Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets (12 page)

“According to them! So I’m out a tip and they didn’t pay and now we have a bag of onions.” Derek tosses a bag on my freshly wiped down counter. Sure enough, when I look inside there are just a ton of soggy, brownish onions that Derek apparently had to remove with his own hands.

“They didn’t pay and you only brought back the onions?” Flip is outraged. He goes off to make a pizza. It’s the way he gets rid of stress.

I tell Derek that I had a great moment with Beth.

“A moment?”

“Yeah. More than a moment, but there was a moment that was very important, I think.”

“Did she touch you where you pee?” he asks.

“Metaphorically.”

“I’m not even sure how that happens.”

“She told me that she liked me. And her friends made fun of her for it. And her boyfriend found out!”

“That all sounds pretty awful, actually.”

“No! It’s great!”

“For you but not her.”

“She said I didn’t ruin her life.” I feel like I’m bouncing up and down but I’m actually standing still. My heart’s racing.

“Well, that’s a good way to start a relationship: ‘Hey, I didn’t ruin your life. Let’s date!’”

Derek’s not trying to make me feel bad, but he’s not really seeing the great part of this whole thing.

“Flip, what do you think?” I walk over to where he stands by the pizza counter, which is stained with pizza sauce, smashed vegetables, and meat drippings.

“What?” Flip asks.

“There’s this girl and I thought she hated me but it’s not that at all.”

“It’s nice when girls end up not hating you.”

“Yeah. She’s got a boyfriend.
He
hates me. But she’s into me.”

“You dog!” Flip accidentally knocks a metal container of cheese on the floor.

Before I can even get the broom and dustpan to him, he’s swept most of the cheese back into the container with his hands.

“You want me to toss that out?”

“Eh. Most of it didn’t hit the ground.”

Flip must think that the layer of cheese that hit the ground first prevented contamination of the rest.

“Anyway,” he says, “is this girl going to dump her boyfriend for you?”

“I don’t know.”

Derek says it’s not likely.

“Why not?” I ask.

“Girls don’t dump one guy for another guy.”

Flip says they do. For the first time in my life I’m inclined to believe Flip, but I quickly back off as I watch him lick a piece of floor cheese from the heel of his hand.

“Derek,” I say, “can you tell me why you know this?”

“Look, Sally and I have been going at it for two months. She hasn’t even mentioned breaking off her engagement.”

“Who’s Sally?” Flip asks.

“My lady.”

“Doesn’t anyone date a girl who isn’t already dating something else?” he yells.

“Flip.” Derek puts his hand on Flip’s shoulder. “You have to go where you’re wanted. I can’t help it if Sally is already engaged.”

“A man doesn’t stick his sausage in another man’s pizza!” Flip declares without irony.

Derek and I burst out laughing.

“That’s classic!” I declare.

Derek gets a call on his cell and goes outside to take it.

I tell Flip that I didn’t mean to get involved with this girl.

“It’s not even really a romance or anything. We just like being around each other. And I’m writing poems for her literary magazine.”

“Poems for a girl? That’s not romance?”

“No! The poems aren’t for her. Really.”

“Look me in the eye and swear that you aren’t trying to impress her with your poetry.”

When Flip says this it makes my whole life sound so stupid. Like I’m some loser back in England trying to woo one of the queen’s handmaidens with sonnets about her bosom. And yet I’m doing it in the style of a gay poet
whom she doesn’t even like.

I don’t answer.

“Exactly,” he says. “Do me a favor. If you steal this girl away from her boyfriend, don’t tell me about it. I’ve lost two wives. So it doesn’t make me glad to hear that this is the way things work with young people.”

Flip goes off to smoke a cigarette.

Derek comes back in and starts cursing before I can even recognize that he’s upset.

“What’s the matter?” I ask.

“You fucked me!”

“What?”

“My mom ran into your mom at the bank. My mom said she hoped I wasn’t a bother this weekend!”

Fuck.

“What happened?” he yells.

“Well, I can’t help that our moms ran into each other for the first time in months!”

“Your mom said you were grounded because you were out seeing your sister. That means I couldn’t even say that you and I went to a party and that I ended up somewhere else. You totally messed this up for me!”

