October 21, 2006--Saturday Story: "I Married Lydia"--Concluded

In Part Four Lloyd had his third and final session with Dr. Luven. It would fulfill the bargain he had struck with his fiancé, Lydia, who had insisted on these visits before agreeing to allow their wedding to proceed. It was a session in which there was more talk than is typical in Bioenergetic Analysis, principally about the connection between the mind and the body, as if the lapsing pre-med Lloyd and the physician Arthur, were colleagues, though there was as well considerable body-work. In this latter instance, after Dr. Luven painfully probed Lloyd’s body until he located the somatic source of his anger, just below the diaphragm it was no surprise to learn, that body-work involved beating the cot in the doctor’s office with a battered tennis racket. This to let out all that accumulated rage. Which it did. Part Four concluded with Lloyd indeed venting considerable anger—both toward his sacrificing parents as well as toward his thus far unsatisfiable fiancé. With the release of all that anger, Lloyd even found himself weeping in Arthur’s compassionate arms. That is, “compassionate,” until Dr. Luven asked where to send his bill.

In Part Five, we at last conclude when . . . .

What now to do about Lydia I thought while sitting in the subway as it thundered its way north toward Columbia. I would have to tell her something about my third and final session with her Dr. Luven. There could be no avoiding that. After all, I had been indiscrete when blubbering about my previous session to her roommate, and Lydia had incorporated what I reported in her Psych paper, so how could I this time say nothing, claiming client-doctor confidentiality? This in spite of the fact that Lydia never told me anything, anything at all about her own sessions. My times with Luven, though, were considered, by agreement, to be “ours,” and thus were open to her scrutiny.

By the time the train reached 96th Street, I was in such turmoil that I bolted to the street even though the College Residence Hotel was still fourteen blocks away up on 110th Street. Which was where I knew Lydia was waiting. That was the arrangement—for her to be there to receive me, with or without open arms, after I completed my end of the bargain.

I was particularly stressed about what I would tell her about the body-work I had done—the bed beating and what it had opened up. I was all right to fill her in in considerable detail about my talking with Dr. Luven, if I could represent it that way, as talking together rather than just listening to him lecture about things like the limitations of Western thought and the linguistic roots of phrenic. Lydia had an interest in psychoanalytic theory and was taking a course on Greek Drama that semester. Thus I felt I would be all right with the mind-body stuff and the Greek etymology.

I could even take the risk of telling her some of what came out about my parents, though not of course how they were angry with her for not wanting to visit them more often than once a month. But I could not even consider telling her about the bloody cock business or my having accused her of being a frigid cunt.

So I needed those fourteen blocks to think things through and get my story straight.

I raced along for the first few streets, leaning into the wind that sheared down Broadway after hooking south off the Hudson. But as soon as I realized I hadn’t as yet figured out how to approach Lydia, I slowed down to allow myself enough time to come up with a scenario that would satisfy her and at the same time keep me out of further trouble.

I assumed she would not sit still for too much talk about the talking part of the analytic hour. I knew this from the little she had revealed through the year about her own work with Luven and, from her, on occasion, practicing a version of his craft on my body. She had done some of her own poking around in a few of the same hot spots he had probed in an attempt to treat me “on the cheap,” as she had described it, suspecting that I would never agree to submit myself directly to his ministering.

Once when we were having sex, in full flagrante delicto so to speak, Lydia tried to grab hold of my now professionally-explored diaphragm. After my third session with Dr. Luven, I realized that’s what she was attempting. I understood, after my time in the Accumulator and from the results of beating the bed, that she had, on her own, in that way, been wanting to attack some of my blockages and thereby redirect some of that stored anger into my orgastic performance.

Perhaps because she lacked Luven’s training and experience, all she managed to do was inflict such excruciating pain that I had literally passed out on top of her; and as she struggled to extract herself, she inadvertently rolled me off the bed and onto the floor where I landed with such unconscious dead weight that I broke my nose and needed to go to the emergency room at St. Luke’s Hospital to get it repaired. It was not much fun attempting to explain to the young and beautiful nurse-in-training what had happened to me—she was unable to stifle her giggles as the blood from my nose dripped down onto one of my best shirts.

