The Broom of the System

8
1990
/a/

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF RAP SESSION, THURSDAY, 26 AUGUST 1990, IN THE OFFICE OF DR. CURTIS JAY, PH.D. PARTICIPANTS: DR. CURTIS JAY AND MS. LENORE BEADSMAN, AGE 24, FILE NUMBER 770-01-4266.

DR. JAY: So it would be safe to characterize yesterday as just not a good day at all, then.
MS. LENORE BEADSMAN: I think that would be a safe assessment, yes.
JAY: And how does that make you feel?
LENORE: Well, I think sort of by definition a day that isn’t good at all makes you feel pretty shitty, right?
JAY: Do you feel pressured into feeling shitty?
LENORE: What?
JAY: If a bad day is by definition one that makes you feel shitty, do you feel pressured to feel shitty about a bad day, or do you feel natural about it?
LENORE: What the hell does that have to do with anything?
JAY: The question makes you uncomfortable.
LENORE: No, it makes me feel like I just listened to a pretty meaningless and dumb question, which I’m afraid I think that was.
JAY: I don’t think it’s dumb at all. Aren’t you the one who complains of feeling pressured and coerced into feeling and doing the things you feel and do? Or do I have you confused with some other long/time client and friend?
LENORE: Look, maybe it’s just safe to say that I feel shitty because bad things are happening, OK? Lenore acts incredibly weird and melodramatic for about a month, then just decides to leave the place where she’s supposed to live as a cold-blooded semi-invalid, and to take people with her, even though she’s ninety-two, and she doesn’t bother to call to say what’s going on, even though they’re obviously still in Cleveland, see for instance Mrs. Yingst’s walker, which could only have gotten in my room at about six-thirty last night, and my father clearly knows what’s up, see for instance having Karl Rummage tell Mr. Bloemker all this stuff yesterday morning before anybody knew, and he doesn’t bother to let me know either, and takes off for Corfu, and I think someone may have given my bird Vlad the Impaler LSD because he’s now blabbering all the time, which he never did before, and it’s conveniently mostly obscene stuff that Mrs. Tissaw’s going to flip about and evict me for if she hears it, and my job really bites the big kielbasa right now because there are like massive mess-ups in the phone lines and we don’t have our number anymore and people keep calling for all sorts of bizarre other things, and of course no sign of anybody from Interactive Cable today, this morning, and then at the switchboard I get a lot of flowers and some supposedly humorously nearly empty boxes of candy, and it turns out they’re from Mr. Bombardini ...
JAY: Norman Bombardini?
LENORE: ... Yes, who’s our landlord, at Frequent and Vigorous, and who’s unbelievably fat and hostile, and as a fringe benefit also clearly insane, and thinks he’s doing me a huge favor, pardon the pun, by promising me a comer of a soon-to-be-full universe all for myself, and he claims he’s infatuated with me.
JAY: And then there is of course Rick.
LENORE: Rick is Rick. Rick is a constant in every equation. Let’s leave Rick out of this.
JAY: You feel uncomfortable talking about Rick in this context.
LENORE: What context? There’s no context. A context implies something that hangs together. All that’s happening now is that a thoroughly screwed-up life that’s barely hung together is now even less well hung together.
JAY: So the woman is worried that her life is not “well hung.”
LENORE: Go suck a rock.
Dr. Jay pauses. Lenore Beadsman pauses.
JAY: Interesting, though.
LENORE: What?
JAY: Don’t you think? Don’t you think it’s rather an interesting situation? Set of situations?
LENORE: Meaning what?
JAY: Meaning very little. Only that if one is going to feel shitty, to continue your use of the adjective, about not having enough “control” over things, and we of course admit freely that we still haven’t been able satisfactorily to articulate what we mean by that, yet, have we ... ?
LENORE: God, the plural tense, now.
JAY: ... that it’s at least comparatively desirable to be impotently involved in an interesting situation, rather than a dull one, is that not so?
LENORE: Interesting to whom?
JAY: Ah. That matters to you.
LENORE: It matters to me a lot.
JAY: I smell breakthrough, I don’t mind telling you. There’s a scent of breakthrough in the air.
LENORE: I think it’s my armpit. I think I need a shower.
JAY: Hiding behind symptomatic skirts is not fair. If I say I smell breakthrough, I smell breakthrough.
LENORE: You always say you smell breakthrough. You say you smell breakthrough almost every time I’m here. I think you must coat your nostrils with breakthrough first thing every morning. What does that mean, anyway, “breakthrough”?
JAY: You tell me.
LENORE: These seat belts on the chair aren’t really for the patients’ safety on the track, are they? They’re to keep your jugular from being lunged for about thirty times a day, right?
JAY: You feel anger.
LENORE: I feel shitty. Pure, uncoerced shitty. Interesting for whom? JAY: Whom might there be to interest?
LENORE: Now what the hell does that mean?
JAY: The smell of breakthrough is getting weaker.
LENORE: Well, look.
JAY: Yes?
LENORE: Suppose Gramma tells me really convincingly that all that really exists of my life is what can be said about it?
JAY: What the hell does that mean?
LENORE: You feel anger.
JAY: I have an ejection button, you know. I can press a button on the underside of this drawer, here, and send you screaming out into the lake.
LENORE: You must be about the worst psychologist of all time. Why won’t you ever let me go with my thoughts?
JAY: I’m sorry.
LENORE: That’s why I’m here, right? That’s why I pay you roughly two-thirds of everything I make, right?
JAY: I’m honored and ashamed, all at once. Back to the Grandmother, and a life that’s told, not lived.
LENORE: Right.
JAY: Right.
LENORE: So what would that mean?
JAY: In all earnestness I say you tell me.
LENORE: Well see, it seems like it’s not really like a life that’s told, not lived; it’s just that the living is the telling, that there’s nothing going on with me that isn’t either told or tellable, and if so, what’s the difference, why live at all?
JAY: I really don’t understand.
LENORE: Maybe it just makes no sense. Maybe it’s just completely irrational and dumb.
JAY: But obviously it bothers you.
