The Howie Chronicles: The Final Curtain
Editor's Note: A therapy patient by the name of Howard Kaplan began sending us typed portions of his sessions nine years ago. On Jan. 22, 1992, we introduced these transcripts as a regular weekly column. At that point, Howie was starting his fifth year with Dr. G. Three years later?after seven years with Dr. G?Howie retired the column but pressed on with his therapy. That was six years ago. Last March, in a one-time resurfacing of the column, Howie voiced his intention to quit therapy at year's end?and now, true to his word, Howie appears to have done just that, 14 years after his first session with Dr. G. We here present a record of the final meeting between these two.
HOWIE: I think I should face you, so I'm going to sit up. This could be the last time we see each other.
DR. G: What are you feeling?
HOWIE: Because this is my last session, I want to make it extra-special, but with so much riding on it I'm feeling sort of paralyzed.
DR. G: You had a curious smile when I greeted you in the waiting room.
HOWIE: How do you mean "curious"?
DR. G: There was something flirtatious in it?that's how it struck me. And it seems to me now not an unfamiliar impression.
HOWIE: Really? You never mentioned it.
DR. G: It could be that it's taken me this long to really see it.
HOWIE: Fourteen years? If I smiled just now when you greeted me in the waiting room, the word I would use is that I smiled self-consciously. Everything was starting off the same as it always does, as if this were just another session I was going to: I arrived, as I always do, at 3:50 on the dot, and at 4 o'clock on the dot you poked your head in the waiting room and caught me, as usual, leafing through one of your magazines. I even had the familiar feeling of finding an article I wanted to read and of being pulled away by you against my will. That's what made me smile?that this was the end, and nothing had changed.
DR. G: So for you there was nothing at all flirtatious in the smile.
HOWIE [pausing]: I did pay a visit to the bathroom when I got here and the first thing I did was check this sore on my forehead. Of all the times to have an ugly sore on my forehead! You see, I was thinking about you at that moment. This sore on my face was going to mar your last impression of me. Normally, I let my sores alone?I'm very disciplined?but this one, foolishly, I squeezed in your bathroom. I squeezed as hard as I could and I only made it worse. When I was finished there was a big red bulge on my forehead, so I took my Swiss Army knife and pulled open the longest blade and pressed the flat of the blade against the bulge, to bring the swelling down. I always pay a visit to the bathroom when I come here. I want to look attractive to you, even though we're both men. My first order of business when I arrive here is to take a leak, but once I close the bathroom door I check myself out in the mirror, and as soon as I'm done peeing I go back to the mirror again. I'll play with my hair a little, but I never get it just right. Some of this primping is for the sake of the general public, but I'm thinking about my effect on you more immediately.
DR. G: What were your thoughts as you were coming here today?
HOWIE: I was worried about arriving late, or missing the session altogether. What if I fall and crack my head open, I kept thinking. I did have a nasty spill at my brother-in-law's on Christmas night. It happened in his driveway as we were getting ready to leave. I had just finished loading the car and was turning back to the house when I slipped on a patch of ice and came down on the side of my head. It happened so fast, and I was so unprepared, that I didn't even have enough time to put a hand out; I hit the ice flush with my left jaw and temple. That ice against my cheek was just as shocking as the impact. I bounced right up but my head hurt, which scared me. The pain went clear through from temple to temple. I walked back to the house and I was steady on my feet but I wasn't sure I hadn't just suffered a concussion. I threw open the front door and from right there in the entryway I announced to one and all that I had just had a mishap.
DR. G: That was the actual word you used?
HOWIE: "I just had a mishap." Those were my exact words. Ann-Marie, Edward's wife, immediately took charge of me. Ann-Marie is a physical therapist at a hospital. She pulled out a chair for me and had me sit and rest a minute. Meanwhile, everyone else clustered around us. Jean later asked if I minded all the attention. She thought I looked put out, but no, I didn't mind it. At one point I asked for aspirin?your head hurts, you take some aspirin?but thank God Ann-Marie was there to advise against it. It's an anticoagulant, as Ann-Marie explained to me, and if, say, I did have some bleeding going on in me, the aspirin would cause the bleeding to go on a little longer. After a couple of minutes I felt well enough to get up and take the wheel of the car for our two-hour trip home. I got us home in one piece but my head hurt the whole time, and that night I slept straight through until morning. I never sleep straight through the night like that.
DR. G: And how were you feeling when you awoke? Any better?
