Chapter 18: The Client's Perceptions
I sat on the lawn outside the dormitory watching the sunset and contemplating Dan. No, that wasn't true. I sat contemplating myself. Dan had surprised me - terrified me - by pushing me the way he did on the trampoline. Whether or not the ends justified the means, though, he had made his point. I had seen plenty of evidence of that in the case studies I had read. An agoraphobic understands that nothing bad will happen to him in a crowd. Still, he is unable to venture from his home. It was the singular failing of the school of cognitive psychology not to recognize that the body's imperatives can not be ignored. So what were mine?
Yes, of course, yes. The answer was yes, I did get off when Adam had struck me. And while I was not ready or able to express that thought out loud - especially to Adam's roommate - it remained unalterably, inescapably true. I had gotten off when Adam had hit me. Both times. But was that me, or was that Adam? Or, worse, was that Adam in me? Did I get off on it - did I want it - merely because he wanted me to want it? Or did it fill some primal need that I did not even recognize I had? Dan was so convinced Adam was a good judge of character. Had Adam judged me and found me... wanting? Was the proverbial writing on the wall? But then, of course, Dan would have to think that about Adam. Dan's whole schema was based on idolizing Adam. If Adam were wrong about something, Dan's world would crumble.
That explanation, while plausible, didn't seem to ring true, though. Dan, in isolation at least, didn't seem in danger of crumbling for any reason. And he had recognized that he was stronger than Adam - at least, could take him in a fight. That would argue against the blind idolatry line of thinking. I trusted Dan. I didn't know why, but I clearly did. And Dan trusted Adam. Was transitivity an emotional property, or just a mathematical one?
I trusted Dan. That was clear. The first thing I did after I had landed was to reach for him. I had risked the status of the research by trying to warn him about Adam. I had told him that Adam had hit me. I had told him, despite the shame and embarrassment I felt over it. How strange these boys all were. I was the fuck toy of a blond Adonis surfer-dude beach-bum gymnast who liked to talk about his girlfriend before sticking his dick in my mouth. The dumb one had thrown me one of the best fucks I had ever had, and had had the grace to jerk me off while he was doing it. That one was straight as a board, I was sure, and yet took my dick in his hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do. The only fully gay one among them was busy falling in love with me, and I had been struck by the leader of the pack - the Alpha Male himself - and rather than leaving (could I leave, I wondered? Could I just pack up and leave?) I told his best friend, who, in any other circumstances, with any other set of jocks, would have probably beaten the shit out of me as well, simply so as not to feel left out. But not Dan. Dan chose that moment, instead, to give me a moral lesson. And an apt one at that. What a crowd!
I became silent within myself as the only question that really mattered presented itself, once again, to my unwilling mind. Did I want it? No. That was not the real question. I had to remember to avoid that trap. Did I need it? I looked within, but the still, small voice was silent.
Adam seemed all things to all people. Doug made him laugh. Why did that surprise me? Dan trusted him. Why couldn't I see why? Why would he fuck Corey, but not Matt or Dan? And why blow jobs from Brad? Why? Why? Why?
The breeze picked up as the light failed, and I was struck by an idea.
I walked around the outside of the building to Adam's room. The curtains were drawn, but the window was open.
"Hey," I called, "you in there?"
The curtains were pulled apart, and Adam stood on the other side of the screen.
"You want to take a walk?" I asked.
"Sure," he said.
"Kay. I'll meet you in front."
Waiting for him at the door, I checked the wind direction. It was coming from the west. I moved to the side of the entrance that would put me upwind when he came out the door. If I could stay upwind, that would be a help. And the failing light meant he would be difficult to see. It would be even darker if we walked the path to and from the lake. I might just be able to keep my wits that way.
Adam came out the front door.
"How can I help you?" he asked. Ironic, I thought, but in character.
"Can we take a walk?"
"Of course."
I led the way, making sure I stayed west of him as I headed us toward the circuit path.
"Can we talk about something?"
"Of course," he said again.
"If we talk, are you going to hit me again?"
"Not for talking," he said. I noted that the answer was not a simple 'no', but decided to persevere anyway.
"I have some information for you," I said.
"Oh? Cool. What do you got, champ?"
"Well, I took one of your unis and sent it to a friend of mine who's a chemist..."
"Was wondering where that went. You took a jock too, right?"
"Yeah..."
"And you sent them right off? Didn't play with them a little first?"
