Read Online My Present Age by Guy Vanderhaeghe - Free Book Online
Authors: Guy Vanderhaeghe
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high and funny and squeaky.”
My ears started to ring. The old blood-pressure thing. “What is it? Do you want me to crawl? Is that it? Beg? Well, I am. I’m begging.” I actually dropped on my knees beside the phone stand. “You can’t see me, Marsha, but I’m in your favourite position – male submissive. I’m on my knees. Picture it, Marsha.”
“Ed, get hold of yourself.”
“Not low enough? Lower? You got it!” I flopped on my belly and the smell of dirty feet rose out of the carpet and assailed my nostrils. “This is Ed reporting. I’m on my belly. I’m grovelling, Marsha. I’m prostrate.”
Why do I do these things?
“Merciful Marsha, I implore you, give me my wife’s phone number!”
Marsha neglected to respond. I lay on the floor, panting. How soon our passions are spent. The phone droned in my ear. Finally Marsha spoke with her customary icy authority, customary when addressing me. “Ed, are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“Are you really on the floor?”
“Yes.”
“Then get up.”
I did.
“Are you sure you’re quite finished?”
“Yes.”
“All right. I’ll see you tomorrow. About nine-thirty.”
“I’m warning you,” I said half-heartedly, knowing I was beat, “if you don’t give me Victoria’s number I’ll keep phoning all night.”
“Then I’ll just have to leave my receiver off the hook, won’t I? Goodnight, Ed.” Click.
She did it, too. Left it off the hook, that is. I’m such a stupid jerk. Never warn anybody. Just do it.
So now I’m pacing, which is what I always do to keep hysteria at bay. If Victoria hadn’t behaved so completely out of character, I wouldn’t be this strung-out. And because I can’t be with her, can’t reach her, my apprehension is augmented. I expect the worst.
The engaging Dr. Brandt, the psychiatrist I visited when Victoria and I were newly married, barely had me inside his office door when he decided to roll up his clinical sleeves and go to work onthis neurosis of mine. This didn’t please me because at the time what I saw as my problem was a temporary loss of imagination. That is, I was panicky because I could not construct a scenario of success in my future. I didn’t regard the apprehension I experienced when I was away from Victoria as a particularly thorny difficulty. At that point I had resolved I wouldn’t let her out of my sight aside from the eight hours a day we spent apart at work. That solved my problem.
Dr. Brandt, however, chose to label my attitude towards Victoria as unhealthy and described it as “infantile separation anxiety.” According to him, whenever circumstances prevent me from being with Victoria, my perception of the world reverts to that of a child. My emotional ties to Victoria, Brandt said, are not the mature ones of a husband to a wife, but those of a child to his mother. Therefore, when I am prevented from being with Victoria, I experience the separation anxiety of a young child, an anxiety compounded by an adult’s ability to imagine dreadful contingencies: rape, murder, automobile accidents, etc. Furthermore, he went on to say that in his clinical experience he has seldom encountered a “socially functioning individual” who perceived his environment to be as threatening and consistently hostile as I apparently did. If my world-view was not significantly modified by therapy I could expect to experience a breakdown in the future. At best I was sure to suffer some severe dysfunction. He thought I already displayed symptoms of burgeoning agoraphobia.
Yet I believe that after only seven sessions with Dr. Brandt I was coming close to convincing him my portrait of the world was more accurate than his own. But perhaps I flatter myself. Still, he asked me to find another therapist. Instead, I went home and announced to Victoria that Dr. Brandt had pronounced me cured. Victoria never did tell me what he said when she phoned him, seeking corroboration of the miracle.
On reflection, what I
My ears started to ring. The old blood-pressure thing. “What is it? Do you want me to crawl? Is that it? Beg? Well, I am. I’m begging.” I actually dropped on my knees beside the phone stand. “You can’t see me, Marsha, but I’m in your favourite position – male submissive. I’m on my knees. Picture it, Marsha.”
“Ed, get hold of yourself.”
“Not low enough? Lower? You got it!” I flopped on my belly and the smell of dirty feet rose out of the carpet and assailed my nostrils. “This is Ed reporting. I’m on my belly. I’m grovelling, Marsha. I’m prostrate.”
Why do I do these things?
“Merciful Marsha, I implore you, give me my wife’s phone number!”
Marsha neglected to respond. I lay on the floor, panting. How soon our passions are spent. The phone droned in my ear. Finally Marsha spoke with her customary icy authority, customary when addressing me. “Ed, are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“Are you really on the floor?”
“Yes.”
“Then get up.”
I did.
“Are you sure you’re quite finished?”
“Yes.”
“All right. I’ll see you tomorrow. About nine-thirty.”
“I’m warning you,” I said half-heartedly, knowing I was beat, “if you don’t give me Victoria’s number I’ll keep phoning all night.”
“Then I’ll just have to leave my receiver off the hook, won’t I? Goodnight, Ed.” Click.
She did it, too. Left it off the hook, that is. I’m such a stupid jerk. Never warn anybody. Just do it.
So now I’m pacing, which is what I always do to keep hysteria at bay. If Victoria hadn’t behaved so completely out of character, I wouldn’t be this strung-out. And because I can’t be with her, can’t reach her, my apprehension is augmented. I expect the worst.
The engaging Dr. Brandt, the psychiatrist I visited when Victoria and I were newly married, barely had me inside his office door when he decided to roll up his clinical sleeves and go to work onthis neurosis of mine. This didn’t please me because at the time what I saw as my problem was a temporary loss of imagination. That is, I was panicky because I could not construct a scenario of success in my future. I didn’t regard the apprehension I experienced when I was away from Victoria as a particularly thorny difficulty. At that point I had resolved I wouldn’t let her out of my sight aside from the eight hours a day we spent apart at work. That solved my problem.
Dr. Brandt, however, chose to label my attitude towards Victoria as unhealthy and described it as “infantile separation anxiety.” According to him, whenever circumstances prevent me from being with Victoria, my perception of the world reverts to that of a child. My emotional ties to Victoria, Brandt said, are not the mature ones of a husband to a wife, but those of a child to his mother. Therefore, when I am prevented from being with Victoria, I experience the separation anxiety of a young child, an anxiety compounded by an adult’s ability to imagine dreadful contingencies: rape, murder, automobile accidents, etc. Furthermore, he went on to say that in his clinical experience he has seldom encountered a “socially functioning individual” who perceived his environment to be as threatening and consistently hostile as I apparently did. If my world-view was not significantly modified by therapy I could expect to experience a breakdown in the future. At best I was sure to suffer some severe dysfunction. He thought I already displayed symptoms of burgeoning agoraphobia.
Yet I believe that after only seven sessions with Dr. Brandt I was coming close to convincing him my portrait of the world was more accurate than his own. But perhaps I flatter myself. Still, he asked me to find another therapist. Instead, I went home and announced to Victoria that Dr. Brandt had pronounced me cured. Victoria never did tell me what he said when she phoned him, seeking corroboration of the miracle.
On reflection, what I
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