bper
in
time_told_me
Chapter 14: The Couch
So here we both are battling similar demons (not coincidentally)
You see in getting beyond knowing it slowly intellectually,
You're not relinquishing your majesty.
Sharing a room with Greg had me looking forward to lights out. Before he'd gotten the switch, I loathed everything about lights out, particularly the lack of a television to drown out my voice in my head. That voice knew too much about me and was bent on complete destruction. Sprinkle the loneliness of an empty room with the stark sound of silence and you have a recipe for self-destruction. The three days before he moved over, I spent my nights hardly sleeping, thereby comtemplating my existential conundrum for hours upon hours. It was enough to make me loathe the smiling faces that counseled me, handed me drugs, promised me things would get better.... From time to time I contemplated faking a full recovery in the interest of locating something better than bedsheets and isopropyl alcohol to...well, to make Eames' speedy response to my late-night S.O.S. worthless. It was three in the morning when I called her and told her the truth. "I just can't do this anymore," I said, which was enough for her to rush over in pajamas.
I missed Eames. I missed Miguel, but he was in occasional contact with me via proxy, an orderly who wasn't paid nearly well enough. He came to find me whenever he had something from Miguel to drop off. I made a request for marijuana, naughty boy that I am. Purely therapeutic in administration, however; I meant only to lubricate Greg for a normal conversation about himself as I'd done so many times with suspects. Rarely was this behavior endorsed. I didn't realize to what degree until my face was plastered alongside a Simon Fife's on national television. Fife was delusional, convinced he'd murdered a girl he'd never even met. I'd pushed champagne on him while flying back from Korea supposing he'd slip up and say something useful. He never did, which made the "disgusting" image of me pouring him a glass of champagne particularly annoying. Fife was crazy; there was never any justice for the insane as far as cops were concerned; having a soft spot for the mentally ill, I gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. Fife was crazy, but he was no murderer. Sometimes the truth doesn't matter unless you're willing to mine for it. If it meant going to jail for possession, I was prepared to mine for the truth about Greg. Getting stoned was an added bonus.
After dinner, I walked back to our room with Greg, listening to him rant endlessly about this or that. I loved his voice. And his mind. And his smell. And his walk. In short, I wasn't complaining.
I shut the door as soon as we got inside.
"I've got something for us to do tonight," I said. "I was going to steal all of the Scrabble tiles from the Rec Room and draw a board on the bathroom floor. Fun way to get a ticket out of here," I said with a shrug.
"Nah! A little defacing of property might add to your bill but it won't get them to turn you loose," he argued. "I wouldn't be surprised if vandalism is just another symptom in the DSM-IV for bipolar disorder, Type I."
I smiled. "In a roundabout way it is," I said as I went to the bed. I pulled a baggie out from under the mattress. "I rolled a couple of these while you were in session today." I handed him a joint.
His eyes lit up. "Is there anything you can't get, roomie?" He sniffed at the joint and gloated, "Lucky for me that your mommy taught you to share."
"Mommy taught me a lot of things, but sharing wasn't one of them. I learned that in the army." I pulled a lighter from my pocket and grinned at him. "Light it," I said with enthusiasm.
He made a show of snatching the lighter from me. "Peer pressure will be the death of me." He took a long drag and held his breath, a beatific smile spreading across his face as he handed me the joint.
"When was the last time you smoked?" I asked, genuinely curious. I took a hit and handed it back over to him.
He shrugged. "Dunno. I steal pot from Wilson sometimes when he's rolling joints for his cancer patients." His smirk was priceless as he took another toke.
"You seem exactly the type." I cracked the window and sat in the chair beside it. "I've been wondering what you must be like when you're baked," I admitted. I gestured to the chair beside me.
"Horny mostly," he bragged, coming over and handing me the joint before sitting down next to me. "You?"
I shrugged sheepishly. "I guess you'll find out."
"I had you pegged for coke, not weed. How often do you smoke?" he asked with a wink.
"It depends. Sometimes often, sometimes not so much. Coke I can't afford, which is for the best." I took another hit and passed it back over to him.
We passed the joint back and forth in silence for a few minutes. House leaned his arms against the windowsill and rested his chin there, staring out.