HOWIE: No, not really. And of course, being me, I found it necessary to complain to Jean. In the old days, one of the finest tributes you could pay a man was to say about him, "And for all his troubles, he never once complained." My own family will never pay me that kind of tribute. Jean's response to hearing me complain about my head again was to say to me, "Are you sure you don't want to go to the hospital?" She had said the same thing to me before we went to bed, and my answer this second time was the same as it was the first time. "I'm not going to spend five hours on the emergency ward and come home with nothing proven one way or the other," I said. I went through the same song and dance with Jean's sister. She called later to speak to Jean and wound up with me instead, and at that point we both had to do our little bit. She asked how I was feeling and I told her I was still hurting, and that's when she hit me with it?"Have you thought of going to the hospital?" she said.
Even when I'm feeling well, I hate the day after Christmas; all I want to do is make order in the house. A kind of frenzy comes over me as soon as I wake up, and I barely say a word to my family except at meals. Yesterday, weak as I was, the frenzy came over me and right away I started to clear the dining room table, which in our house is the catchall for everyone's junk. I worked all morning trying to find places to put things, but finally, around 2 o'clock, I started to wear down. Once again I said to Jean, "My head really hurts me," and Jean says, "I wish you would just go to the hospital." That was the final straw for me. In a barely controlled voice, I said, "Please don't tell me to go to the hospital!" But Jean was really angry now, too, and she shouted back at me, "What do you want me to say to you? Tell me!"
I don't remember now what number I was looking for, but before this fight started I was thumbing through the Yellow Pages and I still had the phone book in my hands when Jean shouted at me. Generally speaking, I'm not one to go in for histrionics, but this time I deliberately let the phone book fall to the floor, and then, without a word, I stepped over it and started away. "Don't pout!" Jean said, and for a split second I hesitated. I was about to tell her, "I'm not pouting," but then I thought, She's right?I'm pouting.
DR. G: Jean has a good eye.
HOWIE: Oh, she's unerring! But anyway, the pouter goes up to his bedroom and stays there for 20 minutes before he ventures down again. The phone book, I noticed, was still sprawled on the kitchen floor. I pretended not to see it and made straight for the coat closet. I'd decided while upstairs to walk over to the library and look up what the experts had to say about concussions. Are you familiar with the reference work Symptoms and Remedies?
DR. G: Only from you, I think.
HOWIE: I've gotten to the point where I can home right in on it without bothering to look it up first in the computer catalog. The book is my personal bible in time of need.
DR. G: Did you find words of comfort in the article about concussions?
HOWIE: The part that stood out for me was the phrase "loss of consciousness." A blow to the head that results in loss of consciousness?that's a concussion. I never lost consciousness, so I was all right. I also read that non-aspirin pain relievers were the way to go, which shouldn't have come as a big surprise but hadn't yet occurred to me. I went back home feeling much more relieved. I took some Advil when I got in, but even before I went to get it, I noticed that someone had picked the phone book up off the kitchen floor. In my mind, my feud with Jean was now officially over. I reported back to her on what I found out at the library, and it was as if she and I had been friends all along. We had a nice evening together, but before we went up for the night, she asked me in the kitchen if we could talk about what happened. For "future reference," as she put it, what should her "response" be?
At that point, all I wanted to do was go up to bed. I looked at her and pleaded with my eyes to let this go for now. I thought of my father and his rule, before bedtime, of not getting into any major discussions. I never liked this rule of his, but now I saw the wisdom of it. My brain needed a good night's rest, not a discussion. I turned off the kitchen light and stood poised at the foot of the stairs, but that's when I finally gave in and faced Jean.
I told her she should never tell me to go to the hospital. "That's a brush-off," I said. "It doesn't cost you anything. That's the kind of thing your sister says. Anybody can say that." So what would I have her say instead, she wanted to know. Would I prefer to have the decision taken out of my hands, she asked, and simply have her say to me, I'm driving you to the hospital. There might be a time, I told her, when that would be the right call, but maybe she could simply start by offering to go to the library for me and looking up the appropriate ailment in Symptoms and Remedies. On hearing this, Jean said, "It did cross my mind, you know, to do that for you today." That was nice to know: it meant I wasn't asking the impossible. She also now admitted that, even before I left for the library, the thought had crossed her mind to recommend I take some Advil. So why didn't she speak up? That would have helped me!
I knew I'd prevailed when Jean's face got this sheepish smile. That's like a white flag at the end of these heart-to-hearts. Usually I'm the one who winds up waving the white flag, but this time it was Jean who smiled. I saw it! I did!
DR. G: It strikes me as significant that you were willing to engage with Jean. When you first came to see me, you described your marriage as at a standstill.
