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enjoy this Alain Marciano writing in the Scars / Down in the Dirt free 2016 PDF file chapbook: Epiphany (click on the front cover image or the title text to download the free PDF file)				You can also order this as a 2016 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the book cover to order Short Stories as a book at any time!

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Therapy

Alain Marciano

    I.
    18 years old. No problems with drugs, love, or family.
    Life, I decided, was okay, even if mine was dull and it crossed my mind that I was made for more. For really big stuff, like walking on water or demonstrating the extended version of the general theory of relativity, the latter of which I eventually chose.
    I went to university, majored in physics (with a minor in theology, just in case) and then met professor Richard F—A most remarkable man, indeed, cute with his perfect four-seasons tan, he was a mediocre lover but a magical teacher and a superior scientist who pushed me into the doctorate program in nuclear physics. Under his supervision I worked four years and wrote three hundred and forty-four pages — including seventeen pages of references and thirty-two of appendixes — that answered some technical questions and demonstrated a few theorems. But, and no need to document it, I knew that I had messed up somewhere. Kind of fantastic. I had started a pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostela and at some point I managed to take a wrong turn and ended up in the middle of nowhere, where I stood the day I had to present and defend my work.
    The feeling of failure, still vague and imprecise before the defense, was crystal clear and definitive after the carnage. There I laid, in a pool of blood, with my throat slashed and and my skull split open, brains strewn all over the place. But there was no fear, no pain, no frustration. I was supercool. In the morning, I had gulped two Xanax with my coffee for breakfast and the questions the members of the committee kept asking struck me as inappropriate. The murmurs coming from the audience seemed to be more pertinent, even though I did not understand them very well and I had to make guesses as to who was saying what. I also tried to understand what my supervisor thought of it all. He sounded tired, absent, eyes wide-open as if he had smoked something to forget that nothing good could come of this and he had always known it. Shit, I was not the only one who did not want to be involved in the proceedings.
    Later in the day, the president of the committee solemnly declared that I was doctor in nuclear physics. No one applauded and I could not blame them. I felt no satisfaction or relief or sense of achievement or anything even a little bit positive. When one of the graduate students, a Peter or Philip or Paul or whatever told me: “They were tough on you”. I thought, “Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, I hate you and I could kill you”. Instead I said, “No kidding?” He did not reply. I asked him if I looked like a mongoloid idiot. He said nervously “OK. You did bad, really bad”. “Thank you, I appreciate sincerity. You honest people are unable to lie, “ I answered back. I guess he was relieved. He probably figured that I’d punch him in the nose. Or worse, in the groin. He said. “You’ll never get a position”. After a moment he added, “Never”. I laughed. “Is that supposed to be a problem? Teaching physics 101 to undergrads? God, no thanks”. He looked surprised. “Why did you do all this? The thesis and everything”. “Professor F. hired me as a research assistant two years ago, and I love this job. Do you understand? I love it”. I was not lying! I had a small office next to professor’s, where I welcomed his students, mostly to listen to them complaining or crying or gossiping. I prepared coffee for them. Sometimes I baked cakes at home and offered them one and we staid there chitchatting together. That was perfectly okay with me and definitely what I was looking for. Disappointed? No way.
    II.
    There are some who say that’s when I started to drink. Not wrong to be honest, but not entirely acute either. With professor F. we had this habit of a glass, or two or more, in the evening, after classes and students. I knew that he would be tired when he came home after a good, full hard day’s work. There was a big armchair, gift from his first wife, in front of the fireplace. He sat there to relax and closed his eyes. One day, I had an argument with someone at administration and I opened a bottle of white wine early in the afternoon. I offered him a drink. This is how it started, this drinking-together habit. I even had the impression that it was important to him, this very moment when he re-opened his eyes and, there I was, in front of him, like it was the moment he had waited for all day. During classes, when he was teaching or when students were answering his questions; during the meetings when his colleagues were arguing over he budget of the department or about the next professor they would hire and even when he was driving back home, I knew that the only thing he had in mind was drinking. And what obviously was his joy became mine too. I knew I had to put as joy and pleasure as possible in the drinks I offered him. At first, I chose wine— profoundly red when I wanted to be serious or a cheerfully yellow when the sun was still shining, in spring or early summer. But I discovered that what he was more interested in the color, than in the taste to be honest. And I learned the art of blue, red, green, and yellow cocktails. After days of reading articles and treatises and technical books, I absorbed myself in small books that explain how to mix two or three sorts of alcohol together, to add fruit juice and ice in order to attain a very precise tint. Fixing those drinks requires some skill, I can tell you that.