I took a deep breath and stretched, then slouched down in the chair. "It's nice out there. Pity we can't take walks," I remarked, hoping to spark some conversation.
He looked over at me. "Cripple here," he gestured to himself. "But it would be nice to sit outside."
I grinned. "That, it would," I said. "I'm interested in what you're thinking," I added.
"I'm thinking about how good it feels to ride my bike on a night like this."
"It hadn't occurred to me that you might be a bike guy," I said. I tilted my head to the side, pretending to observe him. "Yeah. I see it now." I stared at him quietly, knowing he'd take the opportunity to speak, hoping he'd bring up something interesting.
He reached for the joint and the lighter. "I used to run. When I'm on the bike, it's the next best thing." He took a drag off the roach before handing it back.
I put it in the "ashtray" he made in art therapy, one of several giant chunks of clay he'd brought back to the room. "Not many detectives have time to run. Not that I necessarily would."
He'd gone back to staring out the window, chin on hands, elbows on the windowsill. "When I was a kid, it was one of the few things that I loved doing that the old man didn't consider 'faggy.' Not that football or baseball wouldn't have been better...."
"I can't see you doing either. Doesn't suit you." I stared at the back of his head while he kept a close watch on the sky. "What did you enjoy doing?"
"Reading, thinking, asking questions ... and all of those were suspect activities in my father's eyes." As he glanced my way, I could see he was stoned. "Running gave me the illusion of freedom. I had to make do with that until I could really be free."
"The illusion of freedom," I repeated, mulling it over. "Now you can't run. So do you feel free?"
He snorted. "What do you think?"
I nodded. "Is it this place? Or are you trapped somewhere else?"
"When I was a kid, I lived for the day I'd leave my parents' house for college and finally be free. It took me years to realize it doesn't work that way. I'd taken my father along with me for the ride. He's the monkey on my back, the voice in my head that judges everything I do, who constantly reminds me I'm a piece of crap and I always will be. That will never change, even though he's dead, even though he wasn't really my father. It doesn't matter." He shook his head in disgust. "And it just keeps adding up..."
Trapped in his head. I was well aware of what that was like. "I see what you mean. It's easy to think he might've been right when you're losing your mind," I acknowledged carefully.
He shrugged. "Or maybe he's part of why I'm losing my mind. Not that he's been paying any visits the way Amber and Kutner have...."
I stared at him for a second. As was typical of me, I was considering what I could do to help him. My soft spot for the insane knew no bounds. The struggle Greg was enduring was a case to be cracked, I imagined, and I was meant for nothing if not cracking cases. Mental institutions were boring, anyway, and a project was precisely what I needed to regain my confidence.
"My mom," I began, clearing my throat, "was beaten and raped by the man that fathered me. She was...never the same. Not after that. Then she started bring home boyfriends...really nasty men. I...mouthed off to one of them. Only once. And he flew off the handle. The only reason I wasn't beaten to within an inch of my life was because Frank was there to pull him off of me. I've always thought...that was the reason that I was so tolerant of Frank's behavior for so long. He...saved my childhood." I shook my head. "I can't imagine the damage that might've been done if Frank hadn't intervened. And I can't imagine what it might be like to grow up with someone terrorizing me my entire childhood." I stared at him while I waited for a reply, hoping that he was relaxed and uninhibited enough to talk to me.
"Did she keep him around?" Greg asked with a tone I couldn't quite read.
"She didn't keep anyone around."
"Lucky you," he muttered under his breath.
I shrugged. "Some might say it made things worse. I tend to think my flaws are hereditary, not environmental. So maybe you're right; maybe I was lucky." I couldn't stop staring at him. I wished he would turn around and look at me when he talked, but I couldn't have looked at him if I were saying the same things to him. Benefit of the doubt was certainly due. "How bad was it?" I asked, referring to his father. I suspected he'd understand what I meant.
"He didn't kill me or maim me so I suppose it wasn't that bad." He barked out a laugh entirely lacking in mirth. "He always said I was just a whiny little bastard. I'm sure he was right."
"What did he do?" I asked boldly, hoping to put a stop to the endless skirting of the issue.
He turned to me with irritation. "Why do you care? What's it to you what my old man did to me?" He quickly turned back to face the window, not waiting for an answer.