LENORE: Pretty keen perception. If there’s nothing about me but what can be said about me, what separates me from this lady in this story Rick got who eats junk food and gains weight and squashes her child in her sleep? She’s exactly what’s said about her, right? Nothing more at all. And same with me, seems like. Gramma says she’s going to show me how a life is words and nothing else. Gramma says words can kill and create. Everything.
JAY: Sounds like Gramma is maybe half a bubble off plumb, to me. LENORE: Well, just no. She’s not crazy and she’s sure not stupid. You should know that. And see, the thing is, if she can do all this to me with words, if she can make me feel this way, and perceive my life as screwed way up and not hung together, and question whether I’m really even me, if there is a me, crazy as that sounds, if she can do all that just by talking to me, with just words, then what does that say about words?
JAY: “... she said, using words.”
LENORE: Well exactly. There it is. Lenore would totally agree. Which is why it sometimes just drives me nuts that Rick wants to talk all the time. Talk talk talk. Tell tell tell. At least when he tells me stories, it’s up-front and clear what’s story and what isn‘t, right?
JAY: I’m getting a scent.
LENORE: I don’t think the armpit theory should be rejected out of hand.
JAY: Why is a story more up-front than a life?
LENORE: It just seems more honest, somehow.
JAY: Honest meaning closer to the truth?
LENORE: I smell trap.
JAY: I smell breakthrough. The truth is that there’s no difference between a life and a story? But a life pretends to be something more? But it really isn’t more?
LENORE: I would kill for a shower.
JAY: What have I said? What have I said? I’ve said that hygiene anxiety is what?
LENORE: According to whom?
JAY: Ejection remains an option. Don’t misdirect so transparently. According to me and to my truly great teacher, Olaf Blentner, the pioneer of hygiene anxiety research....
LENORE: Hygiene anxiety is identity anxiety.
JAY: I am gagging on the stench of breakthrough.
LENORE: I’ve been having digestive trouble, too, really, so don’t.... JAY: Shut up. So comparisons between real life and story make you feel hygiene anxiety, a.k.a. identity anxiety. Plus the fact that delightfully nice and helpful Lenore Senior, whose temporary little junket I must say does not exactly fill me with grief, indoctrinates you on the subject of words and their extra-linguistic efficacy. Do some math for me, here, Lenore.
LENORE: Wrongo. First of all, Gramma’s whole thing is that there’s no such thing as extra-linguistic efficacy, extra-linguistic anything. And also, what’s with this throwing around words like “indoctrinates” and “efficacy”? Which Rick uses on me all the time, too? How come you and Rick not only always say the same things to me, but the same words? Are you a team? Do you fill him in on this stuff? Is this why he’s so completely uncharacteristically cool about not asking me what goes on in here? Are you an unethical psychologist? Do you tell?
JAY: Listen to this will you. Aside from the me-being-terribly-hurt issue, why this obsession with whether people are telling all the time? Why is telling robbing control?
LENORE: I don’t know. What time is it?
JAY: Don’t you feel a difference between your life and a telling? LENORE: Maybe just a little water out of that pitcher, there, in either armpit....
JAY: Well?
LENORE: No, I guess not really.
JAY: How come? How come?
Lenore Beadsman pauses.
JAY: How come?
LENORE: What would the difference be?
JAY: Speak up, please.
LENORE: What would the difference be?
JAY: What?
LENORE: What would the difference be?
JAY: I don’t believe this. Blentner would twirl. You don’t feel a difference?
LENORE: OK, exactly, but what’s “feeling,” then?
JAY: The smell is overpowering. I can’t stand it. Just let me tie this hankie over my nose, here.
LENORE: Flake.
JAY: (muffled) Who cares about defining it? Can’t you feel it? You can feel the way your life is; who can feel the life of the junk-food lady in Rick’s story?
LENORE: She can! She can!
JAY: Are you nuts?
LENORE: She can if it’s in the story that she can. Right? It says she feels such incredible grief over squashing her baby that she lapses into a coma, so she does and does.
JAY: But that’s not real.
LENORE: It seems to be exactly as real as it’s said to be.
JAY: Maybe it is your armpit, after all.
LENORE: I’m outta here.
JAY: Wait.
LENORE: Hit the chair-start button, Dr. Jay.
JAY: Jesus.
LENORE: The lady’s life is the story, and if the story says, “The fat pretty woman was convinced her life was real,” then she is. Except what she doesn’t know is that her life isn’t hers. It’s there for a reason. To make a point or give a smile, whatever. She’s not even produced, she’s educed. She’s there for a reason.
JAY: Whose reasons? Reason as in a person’s reason? She owes her existence to whoever tells?
LENORE: But not necessarily even a person, is the thing. The telling makes its own reasons. Gramma says any telling automatically becomes a kind of system, that controls everybody involved.
JAY: And how is that?
LENORE: By simple definition. Every telling creates and limits and defines.
JAY: Bullshit has its own unique scent, have you noticed?
LENORE: The fat lady’s not really real, and to the extent that she’s real she’s just used, and if she thinks she’s real and not being used, it’s only because the system that educes her and uses her makes her by definition feel real and non-educed and non-used.
JAY: And you’re telling me that’s the way you feel?
LENORE: You’re dumb. Is that really a Harvard diploma? I have to leave. Let me leave, please. I have to go to the ladies’ room.
JAY: Come see me tomorrow.
LENORE: I don’t have any money left.
JAY: Come see me the minute you have money. I’m here for you. Get Rick to give you money.
LENORE: Set my chair in motion, please.
JAY: We’ve made enormous strides, today.
LENORE: In your ear.
/b/

26 August

Monroe Fieldbinder Collection: “Fire.”

Monroe Fieldbinder drew his white fedora over his eyes and grinned wryly at the scene of chaos all around him.
Monroe Fieldbinder drew his fedora over his eyes and grinned wryly at the chaos that surrounded him. The flames of the burning house leaped into the night air and cast long, spindly shadows of Fieldbinder and the firemen and the gawkers down the rough new concrete suburban street. Undulating shrouds of sparks whirled and glowed in the spring wind. As he stood on the running board of a fire engine, yelling instructions to his men, the fire chief spotted Fieldbinder.
