Empathy Read online

  Doc didn’t have a PhD. He had never been to medical school. Yet he had spent his entire adult life working steadily as a street-corner psychiatrist. It was one of those occupations that come as a surprise, but once you think it over, street-corner psychiatry makes all the sense in the world. And he was the obvious practitioner because this doctor was always looking for his answer in other people. As a result, he was obliged to look for some hope within them too. He believed in change on a one-to-one basis and in that case therapy was a two-way street. Lacking a diploma didn’t matter. And he didn’t need to be able to prescribe drugs. His patients had enough of those already.

  Doc was more than Freudian. He had been born a Freudian. His parents were psychoanalysts and so he had done his internship and residency simply by growing up. Doc had been raised in psychoanalysis much the same way that other children are brought up in a Protestant church, or communism. Of course, in some ways Freudians are a cult because they have both a reductionist vocabulary and a spiritual leader. They do not have universal appeal. Like all structuralists, Freudians have a system of thought that explains everything. However, the reason Doc felt more akin to Episcopalians than Scientologists was that despite their limited numbers, Freudians have managed to penetrate culture and affect it in silent and unspecified ways. They have managed to be bizarre but seem objective.

  Throughout his life the doctor had slowly unpeeled and discarded the burdens of a Freudian worldview. But the job was only half done. Like an ex-Catholic who can’t stop confessing, the sense of transgression always lingers. Through a system of logical considerations and accumulated life experiences, Doc was able to let his family religion slip through his fingers. For example, he did not give his own parents power over everything. They were often bewildered themselves and made mistakes. Doc and his father had the same way of sitting and listening with expressionless concern. They both waved their arms about broadly as the substitute for a feeling. His mother and he were wildly opinionated and would have been happier in some mass movement somewhere made up of people with hope.

  Another Freudian idea that Doc had abandoned had to do with meaning. He knew that some acts were completely without it. There are things that actually just happen. A third disagreement came in his understanding of sexuality. As hard as Doc tried, he simply could not imagine a way that it could be changed. All you could do was make someone feel bad about it. Finally, after staring at many therapists around the dinner table, Doc had concluded that transference was just another kind of love - no better or worse than the most ordinary romance.

  Still, he did retain one fundamental orthodox concept that had grown into the foundation of his personality and belief system. The doctor maintained that there were reasons for behavior and those reasons could be identified. He believed in the big Why.

  As a result he had a very unhappy life. Whenever he found that someone he loved was hurting him or being hurt by him, he would try to discover why. He would ask, why? But most people don’t want to know why. They just want to keep doing it. Doctor had lived long and loved many and he knew that this was true and would always be true. But he could not accept the silence. So, he gave up on love and went into business because it was more important for him to understand than to have someone to go on vacation with.

  Once, Doc and a woman had gone for a walk. It was near Christmas and all around them Christians were spending money. It was exciting to watch their desperation. Doc and his friend walked slowly as the Christians panicked, wildly stampeding like llamas with the alpaca still on them. The two of them turned down a side street looking for a bookstore where more sedate worshipers would be buying Robert Frost. There, they saw a store window, fully decorated, with no observers. In it was a pyramid of ice. In the ice, forming a pattern by their various locations, live lobsters had been planted tail first. Their claws were stuffed with bright ribbons and wildflowers. As they waved about, struggling to free themselves, the flowers waved too, creating a living ice garden. It was really beautiful. Overcome with the romance of the moment, Doc turned to his companion and said:

  “You are the woman I want to have in my life. I can talk to you and about you at the same time. That is why I will always love you.”

  A great burden was lifted from his chest then. He had finally found a woman to both love and analyze. But unfortunately this did not seem to her to be as valuable as it appeared in Doc’s eyes.

  “I’m going to get you,” she said. “I’m going to outclass you in the minds of other people.”

  With that she fled, her white leather coat flapping in the Christmas night.

  There was a whole relationship beyond what she said that night. She was concrete, not just some particle floating out there with Doc’s other abstract ideas. When did he meet her? How long did they go out? How often did they see each other? He wanted to avoid the whole chronology. Instead, for the next few months he asked himself on a daily basis why she had been so cruel.

  This woman in white leather was clearly an oppression experience. She could not be nice. Yet, to this day, Doc mourned, stupidly, the absence of her hostility. After all, being put down by her was still a relationship, no matter how feeble. Like most mean people she was equally self-centered and malleable. This fascinated Doc. Secondarily, there was something in that combination that reminded him of America. But much more important, he wanted a happy ending. He wanted some modicum of control.

  Now, so much later and alone in his apartment, Doc did some self-analysis.

  I’m not the kind of person for whom time heals. The only thing that heals me is resolution.

  Doc would have no rest until he didn’t care whether she would ever love him again. But God, that would take up so much of his time.

  Time passes very slowly for me, Doc thought.

  “This was an accurate perception,” he said and then remembered, with a start, that it was his own life on the table. He had put his own self on the couch. Warily, he walked through the dark kitchen and shined a flashlight into the bathroom mirror. His face was obscured by glare and shadow. All he saw was one soft lip. He ran back to the bed.