I took a deep breath before I continued. "I don't know," I answered half-truthfully. "But what if I can help you? What if I can solve your case when no one else can? Wouldn't it be great for both of us to do something good for our heads right now?"
He gave me a disbelieving look, which softened into a smile, which broadened into a grin and then erupted into a deep chuckle. "You're saying I need a brilliant detective to figure out the mystery of my psyche ... rather than some moron shrink?"
I smiled. "Something like that."
"What if there is no mystery? What if I'm just a garden variety batshit crazy of the hallucinating variety?"
I shook my head. "You aren't. I'd have spotted it."
He nodded his head to reassure himself and then went back to looking out the window. "I'm 50 years old but I still feel trapped by what happened to me when I was 8. Talking about it or not talking about it -- either way it's humiliating." Despite the weed, he looked far from relaxed, hunched over on himself, rocking a little, rigidly not looking in my direction.
I pulled out another joint and lit it, then handed it over. "I can't stop you feeling...humiliated. But I won't think less of you for talking about it. I mean...have you ever really talked about it?"
"Not really...." He stopped moving. "Once. To a girl who'd just been raped and wanted to know something really bad that had happened to me."
"Do you know me better than you knew her?"
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Of course. Relevance?"
"Maybe it's easier to talk to me."
"I hate to ruin a good theory but I've known Wilson better than you for over a decade and he has no idea why I hated the man who was supposed to be my father. And he met my father. Even forced me to go to his funeral. And I use the term 'forced' literally." He turned around and stared at me intensely. "Not that Wilson matters at all when it comes to this...."
Part of me knew that he'd be unwilling to talk to me, but it wasn't any less disappointing that he wouldn't. He handed the joint back to me and I took another hit. "Look," I said, handing it over to him, "I understand. You don't want to talk about it. But what if...what if we never saw each other again? If we left this place and...we never saw each other again...we could agree to that," I said, regretfully. "I want to be better. You want to be better." I shook my head, annoyed at my inability to get my point across. "Or I could be the one you go to. I could be the call you make when you can't stand to sit through another therapy session." I smiled. "But you don't have to tell me at all. This is all about trust. I don't expect you to trust me more than Wilson. So...you wanna keep it to yourself? That's fine. I just thought...I thought you trusted me as much as I trust you."
He stared at me for a full thirty seconds before asking, "Why would you trust me?" His incredulity surprised me.
"Because there's only you. No one else can restore my self-confidence."
"I can't restore my own self-confidence," House mumbled in a whisper. "Besides, everybody lies." I sensed a doubt behind the blanket assertion. I couldn't tell if he was trying to remind himself to be wary or reassert why all efforts were doomed to failure.
I nodded. "That's true," I acknowledged. "But I don't have time to lie to you about this. I'm asking you to let me restore you confidence and mine." I leaned over and put my hand on his back. He took a hit of the joint and handed it back to me. "Please let me do this," I begged. "It can't hurt to try."
He looked down at his hands and nodded. "It's nothing special. He just ... hated everything about me. And I ... couldn't resist bucking authority ... talking back. He believed in discipline. Corporal punishment was how they did it in those days. When I was really little, it wasn't much, although he scared me with his drill sergeant routine. But everybody got spanked, paddled... right? Are belts even that unusual? He told me I never learned and that I left him no choice. Eventually, he graduated to things like ice water baths, locking me out of the house overnight so I'd have to sleep outside, not speaking to me for months at a time. I kind of liked the not-speaking one." He was still staring down at his hands.
I took a deep breath and put my head in my hands for a second. My elbow rested on the windowsill, my head in my hand. I tried to catch his eye as I spoke. "What did you have to do to provoke these incidents? Specifically," I added. No time to be vague, I decided.
"Come home late for dinner after you've gotten a warning and get locked out of the house. Disrespect authority, violate a rule, forget a chore, lose or break something he'd paid for, embarrass him in front of his buddies ... the normal stuff for a young kid ... required retaliation. For my own good, of course," he added sarcastically.
I nodded. Ice water baths. I couldn't wrap my head around the necessity for such a punishment. "Tell me what justifies being submerged in freezing water."
"Showing up the old man on a hot day."
"How'd you show him up?"