“Thought you’d be here, Fieldbinder,” said the chief, a grizzled old white-haired man with a rubicund face. “What took you so long?”
“Traffic.” Fieldbinder grinned wryly at the chief. “Looks like a bit of a mess, here, Chief”
/c/

A Phase III Centrex 28 console with a number 5 Crossbar has features which greatly aid the console operator in the efficient performance of his or her duties. Six receiving trunks correspond to six Source Receiving Call lamps, which flash at 60 Illuminations Per Minute for Out-House calls and 120 Illuminations Per Minute for In-House calls, and which emit at 60 Signals Per Minute a pleasant yet attention-getting tone. Calls can be transferred in-house via the Start In button, the individual extension code, and the Release Destination button, with the Ready lamp and an audible “access-established” dial tone assisting the operator in a smooth transfer. A completed transfer circuit will occupy a trunk until one or both parties terminate the circuit. As in all fixed-loop operations, the Source- and Destination lamps will remain lit until appropriate parties disconnect. As in all fixed-loop operations, simultaneous occupation of all six trunks will result in an All Paths Busy signal and a 120 IPM flash in the console’s Position Release button. The Position Release button allows the operator to exit all completed transfer circuits, and to abort any transfer circuit not yet completed. Other features include a HOLD option to be used when service-area conditions render its use appropriate, and a Position Busy button, an automatic all-trunk feed-lock that renders the console inaccessible from standard trunk circuits, and allows the operator to attend to urgent extra-console business when such arises.
Lunchtime, Bombardini Company and Frequent and Vigorous employees herding through the marble lobby and out the revolving door to lunch, the lobby a big box of noise for a few moments, Judith Prietht had depressed her Position Busy button and was reading a People magazine. Lenore Beadsman sat with wet hair over the Frequent and Vigorous console, answering calls.
“Frequent and Vigorous,” she said.
“F*cking car won’t start,” said a voice.
“Sir, I’m afraid this is not Cleveland Towing, this is Frequent and Vigorous Publishing, Inc., shall I give you the correct number, though it may not work? You’re very welcome.” Lenore Released and then Accessed. “Frequent and Vigorous. Hi Mr. Roxbee-Cox, this is Lenore Beadsman, her roommate. She’s supposed to be in again at six. I will. OK. Frequent and Vigorous.”
The Position Release button gives the console operator a significant amount of control over any and all communication circuits of which he or she is a part. Depression of the button will immediately terminate any given active console circuit. Like hanging up, only faster and better and more satisfying. An additional and not explicitly authorized feature, introduced by Vem Raring, the night operator, with a trash-bag twistie and his son’s Cub Scout knife, allows any and all abusive parties to be put in a HOLD mode unre leasable from that party’s end and so rendering that party’s telephone service inoperative until such time as the console operator decides to let him or her off the hook, so to speak. Exceptionally abusive calls placed in this mode can also, again thanks to Vern Raring, with the help of the Start Out button and a twelve-digit intertrunk reroute code and long-distance service number, be transferred to any extremely expensive long-distance service point in the world, with Australia and the People’s Republic of China being particular favorites of operators inclined to exercise this option.
“I’m going insane,” Lenore said. “This is nuts. This thing has hardly stopped beeping and ringing and shrieking once, and there’s been like one semi-legitimate call all day.”
“Now you know what it’s like to work for a change,” said Judith Prietht, thumbing through her magazine.
“Was it like this for Candy on my lunch hour?”
“How should I know, I’d like to know? I had affairs to attend to myself.” Judith wet a finger and turned a page. A Tab can with red-orange lipstick around the hole and a bag of dull-colored knitting sat on the white counter next to Judith’s console. Lenore had a ginger ale and four books, none of which she’d even gotten to open.
There was jingling and whistling out there. Out of the black line of shadow in front of the switchboard cubicle stepped Peter Abbott.
“Hola, ” said Peter Abbott.
“You,” “ Lenore said over the beeping of the console, ”you fix our lines this minute.“
“An unbelievably nasty problem,” Peter Abbott said, coming around the side of the counter and into the cubicle. Judith Prietht plumped up both sides of her hairdo with her hands. “The office is frantic,” Peter said. “You might be interested to know that this is the worst problem since ‘81 and the ice storm in March and the all-Cleveland-numbers-mysteriously-busy-all-the-time problem, and the worst non-storm-related problem of all time, in Cleveland.”
“What an honor.”
“Pain in the ass, I’m sure, is more like it,” Peter Abbott said.
Judith Prietht was looking up at Peter. “How are you today?”
Peter gave her the fish eye. “Bueno,”
“So is it the console?” Lenore asked, looking down at the console as if it might be diseased. “Is that why you’re here, and not the tunnel man?”
“I’m here for P.R.,” said Peter, eyeing Lenore’s cleavage again. “I was just over at Big B.M. Cafe, and before that Bambi’s Den, which by the way holy cow. And you should see Big Bob Martinez over at the cafe. He’s so pissed. And I just now got done talking to your head guy upstairs, just now, Mr. Vigorous, the little fruit fly in the beret and double chin?”
“Ixnay,” said Judith Prietht.
“So is it the console,” said Lenore.
“We’re assuming not,” Peter Abbott said. “We’re still assuming it’s the tunnels. Otherwise why would targets outside your console-access field be affected?”
“Assuming? You’re assuming?”
“Oh, an extra-special look back at the Olympics!” Judith Prietht said into her People.
“Well, yes,” said Peter Abbott. He fingered a wire-stripper uncomfortably.
“The tunnel guy hasn’t found anything?”
“Well, Tunnels is just having some problems of its own, really, that aren’t helping Interactive Cable’s ability to deal effectively with this service problem at all,” said Peter Abbott.
“Problems.”
“Tunnel men are flakey. Tunnel men tend to be drips. It looks like the tunnel guys have decided to just take off for a while, go fishing or whore-chasing or something. They even like haven’t told their wives where they’re going, and Mr. Sludgeman, who’s the Tunnel Supervisor, is understandably really pissed off, also.”
“So wait. We have a hideous tunnel problem that totally impedes our ability to conduct business....”
Judith Prietht snorted.
