Lives of the Circus Animals

Y
ou want strangers to love you?”

There was another long pause. “No,” he said. “I just don't want them to hate me.”

“And who do you think hates you, Kenneth?”

“Oh, everyone.”

She laughed, much to his surprise. Her laughter was thin and professional, but not unfriendly.

“I'm joking, of course. Most people don't know me from the man in the moon. And it's not real hate. Not really. Even from people who
do
know me. It's fun hate. Faux hate. I'm the man-they-love-to-hate.” He sighed. “Oh, all right. Yes. It does get to me. Sometimes.”

“Of course,” said Dr. Chin. “We'd all rather be loved.”

She sat in an armchair, a mild, round-faced woman in a ruffled blouse, under a Georgia O'Keeffe painting of a skull in a desert.

Kenneth Prager sat on the sofa—the far end of the sofa—tall and lean in a charcoal gray suit. This was his first time in therapy, his second session. Forty-four years old, he had managed to avoid this rite of passage until now. He was not enjoying it. Not only did Chin expect him to do most of the talking, but she also refused to let him have the last word. His livelihood was built on having the last word.

He took a deep breath, smiled, and said, “They call me the Buzzard of Off-Broadway.”

This time she didn't laugh but looked concerned, even hurt, for his sake. “And how does that make you feel?”

“Oh, I was flattered. At first. All right, somewhat miffed. A predecessor was called the Butcher of Broadway, so it's old material. When you get mocked, you want the jokes to be more original.”

She wrote something on her notepad. He feared his flippancy revealed more than he knew.

“But that's not the cause of my depression,” he said. “If it
is
depression. I don't feel guilty about my work. My caring what people think is just a symptom, not a cause.”

Therapy was his wife's idea. Gretchen had grown tired of his glum spirits, his sour sorrow. He couldn't understand his unhappiness either. His life could not be better. He had a loving wife, a pretty daughter, a good job, even a dash of fame. He was only second critic at the
Times,
but strangers recognized his name if not his face. He should be happy. But he wasn't. This failure of happiness worried him. If the achievement of so much in life could not make one happy, then why bother living?

“I love my work,” he insisted. “I've always loved theater. The immediacy of it. Real human presences. I enjoyed reviewing movies well enough, which I did for three years. But I was only third-stringer there and saw too much trash: horror-slasher-teen pics and such. So I was overjoyed when they moved me to drama. Where I'd always wanted to be. The unease didn't set in until after New Year's. I thought it'd pass, or I'd get used to the strangeness, but the strangeness only got stranger. Back in March, Bickle, the first reviewer, went into the hospital for heart surgery. So a few plums fell into my lap, including the big new Disney bomb,
Pollyanna
. Everyone panned it, not just me. We were all surprised when Disney pulled the plug. Nevertheless, I was the one who got congratulated for killing the beast. Which felt odd. Then there was a new play by the author of
Venus in Furs
. Everyone wanted it to be good. I know I did. But it wasn't. It was called
Chaos Theory
and was about madness and mathematics. I think it was really about AIDS—the author is gay—which I said in my review. But it was just so self-indulgent and preachy. It closed too. This time I got hate mail. Floods of it. From people calling me callous and homophobic. And I'm
not
homophobic. I'm in theater, for pete's sake. Well, not
in
it, but
of
it.”

Chin was looking down at her notepad, without writing. Her pencil quivered. Had she read his review? Did she adore the play? She thought he
was
homophobic?

“So—” He hurried back to the real subject. “I was relieved when Bick returned and I was number two again. It took the pressure off.
But nothing's felt the same since. The strangeness returned. It felt worse than ever. Nothing has any savor anymore. Everything feels gray. I'm not sure what I want anymore.”

She flipped through her notes, as if she'd lost her place. “You want to be number one again,” she said idly, as if it were too obvious to mention.

He shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. “Yes, no, yes,” he replied. “I should want Bick's job, shouldn't I?”

“You don't?”

“There's talk of retiring him. They need a replacement, which is why they moved me over to drama. As a test. And I wanted the job. Once. But I don't anymore. Only—I don't
not
want it either. I'm not sure
what
I want anymore.”

She studied him with her round, smooth, full face. Kenneth couldn't tell if her stillness masked sympathy or disapproval. She seemed so cheerfully impersonal. In a less politically aware age, he could've thought of her as an inscrutable motherly Buddha.

“Like I said,” she offered. “You want people to love you.”

“Isn't that a silly thing for grown-ups to want? Especially someone in my line of work.”