He looked uncomfortable, nervous. "It was at a picnic in North Carolina on base. His buddy ate some fried chicken and got a gall bladder attack. My dad started talking about gallstones and how they're made of calcium crystals. I was 12 and I'd been reading physiology books at the library. One of the suspect activities I couldn't do at home -- reading science books I didn't have to read for school. I felt like showing off so I told him that a lot of gallstones are made of cholesterol. He called me stupid and said cholesterol was in the blood and could give you a heart attack. There was bile in the gallbladder and that contained calcium and that caused gallstones. I tried to explain the biochemistry to him but he cut me off and told me he didn't need me to parade my ignorance. He told me to run 5 laps around the ball field to learn when to keep my mouth shut."
I frowned. "How'd the ice bath come up?"
He started to fidget. "It was 95 degrees in the shade and humid. I ran the laps but I smiled the whole time so it wouldn't give him any satisfaction. I stayed out of his way for the rest of the picnic. On the way home, he said it seemed like I liked running the laps so maybe I hadn't really learned my lesson. My mom said, 'John, it's such a hot day. Nobody could enjoy running on a day like today.'" He mimicked his mother's voice with a soft, placating tone. He shifted to a harsh, biting voice as he recited his father's answer. "'Is that right? Was I too hard on you, Greg? Making you get all overheated like that? Well, don't worry, boy, we'll cool you down right quick when we get home.'" House shivered involuntarily at the memory.
My heart raced as I watched him wring his hands, sigh, look all over, put his hand to his temple. He was humiliated, just as he predicted. I fought the urge to tell him I loved him though it was true and I suspected he needed to hear it. He'd stop trusting me. "Was it a bathtub?"
House jerked his head up and down quickly, then paused to take a deep breath. I had to lean forward to hear him as he continued, "We were driving and he stopped by a gas station and told me to go in and buy 5 bags of ice. When we got home...."
I swallowed hard, fighting to hide my disappointment and disgust. "Did you fight him?"
"Yeah," he rasped, crossing his arms and rocking again. "It didn't help. Probably made it worse." He looked over at me, eyes watering. "No more." He propped his arms up on the windowsill again and buried his face in his hands.
I pinched the end of the joint to extinguish the flame and moved my chair closer to his. "O.K.," I agreed. Desperate to kiss him, to tell him he was free of all of his father's shit, I had to settle for asking if he was tired. After all, telling people they're free doesn't make it so. House was one of a handful of people who knew that as well as I did. "We can go to bed if you're tired. We can do whatever you want," I offered.
"No we can't," he objected, raising his head to look up at me.
My heart was in my throat, still racing. I frowned. "What is it that you want?"
"I wanna ride my bike. Very fast. For a very long time." He buried his head in his arms again as if he could shut out the memories by shutting out the world around him.
How to respond to that? "Is there anything I can do for you? I will."
Greg raised his head. His eyes glistened as he hoarsely voiced his request. "Can you make me forget? Can you make it all go away?"
By no means was I sure whether I could or couldn't. "I don't know," I answered honestly. "No one can make you forget. Making it all go away..." I trailed off. "I want to try."
A gust of wind through the window gave me a chill just before Greg turned to me. He wrapped a hand around my neck and pulled me toward him. We kissed, moved to the bed and spent the following half hour (I supposed) making love.
He fell asleep beside me soon afterwards. I stroked his arm. He believed himself unlovable. He believed his father and he struggled to meet his expectations. I wondered how much time had passed between his father's death and his breakdown. Consciously, Greg would have logically determined that the burden of pleasing would've died with the old man, but subconsciously, he'd see himself as an eternal failure, having never managed to please him. Drugs might quiet the voices but the facts would remain the same. He needed a chance to stand up for himself. He deserved a confrontation.
My thoughts drifted to an old girlfriend as I thought about hypnosis. Thought I'd never mastered it, she'd given me several lessons. I wondered whether looking at things again would conjure a hallucination. Would it put his mind at rest? I nudged him.
"What?" he snapped.
"Are you still seeing ghosts?" I asked.
He nodded. "Occasionally."
"I have an idea. But you'd have to palm your psych meds."
"No arguments there," he replied. "Now go get in your own bed. It's hot and cramped."
