This evening, I had a chance encounter with one of the priests who share the house. The front door was open and Matt wasn’t in his office. I wandered into the kitchen, looking for a glass of water. A radio in the backyard was playing dance music, ancient and out of style or maybe so retrograde as to be fashionable once again. An emaciated blond in floppy shorts and a muscle shirt was slumped in a lawn chair, one long thin bare foot twitching to the beat as his bony fingers tapped the arm rest.
“Ohhhhhhhhhhhh. Love to love you, baby.”
“Can I help you?” he asked, using his sermon voice, a deep rumble resonating from that scrawny chest.
“I’m here to see Matt…Father McGinley.”
“His office is at the front of the house. You passed it on your way back here.”
He held a pair of glasses up to his eyes and squinted, assessing whether I was one of Matt’s juvenile delinquent sociopaths, on the prowl, compulsively pilfering small objects. He saw I was nothing more than a garden-variety neurotic who, once chastised, would pad sheepishly back through the house. He dropped his glasses and turned his attention back to Donna Summer.
All I’m able to squeeze out of Matt is the blond’s a Jesuit from Wisconsin on loan to UNC-Charlotte for the academic year. He’s teaching a course on the French Deconstructionists for the comparative literature department. Matt studiously deflects any further questions, but I persist.
“Why is this so important to you?” he asks.
“It isn’t.”
“Then why so many questions?”
“I’m just curious.”
“Curious about what?” he asks.
About that priest, about you, about whether you are what you seem to be, controlled, engaged in life yet detached, distant enough to remain objective, not a prisoner to whims and urges, highs and lows. I’m curious about whether it’s all a façade and, just like me, you toss and turn in your spartan single bed, your beefy, hairy legs twisted in the sheets, kicking at the hobgoblins crawling out of the woodwork. Where do you hide from your demons? What’s the antidote for desire? Dropping to your knees for a rosary and a pair of novenas for the strength to resist temptation or a quick jack-off and a week without candy as penance?
“Nothing…actually, I am curious about something.”
“What?”
“How do we end this?”
“Haven’t you talked with your lawyer?”
“Right. We show up before the judge. No arrests. Completion of counseling verified. Listen to a word or two of wisdom. Look abashed, no, look reformed, like I couldn’t even conceive of fucking up again, like I’m a whole different person than the loser who stood there a year ago. Record expunged and I rejoin the ranks of solid citizens.”
“So there you are.”
“But I’m still curious. What’s your role in all this?”
“I submit a final report to the Court.”
“Have you started it?”
“Yes.”
“Is it finished?”
“No.”
“When do I read it?”
“You don’t.”
“What does it say?”
This line of questioning makes Matt uncomfortable.
“I’m afraid I can’t disclose that.”
I nearly jump out of my seat. One more question he won’t answer, one more secret he’s hiding.
“Whoa, calm down.”
“What do you mean you can’t disclose it?”
“It’s a confidential report to the Court. It belongs to the State. That’s how it works. It’s not mine to give you. It’s the judge’s decision whether to share it. Your lawyer will have to file a motion to get a copy.”
“Wait a minute!”
“What?”
“Who the fuck are you working for here?”
“Well…”
“Haven’t you been preaching to me for months that I’m your patient?”
“Yes.”
“Then give me the report. I have a fucking right to see it. I’ve spent too much time in hospitals and doctors’ offices. I know about patients’ rights. You have to let me see it.”
“Andy, it’s not that simple.”
“It’s not that fucking complicated,” I shout.
“Andy, if you want to see your medical record, fine, but this is different. It’s a report that…”
I realize I’m crying and reach for the box of tissue on the low table between us. They’re oily and they stink, scented to suggest floral bouquets. It’s nothing but frustration, this outburst. I’m tired of him shutting me out, blocking me off. He watches, silently, and the longer he observes, the harder I cry. I point to the closed door. He understands, knowing I don’t want to be humiliated.
“Don’t worry. No one can hear you.”
He waits until the tears have stopped and I’m dabbing my nose obsessively, worried about stray strings of snot.
“I really wish you’d reconsider your decision,” he says.
I shrug and mumble.
“We have one more session. And you can do something for me.”
“What?”
“Write your own evaluation and report. We’ll see how it compares to mine.”
I agree. I work on it all week. On planes, in hotels, at counters, in my little book where the customer thinks I’m scribbling measurements. I edit, revise, tinker until it’s perfect. The honest, unvarnished portrait of the salesman as a no-longer-young man. This is what I write:
Subject: Caucasian male homosexual floating through his late thirties. Divorced, no children. Above-average intelligence and uninvolved in current occupation. Pleasant, unremarkable appearance. Average social skills, but no friends at present time and emotionally detached from family members despite current residence with mother with end-stage lymphoma for whom he acts as primary caregiver.
Pathology: Subject demonstrates certain narcissistic qualities and exhibits tendency for self-obsession without self-awareness. Subject has difficulty forming intimate emotional relationships and his resultant isolation is further exacerbated by a fear of exposure. Subject’s prime motivation in personal interactions is to avoid reviving residual sense of shame created by paternal disapproval of his childhood mannerisms and conduct.
Subject is currently in thrall to deepening depression over recent dissolution of his long-term marriage and the anticipated adverse outcome of mother’s treatment. Subject’s current medication regimen is yielding diminishing results. Subject has difficulty sleeping and self-medicates by increasing alcohol intake and using marijuana when available. Sleep, when finally achieved, is unsatisfactory, coming in fits and starts, seldom extending beyond four hours and often accompanied by hallucinatory images that force his eyes open and render him unable to fall back into unconsciousness.
Subject is morbidly preoccupied, no, obsessed, with death and disease. His current personal situation requires him to spend endless hours in hospital cancer centers where he is constantly confronted with, no, assaulted by, evidence of the precariousness of life. Subject cannot differentiate himself from the fragile creatures surrounding him. Broken things, crumbling, shattered by disease, shriveling to dust, noses plugged with tubes and clamps, lips too dry and cracked to form words, they must rely on their hollow, bruised eyes to communicate their message: Now it’s our turn, soon it will be yours.
Subject experiences panic attacks, hyperventilating as he compulsively calculates and recalculates the ever-dwindling pool of days and the shrinking distance between himself and the intubated and catheterized population of the hospital. Subject responds by seeking temporary relief and gratification in sexual contact. Subject’s panic intensifies at the recognition that his impulsive conduct could be accelerating his projected arrival time at his final destination.
Prognosis: Poor. Subject’s few remaining meaningful contacts are falling away like fish scales. Subject is becoming delusional, with fantasies of drifting away, a Dowager Empress in Splendid Isolation, freeze-dried in the lotus position, afloat, miles above the chaos and cacophony of human interaction. Subject has conversations, dialogues with himself, as there is no one else to listen and respond. The sound of subject’s own voice assaults his eardrums. Subject is exhausted by the endlessly repetitive content. Me. Me. Me. Subject has reached the end of the journey, there’s no fresh laundry in his baggage.