushed her teeth. She clambered onto the bed on which Julian sat in his street clothes. He lovingly embraced her for a few minutes until he felt her relax the rest of the way. He then stared at the wall waiting for a sign. The sign came after about ten minutes in the form of snores. In the interim, his mind painted for himself a scene of majestic heroism in which he rescued a damsel in distress from a burning building. Then, just ahead of the liberating snores, he crossed all of this out in his mind as trite and false.

He returned downstairs, opened his laptop and went right back to reading Amy Tells All. His unfinished business was just at its beginning. As he read the woman’s words, he sobered up enough to gasp and to grope for the dangled rope of rescue. He felt his affinity begin to ignite. He understood every word and the words led to another being on the other side of the mountain. He would soon enough be called to account for it. He would have to state, in the harsh glare of the midday, why, exactly, he found these tweet so literary. He could be made to think that he was mistaken. He would realize that he had missed the little clues that had been strewn there and that he might have been an adult and acted otherwise. “What did you call it? An affinity?” Words hurled right back at him to belittle and diffuse. Can he de-fuse the vented anger, and refuse the implication of lust? “You have a crush on that girl?” Upcoming.