“... and Interactive Cable all of a sudden, whom we pay for service, doesn’t have the staff needed to restore our service? Is that it?”
“P.R. isn’t really my specialty, you know,” said Peter Abbott.
“That really sucks,” Lenore said.
“Could I just say in passing that you have incredibly beautiful legs?” said Peter Abbott.
“Fresh,” said Judith Prietht.
“Fresh?”
“Go into our tunnel,” Lenore said to Peter Abbott. The console was beeping insanely. Lenore had only recently gotten the hang of ignoring the console when she really had to. “Go and restore our service this instant. I’m sure everyone would be grateful, especially the apparently very busy girls over at Bambi‘s, if you get my drift.” Or get Mr. Sledgeman to go fix them.“
Sludgeman.“
“Sludgeman.”
“Mr. Sludgeman can’t go, he’s in a wheelchair. He broke his spine in the ice-storm crisis of ‘81. And I can’t go down. You can’t mess with the tunnels, they’re real delicate. Think of them like nerves, and the city’s a body, with a nervous system. I go in and clunk around, and mess things up even more, and then where are we? Nerves cannot be messed with by the untrained. A tunnel man needs incredible finesse.”
“Even though they’re drips.”
“Right.”
“Holy cow,” Judith Prietht said into her magazine. “Holy cow. Kid, listen to this.”
“I’m sure Mr. Vigorous went on record as saying that Frequent and Vigorous is collectively really ticked off about this,” said Lenore.
“Kid, listen. Kopek Spasova. Kopek Spasova,” Judith said. “The superstar. ”
“Who?” said Peter Abbott.
“Kopek Spasova, the little kid from Russia that wins all the gold medals all over the place in gymnastics. She’s coming to Cleveland next Friday, it says. She’s going to exhibit.”
“May I please see that?” Lenore said. The console was hushed for a moment. “Holy mackerel,” said Lenore. In People there was a picture of Kopek Spasova, at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, spinning around the uneven parallel bars, holding on only by her toes. “She was really great,” Lenore said. “I watched that on television.”
“It said she’s coming to an exhibition sponsored by Gerber’s Baby Food in the lobby of Erieview Tower,” Judith said.
“ ‘Kicking off a promotional campaign for the infant-food giant will be hot gymnastic commodity Kopek Spasova,’ ” Lenore read out loud, “ ‘whose father and coach, Ruble Spasov, just signed a purportedly mammoth promotional and endorsement contract with the firm.’ That’s just in few days.”
“Endorsing baby food?” said Peter Abbott.
“Well, she’s only something like eight, and really small,” said Lenore. She looked back down at the magazine. “ Dad’s not going to be pleased at all. Gerber’s done it again. And right here in Cleveland.”
“How can a communist do endorsements in the U.S. of A., anyway?” asked Judith Prietht. “There are death-penalty rules against that, in Russia, I thought.”
“She’s not Russian anymore,” said Lenore.
“Oh, right, she’s the one whose father just defecated.”
“Defected.”
“That’s the one!”
“Right.”
“I gotta go. I gotta go do P.R. at Fuss ‘n’ Feathers Pets,” Peter Abbott said. “The minute we get competent access to the tunnels, you’re going to get satisfaction, I’m telling you straight out right now. ”
“How comforting.”
“Take care.”
“Kopek Spasova ... goodbye!” called Judith Prietht.
“Adios.”
“I’d like to see that,” said Lenore. “Frequent and Vigorous.”
/d/

Every year in August Monroe Fieldbinder took a vacation and took his family deep into the woods to a lake in the Adirondacks. On this particular day Monroe Fieldbinder stood alone at the edge of the clear clean cold Adirondack lake, his fishing line limp in the clear water, and stared across the lake at a vacation house burning in the woods above the opposite shore. Fieldbinder listened to the distant crackle and watched the black plume of smoke spiral up into the crisp blue sky. He saw shrouds of twirling sparks and the tiny figures of the house’s occupants running around yelling and throwing buckets of water onto the edge of the inferno. Fieldbinder pulled his white fishing hat over his eyes and grinned wryly at the chaotic scene. and grinned ryly at the scene.
/e/

“Get him down! Get him down!”
“Got him.”
“Get him down, Shorlit!”
“I gotcha.”
“God, what a racket.”
“God.”
“We need Wetzel. Ring Wetzel.”
“He’s out of his mind.”
“Just hold him, Wetzel’ll be here.”
“We’re gonna have to wrap him.”
“He’s right, go get a wrap. Wetzel, go get a wrap, run!”
“jesus.”
“It’s OK, it’s OK.”
“Is he gonna be OK?”
“Can you just stand back, please?”
“Got in the cab, wanted to go to the Loop, I says OK, I’m doin’ like he asks me, I get to Wacker and LaSalle and he starts screaming like that. I didn’t know what the hell to do.”
“You did the right thing. Please go stand over there. Shorlit, how you doing? You got him?”
“Barely. Shit.”
“Strong little guy.”
“Out of his mind.”
“He flipped. He just totally f*cking flipped out. Thought I was gonna have an accident getting him here.”
“It’s OK, it’s OK.”
“He’s gonna tear his throat out.”
“Let’s just get the wrap on him.”
“Roll him over.”
“Ow! Little bastard.”
“Sshh, it’s OK.”
“Get the arm.”
“Ow!”
“Roll him back. Wetzel, roll him back.”
“I got him.”
“Tighten it. Careful, his ribs. One more.”
“Gotcha.”
“Jesus God will you listen to that.”
“Get him in. Wetzel, carry him. Shorlit, get a gumey with leg straps. ”
“I gotcha.”
“Christ, he weighs about ninety pounds. He’s a skeleton.”
“Can’t you make him stop?”
“You’re going to have to get back out of the way.”
“Thorazine?”
“I want Thorazine, 250 c.c.’s. Get a rubber, he may swallow his tongue. Shorlit, get the door.”
“It’s OK, sshh, listen we’re here to help.”
“How can he keep it up? He’s gonna stroke.”
“Get a rubber.”
“Put him down.”
“Jesus.”
“Straps.”
“Thorazine.”
