“Why are you here?”
….“
“Why are you here?”
“Because I want to be.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Years and years.”
“What do you see?”
“I see a trellis I have to climb.”
“Why do you have to climb the trellis?”
“Because I am at the top of the trellis and I have to climb it.”
“What is wrong with the trellis?”
“West bids four hearts.”
“What is wrong with the trellis?”
“The trellis is white, with vines with thorns. They scratch my stomach my stomach is fat.”
“What is wrong with the trellis.”
“The trellis has a crack at the top near the window and it pulls away from the wall and breaks off, the trellis breaks off, with vines that bleed when they break.”
“How high.”
“May I please breathe?”
“Yes.”
“….”
“How high?”
“Around… the sun. It’s a doozy.”
“Where are you hurt.”
“My back is hurt. My collarbone is hurt. Like a blister I popped open. I gave birth to a blister in the flowers.”
“How far did you fall?” “….”
“I fell for years.”
“Were you hurt.”
“I am.”
“What do you want.”
“Punish me, please.”
“Please tell me what you want to be punished for.”
“For climbing, and falling, and breathing.”
“Who was at the top of the trellis?”
“May I please breathe?”
“Yes.”
“….”
“Who was at the top of the trellis.”
“Nobody.”
“Who was at the top of the trellis.”
“A window.”
“Whose window.”
“John and Lenore’s. Clarice’s. Lenore’s window.”
“Lenore was in the window.”
“It cracked.”
“The trellis.”
“Yes.”
“Who was with Lenore?”
“I need to breathe.”
“Breathe. Here, breathe. Let me wipe off your lip.”
“Thank you. Lenore’s governess was with Lenore.”
“What was her name?”
“I don’t know the name of Lenore’s governess.”
“Who was a prisoner?”
“Punish me, please.”
“Was Lenore a prisoner?”
“It would be so fun to breathe.”
“Was Lenore a prisoner?”
“My son is in horrible trouble, in the south. Higher than the trellis in the south. Smitten from afar. My son is burning in a white place. My son’s eyes are white now. Needs something to make himself dark, in the game. Cut.”
“Patrice. Breathe.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can. You are. Watch yourself breathe, Patrice.” “….”
“Was Lenore a prisoner?”
“No she was not a… prisoner.”
“Why not?”
“God.”
“Why not?”
“My son.”
“Who was the prisoner, Patrice?”
“….”
“Who was the prisoner, Patrice?”
….“
….“
“Good morning how are you this morning.”
/h/
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF RAP SESSION, THURSDAY, 26 AUGUST 1990, IN THE OFFICE OF DR. CURTIS JAY, PH.D. PARTICIPANTS: DR. CURTIS JAY AND MR. RICK
VIGOROUS, AGE 42, FILE NUMBER 744-25-4291.
DR. JAY: Hell of a dream.
RICK VIGOROUS: Bet your ass.
JAY: Mice, again.
RICK: Hate mice.
JAY: Yes?
RICK: Yes.
JAY: Can we possibly articulate why?
RICK: Mice are small, soft, and weak. Mice scuttle. Mice get inside things and gnaw. Mice tickle.
JAY: Pretty unclean animals, too, aren’t they?
RICK: Dr. Jay, I swear to God, mention hygiene anxiety just once, here, and I’m going to lunge.
JAY: The prospect of discussing hygiene anxiety makes you uncomfortable.
RICK: Lunge-alert.
JAY: Fine. Your comfort is after all our number one priority, here. RICK: Damn well ought to be.
JAY: What would you like to talk about, then?
RICK: Lenore.
JAY: I rather think not, today, if you don’t mind.
RICK: Pardon me?
JAY: It just so happens Lenore and I made enormous strides today. I smelled breakthrough, big time.
RICK: Christ, breakthrough again.
JAY: I’d just rather sit on the Lenore thing and see what comes out. RICK: As it were.
JAY: The jealousy thing, still. You still think I’m sexually interested in Lenore Beadsman.
RICK: I—
JAY: When will you emotionally digest the information that jealousy is simply the stupid man’s misdirected projection of insecurity? Of identity troubles? Of hygiene anxiety?
RICK: I am just so tired of you.
JAY: Sometimes you’re such a clod, Rick. Think about last night’s dream. After what I understand to be fulfilling coitus, then a story, then a fight. Then a dream. The dream. Let’s do the dream. Black sand and scorpions. Where does that put us, now?
Rick Vigorous pauses.
JAY: Awfully tough to figure out. The G.O.D., where else? But Mexico, too. Which is to say here but not here. Which is to say the here of the dreaming unconscious. A luxurious Lincoln in the midst of a blasted region. Self and Other. Difference. Inside-Outside. Except the air conditioner is broken. The Outside is getting in. The heat is the Outside. It’s getting in, because the Inside’s broken. The Inside doesn’t keep the distinction going. The Inside lets the Outside in. And what does it make you do? You sweat. You’re hot and you sweat. What does the Outside do? It makes you unclean. It coats Self with Other. It pokes at the membrane. And if the membrane is what makes you you and the not-you not you, what does that say about you, when the not-you begins to poke through the membrane?
RICK: Look at this, you’re drooling. I can see saliva on your lips. JAY: It makes you insecure, is what it does. It makes you, the “you,” nonsecure, not tightly fastened into your side of the membrane. So what happens? Communications break down. You get confused, cautious. Things don’t mean what they mean. A Mexican motel sign that should be in Spanish says NO VACANCY. Another person, an Other, becomes a threatening animal, a kind that gets inside things and gnaws, to quote. The lobby smells like the nasty dross of digestion. There are language problems.
RICK: Christ, you can tell Lenore was here. How can you let patients dominate you?
JAY: Come on, Lenore and her particular troubles have nothing to do with it. What’s the whole problem? The request you make for a clean, natural thing is interpreted by the Other/foreigner/threatening animal as a threat to soil, to dirty. The disturbance of your security on your interior side of the Self-Other membrane makes you an erratic and dangerous component of everyone else’s Other-set. Your insecurity bleeds out into and contaminates the identities and hygiene networks of Others. Which again simply reinforces the idea of the hygiene-identity-distinction membrane being permeable—permeable via uncleanness, permeable via misunderstanding—which are ultimately, according to Blentner, not coherently distinguishable.
RICK: Blentner, Blentner. Is this all Blentner?
JAY: To a certain extent. So what? Most of what I’ve said comes out of the seminal Heidelberg Hygiene Lectures of 1962. I’d let you look at them, but they‘re—
RICK: I am so tired. You are deliberately unhelpful. I have a freakishly small penis. Attendant self-esteem and security problems. I want help with them. I want to hear about Lenore and her secrets. Instead I hear Olaf Blentner and membranes. Help me with my penis, Jay. Do something useful and help me with my penis.