Therefore, I would have to be prepared to tell Lydia something at a minimum about beating the cot with the racket. Maybe I could get away with just telling her I did it but nothing much happened. But I just as quickly realized that that might not work because the next time she went to Luven for a session of her own he probably would consult with her about what had really transpired. I needed, then, to tell her enough to provide me with the cover of plausible deniability. Maybe I should say that I discovered that there is in fact some anger bottled up in me, things from my childhood like my parents always wanting me to get short haircuts or wear short itchy tweed pants even though my friends had moved on to long ones and how that made me feel like a baby. Things of that kind. And that, thanks to Dr. Luven, I had gotten a glimpse of these repressed feelings; and he had said, or at least implied, on my own, without any more of his treatments, I wanted out of that too, I could continue to discover more anger and in that way exorcise it.

But then again, I thought, maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea to suggest a comparison between Luven’s methods and those of an exorcist. In any case, if I shared this much with Lydia, maybe she would feel I had fulfilled my side of our arrangement; and if she double-checked about me with Luven, whatever he would tell her would confirm that I was telling at least a version of the truth. Or, sad for me to contemplate, he might sigh, pointing out to her that what I had reported to her was as much of the truth as I was capable of perceiving and recounting.

Then, and maybe then, I could do a better job of satisfying Lydia, possibly as soon as I got back to my room where she was eagerly awaiting me, and that this would make her feel better about me and would convince her to agree to proceed with the wedding. We needed to get to that too.

Feeling thus that I had at least an adequate plan I again picked up my pace and after nearly getting run over by a careening taxicab crossed 110th Street and raced up the stairs to my room as much out of desire to see Lydia as to avoid the likelihood of getting stuck in the elevator, which half the time jolted to a stop between floors. I was too charged up with a new kind of energy to risk that.

I was so breathless and aquiver by the time I got there that I could barely get the key into the lock and was surprised that Lydia, who was just inside and had to hear my attempts, out of concern and passion, didn’t rush to unlatch it. Wasn’t she as eager to see me as I was to see and embrace her? But happily there was no time to pursue that thought further since I was quickly able to get the door opened and plunged into the room full of enthusiasm to tell her the story I had so carefully scripted.

“You’re not going to believe what happened today,” I burst out, “at Dr. Luven’s.” She stood in the dim room, at the window, with her back to me and was revealed only in alluring silhouette. “It was amazing, Lyd, just how you told me it would be. How it’s all about the body-work.” She didn’t acknowledge my presence; but I had a head of steam and raced on, “Of course I wanted to avoid that, the body-work, just as you suspected, so I tried to get us talking, you know, psychoanalytic style. Classic avoidance.” She began to stir but still did not turn to me. “He did though tell me a little more about the mind-body continuum but I was eager to get to work, as you know he describes it—as work.”

While remaining at the window, Lydia stamped her foot on the floor. It startled me out of my streaming narrative. I also thought I heard her say, “Shit!”

I was as much confused by that reaction as about why I had so immediately subverted my own well-rehearsed plan to tell her as little as possible, especially about attacking the sites of my repressed anger. But there I was being so revealing about what really went on in Luven’s office. I suspected that the next thing I would be doing would be to tell her about what I had actually said about my parents—not, of course, anything I had said about her. And here I thought my reporting about more-or-less everything would please her, make her feel good about me; but there she was stomping her foot and cursing. Which she again did.

To avoid having to ask about what was going on with her, in truth seeking to ignore whatever it was that she was feeling, I pushed along with my report—“You know that bed in his office, Lyd? I’m sure you do. He had me go over to it and take off all my clothes, actually most of them, and after he found out where all my inner anger was pent up and drew a circle around it with his pen, which at first, to be honest with you I thought was a little strange, he had me beat the bed with an old wooden tennis racket. I also thought that was weird; but since I had this agreement with you I did what he told me; and after whacking the mattress a few times, harder and harder, all that anger and rage began to pour out.”

I checked to see if this was getting to her; if she was beginning to feel better about me. She, though, stayed put looking out enigmatically onto Broadway, but at least she didn’t stamp her foot again or do any more cursing. Thus encouraged, I continued, “As I said, it was amazing, what came out of me, just from beating that bed. To tell you the truth, Lyd, I didn’t realize how angry I was about so many things. About my parents too. And not only about little things like haircuts and itchy pants. I’m talking about some pretty heavy stuff.” I looked at her tentatively, “You know what I mean?”

