Eish!

For my little brother, my Fat Cubby, Jorge.

 

 

“Loneliness, you say,” said the psychiatrist in an even, bored voice. Sitting in a brown leather armchair with his long right shin atop his boney left knee, his face at ease behind immaculate horn-rim glasses, his hair cut close, (a hairline so sharp that it might’ve been attended to with a ruler and a pair of nose trimmers) he looked rather like an old lion; well-fed, jaded. Tired of the day’s events, which nonetheless still came rushing at him like wild boars driven into madness by his mere presence.

 “Yes,” whispered Tom, the man to which the psychiatrist spoke. Hands busy at the worn cuffs of his collared shirt, he spoke into his lap, as if afraid to look the other man in the eye as he revealed the revulsion of his affliction.

“Day in, day out, I’m alone. My roommates all moved out at the end of their leases a few days ago. Separate leases were offered to us all when we moved into the condo a year ago. Our landlord, Mike Stubbins, thought that the arrangement might suit both him and us better than a joint lease. Said we were young, too young to depend on each other to be responsible to pay up at the same time, on time.”

The psychiatrist nodded, but said nothing.

“It was fun at first,” said Tom, now massaging the patch of forehead above his right eye with his left hand. “There were parties and get-togethers, which weren’t exactly the same thing, mind you; there were shared meals and jokes and pet fish by the kitchen sink in bowls too small for them. There were occasional fights, but on the whole, we all got along pretty smoothly. I loved it, even with the tension that sometimes fills homes occupied by young and impatient people. And then-“

Tom swallowed and put his face in his hands. Fighting back something too large to exit his body by way of his eyes or his mouth, his left knee began to piston up and down. There was a pap-pap-pap sound as his foot connected with the carpeted floor again and again. “And then-“

“And then their leases all came to an end,” said the psychiatrist, his eyes on Tom’s rising and falling knee. “They moved out and left you alone in a large condo.”

“Yes,” said Tom. A low moan slipped a hole in his heart, through his veins, into his stomach, up his gullet and out of his mouth. The sound was gutless, the psychiatrist thought, but he supposed that if twenty years on the couch hadn't robbed him of sympathy at all for people like Tom, he’d have found the sound quite terrible.

As it was, it was like hearing the lurch-stumble of a cartoon zombie up a flight of wooden stairs in an empty house. Still got it, the psychiatrist thought. Through a rather difficult force of will, the psychiatrist stifled a laugh.

“They left me alone,” said Tom. His hands muffled his voice, but his words floated into the atmosphere of the room with the force of a stick of dynamite. “Since then, it’s been eating me from the inside out, this loneliness. Since then, nobody needs me or loves me enough to stay around for more than a few months. I’ve become useless to others. What kind of human being does that make me? Humanity is a social existence, but social is the last thing I am, though not by choice. What am I if I’m not human? What am I if I’m forced to become something else by selfish, closeted groups of happy people with everything else to do in life but give me a little time?”

“Tom,” said the psychiatrist, who now stood up and walked over to his desk, a massive and cumbersome thing of mahogany and steel, “what makes you think that people would rather do anything else other than be with you? What about women? What about your family?”

“Women don’t get me,” said Tom. “Women see me coming and they smile and look away. Sometimes they point and talk behind their hands to their friends. I don’t understand it. I’m not a bad-looking man. Maybe a little plain, but not bad-looking. I’ve got my good points, haven’t I?”

Tom raised his wretched face from his hands and stared at the psychiatrist.

He’s looking for my approval, thought the psychiatrist, his mind already halfway out of the office and into Chase’s Bar. He could already feel his a*s getting nice and cozy with an unyielding barstool. Yet, the psychiatrist thought, here this pathetic and desperately lonely man is, seeking my approval when I’ve got my own life to attend to. My own wife, who can be a stone cold b***h sometimes, my own son, who is shooting through the stages of puberty like a human-plant hybrid that’s been fed synthetic plant food, my own mortgage, my own self-image to supplicate, my own self-esteem to raise, my own doubts and demons to pacify. The selfish b*****d.

What is my humble opinion to this man? To a man like this, what do I owe, even given my station in life?

“It hardly matters what I think, Tom,” said the psychiatrist. He poured himself a tall glass of spring water from a pitcher that sat on his desk and stood with the small of his back against the edge of the desk. He sipped water from the glass and stared at Tom, whose eyes were locked on his. In the harsh, jaundiced light of the office, his eyes looked starved and depthless.