“Give me access to an arm, Shorlit.”
“Come on.”
“Forget the rubber till we get him out. He’ll bite your finger.”
“People are gonna think we’re killing somebody down here.”
“Been drivin’ a cab seventeen years.”
“Please wait outside.”
“Never seen any shit like that.”
“Wetzel.”
“Let’s go, pal. You can wait out here.”
“Go with the orderly, please.”
“It’ll kick, wait a second.”
“Jesus.”
“Look at the eyes. They roll over. They’ll roll back when it kicks.”
“It’s kicking.”
“Thank God.”
“My ears are ringing.”
“Holy shit.”
“You better get a drip ready. Call up on five and fill them in, Cathy, OK? First get the drip.”
“Shit.”
“Thanks, you guys. Shorlit, you want to see if he’s got ID?”
“I’ll roll him over.”
“It’s pretty much kicked.”
“Christ, he wet his pants.”
“I’m going to call up and let Golden know we didn’t murder anybody.”
“No ID.”
“Check his chest. A necklace, tags.”
“Umm ...”
“Undo him. It’s OK, it kicked.”
“I’m gonna go call. Try to find ID, then take him over to Series Start.”
“Jesus.”
“Hell of a start to the night.”
“Here’s a necklace.”
“Pretty nice one.”
“ ‘To JB From LB.’ ”
“His eyes are back, anyway.”
“It’s OK.”
/f/

Just a troubling flash of the Queen Victoria dream, last night. Just a strobe of a florid patch of red dough, curled in scorn. A new one, though. Sinister. Lenore is not unresponsible. This one should make Jay’s day.
I am driving in Mexico, in a Lincoln. The air conditioner is broken. It is unbearably hot. I am wearing a wool suit. The suit is soaked with perspiration. The sand of the desert is black. I have reservations at a motel. I pull up to the motel and park by a cactus. There are scorpions. The motel sign says NO VACANCY, even though it’s in Mexico. But I have a reservation, and I assert that I do to the desk clerk standing behind the counter in a lobby that smells like a burp. The desk clerk is an enormous mouse, with a huge handlebar mustache. The mouse is wearing a faded woolen Mexican poncho.
“I have a reservation,” I say.
“Sí,” says the mouse.
The mouse leads me through a hole in the wall (eat it, Jay, I defy you not to eat it up) to a room that is lovely and air-conditioned and perfect and complete in every way except that it has no sheets on the bed.
“Gee,” I say, “there are no sheets on this bed.”
The mouse looks at me. “Seor,” he says, “if you sheet on my bed, I will keel you.”
We both laugh, and the mouse punches me in the arm.
/g/

“Good moming.”
“Good morning. How are you this morning?”
“I’m just fine, thanks, Patrice. Shall we begin?”
“Oh, please.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“Oh, no.”
“What is your name?”
“My name is Patrice LaVache.”
“What is your married name?”
“My married name is Patrice Beadsman.”
“How old are you?”
“I am fifty years old.”
“Where are you?”
“I am at a sanitarium in Madison, Wisconsin.”
“What is the name of the sanitarium?”
“....”
“Whom do you look like?”
“I look like John Lennon.”
“Why?”
“I am sharp-featured and wear round John Lennon glasses and have brown hair in a ponytail.”
“Why are you here?”
....“
“Why are you here?”
“Because I want to be.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Years and years.”
“What do you see?”
“I see a trellis I have to climb.”
“Why do you have to climb the trellis?”
“Because I am at the top of the trellis and I have to climb it.”
“What is wrong with the trellis?”
“West bids four hearts.”
“What is wrong with the trellis?”
“The trellis is white, with vines with thorns. They scratch my stomach my stomach is fat.”
“What is wrong with the trellis.”
“The trellis has a crack at the top near the window and it pulls away from the wall and breaks off, the trellis breaks off, with vines that bleed when they break.”
“How high.”
“May I please breathe?”
“Yes.”
“....”
“How high?”
“Around ... the sun. It’s a doozy.”
“Where are you hurt.”
“My back is hurt. My collarbone is hurt. Like a blister I popped open. I gave birth to a blister in the flowers.”
“How far did you fall?” “....”
“I fell for years.”
“Were you hurt.”
“I am.”
“What do you want.”
“Punish me, please.”
“Please tell me what you want to be punished for.”
“For climbing, and falling, and breathing.”
“Who was at the top of the trellis?”
“May I please breathe?”
“Yes.”
“....”
“Who was at the top of the trellis.”
“Nobody.”
“Who was at the top of the trellis.”
“A window.”
“Whose window.”
“John and Lenore’s. Clarice’s. Lenore’s window.”
“Lenore was in the window.”
“It cracked.”
“The trellis.”
“Yes.”
“Who was with Lenore?”
“I need to breathe.”
“Breathe. Here, breathe. Let me wipe off your lip.”
“Thank you. Lenore’s governess was with Lenore.”
“What was her name?”
“I don’t know the name of Lenore’s governess.”
“Who was a prisoner?”
“Punish me, please.”
“Was Lenore a prisoner?”
“It would be so fun to breathe.”
“Was Lenore a prisoner?”
“My son is in horrible trouble, in the south. Higher than the trellis in the south. Smitten from afar. My son is burning in a white place. My son’s eyes are white now. Needs something to make himself dark, in the game. Cut.”
“Patrice. Breathe.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can. You are. Watch yourself breathe, Patrice.” “....”
“Was Lenore a prisoner?”
“No she was not a ... prisoner.”
“Why not?”
“God.”
“Why not?”
“My son.”
“Who was the prisoner, Patrice?”
“....”
“Who was the prisoner, Patrice?”
....“
....“
“Good morning how are you this morning.”
/h/

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF RAP SESSION, THURSDAY, 26 AUGUST 1990, IN THE OFFICE OF DR. CURTIS JAY, PH.D. PARTICIPANTS: DR. CURTIS JAY AND MR. RICK
VIGOROUS, AGE 42, FILE NUMBER 744-25-4291.
DR. JAY: Hell of a dream.
RICK VIGOROUS: Bet your ass.
JAY: Mice, again.
RICK: Hate mice.
JAY: Yes?