All my gleeful energy melts out of my feet. My stomach is cold and this grim tightness wraps around my torso.

“If she finds out about me and Sally I am
royally screwed.
”

“I didn’t tell my parents anything about that. They don’t know where Jorie works. It’s fine. It’s fine!”

“It’s not fine!”

“Derek, it wouldn’t have mattered. You weren’t at my house. My mom would have said so regardless of me being grounded or not.”

Derek doesn’t seem convinced.

Flip comes back in and, one conversation behind, yells: “And how are you two getting girls that don’t mind you smelling like pizza?”

HALFWAY THROUGH MY FIRST
therapy session I begin to hate the sound of my own voice. Or maybe not the voice but the words. Or maybe the way I’m saying the words. That would be my voice, I guess.

My therapist looks like Lady Gaga’s mother. I’m not sure if that’s exactly accurate—who knows what celebrities’ parents really look like when the celebrities themselves don’t look like real people. But around the eyes she looks like Lady Gaga. So, there it is.

Her name is Dr. Boesche but she says to call her Dr. Dora. I spend the first ten minutes talking about Jorie. Nothing specific about her banishment, but a little about her apartment and her friends. I feel like I need to urge Dr. Dora to worry about Jorie so she’ll call my sister and give her free therapy or something.

“James, why don’t we talk about you today? I can’t really help your sister since she’s not here. And I can’t talk to you about anything Jorie and I talked about.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry. Lots of people don’t know what to talk about when they start therapy.”

“I know what I want to talk about, but I don’t know how to . . . get to it.” I laugh.

“Just say it.”

“I think I have mental health issues.”

“Uh-huh. And?”

“I think my mental health issues are preventing me from being happy.”

“You’re talking around what you want to say. And in here you have to commit to saying exactly what you think and exactly what you feel. It will make things much easier.”

“I usually do this with a bird,” I admit.

This clearly throws Dr. Dora for a loop.

“I imagine that I have a bird therapist. A pigeon. And I don’t have to express what I’m thinking to her since she’s part of my brain.”

Dr. Dora is not taking notes, so she must think I’m a lunatic.

“Which makes me a birdbrain,” I add, hoping to win her over.

“And how long have you imagined a bird therapist?”

“About a year, but I’ve talked to her every day since Jorie got kicked out.”

Dr. Dora asks me a few questions and I try to answer honestly, but there are things that I don’t want to say out loud. I don’t want to admit what I know about Jorie and her cutting. I don’t want to admit to interfering with Beth’s relationship because a) Dr. Dora will probably think I’m a bad person, and b) she’ll probably tell me that being in a relationship is a bad idea if I have mental health issues.

“What do you do for fun, James?” Dr. Dora leans back. It’s almost like she’s asking me on a date. She puts her pen down, even. I don’t find her attractive, but now I feel like I should.

“I work at a pizza shop. I guess that kills my free time.”

“Do you play sports? Watch movies? Read?”

“I read. And I like movies. I’m not athletic, though.”

“What do you read?”

I blank on most of the recent books I’ve read and liked. She’s going to judge my choices, so I have to be sure I tell her things that will make her think I’m worth helping. If I tell her things I’ve never admitted—like how I read
The Story of O
and a bunch of Anne Rice erotica at the county library and jerked off in the restroom—she’ll think I’m a pervert and will report me to my parents.

And the librarians.

“I like Walt Whitman. Mostly, that’s what I go back to. I even carry a copy around with me.”

“What do you like about Walt Whitman?”

I think and think. Is it one thing or everything? I begin to chill and panic. Anxiety attack number four thousand twenty-six approaches.

“I read him in college,” Dr. Dora admits. “So I know a bit about him.”

“I can recite parts.” I say this to be impressive but laugh, too, because I’m nervous.

“That’s good. Memorizing poems is more fun than saying you work at a pizzeria.”

“I guess I like him because he says everything. And he thinks everything has something good about it. And even when he gets depressed about the Civil War or when his mother died—you can see some of the darkness in the poems, but ultimately he always comes back to sing.”

