General Shapiro had created a monster. After one of our trips-I don't remember which; the past has become a blur of canvas, acrylic paint, and cunt in my mind-I came home determined to do something about our relationship. Monica might not have reached her bottom, but I had. After all, I was a man of the theater. I had a professional identity for which it was important to maintain at least a veneer of respectability. I still considered myself a member of society. What had happened in our apartment building was happening all over again. Our sex was resulting in our being ostracized. I could have pointed my finger at the repression of American society; I could have said it was like the Salem Witch hunts, or the McCarthy trials; I could have compared Monica and me to the Hollywood Ten; I could have looked at Monica as an Alger Hiss-type martyr, but I realized that-when an eight-year-old flying on the same flight cries out, "Mommy, why does that lady have a penis in her mouth?" — it was Monica and I who had to change.
I knew we never should have quit Shapiro in the first place. The cement bunker was only a band-aid. It had been a wonderful solution, but it wasn't going to solve all our problems. You can't live in a state of total soundproof isolation, and you can't live on a total Chinese take-out diet. In addition, I'm basically a social creature. I need more than the leering eyes of a Chinese delivery boy for friendship. How was I going to get us back into treatment? As far as Monica was concerned, she was happy. My plan of enabling her and letting her spiral to a bottom had obviously backfired. She was more addicted than ever. I wasn't going to be able to conquer such a problem on my own. I needed a power greater than myself. I needed General Shapiro, but Monica wasn't going to take kindly to an interventionespecially one performed by Shapiro, whose crude methods and blunt truths she still claimed to despise. Shapiro was also a bit of a prima donna. You don't get to be the highest-ranking Jewish marriage counselor in the history of the United States Army without having run the gauntlet. Shapiro's climb up the ladder of the military couples counseling establishment had obviously hardened him, but also made him cranky and erratic at times. Who knew what would happen when I called to ask for help? He'd promised he would see us anytime we needed him, but finding an available hour with someone whose time was so coveted would not be easy. He'd have us over a barrel. He'd find the hour, but it would be a sacrifice on his part and he'd let us know it. There was going to be pressure on Monica to change, and Monica didn't respond well to coercion.
I wasn't looking forward to seeing the sneer that always crossed Monica's face when I mentioned Shapiro's name, nor was I looking forward to the stream of invective that would pour out of her mouth. She had nothing nice to say about the man, although in her more contemplative moments she admitted he'd helped us. After all, she wouldn't have become addicted to abstract expressionism if it weren't for him, and she wouldn't have attained a state of orgasm that made tantric sex look like Puritan love at Plymouth Rock.
One day I took the plunge. It was somewhere between our second and third fuck, so it must have still been early morning when I snuck off into the kitchen and picked up the phone. Monica was in her usual state of post-coital delirium. I could hear her moaning, "Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me," from our bedroom. The abandon that had characterized my earliest days with her had long passed. I'd become so concerned about the wake of destruction that followed our sexual escapades that I was rarely if ever non compos menus after sex anymore. I got General Shapiro's answering machine message. This is Doctor Shapiro on an answering machine. Please leave your name, number, and the time you called, and I will get back toyou shortly. Shapiro had grown up on the wrong side of the tracks; there was a pugnacity in the tone of the message that went back to his hardscrabble childhood. His voice echoed as if he were booming out a message to his troops in some chilly airplane hangar along the 38' parallel in Korea.
1 hesitated for a moment as the tape ran.
"General Shapiro, hi… it's James Moran. Um, let's see, 1'd like to talk to you about Monica and myself, but at this point I would rather you didn't call me at home."
"Hi, Mr. Moran, it's Dr. Shapiro." The echoing sound in the background of the answering machine message was still there even though the message itself had stopped. Did he dictate his message in some dank cave? Did this tough veteran of sexual warfare inhabit some rugged mountain lair when not in his office?
"I think a complication has set in. It's like when you get an infection after surgery. That suggestion about getting interested in other things besides sex is where it all started."
"1 know. She's got hypergraphia satyriasis."
"Don't you want to hear what she's been doing?"
"1 know,1 know…."
"She got interested in abstract expressionism, but it only increased her desires. We're getting thrown out of museums, office buildings-anywhere there's public art poses a problem." I blurted out her symptoms as fast as 1 could. When General Shapiro made his mind up about a diagnosis, nothing would shake him, and even though many of his diagnoses had nothing to do with any symptoms we described, he always seemed to hit the nail right on the head. Hypergraphia satyriasis sounded right, though hypergraphia referred to the compulsion to write, and satyriasis was a sexual compulsion restricted to men. You had to take Shapiro with a grain of salt, or you wouldn't get anything out of him at all. For all I knew, the diagnosis could have referred to the case of another patient, but it didn't matter. As Shapiro had pointed out, he rarely experienced any failure in his many years of work. So even if he was treating Monica for the wrong ailment, he'd undoubtedly come up with the right cure.
"It's the hypergraphia satyriasis. She's a She's not suffering from cancer. go on to live totally normal lives."
"I'm not doubting your diagnosis, but what do we do if she rejects it. It's unfortunate, but you are providing her with grist for her mill. She finds you totally irresponsible in these diagnoses, and here you come up with an ailment whose chief symptom, compulsive writing, has nothing to do with her. Then to make matters worse, you make up a dual diagnosis giving her a second ailment that primarily afflicts males."
"It's not a dual diagnosis. If you look in the DSM, hypergraphia satyriasis is listed. She has an anomalous form of it that derives from the same source. The same neuronal structures in the brain are affected, only in Monica's case the symptom is compulsive sexuality in the presence of abstract paintings rather than compulsive writing of dirty novels, which is the actual everyday manifestations of the hypergraphia in typical cases. In an atypical case like Monica's, you have a permutation. The abstract expressionist lines are like scribble. The pornography usually confined to the page takes place on or near canvases, but I don't think we're far off the mark. Psychopharmacologists medicate hypergraphics, but I don't think Monica needs medication. Monica is afraid of being happy. It causes her anxiety. This sexuality is just her way of avoiding pleasure." I couldn't see him, but I was sure that Shapiro was running his fingers through his nonexistent hair.
"We've used our bodies to have out-of-body experiences. The intensity of our sexuality has alienated us from our selves."
Shapiro sighed. He was bored. He hated it when patients talked about their problems. He especially hated it when patients offered diagnoses that differed from his own. The tone of his voice said fine, think avhateverjou want, but don't tell me. My analysis was not as long as Shapiro's, but I thought brilliant. Shapiro was like my father. He never paid any attention to anything 1 said. That's why I ended up fucking my mother. Out of body body experience; I couldn't believe Shapiro didn't realize my brilliance, but I wasn't surprised. If he acknowledged me then he wouldn't be able to take all the credit for the cure. Shapiro was like a hunter who stuffs the carcasses of his prey and hangs them on his trophy wall. He wanted Monica's tusk. If someone was going to get better in his office, Shapiro made sure it was his fault.