I smiled at him and went to bed.
You see in getting beyond knowing it slowly intellectually,
You're not relinquishing your majesty.
Sharing a room with Greg had me looking forward to lights out. Before he'd gotten the switch, I loathed everything about lights out, particularly the lack of a television to drown out my voice in my head. That voice knew too much about me and was bent on complete destruction. Sprinkle the loneliness of an empty room with the stark sound of silence and you have a recipe for self-destruction. The three days before he moved over, I spent my nights hardly sleeping, thereby comtemplating my existential conundrum for hours upon hours. It was enough to make me loathe the smiling faces that counseled me, handed me drugs, promised me things would get better.... From time to time I contemplated faking a full recovery in the interest of locating something better than bedsheets and isopropyl alcohol to...well, to make Eames' speedy response to my late-night S.O.S. worthless. It was three in the morning when I called her and told her the truth. "I just can't do this anymore," I said, which was enough for her to rush over in pajamas.
I missed Eames. I missed Miguel, but he was in occasional contact with me via proxy, an orderly who wasn't paid nearly well enough. He came to find me whenever he had something from Miguel to drop off. I made a request for marijuana, naughty boy that I am. Purely therapeutic in administration, however; I meant only to lubricate Greg for a normal conversation about himself as I'd done so many times with suspects. Rarely was this behavior endorsed. I didn't realize to what degree until my face was plastered alongside a Simon Fife's on national television. Fife was delusional, convinced he'd murdered a girl he'd never even met. I'd pushed champagne on him while flying back from Korea supposing he'd slip up and say something useful. He never did, which made the "disgusting" image of me pouring him a glass of champagne particularly annoying. Fife was crazy; there was never any justice for the insane as far as cops were concerned; having a soft spot for the mentally ill, I gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. Fife was crazy, but he was no murderer. Sometimes the truth doesn't matter unless you're willing to mine for it. If it meant going to jail for possession, I was prepared to mine for the truth about Greg. Getting stoned was an added bonus.
After dinner, I walked back to our room with Greg, listening to him rant endlessly about this or that. I loved his voice. And his mind. And his smell. And his walk. In short, I wasn't complaining.
I shut the door as soon as we got inside.
"I've got something for us to do tonight," I said. "I was going to steal all of the Scrabble tiles from the Rec Room and draw a board on the bathroom floor. Fun way to get a ticket out of here," I said with a shrug.
"Nah! A little defacing of property might add to your bill but it won't get them to turn you loose," he argued. "I wouldn't be surprised if vandalism is just another symptom in the DSM-IV for bipolar disorder, Type I."
I smiled. "In a roundabout way it is," I said as I went to the bed. I pulled a baggie out from under the mattress. "I rolled a couple of these while you were in session today." I handed him a joint.
His eyes lit up. "Is there anything you can't get, roomie?" He sniffed at the joint and gloated, "Lucky for me that your mommy taught you to share."
"Mommy taught me a lot of things, but sharing wasn't one of them. I learned that in the army." I pulled a lighter from my pocket and grinned at him. "Light it," I said with enthusiasm.
He made a show of snatching the lighter from me. "Peer pressure will be the death of me." He took a long drag and held his breath, a beatific smile spreading across his face as he handed me the joint.
"When was the last time you smoked?" I asked, genuinely curious. I took a hit and handed it back over to him.
He shrugged. "Dunno. I steal pot from Wilson sometimes when he's rolling joints for his cancer patients." His smirk was priceless as he took another toke.
"You seem exactly the type." I cracked the window and sat in the chair beside it. "I've been wondering what you must be like when you're baked," I admitted. I gestured to the chair beside me.
"Horny mostly," he bragged, coming over and handing me the joint before sitting down next to me. "You?"
I shrugged sheepishly. "I guess you'll find out."
"I had you pegged for coke, not weed. How often do you smoke?" he asked with a wink.
"It depends. Sometimes often, sometimes not so much. Coke I can't afford, which is for the best." I took another hit and passed it back over to him.
We passed the joint back and forth in silence for a few minutes. House leaned his arms against the windowsill and rested his chin there, staring out.
I took a deep breath and stretched, then slouched down in the chair. "It's nice out there. Pity we can't take walks," I remarked, hoping to spark some conversation.
