The Man I Love

by Suanne Laqueur

  “Do you see now, Erik? How when you would try to make love, terror and anxiety would immediately follow?”

  “I do see it now. I can’t believe… Never in a million years would I have linked those things together.”

  “They were already linked. You just weren’t aware.”

  “How do you not be aware of something like that?”

  Diane leaned forward in her chair. For a moment Erik thought she was actually going to touch him, take his hands in hers. But she only clasped her own hands together and looked at him intently. “What happened, Erik,” she said, “was traumatizing.”

  “I had a bad dream,” he whispered.

  “The way the brain deals with trauma is to suppress. It doesn’t forget. It just pushes the trauma somewhere deep, where it continues to exert its power without you being aware of it.” She sat back, but her gaze stayed fixed on him, holding him rapt. “It is absolutely no shock the repercussions to your relationship with Daisy were sexual. It makes perfect sense being sexual and loving and connected brought on feelings of extreme anxiety. It makes sense you are reluctant or even outright averse to leaning into the joyful moments of your life because part of you is now braced and waiting for something to come along and blow your joy to bits.”

  “What do I do?” he said. “How do I stop this?”

  Her smile was indulgent. “You’ve begun today. This was a huge step. You did an amazing thing here.”

  “And we’re out of time, I take it?”

  “For today. But we have plenty of time to work this out.”

  Coup de Grâce

  He went home. He was still chilled and feeling the residue of the session on his skin, so he took a long hot shower before falling into bed and careening into sleep.

  And he dreamed.

  Dreams with cruel vividness and clarity, with not a shred of the absurd to remind him these were only dreams. He was back up in Daisy’s room, in her bed, wrapped in her arms and legs and hair. Her mouth swollen and hungry in his, her breath in his lungs as she whispered amazing things.

  Up on his elbows, cradled in her thighs, he held her head in his hands, her hair woven around and between his fingers. As he worked his hips in her, his necklace swung back and forth by her chin. She kept catching the fish in her teeth and smiling up at him. Those gorgeous, wicked, blue-green eyes. She had him. She’d caught him. He was where he belonged and it would never end, ever.

  He rolled down and pulled her up onto him, a cartwheel of limbs and a seamless, unbroken kiss. And then she was over him, leaning on his wrists, holding him down, onto him and all over him and so damn good at him. He could writhe here forever, gripped from within and without by her body on top of his. Firm flesh and soft skin, shifting muscle and bone. So small but so strong and coaxing from him emotions he didn’t even know he had. They burst from him unbidden as he gasped out of their kiss, holding her head, holding her mouth still against his, fighting for breath. I love you, Dais. I love you, I love you…

  Then the dream turned dark.

  Pitch black. Thick, tangible black. His back burning under the rake of her fingernails. The taste of blood in his mouth. Her hair damp and sweaty in his tight fist. His weight pinning her to the floor, to the wall, to the bed. Her wrists crossed in her back. Holding her down. Hurting her. His teeth on the back of her neck as he tore her up because she needed it.

  Down into the black.

  Down…

  Erik woke up coming, sweating and trembling, a lap full of sweet, strong wetness and the taste of blood on his tongue as his mouth cried Daisy’s name out to the dark. The thin dark of his room. He was awake. Alone and cold. She wasn’t there anymore, she had sent him back.

  I’m useless to her.

  He crawled back into the shower, literally crawled and sat under the spray, curled up against the wall of the tub. He had the hot water full blast, steam billowing in clouds around him, but he was freezing again, drowning in the icy rapids. He could not get warm, could not get out of his own head. He put on his warmest clothes, even a hat, made tea and warmed up some soup but he could barely tolerate a sip or spoonful. He was sick.

  He was crazy.

  He pushed the bowl away and picked up the phone. He got Diane’s voicemail, left what he hoped was a coherent message, and then resumed pacing around and sipping plain, hot water. She called him back in five minutes.

  “Help,” he said.

  “Help is here. Tell me what happened when you went home.”

  He sketched it out for her, too anxious to be embarrassed.