RICK: Yes.
JAY: Can we possibly articulate why?
RICK: Mice are small, soft, and weak. Mice scuttle. Mice get inside things and gnaw. Mice tickle.
JAY: Pretty unclean animals, too, aren’t they?
RICK: Dr. Jay, I swear to God, mention hygiene anxiety just once, here, and I’m going to lunge.
JAY: The prospect of discussing hygiene anxiety makes you uncomfortable.
RICK: Lunge-alert.
JAY: Fine. Your comfort is after all our number one priority, here. RICK: Damn well ought to be.
JAY: What would you like to talk about, then?
RICK : Lenore.
JAY: I rather think not, today, if you don’t mind.
RICK: Pardon me?
JAY: It just so happens Lenore and I made enormous strides today. I smelled breakthrough, big time.
RICK: Christ, breakthrough again.
JAY: I’d just rather sit on the Lenore thing and see what comes out. RICK: As it were.
JAY: The jealousy thing, still. You still think I’m sexually interested in Lenore Beadsman.
RICK: I—
JAY: When will you emotionally digest the information that jealousy is simply the stupid man’s misdirected projection of insecurity? Of identity troubles? Of hygiene anxiety?
RICK: I am just so tired of you.
JAY: Sometimes you’re such a clod, Rick. Think about last night’s dream. After what I understand to be fulfilling coitus, then a story, then a fight. Then a dream. The dream. Let’s do the dream. Black sand and scorpions. Where does that put us, now?
Rick Vigorous pauses.
JAY: Awfully tough to figure out. The G.O.D., where else? But Mexico, too. Which is to say here but not here. Which is to say the here of the dreaming unconscious. A luxurious Lincoln in the midst of a blasted region. Self and Other. Difference. Inside-Outside. Except the air conditioner is broken. The Outside is getting in. The heat is the Outside. It’s getting in, because the Inside’s broken. The Inside doesn’t keep the distinction going. The Inside lets the Outside in. And what does it make you do? You sweat. You’re hot and you sweat. What does the Outside do? It makes you unclean. It coats Self with Other. It pokes at the membrane. And if the membrane is what makes you you and the not-you not you, what does that say about you, when the not-you begins to poke through the membrane?
RICK: Look at this, you’re drooling. I can see saliva on your lips. JAY: It makes you insecure, is what it does. It makes you, the “you,” nonsecure, not tightly fastened into your side of the membrane. So what happens? Communications break down. You get confused, cautious. Things don’t mean what they mean. A Mexican motel sign that should be in Spanish says NO VACANCY. Another person, an Other, becomes a threatening animal, a kind that gets inside things and gnaws, to quote. The lobby smells like the nasty dross of digestion. There are language problems.
RICK: Christ, you can tell Lenore was here. How can you let patients dominate you?
JAY: Come on, Lenore and her particular troubles have nothing to do with it. What’s the whole problem? The request you make for a clean, natural thing is interpreted by the Other/foreigner/threatening animal as a threat to soil, to dirty. The disturbance of your security on your interior side of the Self-Other membrane makes you an erratic and dangerous component of everyone else’s Other-set. Your insecurity bleeds out into and contaminates the identities and hygiene networks of Others. Which again simply reinforces the idea of the hygiene-identity-distinction membrane being permeable—permeable via uncleanness, permeable via misunderstanding—which are ultimately, according to Blentner, not coherently distinguishable.
RICK: Blentner, Blentner. Is this all Blentner?
JAY: To a certain extent. So what? Most of what I’ve said comes out of the seminal Heidelberg Hygiene Lectures of 1962. I’d let you look at them, but they‘re—
RICK: I am so tired. You are deliberately unhelpful. I have a freakishly small penis. Attendant self-esteem and security problems. I want help with them. I want to hear about Lenore and her secrets. Instead I hear Olaf Blentner and membranes. Help me with my penis, Jay. Do something useful and help me with my penis.
JAY: Penis, shmenis. What can I do about your penis? You are not your penis. It’s you I’m interested in.
RICK: Christ.
JAY: Are things so bad? You’ve got Lenore, a beautiful, bright, witty, largely joyful albeit troubled and anyway interestingly troubled girl, and she loves you.
RICK: But I don’t have her. I can’t. I never will.
JAY: The Screen Door of the Great House of Love, et cetera et cetera. RICK: Christ.
JAY: Well, Rick, really, get mad if you want and no doubt will, but I think à la Blentner it all comes back to the membrane. I think the membrane is the breakthrough you want. I think it’s membrane we’re both smelling here. You want to use your penis to put what’s inside of you inside an Other, to tear down distinctions the way you want them torn down. You want to have your membrane and eat it too, so to speak. Your desire to bring the Inside out is just an image of your fear of the Outside getting in ... in short, hygiene anxiety.
RICK: F*ck this. Start the chair.
JAY: I’m your friend.
RICK: I have to go to the bathroom in the worst way.
JAY: We’re making strides. You don’t think we’re striding? I insist that we’re striding.
RICK: Schmuck.
JAY: The scent is everywhere.
RICK: You know who you’d get along with really well, is Norman Bombardini.
JAY: You know Norman?
RICK: Good God. I should have known. Let me out of here.
JAY: Come back on Monday. Give Lenore money so she can come back, too.
RICK: Schnook.
JAY: I’m here for you.
/i/

Lenore saw Mr. Bloemker through the window of Gilligan’s Isle as she was passing by after work on her way to the bus stop. Gilligan’s Isle was a little ways down from the Weight Watchers facility Norman Bombardini had pointed out from the restaurant the night before. In Lenore’s purse was a note from Mr. Bombardini, with a smeared chocolate thumbprint in one comer, that had come with an almost empty box of candy to the Frequent and Vigorous switchboard today. The note said “Be my tiny Yin.”
