"Come on. Rick, let's…"
"And you like to get fucked."
Katherine Spann frowned and took a step away from him.
"Don't look so shocked. It's not against the law."
Again the woman shook her head. "Let's catch that plane."
"Let's not, Kathy. Let's stay here and have a little fun. Believe me, it'll be worth it. I'll make sure of that."
"Come on, Romeo. Let's go home."
Scarlett gripped her tighter. He had yet to let go of her arm. "Don't treat me like I'm some little kid."
"Then quit acting like one. And let go of me."
Scarlett dropped his arm as anger came into his eyes. "Aren't we the cold one? Tell me, woman, just what does a guy have to do to get somewhere with you?"
"Shut it down, Rick. I've had a good time. Let's not spoil it."
"Answer me! What's the matter? Don't you like men?"
"Rick," she said slowly, beginning to clench her teeth. "I work with you and you're a part of the job. I like you as a partner, but we can't be anything else. Can't you see that?"
"Don't be absurd. What does that matter? I won't tell anyone else."
"That's not the point."
"The point is, Kathy, that I am crazy about you. I have been ever since I first saw you standing at that bulletin board checking the assignments. You dominate my thoughts."
"I said shut it down, Rick. I want to catch that plane. Are you coming or not?"
"You listen to me!" Scarlett almost shouted. "Don't you turn your back on me. I won't have it! For two months now I've kept my feelings to myself. Business is business and I'm a professional too. Fine. Okay. But now the case is over. The Squad is disbanded. We'll be reposted and that's the end of that. But that doesn't alter the way I feel. Nothing can change that. I want you, Kathy! You drive me out of my mind!"
"I'm leaving, Rick," she said. And Spann turned to go.
"Fuck you!" the man yelled. "Don't hold your cunt so tight!" And with that he reached out with his good arm — the one without the stitches — and grabbed her breast.
Katherine Spann seized his hand, pried her body free of his grip and pushed him away. "Do that again and I'll slug you," she said. Her right hand balled in a fist. "Now leave me alone. I don't fuck cops. That's incest, you ass!"
Rick Scarlett's face grew livid with drunken rage.
"You bitch!" he shouted. "You tight-ass bitch! It's all a game to you, isn't it? All a fuckin' game! You dress up in the uniform and hold your back erect, masking it as protocol while you show off your tits! And look at you tonight! You hypocrite! Cut it any lower and that dress would show your snatch!"
"You child," Spann said, and she turned on her heels and left him ranting in the night.
She took the steps three at a time to gain the road below. As luck would have it there was a cab waiting at the bottom. Twenty minutes later she was at the Sea-Tac Airport with very few minutes to spare. She was the last passenger to board the final flight to Vancouver that night.
It was only as the DC-9 gained altitude and the water dropped away that she finally began to relax and let the tension unwind.
Oh hell, Spann thought, closing her eyes. Why is it that just when things begin to go right, someone has to spoil it? Now she'd have to watch Scarlett.
Part two
WHAT'S UP, DOC?
No, it was not funny; it was rather pathetic; he was so representative of all the past victims of the great Joke. But it is by folly alone that the world moves, and so it is a respectable thing upon the whole. And besides, he was what one could call a good man.
One Mind's I
Vancouver, British Columbia.
October
Rain. Rain. Rain.
Pain. Pain. Pain.
It feels like a ghost
Come back
To haunt me once again.
Slow days. No gain.
I don't think I'm up to this!
I spent the night in her old chair sitting next to a shuttered window.
Now that my mother's in the ground I really must sell her house. Outside, an October wind in barren trees moaned so mournfully.
I just sat there most of the night, staring at the pictures.
While the pictures lay on her tabletop.
Staring back at me.
OBSESSIONS — It is not uncommon for neurotics to develop a special concern about some danger or problem. If these exaggerated concerns become very intense they are called obsessions. For example it may be necessary for a person to climb out of bed countless times a night to check the gas valves on the stove. Or like Howard Hughes, someone may be so concerned about the slightest contact with dirt that he is compelled to wash his hands constantly or to become a recluse. Neurotic obsessions are thought to conceal some wish that is often either of a destructive or sexual nature. This wish is usually quite obscure in most obsessions and hidden in symbolic distortion.
What do I know about death? Well, let me see.
I know that the true way of defining the end of life is "as a state where time no longer exists." Time needs activity by which to measure it, so without activity there can be no time.
I know that the human obsession with death is called thanatophilia. And I know that a person who fears death in an abnormal sense is termed a thanatophobe. If the shoe fits wear it.
Father. Brother. Mother. Son.
Starting over: how many times? Is not will the very core of character? Is the rudder of the ego not a person's will? All the past and all the future, Do they not determine the now?
The course of Life surely depends upon the deftness of the helmsman. So, sail away!
I must remember to pick up my suits from One Hour Martinizing. Also I need more Gillette Atra blades. Is it just my imagination or do they really put the sharp razor blades in the first and last position with duller ones in between?
I dreamt about you last night, Cathy — about the accident. When I awoke I found I had my pillow grasped tightly in my arms.
Again I saw the gravesite, but I couldn't go near the grave. It was raining and all the mourners were standing under black umbrellas. Your mother was crying and I wanted to hold her, but somehow I couldn't join in. I stood at the periphery of the graveyard getting soaking wet. I was the only one present without protection from the rain. God, sometimes I get so lonely. So fucking tired of life.