I paused since I needed to have some reaction from her, to know how she was feeling about what I was revealing. I didn’t want to go much further without some sign from her that she understood, that she empathized with me since she too had had similar sessions with Luven, perhaps she would even share some of her own experiences with the cot and tennis racket. I had to know if what had happened to me, which I was now recounting, was what she wanted to hear or was it making matters worse between us. So I took a chance and asked, “Lyd, are you . . . ?”

As if shot, she wheeled on me and, though the light was behind her, and none of the room lights were on, I could still see that her eyes were blazing. “I can’t fucking believe it!” she exploded.

“I’m sorry, Lyd, I assumed you wanted to hear what happened today with Dr. Luven. It was my last session and I thought you’d be happy to . . . . “

“Happy? Happy? I don’t give a shit about your Dr. Luven and his stupid Orgone Box and tennis racket.”

To say the least I was shocked beyond speechlessness. She was talking about her Dr. Luven, not mine, the “Great Man” as she always referred to him, the person to whom she had insisted I go in one last attempt to save our relationship, to learn from him how to bring her to fulfillment. And here I was reporting back to her that it had worked—he had identified my blockages, they had been successfully attacked, I had wept in his office, I had even had an erection there and ejaculated all over him. Beyond that I was also all set to try it on her! What more could she want from me?
Again I tried, saying, “But Lyd . . . .”

“It’s so typical of you,” she spat back, “to think that everything’s about you.” She resumed stamping her foot. She was wearing steel-toed construction boots and I was worried about the people living on the floor below.

I shook my head, “Not at all. I was only trying to . . . . “

“Well stop that ‘trying’ and listen for a change, will you.” I signaled that I would by moving toward the desk and sitting on the chair, looking up at her as she stormed around the small room, stopping on her second circuit to kick over the wastebasket.

“I can’t begin to tell you how she makes me feel. I’ve been involved with her for two years; but today was the end, the last straw. I loved her and thought she loved me.” Her tone had softened and she began gently to whimper.

Though I should have gotten up and tried to comfort her, I instead sat there so stunned that, as if in a cartoon, my mouth dropped open.
Until then I had always thought of Lydia as heterosexual. Totally so. Incredibly so. But this? When I recovered from my initial shock at this confession, a thought flickered through my mind--maybe this has been the source of her problem with me.

I stammered, “I didn’t know, Lyd. I’m so sorry. Everything is becoming clearer now. Have you ever talked about this with Dr, Luven? I mean worked on it with him? I think he would be quite helpful with this kind of a problem. As I understand it, isn’t it also all because of Orgone Energy? It’s displacement or redirection or something like that?”

“I can’t believe you,” she stamped, no longer crying. She was again the familiar Lydia, “You’re such an asshole.” I think I might have smiled at that anatomical reference.

“You’re right, sorry. I don’t know what I’m talking about,” adding under my breath, “as usual.”

But I continued to sit stolidly at my desk while Lydia resumed her pacing. And as I slowly began to get used to the idea that Lydia was a lesbian, I must admit that I felt some relief. She was right—it wasn’t about me. It was about her! I knew, of course that this would probably get in the way of the wedding plans, that is unless Dr. Luven could work one of his famous miracles. But if not, so be it—I could tell my parents about her or maybe, better, make up some kind of less scandalous excuse. And when they were being apoplectic about needing to put the marriage on hold, I would slip into the conversation that I wasn’t going to med school. They would be so upset about the wedding that they probably wouldn’t even notice.

With some hesitation I asked, “Have you, Lyd, have you worked on this with Arthur?” From my chair I was leaning toward her, attempting to hold her in my gaze.

“How could I? It just happened today.” She was back at the window.

I thought, incredulously, that while I was beating on the bed at Luven’s, at her insistence, she was out trysting, cheating on me with her girlfriend! Who knows, maybe with another modern dancer. But I was, I amazed myself to find, actually more amused by this than angry. “Well, maybe it’s a good thing.” I slipped into my liberal mode—after all, the world was changing, becoming more tolerant and permissive. I had even participated in a few Civil Rights marches. In fact, one right there at Woolworths, on Broadway, protesting their treatment of Negroes in the South. So why was it such a big deal being a lesbian?