Gilligan’s Isle was a very popular bar. The inside of the place was round, the walls were painted to look like the filmy blue horizon of the ocean, and the floors were painted and textured to resemble beach. There were palm trees all over, fronds hanging down tick lishly over the patrons. Sprouting from the floor of the bar were huge statued likenesses of the whole cast: the Skipper, the Howells, Ginger, and the rest, painted in bright castaway colors and all with uncannily characteristic facial expressions. The huge castaways were sunk into the floor at about chest level; their heads, arms, shoulders, and outstretched upturned hands were all tables for patrons. There was a certain amount of intertwining: Mr. Howell’s arm was wrapped part way around Mrs. Howell’s waist, Mary-Ann’s long hair brushed the plastic top of Mr. Howell’s forearm, the Professor’s thumb hovered achingly close to Ginger’s décolletage. The bar itself was made of that vaguely straw-like material that huts on the show were made of. Behind the bar at all times was one of a number of bartenders, all of whom resembled, to a greater or lesser degree, Gilligan. Once an hour the bartender would be required to do something blatantly cloddish and stupid—a standard favorite had the bartender slipping on a bit of spilled banana daiquiri and falling and acting as if he had driven his thumb into his eye—and the patrons would, if they were hip and in the know, say with one voice, “Aww, Gilligan,” and laugh, and clap.
Mr. Bloemker was sitting at the back, at Mary-Ann’s left hand, facing the front window. With him was a very beautiful woman in a shiny dress who stared blankly straight in front of her. Lenore saw them and came inside and went over to their table.
“Hi Mr. Bloemker,” she said.
Mr. Bloemker looked up with a start. “Ms. Beadsman.”
“Hi.”
“Hello. Fancy meeting ...” Mr. Bloemker looked strange and scooted a tiny bit toward Mary-Ann’s wrist, away from the beautiful woman he had been sitting right next to.
“Well Frequent and Vigorous is just over in the Bombardini Building, over there,” said Lenore, “which you can probably see, if you look over in the comer of the window, over there, with the lights on?”
“Well well.”
“Hi, I’m Lenore Beadsman, I know Mr. Bloemker,” Lenore said to the beautiful woman.
The beautiful woman didn’t say anything; she stared straight ahead.
“Lenore Beadsman, this is Brenda, Brenda, may I present Ms. Lenore Beadsman,” said Mr. Bloemker, his fingers in his beard. In front of both Mr. Bloemker and Brenda were drinks in plastic jugs shaped like pineapples, with straws coming out of holes in the top.
“Hi,” Lenore said to Brenda. “....”
“Please sit down,” said Mr. Bloemker.
Lenore sat. “Is Brenda OK?”
“Please don’t mind Brenda. Brenda is very shy,” Mr. Bloemker said. He was slurring a tiny bit. He was apparently a bit tight. His cheeks were lit up above the tendrils of the top of his beard, his nose shone, his glasses were a little steamed, and he was uncombed, a huge, obscene Superman-curl of hair lying like a giant comma across his forehead.
“I tried to call you today,” said Lenore, “except you weren’t there, and then I could only try once, because we were incredibly busy, what with horrible line trouble and everything.”
“Yes. It was a busy day.”
“I couldn’t have my father call you because he wasn’t in. He’s out for a couple of days, and apparently unreachable.”
“Yes.”
“But the minute he gets back.”
“Fine.”
“And the really big except also troubling news is that I think for sure Lenore and Mrs. Yingst and the other patients are at least still around, in Cleveland, because Mrs. Yingst’s walker was in my apartment last night, and it wasn’t before, and she left a message for me with my bird, who can suddenly talk.”
“Your bird can suddenly talk?”
“Yes. Unfortunately mostly obscenely.”
“I see.”
“To be honest, it’s not inconceivable that Mrs. Yingst gave him LSD.”
“Oh, now, I don’t think Mrs. Yingst would do something like that.”
“But then what’s going on, all these old patients just hanging around Cleveland, and not telling anybody, and staff and staff’s families hanging around, too?”
“Residents.”
“Residents, sorry.” Lenore looked at Brenda. “Listen, are you sure Brenda’s OK? Brenda like hasn’t moved once, that I’ve been able to see, since I got here.” Brenda stared straight ahead out of her beautiful eyes.
Mr. Bloemker looked blankly at Lenore. “Please,” he said, “give Brenda not a thought. It takes Brenda a while to loosen up around strangers.” He looked back down at his pineapple with bleary eyes and played with his straw. “Residents. We call them residents, you know, actually it’s at my insistence that we not call them patients, we call them residents because we try very hard at Shaker Heights to minimize the medical implications of their being with the facility. We try to minimize the appearance of illness, the importance of illness. Without much success, really, I’m afraid.”
“I understand,” said Lenore.
There was a yelp and a crash and tinkle; the bartender lay sprawled over the bar with his head in a palm-tree pot, his legs in white cotton pants waving, beer on the floor. “Aww, Gilligan,” everyone yelled and laughed, except Lenore and Mr. Bloemker and Brenda. Mr. Bloemker scratched under his beard with his straw.
“A troubling and disorienting position at the facility, mine,” he said. He looked up at Lenore. “Why don’t you help yourself to some of Brenda’s Twizzler? Brenda’s not drinking it, I see.”
Brenda stared.
“Well, I don’t really drink alcoholic stuff much,” Lenore said. “It makes me cough.”
“Here.”
“Thanks.”
“Troubling.”
“I can imagine.”
“The old ... the old are not like you and I, Ms. Beadsman. As you no doubt know, having spent so much time around ... at the facility.”
“They’re different, I agree.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.” Lenore tried a bit of Twizzler, got a strong taste of gin and Hawaiian Punch, closed her eyes, discreetly spat the bit of Twizzler back out of the straw into the plastic pineapple jug.
“They are also Midwesterners,” continued Mr. Bloemker. “As a rule, almost all of them are Midwesterners.” He stared off. “This area of the country, what are we to say of this area of the country, Ms. Beadsman?”
“Search me.”
“Both in the middle and on the fringe. The physical heart, and the cultural extremity. Com, a steadily waning complex of heavy industry, and sports. What are we to say? We feed and stoke and supply a nation much of which doesn’t know we exist. A nation we tend to be decades behind, culturally and intellectually. What are we to say about it?”
“Well, you’re saying pretty good things, really; I sense some interest on Brenda’s part, too, I think.”
“This area makes for truly bizarre people. Troubled people. As past historians have noted and future historians will note.”