I felt like that this evening so I spent some time in the sky. You should have seen Jupiter! So magnificent and alive with cloud activity. With a camera-shot through my telescope I caught Saturn at a good angle for the rings. Tomorrow night after shift I think I'll develop and blow up the film. Maybe I'll put a picture up on the bedroom wall. I could use the company.
When you're tired — alone — and afraid of the future, what else can you do? Maybe see a shrink!
Am I having an anxiety attack or is anxiety attacking me? Tonight is Halloween.
I lay the pictures — there are three pictures now! — out on the developing table beside my photo enlarger. I had just finished blowing up the shots taken in the sky. I found my hands were shaking and my body had gooseflesh crawling. It took me more than an hour to overcome the urge. But I did it. Once again I managed to keep my MONSTER! in its cage. Next time I might not be lucky. Next time I might not win.
I fear that next time I might just blow those three pictures up.
God save me from that.
November
Well, I saw Dr. George Ruryk today and this is what he told me.
First of all ask yourself: where do my thoughts come from? We've all heard of complexes. "Stop treating the child that way, you're going to give him a complex." "That man suffers from an inferiority complex." "I tell you the guy is weird. He's got some sort of Oedipus complex." "She's got this Electra complex. She wants to fuck her father." So what is a complex?
A complex is a group of ideas that dominate your thoughts and color your experiences. You come to see everything in relation to those ideas. If you're in love, for example, the slightest thing, like just a whiff of perfume, will bring immediately to mind all the ideas and feelings that make up your "love complex." A complex is to psychology what Force is to physics. But here comes the rub!
What happens if a particular complex is for some reason totally out of harmony with the rest of the conscious mind? Perhaps its ideas are unbearably painful. Perhaps it is of a sexual nature incompatible with the person's rigid views and principles.
What happens is that a conflict arises — a struggle commences and ensues between the rebel complex in question and the rest of the personality.
Perhaps the complex can be modified by the mind so that it is no longer incompatible with the rest of the personality.
Perhaps the mind can weigh the merits of each opponent and consciously choose to abandon one in favor of the other.
Or perhaps this is impossible and there must be a fight to the finish.
If there must be a fight then the common method used by the human mind is the sledgehammer of repression.
In using repression, conflict is avoided by banishing one of the opponents to the cellar of the mind. From there the exile is no longer allowed to achieve normal expression, and the victor of the fight is left in control of the field of consciousness.
But here, Dr. Ruryk said, comes the second rub!
Though the complex is shut up downstairs in the dark and denied its normal function, it is not annihilated. It continues to exist within the deeper layers of the mind, festering, while prevented from rising to the surface by the constant resistance of the guard at the door, namely the mind's force of repression.
Have you ever put tarmac on a driveway before the winter snows set in?
Well if you have — and if you failed to kill every last living seed on the ground before doing so — come spring the tarmac will crack and up through its surface will sprout a small plant shoot.
Same with the human mind.
But in a much more devious way.
For a repressed complex can only influence the conscious mind indirectly. This is because of the "censor"' guard standing watch at the cellar door. It must slip out in disguise.
The uglier the monster, the more circuitous its route.
So, Dr. Ruryk said, back to your inquiry about an obsession with death.
Assume something has happened which has caused remorse in a person's mind. Perhaps you know such an individual?
(Yes, I think I do.)
Now say this remorse is painful to that person's mind. Perhaps it's guilt over a death. To deal with this upset to equilibrium the complex related to this remorse is repressed by the conscious mind. But that complex still tie.. press itself. So how does it manifest?
Sometimes the mind uses symbolism to express these repressed and dissociated ideas: here you have the man who thinks that he is Napoleon. The man with the delusion.
Sometimes the mind uses the device which we call projection. Here the repressed complex is no longer regarded by the personality as being part of its own self. The complex has been projected onto another person — and thus conflict is avoided.
If the complex is projected onto a real person, then a delusion of persecution by that individual may result. And in self-defense the patient may try to kill that other person.
If the complex is projected onto an imaginary person, or one who is long since dead, then the repressed set of ideas appears as an hallucination. The patient sees ghosts. Or hears commanding voices telling him what to do. Perhaps a voice from Hell.
What you must realize. Dr. Ruryk said, is that any one of our instinctive drives may give rise to a conflict in the mind.
Freud said that most cases of repression arise from the instinct of sex.
Perhaps he was right.
But right or not, the fact remains that the origin of a mental aberration is not to be found in any disturbance within the mechanics of the mind.
It is to be found in the material from life fed into the brain of any particular human being.
Therefore to answer the question of whether or not you yourself may go insane, ask yourself: Do I have monsters lurking in the cellar of my mind?
But there's a final rub!
For if you do they've been repressed, and you won't even know they're there until they break out of the dungeon.
That's what Dr. Ruryk said when I saw him early today.
He suggested that if I was interested in pursuing the matter further I might wish to sit in on a psychology seminar given by one of his former students. He told me her name is Genevieve.
I might just do that and find out where it leads.
Of course I didn't tell Dr. Ruryk about my problem with the heads.
Complex is to psychology what Force is to physics. Let's see where this goes. Eh, whadda ya say?