One time when we were walking, Eva said there was a movie opening that she’d like to see. She described the movie from some review but I was only half listening. “It’s about a man and a woman who spend a lot of time together, mistreating each other,” she said. “They mistreat each other because it’s the only way either of them knows to express feelings.”
“Well, why don’t they stop seeing each other?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose we’ll have to see the movie to find out.”
So out of this barely coherent conversation, I agreed to go to the movie with her.
Was this a date? I wasn’t sure. I thought of taking her hand, but didn’t. I was more aware of her presence next to me than the action on the screen. Or to put it another way her presence distracted me from the movie at least for awhile. I felt I was in an ocean liner on a black sea sailing awkwardly toward the screen, though not getting any closer. I forgot how long movies are. This one seemed to go on forever, slowly, relentlessly. I thought of going to the bathroom for a respite or going to the popcorn counter for something to eat — not popcorn — but I didn’t dare to move. All this time, Eva’s focus never left the screen or such was the impression of the agitated bystander next to her.
And then for some reason only its own it was over and the audience began to shuffle toward the exit.
“What did you think?” Eva asked me.
I couldn’t begin to say. “What did you think?” I asked her back.
“I understood by the end why they stayed together through all their misery.”
“The director required them to,” I said.
We were outside the theater now. She looked at me before breaking into a laugh. “I didn’t know you were so funny,” she said. “You did mean that as a joke, didn’t you?” I didn’t answer. “They stayed together because the only way they could express their love for each other was by treating the loved one miserably.”
“Displaced behavior,” I said.
“Yes. Extreme displaced behavior,” she said. “Thanks for going with me.”
“Like treating an inanimate object as if it were human,” I said to add to the dialogue.
“Not like that,” she said. “It was extreme but realistic. People are afraid to express tender feelings. You have to educate yourself to express love. I think that’s what the movie was saying.”
The movie had put me in an odd contrarian mood. “Well, we all sort of knew that before the movie began.”
“So you didn’t like it. I’m sorry. Should we take a cab back?”
I could see she was getting upset with me. “I did. I did like it, as a matter of fact.” I struggled for something else to say that was positive. “It had interesting camera angles… Why don’t we walk back?”
“It’s a long walk, Mel,” she said. “Longer than any of the walks we usually take. Let’s start off on foot and if one of us gets tired, we can call a cab.”
So we started off at a determined pace. After four blocks I was tired, but I wasn’t going to give in. We were getting to be like an old married couple, intimate yet distant. I could hear myself saying something of the sort to Klotzman.
Our topic for discussion was the movie, which we moved around between us and when that was gone we fell into a protracted silence. While we talked it was though I was seeing the movie for the first time. It was all much clearer in the light of day.
“Ron doesn’t like most movies,” she said out of the blue. “I don’t like to go alone so it was good of you to keep me company.”
Again I was being pigeonholed as Ron’s stand-in, which I didn’t know that I liked, which I knew I didn’t like.
When at long last, angry at having walked so far, we got to her door, caught up in the spell of the movie — my excuse to myself — I grabbed at her as she was unlatching her door and kissed her roughly, surprising us both.
She pulled away. “You hurt me,” she said. In an instant I returned to my old stiff self and moved like a shadow to my own apartment.
Ten minutes later she knocked at my door. I was only slightly surprised to see her there. “I didn’t mean to chase you away,” she said.
“I was out of control,” I said.
She was looking at something over my shoulder. “Is that a new couch?” she asked.
“You can tell,” I said. “It looks just like the old one, doesn’t it?”
“It looks altogether different,” she said. “Could I sit on it?”
It was the first time she had been in my apartment — a lot of firsts today — and we sat, slightly apart I should add, on my new couch. Then since I wasn’t moving she leaned over and kissed me gently on the lips. And so we necked for awhile like teenagers and though I had a fierce erection, threatening to tear me from the couch, I did nothing to further its cause. After awhile, she asked me if there was anything to eat. I got up, knowing there was nothing, and looked around before making my report.
“That was nice,” she said, and kissed me goodbye before returning to her own apartment.
I reported much of this to Klotzman at our next session.
“Tell me again why you didn’t go to bed with her,” he said
“I can’t explain it,” I said. “In some way I wasn’t ready to. I think I didn’t want to get involved.”
“That doesn’t make sense, Mel. Listen to yourself. You are already involved. Was there something about having sex with her that frightened you?”
I jumped at the excuse he had offered me and nodded abjectly.
“What frightened you? Do you know?”
“If I knew,” I said, “you would be the first one I’d share it with. Let’s move on to something else, okay? I had another police lineup dream.”
“I think this is important, Mel. Think about it. What might have frightened you?”
“I was already sorry about the kissing part, innocent as it was. I didn’t want things to go any further. I don’t think I really trusted her. She was a neighbor and a relative stranger. I was afraid of where it might lead.” Whatever I said, none of it sounded real.
“You’re talking in circles,” Klotzman said “You didn’t trust her, to do what I might add, because you didn’t trust her. Where might the kissing lead?”
I didn’t know what he was getting at. “To sex?” I asked.
“Yes. And where else?”
His questions were making me more uncomfortable than usual. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Is it the sex act you’re afraid of?” he asked.
“I didn’t have a condom. I was unprepared.”
“Forget the condom,” he said. “Were you afraid you’d disappoint her?”
“I don’t know. I just wanted to be left to myself.”
“You got your wish,” he said. “When she left, feeling rejected, were you happier?”
I tried to remember my state of mind when Eva went back to her own place. “More a sense of relief,” I said.
“You were glad to have your place again to yourself?” he asked.
“In a way. Yes, I suppose I was.”
The dream I never got to report to Klotzman was about a police lineup of four couches, one of them being the eyesore I had discarded. Someone like me was in the position of being the identifier, though it was not clear what I was being asked to identify.
The fat policeman asked me, “Is it contestant number one, contestant number two, contestant number three, contestant number four or contestant…. Where is contestant number five?” No one seemed to know. “Well, get someone up there.” A small man, who had been sitting around, took the fifth position. “Well?”