He looked over at me. "Cripple here," he gestured to himself. "But it would be nice to sit outside."
I grinned. "That, it would," I said. "I'm interested in what you're thinking," I added.
"I'm thinking about how good it feels to ride my bike on a night like this."
"It hadn't occurred to me that you might be a bike guy," I said. I tilted my head to the side, pretending to observe him. "Yeah. I see it now." I stared at him quietly, knowing he'd take the opportunity to speak, hoping he'd bring up something interesting.
He reached for the joint and the lighter. "I used to run. When I'm on the bike, it's the next best thing." He took a drag off the roach before handing it back.
I put it in the "ashtray" he made in art therapy, one of several giant chunks of clay he'd brought back to the room. "Not many detectives have time to run. Not that I necessarily would."
He'd gone back to staring out the window, chin on hands, elbows on the windowsill. "When I was a kid, it was one of the few things that I loved doing that the old man didn't consider 'faggy.' Not that football or baseball wouldn't have been better...."
"I can't see you doing either. Doesn't suit you." I stared at the back of his head while he kept a close watch on the sky. "What did you enjoy doing?"
"Reading, thinking, asking questions ... and all of those were suspect activities in my father's eyes." As he glanced my way, I could see he was stoned. "Running gave me the illusion of freedom. I had to make do with that until I could really be free."
"The illusion of freedom," I repeated, mulling it over. "Now you can't run. So do you feel free?"
He snorted. "What do you think?"
I nodded. "Is it this place? Or are you trapped somewhere else?"
"When I was a kid, I lived for the day I'd leave my parents' house for college and finally be free. It took me years to realize it doesn't work that way. I'd taken my father along with me for the ride. He's the monkey on my back, the voice in my head that judges everything I do, who constantly reminds me I'm a piece of crap and I always will be. That will never change, even though he's dead, even though he wasn't really my father. It doesn't matter." He shook his head in disgust. "And it just keeps adding up..."
Trapped in his head. I was well aware of what that was like. "I see what you mean. It's easy to think he might've been right when you're losing your mind," I acknowledged carefully.
He shrugged. "Or maybe he's part of why I'm losing my mind. Not that he's been paying any visits the way Amber and Kutner have...."
I stared at him for a second. As was typical of me, I was considering what I could do to help him. My soft spot for the insane knew no bounds. The struggle Greg was enduring was a case to be cracked, I imagined, and I was meant for nothing if not cracking cases. Mental institutions were boring, anyway, and a project was precisely what I needed to regain my confidence.
"My mom," I began, clearing my throat, "was beaten and raped by the man that fathered me. She was...never the same. Not after that. Then she started bring home boyfriends...really nasty men. I...mouthed off to one of them. Only once. And he flew off the handle. The only reason I wasn't beaten to within an inch of my life was because Frank was there to pull him off of me. I've always thought...that was the reason that I was so tolerant of Frank's behavior for so long. He...saved my childhood." I shook my head. "I can't imagine the damage that might've been done if Frank hadn't intervened. And I can't imagine what it might be like to grow up with someone terrorizing me my entire childhood." I stared at him while I waited for a reply, hoping that he was relaxed and uninhibited enough to talk to me.
"Did she keep him around?" Greg asked with a tone I couldn't quite read.
"She didn't keep anyone around."
"Lucky you," he muttered under his breath.
I shrugged. "Some might say it made things worse. I tend to think my flaws are hereditary, not environmental. So maybe you're right; maybe I was lucky." I couldn't stop staring at him. I wished he would turn around and look at me when he talked, but I couldn't have looked at him if I were saying the same things to him. Benefit of the doubt was certainly due. "How bad was it?" I asked, referring to his father. I suspected he'd understand what I meant.
"He didn't kill me or maim me so I suppose it wasn't that bad." He barked out a laugh entirely lacking in mirth. "He always said I was just a whiny little bastard. I'm sure he was right."
"What did he do?" I asked boldly, hoping to put a stop to the endless skirting of the issue.
He turned to me with irritation. "Why do you care? What's it to you what my old man did to me?" He quickly turned back to face the window, not waiting for an answer.