She shrugged—“silly” was irrelevant here. “Maybe if you praised more and criticized less?” she proposed. “Would you feel better about yourself then?”

He stared at her. “But I'm a critic. I'm paid to criticize.”

“Aren't you also paid to praise?”

“Yes, but—” He shook his head. “I always feel what I say. And I say what I feel. I have nothing but my opinions to go on. If I'm untrue to those, I'm lost.”

“So you let pride stand in the way of happiness?”

She was faintly smiling. Was she pulling his leg?

“Only pride in a job well done,” he declared. “Otherwise I'm a hack. And I'm just as anxious praising as when I criticize. Because I can make success as well as failure. Because of where I work.”

“The
Times,
” she said.

“Yes. The
Times
.” Had she forgotten? “That's what this love and hate are really about. People think I have all this power. But I don't feel powerful. I feel power
less
. I mean, I'm just another journalist on deadline.
I know, I know. It's not me that people hate. It's the
Times
. The
Times
has all the power. But people mistake me for the
Times
.”

She gazed into him, calm and deep, as if hearing the running water of thought in his brain.

He followed his thoughts backward, upstream a few yards. “Are you saying that people
do
hate me, Dr. Chin?”

“Such a strong word,
hate
. I wonder why you keep using it. Do you hate them?”

“No. I don't hate anyone.”

“There seemed to be an enormous amount of—not hate, but dislike in your remarks this morning about that Neil Simon play.”

Kenneth froze.

“A harmless comedy,” Chin continued in her gentlest tone. “People want to laugh. You seemed angry at them for enjoying a joke that you didn't get. I sensed a lot of rage in your word choices.”

There was no safe haven in this city of newspaper readers, no refuge from his own prose. “That wasn't rage,” he said. “That was wit. I was being funny. I want people to laugh. I just want them to laugh at fresh jokes, not stale TV one-liners. Do we really need to discuss a smart-ass review of an unnecessary revival of
Star-Spangled Girl
?”

“
You
call it smart-ass. Another interesting word choice. I'm no crude Freudian, Kenneth, but what does a child do with his ass?” Chin laughed, disowning the idea even as she delivered it. “You expressed your rage by
shitting
”—she laughed harder to get the word out—“on an audience who enjoyed a joke you didn't get. And maybe on a playwright who is more famous than you—or I—will ever be.”

“Can't we talk about my dreams?” he said. “I've had some very interesting dreams this week.”

“These questions disturb you? The critic hates to be criticized?” She laughed again, more amiably this time. “I'm just tossing out ideas, seeing what works as we get to know each other. But your reviews can be as revealing as dreams, Kenneth. They are dreams you dream with words. There was one phrase in particular I found revealing…”

Kenneth had trusted Chin when she was silent. As she talked more about his review, he lost all faith in her. He felt no rage toward Neil Simon or Simon's audience. Maybe he wanted to be loved, sure, but only by people who loved what he loved, which was good theater. Her
suggestion that he be nicer in print proved that she didn't have a clue. Chin had been recommended as a therapist experienced in handling artists, which should have warned him. Any artist who'd spill his unhappiness to a shrink instead of pouring it back into his work was not someone to win Kenneth's respect.

He patiently heard her out. Finally, he took a deep breath and said, “I never took you for a Neil Simon fan, Dr. Chin.”

“Oh I'm not. I don't know his work, only his reputation. I rarely get to the theater. In fact, I try to avoid it.”

“You don't like theater?”

“My own little quirk,” Chin admitted with a chuckle. “I feel embarrassed watching actors. All standing up there pretending to be people they aren't. Actors in movies or TV don't bother me. But seeing them live onstage makes me very anxious.”

Kenneth couldn't believe his ears. She treated it as a comic tic, a matter of no importance. Physician, heal thyself, he thought. She's crazier than I am.

“But that's neither here nor there,” she said and began to discuss the uses of self-forgiveness.

Good-bye, Dr. Chin, thought Kenneth. He needed to find another shrink. Her theater phobia was the last straw. Besides, she had no coherent program, no unified theory of psychology. She said so herself: she just tossed out ideas, seeing which ones stuck. And she laughed too much. It was impossible to take her seriously.

“You disagree?” she suddenly asked. “You think I'm talking through my hat?”

“No, not at all. I'm thinking it over,” he claimed. “Digesting that idea”—even though he had no notion what the idea was.

He was not yet ready to tell Chin that they were over. He could do it on Monday, by mail. Kenneth Prager always expressed himself more forcefully on the page than he did in person.