“It matters what you think,” said Tom. “You’re my psychiatrist. What you think could save my life.”

The psychiatrist sipped from his glass and placed it on his desk. He pointed at Tom with a long, be-ringed finger and smiled. “Tell me why you’re lonely, Tom. It is what you think that matters.”

Tom swallowed again. There was a large, trembling lump in his throat that bobbed up and down. “My family, well, they’ve got their own lives to live, don’t they? They had enough of me when I was a kid.”

“Tell me why you’re lonely, Tom,” said the psychiatrist, his tongue in his right cheek. “It’s ok. Really. It won’t hurt, to tell me something so simple.”

Tom cringed, seemed to sink into himself a bit; a black hole that had run out of matter to consume that now had no choice but to feast upon itself to survive, if only for a few more moments of life.

“I demand a lot of the people around me, my friends, my family, the women who’ve slipped in and out of my life,” said Tom, his eyes watering. He drew a sleeve across his face and sighed a shaking breath into the office. “It’s hard to think more of myself than I think of others, even those who probably don’t deserve such things. I gave my last roommate my last few dollars when he kicked me out. I was worried about him not making his rent. There I was, on the street, potentially, and I was worried about him not being able to make his rent. I mean, what kind of self-destructive thing is that?”

The psychiatrist nodded and tilted his chin at Tom, who understood this to be an indulgent gesture that also told him to go on, talk.

“I had a woman I liked shake me down for dinner and a full tank of gas before she dumped me at my apartment with a lie about meeting her girlfriends on account of a dire emergency.”

Now that he’s talking about his past, thought the psychiatrist, it’ll all come out like s**t out of a newborn.

It did.

“My oldest brother,” said Tom in a voice that was hurried and hoarse, “went after a man who sold me a clunker, a real lemon; a car that I never got despite frequent calls about the matter. I didn’t immediately ask for the title, you see. My brother found the man and scared my thousand dollars out of him, but I never saw the money again. A former boss heard my requests for the weekend off for six months. I’d have worked myself to the bone, but the weekends were supposed to be mine. When the time came, he hired three workers to replace me and fired me. He called the cops on me when I refused to leave the building without my last paycheck. I was hauled downtown and thrown into a lush tank for three hours. It keeps happening, over and over again. People keep letting me down and I keep taking it and that’s why I’m lonely.”

The psychiatrist’s hand found his chin and stroked it while he walked around the office once. He looked out of the large plate-glass office window, at the park below, which had been made beautiful with color by the caress of autumn’s hand. Pigeons cooed and strutted beneath nearly skeletal trees. At the far right end of the park, a small child was shoved into the pale blue sky over and over again by a laughing woman in a light jacket. The year-end winds blew crisp and dyed leaves into the lap of a sleeping bum at the other end of the park. The bum rested against a light pole, a garish orange trucker’s hat pulled low over his face as he snored the day into dusk.

Outside was the cool touch of autumn, brisk and beautiful and filled with timely purpose.

Inside was a human being filled with broken glass and self-loathing.

“Tom, you’ve lived your life thinking that being a victim is the only way you’ll ever matter to others. Take control and show others that you matter. More importantly, show yourself that you matter. Live.”

Tom looked into the psychiatrist’s eyes and the psychiatrist looked back into Tom’s. In Tom’s eyes, the psychiatrist saw death and defeat. And rage. A twisting, grotesque thing of black spite and red-hot terror. In the psychiatrist’s eyes, Tom saw a way.

A way to end his miserable loneliness.

A way to make a mark in the world before he left it for good.

That evening, the psychiatrist (whose name was Dini) had a Gin & Tonic with a turkey and chicken on Rye, no crust at Chase’s Bar. He took his glasses off to drink; for real drinking was a job for the natural man.

Staring into the morning paper over eggs and coffee two years later, Dini didn’t even recognize Tom’s withered face.

Had he noticed Tom’s face, he’d have frowned.

Tom’s Second Chance Home, established by a formerly hopeless shell of a human being a year after a particularly important day saved lives on a daily basis.

 

Reviews

[Inda Lauryn]

Humanity is a social existence, but social is the last thing I am, though not by choice. What am I if I'm not human? What am I if I'm forced to become something else by selfish, closeted groups of happy people with everything else to do in life but give me a little time?"

Uh, wow.

I have to say I was surprised by the ending. I never expect things to end on a ray of hope or the best possible outcome. Pleasant surprise though. I liked this story.