Still in that tolerant mode, I said, “It’s OK with me, Lyd. Everyone has to find out who they really are and attempt to lead an authentic life.” I had been reading the French Existentialists in Lionel Trilling’s class and living authentically was one of their dogmas.

“I can’t believe you,” she screamed, “Here I had a fight in class today with Martha Graham and all you can talk about is authentic-this and authentic-that bullshit. You’re useless!” She was standing by the bed and kicked it so hard that it jumped off the floor.

Again my mouth dropped open. So Lydia was not gay! I stammered, “I, I didn’t know . . . I thought that . . . .”

“Well stop thinking then. You were never very good at that anyway.” I began again to think about what I would say to my parents. I obviously would need a new plan.

“With Graham herself? I know you take classes in her school but with her?” That seemed impossible. “Isn’t she like a hundred years old?”

“She’s only seventy,” Lydia said, her voice dripping with contempt, “And she not only still conducts classes, master classes, the ones I’m in, thank you, but she also performs. If you had been paying attention to me, rather than jumping on my every minute, you’d know this.”

This charge hardly seemed fair, considering who in fact did most of the “jumping”; but I restrained myself, still wanting to be helpful. “So what happened, Lyd?” She didn’t respond. “You actually had a fight with her?” That too was incredible to me—Lydia had a fight with Martha Graham herself, a true immortal?

“I told you about that too.” I did not in truth know what she was referring to but I nodded back at her as if I did. She turned her back to me again and said, “It’s about her next concert. At City Center. Where we saw Merce last year.” I nodded some more even though she wasn’t facing me, thinking perhaps she could see my reflection in the window. I wanted her to know I was not only listening but was also being empathetic.

“Today she told me, that bitch, that she was putting that suck-up, Mercedes Simpson in the company.” Once more she stomped on the floor. “And not me. For Clytemnestra, of all things. She’s reviving it. It might be the last time Martha performs, I should say stands around preening on stage since she can barely move any more. Wrapped to disguise her sagging body in a bunch of scarves and veils, the old bitch. I was born to be Iphigenia. Not that Mercedes tramp!”

I kept nodding in her direction and emitted only, as Lydia’s roommate had done when she was getting me to tell her all about my first session with Luven, “Uhmm.”

“I even studied Aeschylus’ version this term in Greek Drama. So I’m prefect for the company.” She growled, “That Mercedes can’t even read!” And she added malevolently, “She’s such a slut!”

Lydia kicked at the bed again but missed it this time, losing her balance in the process, and as a result gracelessly tumbled onto it. She landed so hard, hitting the back of her head on the wall with such force, that my Columbia pennant came loose and fluttered down onto her. In a rage she smacked the mattress ferociously with a clenched fist.

I couldn’t help noticing how ridiculous she looked, bouncing up and down on the bed out of frustration, with the banner crumpled across her lap. But, trying to remain objective, I continued to maintain my poise and said again, “Uhmm.”

Lydia began to shake her head back and forth so violently that spittle flew out of her mouth and dribbled all over her leotard and the pennant. She gasped, “That Bitch . . . . Martha. . . . That slut . . . . Simpson . . . .” With each name and curse she slammed her fists on the bed, each blast harder than the last so that my pillows began to bounce in the air launched by the trampolineing mattress.

I didn’t moved, still attempting to keep eye contact, as much transfixed by her full-blown tantrum as by my desire to read her body language and, thereby, also attempt to help her. In that spirit I began to pose, “So tell me, Lydia . . . .”

“I’m never going back there . . . .” She broke off and began to cry again, which this time quickly became deep sobs as she continued to pound the bed.

“Where is that, Lydia?” I asked with as much compassion as I could muster, which was difficult for me to do because I was surprised, at that delicate moment, by something very strange and disturbing that was beginning to happen to me. Something I am more reluctant than at any previous time to reveal. Something to this day about which I am both ashamed and mortified. But I must, in spite of that try . . . .

