‘And what about the follow-up? Does it make sense to go on offering up your life for public scrutiny?’
‘You sound like Beck. Except he said that I was dramatizing my life.’
‘How do you feel about that?’
‘I think he’s being a bit unfair. I’m not dramatizing my life. I’m writing about something dramatic that occurred in my life. There’s a difference.’
‘A subtle difference, some would argue.’
‘It’s a big difference! I mean, with the Miranda Frost interview, it’s mostly just transcription. It’s objective journalism in its purest sense.’
‘And the follow-up?’
‘Well, no – that’s a personal account. It has to be subjective; that’s what makes it interesting. But that doesn’t mean I’m dramatizing. I mean, yes, there may be a dramatic element to the language and structure, but that’s because I wanted to capture the feeling of the experience. I wanted to be emotionally truthful.’
Dr Barbara weighed this argument in several seconds of silence.
I obviously hadn’t made myself entirely clear, so I tried again. ‘Put it this way: we all use one or two dramatic tricks when we’re talking about our lives. Say you were late for work – you missed the bus or got stuck in traffic or something. It’s very difficult to tell that story straight, without emphasizing certain details: the frustration, the watch-checking, the idiot in front of you who was on his mobile and didn’t realize that the lights had changed. You want to convey the experience as it felt at the time. It’s normal, and it’s not dramatizing as such. It’s just drawing out what’s inherently dramatic in the situation.’
These were arguments I’d already rehearsed for when Beck read the follow-up; I was making him wait, too. Yet based on this trial run, I thought my explanation could do with some fine-tuning. Dr Barbara still looked sceptical.
‘I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve read the article,’ she said.
Outside, the sky was starting to darken. There had been only a little high cloud when I’d entered Dr Barbara’s office, fifty minutes ago, but now it was dim enough that she had to switch on both of the floor lamps. As she did, I thought idly about how the session had not quite met my expectations. True, I was used to Dr Barbara challenging my thinking, on most topics, but today there was something else. I’d been left feeling defensive and a little misunderstood, as if my words weren’t having the effect I intended for them. It was in this mindset that I decided to mention that my libido seemed to be coming back. I wanted to give her some unequivocal good news, proof that despite everything – despite the arguments with Beck and the anxiety dream and Simon’s corpse – I was feeling generally better. But even here, Dr Barbara’s reaction was guarded.
‘I think that’s something else we need to keep an eye on,’ she told me.
‘It’s a good thing,’ I assured her. ‘I mean, I actually want sex again. I’m enjoying it – really enjoying it – for the first time in months. I’ve had three orgasms in the past fortnight. I think it’s a pretty clear sign that my mood’s improving.’
Dr Barbara frowned a bit as she settled herself back in her chair, but she didn’t blush. It was impossible to make Dr Barbara blush, as I’d discovered months ago. She knew, of course, that my sex drive was the first thing to go when I was getting depressed. I’d told her that before Christmas; it was as predictable as the tides. Her response was that I should focus less on the physical side of things and more on the emotional closeness that making love could bring. This almost made me blush; it certainly made me cringe, which caused Dr Barbara to posit that I might have ‘intimacy issues’. (Paradoxically, she also thought I had an unhealthy dependency on romantic relationships, since I hadn’t been out of one for more than a fortnight since I was about fifteen.) But the only issue for me was Dr Barbara’s choice of vocabulary. I didn’t think a doctor should be using a phrase like making love. In all honesty, I didn’t think it was a phrase that had any place outside pre-1950s literature, where the meaning was different and less cloyingly euphemistic.
Contrarily, I assumed it was my diligent logging of orgasms, this focus on the physical, that was now causing Dr Barbara to frown like that; though, in truth, her frown was difficult to read. It was also possible that she had more general concerns about my sudden uplift in mood. This was understandable, of course, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with. It was frustrating to feel reined in like this, to have every emotion – even the positive ones – viewed as a potential symptom.
‘Is there anything else you’d like to talk about before we finish?’ Dr Barbara asked.
I was feeling slightly petulant at this juncture, but at the same time I still wanted to win back Dr Barbara’s approval before we ended the session. This is why I started to tell her about the speed – how there’d been a couple of instances in the past fortnight when I’d wanted to take it, but both times I’d resisted. It was an achievement of sorts, though I realized, halfway through my story, that it was unlikely to be met with any great approbation. Dr Barbara’s frown deepened, losing all traces of its previous ambiguity. In retrospect, it was stupid of me to expect anything else. When it came to drugs, Dr Barbara and I were never going to agree; we couldn’t even agree on terminology. I talked about recreational use and blowing off some steam; she talked about ad hoc self-medication and comorbidity.
When I had finished my exposition, she sat for a moment in stony-faced silence, then said, ‘Okay, that’s something we really need to keep an eye on.’
So that was three eyes now: sex and drugs and insomnia. We were fast running out.
‘I think you’re missing the point,’ I told her, after waiting calmly for a few seconds. ‘I decided not to take it, despite being exhausted and stressed out of my mind. A few months back, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But on this occasion, I decided that given the time of day and general circumstances it would be better – in the long run – not to. That’s progress, don’t you think?’
This last was said jokingly, to try to force a wobble in Dr Barbara’s anxious pout. But it wasn’t a joke. I wanted to make her see that things were getting better, for her to give some indication that she agreed with me, even in a very limited sense.
She didn’t.
‘Abby, this is lunacy. As I’ve told you again and again, I’m not going to be happy until you’ve stopped entirely. The amphetamines, the MDMA – all of it. It sets you back a long, long way every time you take it.’
‘Which I didn’t,’ I noted, since this emphasis was getting rather lost.
‘Wonderful. So why not go one step further and just get rid of it? Take away the temptation.’
‘I’ve told you. It keeps me on an even keel. Sometimes it’s the only thing that does. Besides, it’s much better for me than too much drink. I know that from experience.’ I pointed to the scar in the centre of my right palm, a perfectly circular white disc, about the size of an ibuprofen. ‘I’ve never wanted to do anything like that on speed, and certainly not on ecstasy.’
Dr Barbara acknowledged this fact with a curt nod. But I don’t think she was any closer to accepting the broader picture I was trying to paint.
I left feeling vaguely dissatisfied.
6
DADDY
I wanted to kill my sister.
She called me the day before the family meal – the day before! – to tell me that some work thing had come up. She was being flown out to New York that very evening. It was something she simply could not get out of.
‘You bitch! You absolute bitch!’