  Even though the doctor was young, he didn’t feel that his life had happened quickly. He felt that it had happened very, very slowly and he fully realized the impact of years of twenty-four-hour days. This was why he hated the past. He never wanted to relive one minute of it. He couldn’t even bear to think about it. He wouldn’t even want to relive breakfast, because the doctor was waiting for a particular thing to happen. A particular explanation.

  Enough reminiscing, Doc told himself sternly. I could spend the rest of my life poring over the first thirty-one years of it.

  Finally he rolled himself out of bed.

  At his feet lay yesterday’s ancient drab clothes. They would do fine. It was easier to dress down when working the street. Frankly, it helped his patients trust him. They didn’t worry about trying to impress. Doc spooned out a cup of instant coffee and ran the comb through his hair. Then, in a burst of impending entrepreneurial spirit, he went downstairs to take care of his own business before the Hare Krishnas got the best corner.

  As soon as he hit Second Avenue, Doc started madly distributing his business cards to reasonable-looking neurotics. Anything to drum up new clientele. Since Doc had a policy of never seeing a patient for more than three sessions, he had to advertise constantly.

  THE DOCTOR IS IN

  LAY ANALYSIS MY SPECIALTY

  RATES YOU CAN EMOTIONALLY ACCEPT

  Plus address and phone number.

  Handing it out with meaningful glances, Doc looked at passersby as potential patients. He wondered which person and their problems would enter and transform his life?

  Doc noticed one young man who had that expression on his face as though he had given up looking for work. He couldn’t stand his jobs, even the one wrapping muffins. Doc could see he was blaming himself, believing the lies on the television set. Doc could tell him how many millions had the same problem. That it
wasn’t personal.

  Another guy passed by. He had a neuromuscular disorder, maybe MS. His boyfriend was scared, didn’t know what to do. Doc could sit down with both of them and lay out the facts. He could help them face it.

  That woman over there had an observant ego. Even though she was tired and on her way to or from work, Doc could tell she watched everything closely. Sessions with her would be a sharing of ideas, a place to freely engage. Doc and she would sit back proposing this or that. They would just talk.

  These strangers filled him with feeling. There were so many things he wanted to go through with them. He wanted to love them. There was a palpable relief in being Doc. He felt suddenly happy, purposeful in life. Being happier let him see more. It put the present day in sharper perspective. Of course, that had its own side effects because then Doc began to notice the other Americans. He started looking around at all the sights one normally ignores. Doc’s focus moved away from the hopeful and on to the fact that more and more people on the street were opting for nonfunction at an increasingly early age. So many men and women stuck needles in their arms. Doc couldn’t even go to the post office without passing two or three on the nod.

  He felt personally responsible. If only he could come up with a solution. It was up to him. Doc couldn’t think of anyone else who could do it. Some of us walk to the store, Doc thought. And some stand there drooling, slowly sliding. The subway makes speeches under our feet.

  When he finished his advertising duties for the day, Doc started wearily back toward home. There was so much bad news in the air and on people’s faces. Recently someone had mentioned that there would be no more winters due to global warming and no more rain forests. But this year was as cold as it had ever been and so even some disaster news was called into question. Personal disasters, however, were everywhere in human form, lumped under blankets in corners or smack in the middle of the sidewalk, bleeding from the face with no gloves while the ambulance took forever.

  “Hello, ambulance?” said Doc into a pay phone. “There is a white man, mid-forties, in a business suit. I think he had a heart attack.”

  It was the only way to get them to come.

  “Are you sure it’s not a homeless person?” the radio dispatcher said.

  “Yes,” Doc said. “He’s wearing a watch.”

  It worked this time but even desperate methods were increasingly undependable because there were fewer and fewer pay phones that actually worked or that took coins and not just calling cards.

  Every time it rained, Doc knew it rained on people. When it snowed, it froze them. There was no longer weather without imagining human objects. The cozy inside became an increasingly rare commodity and Doc was aware of this all too well. But even with a substantial amount of knowledge, every day something big happened in the world that Doc could not fully understand. If there was a global economic crisis, where did all the money go? Was the money unreal in the first place, only now everyone finally said so? Or did a couple of people manage to grab it all? Just by looking out the window Doc noticed more news than there was room for and he felt curiously uncomfortable about people everywhere getting really angry while Americans stayed the same.

  It happened to be Christmas again, which was always confusing because he couldn’t help feeling certain feelings. Certain whimsies entered Doc’s heart even though they had nothing to do with his own life. The public spectacle intensified at this time of year and, caught up in the display, Doc had a lot of opportunities to look around wondrously. New Yorkers are introspective in that way. They’re the kind of crowd that pays attention to the crowd.

  While observing this particular Christmas, he was struck most particularly by the Emergency Disaster Services Mobile Canteen that was parked outside the tent-city refugee camp occupying Tompkins Square Park. He wasn’t sure which word surprised him the most: emergency, disaster or services. It was clearly a time for setting priorities, every American knew that. Should they choose preventative food on their plates or pay insurance bills for hospitalization that didn’t exist? Of course, this was a middle-class dilemma. Christmas smelled sexy, like wet cheese.