Talking about Whitman lets me talk about how I broke my arm and my anxiety attacks.

“Do you feel anxious often?”

“Not really. A few times a month maybe. Lately a few times a week. Or all the time, I guess.”

I have not admitted I have panic attacks to anyone. Derek doesn’t know. Jorie only knows that I’ve had a few bad days recently. Beth thinks I’m weird but not enough to dislike me.

My eyes water a bit.

“Do you feel depressed?”

“Who doesn’t?” I laugh. I feel terribly sad. Like I’m hopeless, even though I’ve got a professional here to help me.

“I’m going to make a rule for you. You tend to laugh when you say things that are serious. I want you to stop doing that. Not just in here but everywhere.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for things that aren’t your fault. Just be conscious of laughing.” She asks me why I think I laugh.

“I never even noticed it.”

“You need to start noticing it and stop doing it. You’re trying to make serious things seem not serious.”

“Okay.”

“Do you think about suicide?”

I nod because I can’t use my mouth to betray myself anymore. I want to say not a lot, but that doesn’t seem true or helpful.

Dr. Dora writes a few things. She tells me to track my anxiety attacks and to write poetry about them if that helps.

“But there are some things you can do to help when you have an attack.”

She tells me to breathe deeply, and while she’s trying to show me how to meditate—something I thought a therapist would laugh at—I blurt out that I hug trees.

“Really? And does that help?”

“Sometimes.” I start crying.

She asks me why I’m upset and I tell her that it hasn’t helped.

“But, James, you’re alive!” She finally seems like a person. “And you’re here for help. Not everyone can get through these things alone.”

I cry more. Too much for a guy. Too much for me to ever stop. I think about how I’m going to let my sister down because I’m not strong enough to help her. How am I supposed to be there for her when I can’t hold myself together?

Dr. Dora lets me cry. I blow my nose with the thin, dry tissues next to my chair. I sneeze from the dust. These tissues are either cheap or not used much.

“I’m going to say something,” she says. “It’s too early for you and me to know for sure if it’s necessary, but we’re going to talk about this eventually. We might need medication to help you with the anxiety. But I’m not sure yet. It’s just worth mentioning now to give you a sense of how serious I take what you’ve told me. How do you feel about that?”

“I don’t want to be medicated.”

“There are definitely things we can talk about to help you with your anxiety—things that aren’t medicine. But I want you to be open to everything. I’m not the kind of person who will just throw pills at you and send you back into the world.”

At the end of my first fifty minutes, she gives me her card and says I can call if I’m feeling very depressed.

“Anytime. It’s better to call me than to not call because you don’t think you’re depressed enough.”

“Okay.”

“Promise.”

“Okay.”

“No,
say
‘I promise.’”

“I promise.”

I apologize for having to pay in cash that smells like pizza and laugh a bit.

“There. Again. You have to stop that.”

I almost apologize for screwing up, but then I say, “It may take me a bit to stop myself from laughing.”

THAT NIGHT I START AN E-MAIL
to Jorie to tell her about therapy. Then I scrap the e-mail completely, realizing I’m more likely to see my sister in person than she is likely to get to a library to check her e-mail. How did people stay in touch before the Internet?

Dr. Bird says, “Messenger pigeons are efficient and whimsical.” I think she’s joking.

I stare up at my tree collage in low lamplight. I should be doing homework. I have two papers to write and a book to read and chapter questions to answer. I’m not sure what subjects go with what assignments, but I’m not convinced it matters. I’ll talk my way into an extension for everything that’s important and I’ll take the zeros for homework. It’s easier that way. Or maybe I just won’t hand anything in.

I shut my eyes. Dr. Bird says she knows about my real therapist. Of course she knows. She knows everything.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Bird. I need someone who can think outside of me.”

Dr. Bird asks what I think about medicating my anxieties away.

I stare at her round, black eye. I notice the shimmer to her feather color that looks like the gasoline rainbow in parking lot puddles.

I tell her I’m afraid that I’ll become a muted person. Different. Dull. Like I’ll be in limbo, constantly. I say I’m not sure if being numb is any different than what I feel now.