All the while that I was attempting to be there for her, to truly hear her, to do all that I was capable of doing to help her through this desperate crisis, one which was tearing at her heart and which was releasing, should I say unblocking, so much of her pent-up anger; all that while, as I sat there at my desk, but turned to her, trying to hold her gaze, all that time, as I leaned toward her in an act of compassionate caring, I was, I must force myself to confess, I was getting the largest, hardest erection I had ever had! Yes, I know you are curious, even more tumescent than the one I acquired the previous week as I sat in the Accumulator!

But still, in spite of my pleasure and simultaneous discomfort, I attempted to keep my body leaning toward her, to signify my desire to be close, to show sincerity but as a consequence crushing it. I one more time tried to reach out to Lydia, “I understand, Lyd, that you won’t go back to Martha. From what you say it is clear that she is a bitch. I agree with you.”

At the mention of Graham’s name, Lydia began to use both fists on the mattress, with such power that she began to bounce on the springs along with the pillows and cushions. “And that Luven too. I’m never going back to him. That quack!” This reference to him only increased my, yes, excitement and the size of my . . . .

But she was in such distress that I hoisted myself, literally that was what was required, out of the swivel chair and clumsily and painfully shuffled toward her, thinking, once I dragged myself there, I would sit down beside her and maybe even cradle her in my arms while at the same time restraining her from beating the bed. So she could get control of herself. But, glancing surreptitiously at my watch, I also realized it was getting to be time for me to begin to make my way over to the Organic lab where I needed to complete my assignment. I had, thus to bring this session to some kind of closure.

It had grown quite dark in the room; but still, when Lydia raised her head as I inched close to her, with my crotch at her eye level, she hissed at me with even more venom than she had expended toward Mercedes and Martha, “Get that thing away from me,” she was pointing at my exploding trousers, “It’s the most grotesque and disgusting thing I have ever seen!”

If possible, the looming sight of it intensified her fury and her assault upon the bed, which did not abate as the phone began to ring. The unexpected sound jolted me. “Don’t answer it,” she shrieked.

“I have to. It could be the technician calling to tell me the make-up lab has been cancelled.”

“You are such a shit,” Lydia yelled. “You and your stupid pre-med business.”

But since it might have been an important call for me, I began to turn back toward the desk where it continued to ring. A bed cushion cracked me in the back of the head. “I can’t believe you. A phone call is more important to you than me.” Another pillow, missing me, slammed off the desk lamp, tipping it onto the floor, where the bulb shattered. My erection began to deflate.

The ringing ended just as I got my hand on the receiver. At the same moment the answering machine clicked on. I had set is so that I could hear whomever was leaving a message as a way, while studying, to screen calls.

It was my father. His voice unmistakable even modulated by the cheap instrument. “Son, it’s me, dad. Are you there?" I reached again to answer; but Lydia, who had leaped from the bed, had jumped up onto my back, wrapping her arms around my throat and her legs around my waist. From her unexpected weight I fell backwards and locked together this way we crashed onto the bed.

“I guess you’re not,” my father’s voice continued, “so I’ll leave you a message.” He was talking very slowly and deliberately, not used to leaving messages.

I unsuccessfully tried to wrestle loose from Lydia, who was extremely strong and muscular from all her dance training. “This message is from your mother and me.” Since I had never heard him say anything like this, anything that sounded so ominous, I redoubled my efforts to extricate myself. But could not. Still entangled, we slammed into the wall together. My reproduction of Van Gogh’s Starry Night crashed down on top of us. “She wants you to know that it’s all right if the Lichters will not allow us to invite anyone else to the wedding.”

“The wedding again,” Lydia snapped, “I can’t believe any of you.” We were rolling back and forth in a knot of arms and legs.

“Your Aunt Madeline,” my father’s disembodied voice went on, “says she can’t come to the wedding. Which is fine with us. Your mother, you know, never really liked her.”

“I hate her,” I could hear my mother saying in the background.

“I also hate Madeline,” Lydia panted. She was beginning to weaken, and I managed to twist myself out of her clutches.

“But ask the Lichters, when you tell them about Madeline, if they can add shrimp cocktail to the menu.”

“Pick up the phone will you,” Lydia at last screeched, “And tell them to send out the fucking invitations!”

With that the tape ran out, and I instantly regained my erection.

The End!