/13/ Real Therapy
DR. IRVING FRANKEL TURNED out to be a slim, slightly balding, older gentleman with a warm smile, a calming demeanor, and a Ph.D., thankfully not a psychiatrist.
Dr. Frankel would stick with me for the long haul. He wouldn’t talk about his daughter’s algebra exam. He wouldn’t tell me that I was straight or gay or that I couldn’t possibly be homosexual. He wouldn’t suggest that I figure things out for myself. He wouldn’t tell me to masturbate more frequently or find a woman to date. He wouldn’t want to go to the beach with me.
Dr. Frankel would listen and talk and listen some more. Dr. Frankel would laugh. Dr. Frankel would let me suffer.
At times, therapy with Irving Frankel was like being tethered to an infinitely long piece of rope. I would wander aimlessly, lost in my thoughts amid psychic mazes, while he let out more slack. Sometimes it was frightening. That slack in the rope made me anxious and afraid that I would not find my way back unless Dr. Frankel reeled me in.
I would grope through my memories and feelings looking for words but often not verbalizing what was going on in my head, wondering if he still had hold of his end of the rope. I had to trust that he did and that he would pull me back if need be.
Often the wise doctor would remain silent, deliberately, it seemed, allowing my anxiety to grow, until my random thoughts could crystallize into words, fragments of a sentence, a complete thought. The lifeline gave me the freedom to explore and a way to get back, but I persisted in remaining inert, stuck, resisting any action or change that might threaten my safe but unsatisfying emotional balancing act.
I saw Irving about once a week for nearly four years, but, remarkably, I remember only a few conversations between us. Certainly my homosexuality was the main issue for me: how I got that way and, more importantly, how not to be what I was or, godforbid, how to be what I was. I still wasn’t sure which. ...
At some point during our first year of therapy, I discovered Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story in Barnes and Noble’s gay and lesbian section. It was the first gay novel I ever read; and while I could relate to it on some level, it was not a story that even remotely reflected my experience. When I finished it I gave it to Irving and asked him to read it.
It wasn’t exactly my life, but I think I wanted him to know that there were others. “See, soul searching, like me,” I said.
It was also a gesture of trust, an attempt to broach the subject of my sexuality again, perhaps at a deeper level than before. When I asked about the book some weeks later, he had it on the side table next to his chair.
“I did read some of it,” he confessed. “But, I’m sorry, I just couldn’t get very far.” He did not elaborate but handed the book to me.
With the book in my hands, I left on one of my mental excursions and Dr. Frankel let out the rope freely.
After some long minutes of silence, Irving said, “You seem far away. What’s going on?”
When I get terribly anxious, words will inevitably fail me. So does rational expression. Thoughts, feelings, anxiety spill over into irrational behavior or symbolic acting out...
So, when asked what I was thinking, I took A Boy’s Own Story with the picture of a melancholy-looking homosexual boy on the cover that Dr. Frankel had just handed to me. I looked at the book as if it were another dread disease and I tore the paperback in two, down the binding; and then tore pages out and tore the pages in half and the halves into pieces.
... I was crying, “That’s not me. It’s not me, it can’t be me!” Tears flowed down my cheeks and I repeated, “it’s not me…it’s not me.” I gasped for breath and sobbed from deep in my gut.
When my outburst subsided I got down on the floor, picked up the torn pages of Edmund White’s life, and threw them into the wastebasket.
I can’t remember if Dr. Frankel and I exchanged any words. I’m sure he said something kind to acknowledge the intimacy of the moment and, indicating that our time was up, said gently, “I’ll see you next week.”
We continued to meet through the spring and into the summer. Dr. Frankel’s therapy must have been imperceptibly chipping away at my resistance.
2 comments:
I think the action said more than any words could. Good that you had your lifeline there.
PS - Of course I totally relate to your angst there. I occurs to me that I went through it in 10th grade when the bullying and name calling was at its height, and it was horrible: to realize you are not a regular boy, will never be a regular guy, but just this horrible thing everybody hates. A homo. That's when I first started wanting to kill myself.
A change of schools helped and so did embracing an all-consuming faith. That did its own damage, of course, but it gave me something to cling to. It was ten long years later before I came out, met other gay people, and began to live *my* life, not somebody else's idea of what was right for me.
(But hey Frank, just between us - don't repeat this, okay? - sometimes it still bugs me. Not being a regular guy, I mean. But you gotta play the hand you're dealt, ya know? So you just move on and live your life, and be content with the self you've got. It could be worse. Like being a Republican or something.)
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