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Order this writing in the collection book Revealing All Your Dirty Little Secrets available for only $1995 |
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This appears in a pre-2010 issue
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All the Magical Things That She Shall Never Know
Brett St. Pierre
“Where were you just now?”
Where was I? Momentarily distraught.
Partially bored, mostly defensive, I had found a design in the carpet that held more than a striking resemblance to Adolf Hitler if he had suddenly grown luscious breasts; at second glance I found that he was sodomizing Shirley Temple and that they both seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves. And I disappeared.
As my therapist spoke in an attempt to break my malingering I became utterly confused by the fact that all three of them turned to me as one and simultaneously asked three separate questions. I sat with my arms across my chest, motionless and waiting patiently for only of them to repeat their inquiry so that I knew exactly which one to answer.
But no one else spoke, merely waited.
“Could you repeat the question?” My voice was low and timid and my throat was arid, my words cracking and by question becoming almost nonexistent.
I sounded so pathetic. Six feet tall, one hundred eighty pounds, and I could barely make myself audible in front of a short, decaying woman who couldn’t see a goddamn thing.
My whisper was saved, however, by the deafening, solid emptiness of the room that we were in that made every sound so intricately apparent; saved me from having to repeat myself, which I wasn’t sure I could do at that point.
July and I was fucking shivering.
“You disappeared there for a second. Were you daydreaming?”
“I was doing a myriad things.”
“Doing? Pretending? Dreaming?”
“I don’t think that I understand...”
“Doing a myriad things in your head? Were you . . . daydreaming? You know, where you...”
“I know what daydreaming is you fucking ignorant goiter.” Finally, a sentence that we could both understand came out of my mouth.
“I was trying to say that I don’t always understand, that I can’t always tell the difference, anymore.”
“Between daydreaming and reality?”
“Between anything and reality.”
She wrote down a few notes that I perceived to be nothing more than senseless skittering in the corner of her legal pad while she weighed her options for secure advancement.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“The screams in the other room. The lions behind it.”
“No, dear, I don’t hear anything.” Shit.
We stared off into our own little spaces of nothing for a few moments before she, again, broke our silence.
“Do you at least understand what you came back to achieve? The last time that I saw you, we were fighting severe depression with many psychotic features. But you disappeared before either of us could try to break them down and understand them. Is that why you came back here, now? To try and understand?”
“I’m not really sure of anything anymore. But, I think that I wanted to come back to try to get back to where I was before I left the first time.”
“And where is that?”
I imagined it but never spoke- not to this woman. She didn’t have any answers for me, not then. Not after what she knew . . .
That smug smile, she was about to make a premature inference wasn’t she? Wasn’t she, that fucking bitch.
She flipped back over her notes and read calmly for a moment before telling me what I felt.
As if she knew anything about me, what goes on in my head. I should just punch this bitch in the throat and go home.
“The last time that you were here you seemed to be dealing with a lot of the same things, but they seem to have more control over you now. Has anything in your life changed since then? Something difficult, something ... important to you?” She fucking knew.
“Don’t bring that up, you don’t know anything about it.” I was growling through clenched teeth and I wasn’t even sure why.
“About what?”
“What, did she tell you, too? Before she even fucking told me, did she tell you?” Why? Why this?
“The last time that you left you had control, Brett. If you want to get back to that point you need to try for a little more control.”
“Don’t fucking talk about her then. What, did she tell you, too, that I was crazy? That I needed help? What, do you think I need to be here? I don’t need this shit. You can’t fucking help me, only she can.”
“She?”
“Don’t you fucking talk about her anymore! She has nothing to do with this.”
“Brett, you need to try for a little control. You need to get a hold of yourself.”
The anger didn’t slowly boil, it immediately nagged and bubbled over but as I paced around the room I thought to myself, ‘this isn’t even me, this isn’t even fair.’
I started to bawl. Becoming light-headed.
“I fucking hate you!” I pointed with a stern finger as she sat, unwavering.
Six feet tall, one hundred eighty pounds and I couldn’t even strike fear into an elderly woman.
“Why do you feel that you hate me, Brett?”
“You can’t make me do this. You can’t force me to let her go.”
“Is that what this is about? Is this about the girl that you would bring with you before? Is that what has changed about when we meet now? What makes it so difficult to deal with these issues?”
Don’t.
“I’m not fucking crazy.”
“Brett, you need to sit down.”
“Stop fucking talking about her and I will. You just fix me and I’ll fix that whole thing. Don’t even worry about it.” My head hurt something fierce.
“Please, just sit on the couch and we’ll start wherever you want to, okay?”
“You want to talk about her? Fine, she fucking left. You want to talk about closure? Fine, I never had a chance at any. You want to fucking find her and fucking choke her to death, (love), before she . . . (love), just fucking left? You want to know why, why we were engaged and she just disappeared?”
I was throwing anything anywhere. I was screaming and I was calm and I was cold and dripping sweat.
I was scared and tired of not being able to hear her breathing next to me at night before sleep.
I was tired of being lost and tired of trying to blame anyone for everything that I couldn’t understand.
I was tired of being the one that suffered because I wasn’t allowed the knowledge. I was tired of not being allowed anything in this.
I was tired of others having more control over me than I wanted to admit.
I was tired of her being in control but not wanting it anymore.
I was tired of loving her.
I was tired of needing to love her.
Fuck, I was tired of needing her.
I was just fucking tired. Tired and I wanted her back as a better man.
But, of course, she heard none of this. And all she saw were the tears and the drool and the sweat and the blood that started to appear on my knuckles.
And all she knew were my ranting screams through clenched teeth that she couldn’t decipher- but never the aching need that pressed me forward as I felt I needed to destroy everything before I paid for my session and left for the day and never came back.
She never knew exactly why I needed this- that I needed to purge myself and somehow become something perfect so she would want to come back. That I was out of ideas. That I was here because I needed someone to give me a panacea and tell me I was ignorant and they had the way.
But, of course, she heard none of this. All she heard was me hitting the floor. Suspecting, though, of why. I‘m sure.
“Isn’t she beautiful?”
“Yes, yes, she is, Torvald.”
“What’s her name again?”
And then I see her somewhere in Georgia. There’s high grass everywhere, and we’re standing on the edge of a pond. Trees generously splay its continuity at random intervals, and she’s dangling dreamily from a homemade swing that’s attached to the largest, most matriarchal oak of them all by fraying, ancient rope; watching the grass sway as she does gently in step. In slow motion.
She wears a flowered sundress with violets that dot the white as often as the trees do the high grass that surrounds us. Her hair drifts awry with each gentle gust of wind that also makes the dress wrap gently around her shoeless legs. There are her beautiful blue eyes that always shimmered with a thousand tales every time she smiled. I stood off to her left side with my hands in my pockets and tried to find one of those tales, but she gently turned away, blushing as she always had when she noticed the sense of bliss that always smeared itself across my face whenever I saw her smile.
“I’m going to find out eventually, you know.”
“Find out, what?”
“The reason why you watch me when you don’t think I know you are. The reason why you run your fingertips gently over my naked body after we make love.”
“Because I’m taking notes for times like these?”
“Yes, but what times are those, Mr. Brett?”
“Whenever I need to be somewhere beautiful; somewhere less...grotesque than reality. Less grotesque than myself.”
“You think I’m beautiful?”
“Always ... are you blushing?”
“Maybe. But why me? I’m not that special.”
“No, you were always just a dream.”