  Those three hundred homeless people living in the park across the way had certainly changed his life. Now, every night, the GPs, the Garbage Pickers, tore open every plastic bag and scattered its contents all over the sidewalk, looking for something. Every morning the sidewalk was covered. Also, people shit and pissed in crevices and doorways. This was especially true of the crackheads who had given up on certain elements of social training and drug dealers who didn’t have time to find a bathroom. The whole sidewalk stank. Most difficult for Doc’s own sense of personal integrity were the homeless guys with paper cups opening and closing the doors at various cash machines all over the city.

  “You gotta tip me,” one of them told Doc, as he pulled out his twenty dollars. “’Cause I don’t have one of those cards.”

  “It’s not the card that gets you the money,” Doc told him. “You’ve gotta have an account. I mean, you can only get back the money that you put in there in the first place.”

  “You’re kidding,” the guy said, smelling awful. “I thought you just needed the card to get the cash.”

  That afternoon, Doc started counting and discovering that eight different people stopped and asked him for money. With each one he had to make a moral decision. But he didn’t know how. He didn’t know which set of values were applicable. If he gave each person some reasonable, humanly respectful amount, he wouldn’t have enough for himself. If he gave each a token amount, they wouldn’t have enough. Then Doc realized that even if he gave each person a reasonable amount every time they asked for it, this still would not help them. It would not get them off the street. He could not figure out the difference between right and wrong. So, he gave each one something.

  Yes, it was Christmas and Third Street looked great. The Hell’s Angels outdid themselves by being tasteful for a change. Their decorations were arty and conceptual in alternating geometrics. The whole block of tenements was draped in plain light, lush and dripping like kudzu. No Santas, Baby Jesus, or reindeers. The Angels dumped the kitsch and gave everyone frozen foam blossoms in green, red, and white. Of course, the Angels were bullies, and not heroes, so there was a vast complication to this beauty because Doc was dependent on vicious killers to get it.

  Overwhelming news and overwhelming personal confusion. Plausible deniability, extreme money funneling, circuitous routes. Not telling people or telling people that you’re not telling.

  Face it, Doc thought. From the first divided cell to the last pump of the respirator, a group of people is the most dangerous force on earth.

  Chapter Two

  Anna came home from the temp agency early. They had promised to send her out but they didn’t. What was wrong with her? It used to be that stockings, heels, and combing her bangs forward were the only prerequisites for employment. Now she had to know Word Perfect, too. Feeling inadequate and inappropriate, she splurged at the newsstand and then made a beeline home, running the gauntlet of beggars and people handing out circulars, business cards, and discount flyers. She clutched their offerings to her chest and ran up the stairs.

  The first thing Anna saw at home were three roaches hanging out by the dish drain. Vengefully, she put out the Combat and waited. Those assholes at American Mutual were too much to take. Thank God she didn’t have to go back there. In three days she had typed up all the correspondence pertaining to a group of workers with asbestos poisoning trying to sue the company. Then there was the puny executive who cornered her at lunch.

  “How can you live with yourself knowing that you’re fighting poor people who are dying from asbestos?” she’d asked.

  “Most of them were heavy smokers,” he said, satisfied, and then asked her out for the second time.

  Later in the office the old Italian guy who had worked for the company for twenty-four years was moaning and groaning about some fag who’d moved in next door.

 
“What do you care?” Anna said, trying to be sweet about it. “He’s not bothering you.”

  “Not bothering me?” the guy said, offended. “He’s a big queen How would you like it if some butchy woman was in your face all night long?”

  There was no one to take it out on but the roaches. Now, as she walked through her apartment, there were black plastic squares in every room protecting her from vermin. But actually this gave her no comfort because she did not know how Combat worked. She had no assurance that it did not operate on the same basis as radiation, another invisible substance.

  It was time to relax. But how? Anna had given up bicycle riding because her bikes got stolen every two months, and the price of bike locks was hovering somewhere near the cost of health insurance. She couldn’t bear to watch television. She couldn’t listen to most of what was on the radio because of the way the music constantly rhymed. But everyone has to give over their mind to some electronic field. Everyone needs someplace to surrender. Anna liked magazines. They were glossy machines. The only technology that she could fold. She read them on a regular basis because they were absorbing. Each one came out on a specific day of the week and was good for an hour of absorption.

  Anna took off her shoes and left them standing in the middle of the room. She carefully rolled down her stockings, knowing that the slightest scratch would cost her. Damn it, they caught on a toenail. This was so humiliating. It made her sick to death of herself. Anna read People magazine. Why was gossip more interesting than the world? It had something to do with marketing, of that Anna was sure. It had something to do with the organized promotion of a Fake Life. As far as Anna could see, marketing seemed to happen to everyone: drug dealers, beggars, people with careers. It was an unacknowledged public embarrassment. That’s why People was her private pleasure, not to be enjoyed on the subway in front of others. This week’s photo had a picture of some guy. She glanced at the face but it was meaningless to her. The names on the cover were: CHRIS EVERT PRINCE RAINIER ZSA ZSA CHAPPAQUIDDICK