I took a deep breath before I continued. "I don't know," I answered half-truthfully. "But what if I can help you? What if I can solve your case when no one else can? Wouldn't it be great for both of us to do something good for our heads right now?"
He gave me a disbelieving look, which softened into a smile, which broadened into a grin and then erupted into a deep chuckle. "You're saying I need a brilliant detective to figure out the mystery of my psyche ... rather than some moron shrink?"
I smiled. "Something like that."
"What if there is no mystery? What if I'm just a garden variety batshit crazy of the hallucinating variety?"
I shook my head. "You aren't. I'd have spotted it."
He nodded his head to reassure himself and then went back to looking out the window. "I'm 50 years old but I still feel trapped by what happened to me when I was 8. Talking about it or not talking about it -- either way it's humiliating." Despite the weed, he looked far from relaxed, hunched over on himself, rocking a little, rigidly not looking in my direction.
I pulled out another joint and lit it, then handed it over. "I can't stop you feeling...humiliated. But I won't think less of you for talking about it. I mean...have you ever really talked about it?"
"Not really...." He stopped moving. "Once. To a girl who'd just been raped and wanted to know something really bad that had happened to me."
"Do you know me better than you knew her?"
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Of course. Relevance?"
"Maybe it's easier to talk to me."
"I hate to ruin a good theory but I've known Wilson better than you for over a decade and he has no idea why I hated the man who was supposed to be my father. And he met my father. Even forced me to go to his funeral. And I use the term 'forced' literally." He turned around and stared at me intensely. "Not that Wilson matters at all when it comes to this...."
Part of me knew that he'd be unwilling to talk to me, but it wasn't any less disappointing that he wouldn't. He handed the joint back to me and I took another hit. "Look," I said, handing it over to him, "I understand. You don't want to talk about it. But what if...what if we never saw each other again? If we left this place and...we never saw each other again...we could agree to that," I said, regretfully. "I want to be better. You want to be better." I shook my head, annoyed at my inability to get my point across. "Or I could be the one you go to. I could be the call you make when you can't stand to sit through another therapy session." I smiled. "But you don't have to tell me at all. This is all about trust. I don't expect you to trust me more than Wilson. So...you wanna keep it to yourself? That's fine. I just thought...I thought you trusted me as much as I trust you."
He stared at me for a full thirty seconds before asking, "Why would you trust me?" His incredulity surprised me.
"Because there's only you. No one else can restore my self-confidence."
"I can't restore my own self-confidence," House mumbled in a whisper. "Besides, everybody lies." I sensed a doubt behind the blanket assertion. I couldn't tell if he was trying to remind himself to be wary or reassert why all efforts were doomed to failure.
I nodded. "That's true," I acknowledged. "But I don't have time to lie to you about this. I'm asking you to let me restore you confidence and mine." I leaned over and put my hand on his back. He took a hit of the joint and handed it back to me. "Please let me do this," I begged. "It can't hurt to try."
He looked down at his hands and nodded. "It's nothing special. He just ... hated everything about me. And I ... couldn't resist bucking authority ... talking back. He believed in discipline. Corporal punishment was how they did it in those days. When I was really little, it wasn't much, although he scared me with his drill sergeant routine. But everybody got spanked, paddled... right? Are belts even that unusual? He told me I never learned and that I left him no choice. Eventually, he graduated to things like ice water baths, locking me out of the house overnight so I'd have to sleep outside, not speaking to me for months at a time. I kind of liked the not-speaking one." He was still staring down at his hands.
I took a deep breath and put my head in my hands for a second. My elbow rested on the windowsill, my head in my hand. I tried to catch his eye as I spoke. "What did you have to do to provoke these incidents? Specifically," I added. No time to be vague, I decided.
"Come home late for dinner after you've gotten a warning and get locked out of the house. Disrespect authority, violate a rule, forget a chore, lose or break something he'd paid for, embarrass him in front of his buddies ... the normal stuff for a young kid ... required retaliation. For my own good, of course," he added sarcastically.
I nodded. Ice water baths. I couldn't wrap my head around the necessity for such a punishment. "Tell me what justifies being submerged in freezing water."
"Showing up the old man on a hot day."
"How'd you show him up?"