I was determined not to be baited. I was upwind, I was not looking at him. I could practically see Glinda behind a tree, protecting me, saying to Adam, "you have no power here. Now be gone. Before somebody drops a house on you, too." My advisor used to tell me that you had to enter the client's world - at least at the beginning of the therapeutic relationship. See the way he saw, accept his perceptions as true, at least for him. This was something I had not done, heretofore, caught, as I was, in his hormonal haze. I let the accusation pass through me.
"No," I said, calmly, as if the suggestion didn't sting in the least, "that would have tainted the results."
"S'okay," he said. "Stuff of mine comes up missing all the time. Mostly underwear. People take them to play with. You wouldn't believe how much I have to spend in clothes."
Huh. Well, that made sense.
"Doesn't it piss you off?"
"It used to," he said. "Not anymore. I figure whoever takes 'em needs 'em more than I do. It's just a pain in the ass when I don't have any clean ones left."
"Yeah?" I said, smiling despite myself. "That's some image. Ninja commandos following you around waiting for you to change your clothes." He chuckled, recognizing the absurdity of what he was talking about. "It was really bad in high school," he said. "On days I had gym, I'd always have to go home bareback. I started taking an extra pair where ever I went." We walked on a little ways in silence. He was seeming more human to me. Was it my precautions? Or perhaps he was simply in a better mood? Was it something I had done? What? "My friend called me with the results," I said. "It seems you have really high levels of hormones. Really high. Testosterone, androgens, the sexual hormones."
"That makes sense," he said.
"Oh? How so?"
"I hit puberty at ten."
"Ten?! That's so early!"
"Yeah. I know," he said. "It was, like, two years before the rest of my friends."
"I bet you were incredibly popular," I offered. "You have a lot of friends when you were growing up?"
"No. Not friends, really. So what do these hormones do? How do they, you know...make people go will-less around me?"
I basked in the moment. I had power over Adam. I had information - which was, perhaps, the only thing he wanted.
"Will-less. That's a really interesting word."
"I never could figure out a good one to describe what happens."
"No, it's a good word. It describes it really well."
"Yeah. So how does it work?"
"Don't know that yet. That would probably require a bigger sample, and some tests."
"More clothes?"
"No," I laughed, "sweat. More sweat. I need a large sample of sweat from you, so I can send it off to her."
"Sweat? Sweat I can do. What kind of tests?"
"That'll have to wait for when we get back to school. You know. Experiment with it. See if we can isolate the mechanism by which it works, exactly what the effects are, that kind of thing. Experiments with controls."
We fell into silence again, Adam considering, I was sure, what I had told him, me still pleased I had found some leverage, and beginning, for the first time, to feel somewhat at ease around him. The forest was beautiful in the darkness. The crickets sang, moonlight shone through the branches, reflecting off bits of mica in the path.
"Dan likes you a lot, you know," I said.
"Yep. I know."
"He says you're a really good judge of character."
"Um hum." Be in the client's world, my advisor was saying. Enter his reality. See through his eyes.
"How do you do it?"
"I just watch."
The trees opened, and the lake presented itself to us. The moon, half-full and waxing, reflected off the water, silver on black.
"This place is really beautiful at night," I said. We looked out in silence for a while.
"Can I ask you a question?"
"Shoot," he said.
"How did you know I'd get off when you slapped me?"
Adam turned and looked at me for a moment. Then he took a step forward, put his hand behind my neck, drew me into him, and kissed me.
No, that's not true. When one sees the word kiss, one has an image in one's mind of what a kiss looks like - what it feels like. Jung's archetype of a kiss, perhaps. Plato's form. No such image approached what experiencing Adam was like. His smell filled my nostrils as his hand guided me in, the aroma slamming into my mind like a cement truck into a wall. My mouth met his, and opening his lips, he opened mine. His taste - his taste! - was earth and salt and blood. It was sweet and bitter all at once, overloading my tongue with information it could not find the time to process. I immediately became hypersensitive, able to feel each of his whiskers individually as they scratched at the surface of my lips, my mouth, my chin. He was doing something with his hand as he held me to him, strongly, crushingly immobile. Was he massaging my neck - pulling from it whatever resistance the muscles could muster? As his tongue filled me, I became diaphanous. Water that could hold tenuous form as in The Abyss.
Yes, Adam, yes. Will-less is a good word.