“Yup.”
“And when the people in question then become old, when they must not only come to terms with and recognize the implications of their consciousness of themselves as parts of this strange, occluded place ... when they must incorporate and manage memory, as well, past perceptions and feelings. Perceptions of the past. Memories: things that both are and aren’t. The Midwest: a place that both is and isn’t. A volatile mixture. I have sensed volatileness at the facility for some time.”
“Does this explain anything, do you think? Disappearance-wise?”
“I think it explains very little.”
“I’m going to give Brenda back her Twizzler. Brenda, here’s your Twizzler back, thanks a lot, I’m just not in the mood. Are you sure she’s OK? Have I offended her somehow?”
“Brenda, don’t be a stick in the mud.”
Brenda was silent.
Mr. Bloemker massaged his chin. “The average age of the residents at the facility—I did some research today at the request of the owners—the average age of the residents at the facility is eighty-seven. Eighty-seven years of age. How old are you, Ms. Beadsman?”
“I’m twenty-four.”
“So you were born in 1966. I was born in 1957. The average resident was born in 1903. Think of that.”
“Boy.”
“These people, think of the worlds they’ve been part of. The worlds. They’ve literally gone from horse and buggy to moonshot. The technological changes alone that they have stood witness to are staggering. How might one even begin to orient oneself with respect to such a series of changes in the fundamental features of the world? How to begin to come to some understanding of one’s place in a system, when one is a part of an area that exists in such a troubling relation to the rest of the world, a world that is itself stripped of any static, understandable character by the fact that it changes, radically, all the time?”
“System?”
Mr. Bloemker looked at his thumb. “Have you ever been to the Desert, Ms. Beadsman? The G.O.D.?”
“Not for quite a while, like ten years. Lenore and I actually used to go. She had a Volvo that we’d take down, do a little fishing at the edge, do the wander-thing.”
“Yes. I would like to go down and wander.”
“Well it’s easy. You can just buy a Wander Pass at any gate. They’re only about five dollars. The really desolate areas can get pretty crowded, of course, sometimes, so it’s good to get there early, get as much wandering as you can in before noon. ”
“Brenda and I may go down soon. I feel a need for ... for sinistemess. I sense Brenda does, too. Am I right, plum petal?” Bloemker carelessly chucked Brenda’s chin with his hand. Brenda tilted way back on the bench, beside Mary-Ann’s hand, until her legs hit the bottom of the table, then sat rapidly up again, vibrating a little. Lenore narrowed her eyes.
“Hmmm.”
“Another thing I must in all frankness admit to finding ... amusing,” Mr. Bloemker said, sucking for a moment on the straw in his jug, drinking at something that smelled to Lenore like another Twizzler, “although I hesitate to use that term, because it sounds as if I mean to be derogatory, which I do not. Our residents, the people who are very old now, have really made our culture what it is. And now by culture I mean this country’s culture, not Ohio’s culture, which I do not profess even to begin to understand. Particularly the women, it seems to me. We like to think the sexual revolution is a creation of our generation. That’s a crock, pardon my language. The women who are now old invented it all. Everything we profess to enjoy. The women who reside in facilities now were the first American women to cut their hair short. The first to drink. To smoke. To dance in public. Shall we discuss voting? Making money? Being economic entities? They were pioneers, these people in wheelchairs with blanketed laps.”
“Listen, are you absolutely sure Brenda’s OK?” Lenore asked. “Because the thing is I haven’t really seen Brenda move once on her own, which it occurs to me now includes seeing her chest move to breathe, or seeing her blink. What’s with Brenda?”
“The cutting of hair. That particularly fascinates me. It freed these women from a prison. An aesthetic prison. It freed them from the one-hundred-brushstrokes-a-night tyranny of the culture that ... obtained.”
“The not blinking really bothers me, I’ve got to tell you. And what’s this on her neck, here? On Brenda’s neck?”
“Birthmark. Pimple.”
“Is this an air-valve? This is an air-valve! See, here’s the cap. Are you sitting with an inflatable doll?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You’re sitting with an inflatable doll! This isn’t even a person.”
“Brenda, this isn’t funny, show Ms. Beadsman you’re a person.”
“My God. See, she weighs about one pound. I can lift her up.” Lenore lifted Brenda way up by the thigh. Brenda suddenly fell out of Lenore’s hand and her head got wedged between the bench and Mary-Ann’s hand, and she was upside down. Her dress fell up.
“Good heavens,” said Mr. Bloemker.
“One of those dolls. That’s just sick. How can you sit in public with an anatomically correct doll?”
“I must confess, the wool seems to have been completely pulled over my eyes. I thought she was simply extremely shy. A troubled Midwestemer, in an ambivalent relation ...”
“Nice doll,” remarked another patron, at Mrs. Howell’s elbow.
“I think Brenda and I should be going,” Mr. Bloemker said. He struggled with Brenda’s plastic legs. Brenda was wedged. Lenore helped Mr. Bloemker pull. Brenda came out, but her dress got caught on Mary-Ann’s thumbnail and ripped and fell off.
“Holy shit,” said Lenore.
“Holy cow,” said the patron at Mrs. Howell’s elbow. “Where’d you get that? Are those expensive?” Other people at different tables turned to look. Things got quiet.
“How excruciatingly ... ,” Bloemker muttered.
“Probably wise to go now,” Lenore said.
“Certainly nice to have seen you, anxiously await your father’s ...” Mr. Bloemker covered Brenda as best he could with his sportcoat and made for the door. There were whistles and claps. Bloemker broke into a run and ran suddenly into the bartender, who was coming around the side of the bar with a tray of creamy White Russians. There was an enormous crash and tinkle, and the bartender flipped over backwards and drove his thumb into his eye, and White Russian went everywhere, and a shard of broken White-Russian glass hit Brenda and punctured her and she flew out of Mr. Bloemker’s arms and went whizzing around the room, twirling, losing air, finally to land limply but beautifully in a palm-tree pot, with one leg wrapped around her neck. Mr. Bloemker flew out the door. Lenore sniffed at his Twizzler. The patrons laughed and clapped,
“Aww, Gilligan.”