I heard several bouts of strained nasal breathing. I grasped the receiver, waiting to hear that it wasn’t just me, that I was better than this, and that there was no such thing as a gray reptilian heart. “Say it!” I whispered, barely audibly, and in Russian. “Do your job! Make it work! Give me some happiness!”
More analytic silence followed.
“It is true,” Dr. Levine grudgingly allowed, “that the circumstances in which you live present a unique set of problems.”
“Yes,” I said. It was true. Bad circumstances made for unique problems. I waited for more. I waited for one minute, then for another, but in vain. Oh, come on, Doctor. Throw a dog a bone. Tell me I’m better than this. Talk about my heart. I put my face in one of my big, squishy hands and I cried, exaggerating my wails in the hope that the doctor would take pity and absolve me of my sins.
But he wouldn’t do it. Not for US$350 an hour. Not for all the money on the Cayman Islands. Not for all the money in this gray-hearted world of mine.
As depressed and immobile as a twenty-first-century Oblomov, I lay on my bed scrolling through the darkest corners of the Internet, the laptop whizzing and bleating atop the mound of my stomach. I watched all kinds of unfortunate women being degraded and humiliated, tied up, spat upon, forced to swallow gigantic penises, and I wished I could wipe off their dripping faces, whisk them away to some Minneapolis or Toronto, and teach them to take pleasure in a simple linear life far from their big-dicked tormentors.
I decided to write Rouenna an electronic letter.
Dear Rouenna,
I am in a small country called Absurdsvanï, to the south of Russia, near Iran. A civil war has broken out and innocent democrats are being shot in the street. I am trying to save as many people as I can. The Belgian government has awarded me citizenship in recognition of my services, but it may be too late to save my own life. Pray for me, Rouenna. Go to mass with your abuela Maria and pray for my soul.
I don’t know if your new boyfriend has taught you to read Freud yet, but I want to tell you about a dream I had in which you sold me an apple for eight dollars. My analyst says it means that everything you ever did for me was conditional upon my money. From the very beginning when you saw my loft and said, “Dang, jumbo, I think I finally made it,” you were using me. (See, I don’t forget a thing!) My analyst, who is a medical doctor, says you better change, Rouenna, because what you’re doing to me is going to destroy you inside. You’re the one who’s going to be hurt by your actions and that’s a medical opinion. Think about it!
If I make it out of here alive I’ll still be yours forever, because you’re the only thing that makes my life worth living.
Actually, I hadn’t gotten around to mentioning the apple dream to Dr. Levine, but it was always useful to bring up an authority figure with Rouenna. As soon as I sent the message, an auto response popped up on my screen.
Hey there cowboys and cowgirls! I cant answer your message right now because me and my man are going up to CAPE COD for a week just to chill out from all the stress thats been killing us!!!! While y’all steaming like chinese dumplings in NYC we’ll be staying at a famous film director’s house in hiyanissport (cant say who it is or Proffessor Shteynfarb will kill me!). Ha ha. Just kidding. I’ll be back next Wednesday so dont miss me too much. Kisses, R.
Thought of the Day: “The earth swarms with people who are not worth talking to.”—Voltaire, French Philospher. Totally true!!!!!
I reread the message, the laptop pneumatically rising and falling on my belly with each breath. There was a phrase that had stuck in my mind. It wasn’t the Voltaire. I reread Rouenna’s message. “Film director.” That was it. Not a movie director, but a film director. Christ. I tapped at the keyboard with a numb forefinger, winding my computer back to the stream of pornography, the clean-shaven vaginas confronted with twirling batons. I fell asleep in a whirlpool of rage, a woman’s false moaning registering thinly on the laptop’s speakers.
A hand was rubbing my shoulder, but I couldn’t connect it to the familiar voice telling me to “Wake up, Misha.” The hand continued to massage me, infusing my shoulder with the smell of alcohol and man sweat.
“Don’t touch me!” I cried, jolting awake and smacking hard at the hand on my shoulder. For an odd second, I was surprised to find Alyosha-Bob standing beside me and not my father.
“What the fuck, Misha?” Alyosha-Bob said, rubbing at his hurt. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
The globe of Alyosha-Bob’s head hovered over me, blue veins forming rivers of concern, his nose a living, breathing subcontinent. He was wearing nothing but sweatpants, his naked chest sporting a standard Orthodox cross and a Jewish c’hai. Recently my friend had been flapping his fish lips about adding some religious meaning to his life. I wanted to ask him: why are Americans always searching for something when clearly there is nothing to be found?
He picked up the laptop from my belly. “Oh, that’s nice, Snack,” he said. “Stuffherass.com. Is that your new girlfriend in the dog collar?”
“I’m sorry I hit you,” I said. “I just don’t want to be touched right now.”
“What did your analyst say?”
“Post-traumatic stress. Blah, blah, blah.”
“What else did he say?”
“He told me to go for a walk. You know, get some exercise. Buy a suit.”
“Brilliant as ever.” Alyosha-Bob laughed. “I ordered buffalo wings from room service. They’re in the living room. There’s Black Label in the minibar.”
The buffalo wings were dry and inauthentic, and it took four buckets, or forty-eight wings, to satisfy me. I sucked on the brittle bones as if I were a pornographic understudy myself, savoring the mild tomato-based “hot sauce” dribbling past my chin and onto my Hyatt bathrobe. I let the invisible central-air currents stroke my stubbly face. Hot sauce and air-conditioning: when I put them together, I almost felt safe.
Alyosha-Bob was typing on his laptop with one hand while the other was switching television channels with a hefty zapper. He was trolling for news about Absurdistan. “CNN nothing, MSNBC nothing, BBC almost nothing, France 2 something, but je ne comprends pas what it is…Looks like we’re stuck with ORT.”
He turned on one of the Kremlin-controlled Russian networks, all Putin, all the time. True enough, the Russian president was giving a press conference. He looked the way he always did, like a mildly unhappy horse dipping his mouth into a bowl of oats. “Absurdsvanï is an important partner for Russia, strategically, economically, and culturally,” Putin sadly imparted into the microphone. “We hope for a cessation to the violence. We implore the Sevo leadership to respect international norms.”