I had been reduced to the sum of my instinctual responses. Saliva poured from the glands under my tongue as he took my mouth completely as his own. He explored, he undulated, he poked, he tasted, he took. Some part of me became aware, through the fog of bliss and desire and need, that he held me by the waist with his other hand. Would I have fallen if he let go? I could not tell, as I did not then know whether or not I still had legs. He had turned my head so that it rested on his shoulder while he possessed my mouth, cradling it in the crook of his neck.
I can not tell you how long it lasted. I could not tell you if night had become day at that moment, or if the lake had spontaneously burst into flames. I can not tell you at what point I came. There was no time, no context. There was only him, and what he was doing to me, and the overwhelming desire I felt to melt entirely into him, to become part of him, as he had so clearly become a part of me. All I know is that while my mouth was his, while his tongue fucked me so relentlessly, I had completely and utterly disappeared.
When my soul reentered my body, I was sitting, collapsed on the grass. Adam was at the shore in front of me, staring at the black silhouette of the mountains. I was panting, I noticed. I was drenched in sweat, I noticed. I was sticky. Two minutes later, I was able to find my voice.
"Thank you," I said weakly, at a loss for anything else to say. I saw Adam nod without turning from the vista.
"What was that for?" I asked.
"A reward," he said. "You're finally asking the right questions."
I was too weak to be pissed, too moved to be offended. I grunted acknowledgment, and continued my recovery.
Back in the dorm, I retreated to my room post haste to pour myself a stiff drink. I downed it without tasting it, and poured another, this time looking at the cloudy amber color of the liquid for a few seconds before gulping it in. Taking the bottle, I retreated to the couch. Some part of me insisted I comprehend what had just happened - analyze it, process it. The rest of me poured another 2 fingers, and chugged it. Fire began to spread radially from my stomach. A pleasant sensation, and one far better than the alternative: exploration, self-realization, understanding. By the time I heard the knock on the door, I was feeling no pain.
"C'min on." I said, not hearing myself commit the spoonerism.
"Hola, amigo," came the response as the door opened. It was Matt. Cute, adorable, happy, needy little Matt.
"Hideliho, Neighborino," I called back. "'Sup?"
"Are you okay?" he asked, walking over to join me at the couch.
"Oh, I'm just peachy. Peachy, peachy, peachy. That's a funny word. Kind of looses its meaning after a while, doesn't it? Peachypeachypeachypeachypeachy."
"You're wasted."
"Yeah, I think I've wasted a lot."
"No," he laughed, "you are wasted."
"Ohhhh," I said. "Sorry. I am wasted. Yep. Yeppers. Yepperino. I'm wasted-do-didly-dias."
"Shut up, Flanders," he said, which I thought was the funniest thing I had ever heard in my life. He leaned over and picked me up off the couch as a husband would a bride to bring over the threshold.
"How much did you drink?"
"Don't know. How much is left?" I asked.
"The bottle's pretty much empty."
"Then all of it. I drank all of it."
"You drank a whole bottle of JD?"
"No, just what was there."
I had no clue that I was making no sense. Matt began carrying me into the bedroom.
"Ah, the boudoir? Yes," I slurred, "to the boudoir, Jives, and step on it."
"Yes, sir!" he said, negotiating the corner to avoid hitting my head against the door jamb - as if I would have noticed.
"Sir? Ah. I am your sir. I am your sir, you are my puppy. Bark. Bark little puppy."
"Okay," he said, gently, "now you're just getting ugly."
"You're not ugly. You're pretty. You're the prettiest puppy ever. Pretty puppy. Prettypuppyprettypuppy. Pretty puppy is stripping me."
And indeed, he was. A sandal fell from my foot, and he turned his attention to the other one.
"Is pretty puppy going to rape and pillage me?"
"Not tonight, amigo. Don't think you're quite up for it."
"I can get up. Watch. I'll get up." I sat up, only to be overcome by an intense wave of dizziness. I fell back to the bed, feeling it beginning to spin.
"Oooh. Pretty puppy is right. I can't get up."
The second sandal fell, and he climbed on the bed, beginning to undo my shorts.
"Can I ask pretty puppy a question?" I could feel consciousness begin to fall from me.
"Sure, amigo. Ask what ever you want."
"What's with all the twists?"
"Huh?"
"Everything's so screwy here," I mumbled. "Everything's wrong. I keep thinking I've figured it all out, but then you all throw me some twist which just fucks me up again."
"We're gymnasts, amigo," he said, the last words that I would hear that night, "twists is what we do."