He looked uncomfortable, nervous. "It was at a picnic in North Carolina on base. His buddy ate some fried chicken and got a gall bladder attack. My dad started talking about gallstones and how they're made of calcium crystals. I was 12 and I'd been reading physiology books at the library. One of the suspect activities I couldn't do at home -- reading science books I didn't have to read for school. I felt like showing off so I told him that a lot of gallstones are made of cholesterol. He called me stupid and said cholesterol was in the blood and could give you a heart attack. There was bile in the gallbladder and that contained calcium and that caused gallstones. I tried to explain the biochemistry to him but he cut me off and told me he didn't need me to parade my ignorance. He told me to run 5 laps around the ball field to learn when to keep my mouth shut."
I frowned. "How'd the ice bath come up?"
He started to fidget. "It was 95 degrees in the shade and humid. I ran the laps but I smiled the whole time so it wouldn't give him any satisfaction. I stayed out of his way for the rest of the picnic. On the way home, he said it seemed like I liked running the laps so maybe I hadn't really learned my lesson. My mom said, 'John, it's such a hot day. Nobody could enjoy running on a day like today.'" He mimicked his mother's voice with a soft, placating tone. He shifted to a harsh, biting voice as he recited his father's answer. "'Is that right? Was I too hard on you, Greg? Making you get all overheated like that? Well, don't worry, boy, we'll cool you down right quick when we get home.'" House shivered involuntarily at the memory.
My heart raced as I watched him wring his hands, sigh, look all over, put his hand to his temple. He was humiliated, just as he predicted. I fought the urge to tell him I loved him though it was true and I suspected he needed to hear it. He'd stop trusting me. "Was it a bathtub?"
House jerked his head up and down quickly, then paused to take a deep breath. I had to lean forward to hear him as he continued, "We were driving and he stopped by a gas station and told me to go in and buy 5 bags of ice. When we got home...."
I swallowed hard, fighting to hide my disappointment and disgust. "Did you fight him?"
"Yeah," he rasped, crossing his arms and rocking again. "It didn't help. Probably made it worse." He looked over at me, eyes watering. "No more." He propped his arms up on the windowsill again and buried his face in his hands.
I pinched the end of the joint to extinguish the flame and moved my chair closer to his. "O.K.," I agreed. Desperate to kiss him, to tell him he was free of all of his father's shit, I had to settle for asking if he was tired. After all, telling people they're free doesn't make it so. House was one of a handful of people who knew that as well as I did. "We can go to bed if you're tired. We can do whatever you want," I offered.
"No we can't," he objected, raising his head to look up at me.
My heart was in my throat, still racing. I frowned. "What is it that you want?"
"I wanna ride my bike. Very fast. For a very long time." He buried his head in his arms again as if he could shut out the memories by shutting out the world around him.
How to respond to that? "Is there anything I can do for you? I will."
Greg raised his head. His eyes glistened as he hoarsely voiced his request. "Can you make me forget? Can you make it all go away?"
By no means was I sure whether I could or couldn't. "I don't know," I answered honestly. "No one can make you forget. Making it all go away..." I trailed off. "I want to try."
A gust of wind through the window gave me a chill just before Greg turned to me. He wrapped a hand around my neck and pulled me toward him. We kissed, moved to the bed and spent the following half hour (I supposed) making love.
He fell asleep beside me soon afterwards. I stroked his arm. He believed himself unlovable. He believed his father and he struggled to meet his expectations. I wondered how much time had passed between his father's death and his breakdown. Consciously, Greg would have logically determined that the burden of pleasing would've died with the old man, but subconsciously, he'd see himself as an eternal failure, having never managed to please him. Drugs might quiet the voices but the facts would remain the same. He needed a chance to stand up for himself. He deserved a confrontation.
My thoughts drifted to an old girlfriend as I thought about hypnosis. Thought I'd never mastered it, she'd given me several lessons. I wondered whether looking at things again would conjure a hallucination. Would it put his mind at rest? I nudged him.
"What?" he snapped.
"Are you still seeing ghosts?" I asked.
He nodded. "Occasionally."
"I have an idea. But you'd have to palm your psych meds."
"No arguments there," he replied. "Now go get in your own bed. It's hot and cramped."
I smiled at him and went to bed.