    What I am trying to say is that I did not start to drink after the defense. Professor F and I had this little ceremony going on for three years or so. Until the last evening.
    It was the end of the semester. and Professor F. gave a party at his place. Plenty of food and big bowls of colored, syrupy alcoholic cocktails that I had prepared. My favorite was the reddish-orange — because it was the most difficult to keep stable — but most people seemed to prefer the golden one. I surveyed the guests. There was no one I was acquainted with intimately. No one with whom I wanted to enter into complicated discussions. Next to me, alone with an half-empty glass, was a mathematics professor. I asked her if she liked the drinks. I told her that I had mixed them, drunkenly proud. She looked at me and replied “I thought you had a doctorate in nuclear physics”. I laughed too carefully, and said, “God, no, you must be mistaken. I work at the Wholefoods’”. Thirty seconds later, I left and went back to my apartment, a one room-one bathroom just above the Chinese restaurant on Main Street. It smells so bad it’s as if I lived in the restaurant itself. But I would be alone and there was probably half a bottle left somewhere too.
    Professor F. phoned me the next morning. He told me that he was leaving the University, a promotion, somewhere on the west coast, big deal and our story was over and it was better not seeing each other anymore. His voice was sweet and calm, just as it was whenever he told me to rewrite or rethink a chapter in my thesis. “What will you do with your doctorate?” I hung up the phone and yelled Fuck, Fuck, FUCK. My head was aching. There was a strong smell of fried spring rolls everywhere. It was almost eleven, the Chinese were opening the restaurant.
    III.
    My pleasure is to fancy that it did not take them long, a handful of minutes, to decide that my contract would not be renewed. Pride. There was not much to discuss. But then, I had a question for myself, another one: end of episode one or end of the story?
    I have enough time to think during my shift at Red’s, a small coffee shop at the corner of Brings and 7th. Five tables and a few chairs, barely two per each table. No need for chairs. People don’t stay. They take their coffee or whatever they buy and pay and leave to drink it in their car or in any friendlier place. No wonder. The room is narrow, dark and stinks. I don’t know exactly where the odor comes from. My boss does not know either. We don’t even know what kind of smell it is—hard to tell—sour and mild at the same time. When I started to work there, I washed my hair every evening until I realized that no one cares. It’s no longer a problem. But the cold still is. My boss doesn’t want to spend the money to heat the place. I tell him, “Really, I am cold, we are in December, I am cold” and also “We are in April, I am cold”. I cough and blow my nose and I show him my fingers, “Look at my knuckles.” He tells me, “Bring a sweater, and that will do it” or “Gloves, it’s gloves you need”. That’s what he says when I complain. But he is wrong, of course, a sweater is not enough. I freeze, my feet freeze no matter how many pairs of socks I wear. And there is no use in suggesting that customers would like to have a warmer place to seat and drink their coffee. He knows perfectly well that almost no one wants to do that. And the ones who would like to stay are not welcome, besides me I mean. And he also tells me, “You don’t like the job? If you don’t like the job, you can leave, I’ll find someone else”. Red is the only one who gave me a job. Period.
    I have been there for two years, four months and a few days, and I do not want to complain. The good thing is that I am alone all day long. I just have to do what people ask me do to, “Good morning sir, how are you doing today, sir, how would you like your coffee sir?”. There are some who say “a regular coffee, medium cup” and I repeat, “a regular coffee, medium cup, sir” as if there was someone else behind me who is taking the order! I stick a medium styrofoam cup under the machine, press a button, release it when the cup is almost full, put a lid on it and turn back to the counter “$1.75, Sir.” That’s it. And then, “Have a nice day,” sometimes when I feel it. I just have to follow the instructions. I don’t have to use my brain, or what’s left of it. Sometimes, when there is no one in the shop, I take a sip at the bottle I hide under the counter and that’s it. Not much. But enough to keep the cold away.
    After two years and four months and a few days, no one has ever asked me anything about having a doctorate in nuclear physics or about wanting to be a research assistant all my life, like why are you doing this job! My boss did not even ask me what I did before I entered his coffee shop for the first time. After two years and four months and a few days I only remember that I wanted to stay there until I had decided whether it was another episode or a new story.
    Life is made for really, really big stuff.

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