HOWIE: Did I? I don't remember. That was a long time ago.
DR. G: It's in my notes. I've been looking back over my notes from our early sessions.
HOWIE: We didn't have children then. I do sort of remember now using the word "standstill."
DR. G: It also struck me just now that what you were telling Jean was, Deal with me?I'm not going to be sent away. As a very young child, you were packed off to Grandma Mollie's?it became a very convenient way of shutting you up.
HOWIE: You're touching on some of our very first themes.
DR. G: These themes have been with us all along, it seems to me.
HOWIE: What else did you find in those notes you were looking at?
DR. G: You brought in a dream about your parents in the third session. In the dream, both your parents are looking on while you masturbate. Your father is disapproving and your mother is uncomfortable. Nevertheless, you go on masturbating furiously.
HOWIE: I forgot about that one. That was quite a dream.
DR. G: It made me wish I'd looked at my notes a little sooner. I had the feeling I was encountering the dream for the first time. You also described your father as a tyrant in that third session, and it struck me at the time that you got to that rather fast. If I can take a moment here to give myself a performance rating, I think I did a good job in contending with your father. I never felt inclined to judge you?that part was easy for me. The hard part for me, I think, related to your mother, rather. In looking at your dream again, I recognized, in your mother's reaction, a similar kind of reaction in me to you and your silences. Your silences in here often made me uncomfortable, and this is where I feel I could have stood some improvement.
HOWIE: I've been trying very hard of late to struggle through those dead spots. I'm asking myself now, what do I want to say? I know I'm going to leave here with things I forgot to say. I never did get around to reading you my short story. The one thing I wanted out of therapy was a published novel, and now I'm going to walk away with only this short story. That makes me very sad, but that's the reality. I know you'll say I had other reasons for coming here, and maybe I did, but they were secondary in my mind.
DR. G: I do think you had other motives for being here, but that's not to say your disappointment isn't well-taken. And perhaps, too, you have a lot of anger toward me.
HOWIE: You know I was never able to feel much anger toward you. And at least, you know, I'm leaving with this one short story. Maybe that's a necessary step toward the novel. I sometimes think that my quest in here to write a novel was a little like my quest in Europe to lose my virginity. I was 19 that summer and sick to death of being a virgin, but apparently I wasn't quite sick of it enough: after nine weeks in Europe, I returned home a virgin. The trip was an utter failure?or so I thought for many years. But one day, looking back, I took a different view of it. True, I hadn't gotten laid while I was over there, but one thing I did accomplish was to masturbate for the first time. That's what my trip to Europe amounted to, finally. My goal had been to get laid, but I hadn't learned to crawl yet. Well, now I had learned to crawl, and could go on to the next stage. We both know I've always been a very slow starter.
DR. G: I do hope you'll continue with your writing, Howard. I think you have a lot to say, and I think you're finding ways to say it.
HOWIE: I feel another silence coming on. How much time is left? Maybe in these last few minutes, I can ask you some questions.
DR. G: What would you like to ask?
HOWIE: Did you ever tell anyone that you were Dr. G?
DR. G: I told my wife.
HOWIE: That's it? Just your wife? Nobody else? I'm not surprised you told your wife, but what about your officemate?
DR. G: No, I never discussed it with him. I only told my wife.
HOWIE: One of my fantasies is to return one day and do an interview with you for some newspaper or magazine. "The Man Who Was Dr. G." What do you think?
DR. G: I'm not so sure I like it.
HOWIE: Your business would skyrocket! You'd be turning people away!
DR. G: Maybe in the short term, but ultimately I think that kind of exposure would be bad for business. I'm not even listed in the phone book, you know.
HOWIE: I didn't know. Is that a choice?
DR. G: Yes, very much so. I don't care to publicize my service even to that extent. Drumming up clients seems counter to the work.
HOWIE: Maybe the thought of deserting you makes me feel guilty, and it assuages my guilty conscience to imagine bringing customers to you. But tell me at least you won't rule my proposal out.
DR. G: I'd have to think more about it. I'm certainly very flattered by it.
HOWIE: Here's another question for you. Dora, you know, started taking piano lessons this past summer, and one of the things her teacher has her do is track her practice time. The five students with the most minutes are posted each week, and Mr. Berdos gives each of these five students a lollipop. If you were to post the five patients who've been with you the longest, would my name top the list, with 14 years?
DR. G: I do have another patient who started at the same time as you, and this individual is still under my care. But there was a hiatus in my work with this other person, and in terms of total hours you might well top the list. But you'll always be special to me. Very, very special, Howard.