  “I’m sorry, Erik,” she said. “We didn’t leave off in a safe place.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s difficult to end a session in a place where you feel safe, in a place where you can put down whatever we were discussing and leave it there. We were in the middle of something rather intense, and you took it with you.”

  “I need to talk to you,” he said. “I can’t tough it out another week.”

  “Of course not. I’m glad you called. I can meet you at my office in ten minutes, can you come?”

  “You’d see me?” he asked. “Tonight?”

  “Erik,” she said, “it’s my job. You’ve hired me. I’m on your team now.”

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  “See you in ten minutes. Drive safely, please.”

  * * *

  He told her. Unloaded all of it—the cocaine and ecstasy, and all those nights in the pitch dark when he and Daisy tried, it seemed, to kill each other. To fuck each other to death.

  “The last time,” he said, “when I had her in the shower afterward. Her body… She was like this broken thing. The scars on her thigh and the scars on her calf. And then the scratches down her back and the bruises on her arms. Her hair was collecting in the drain because I had pulled on it. It was horrible.”

  “It must have been frightening.”

  “But it felt so good. Violence made the sex amazing and I didn’t understand. I still don’t. Well, maybe I do a little. I see how they were tied together in our minds. Maybe… Maybe we were trying to connect back with the night before the shooting. Because the night had such a raw edge to it.”

  “But remember it was deeply loving as well. And since feelings of love only brought anxiety, possibly you had to jettison it and focus solely on the raw savagery.”

  “I have no memory of thinking that way.”

  “Of course not, it was purely subconscious. You were simply trying to take control any way you could. And losing control simultaneously.”

  “I remember I couldn’t do it anymore,” he said. “Be violent in bed. But I think she still needed it. And then I was useless to her.”

  Diane inclined her head. “You feel that?”

  “I do. I really believe Daisy needed the violence. She was hooked on it. Just like coke. I wouldn’t give it to her. And she went to David to get it. To ask him for it. Knowing he would do anything for her.”

  “You must have been devastated.”

  “She killed me,” he whispered.

  “It seems you’re still angry with her,” Diane said after a moment.

  He opened his mouth to reply of course, but then stopped to think about it. Was he angry with her? Of course he was. At least he had been. Was he still?

  “Am I?” he said.

  “Are you?”

  He put his head in his hands, pulling the hair back from his temples. “I just don’t understand,” he said, sighing. “I just don’t understand how she could do it.”

  “She was traumatized as well, Erik. I’ll play devil’s advocate for a moment and say she may not have been entirely in her right mind when she slept with your friend.”

  “It’s possible,” Erik said, thinking of the cocaine left carelessly on David’s coffee table, “she was high when she slept with him.”

  “Would you treat it as a reason or an excuse?”

  Erik looked at her. “I don’t like to treat it at all.”
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br />   Diane gazed back, fingertips steepled beneath her chin. “I can’t speak to her experience, Erik. She’s not here. We’re talking about you and your experience. About what it was like, no matter the reason or excuse, to find her in bed with David. After everything you had been through together.”

  “Everything I did,” he whispered. “Crawled through broken glass. Stared down the barrel of a gun. And it wasn’t enough. She made me feel useless.”

  “Yes,” she murmured.

  “And used.” His face twisted with the pain, eyes hot and throat tight. “It was almost like another shooting. Except she had the gun this time.” A swift rage filled him and he grabbed the tissue box and fired it against the far wall. “Fuck,” he said, sinking his face into his hand again. “Sorry. I’m not aiming at you.”

  “I know,” she said calmly.

  “She was… She had my life, Diane. She had my soul. She was like this.” Erik put his hands out, cupped together, open and receiving. “Like this. And I put myself there. Everything. Anything. No secrets. Stories about my father, memories of my father. I would put them in her hands and she would hold them. She understood me. And then it was ruined.”

  “Was it?”

  “You know how when they execute someone by firing squad, the captain takes the last shot. It has a name. It’s French, Daisy would know it.”

  “The coup de grâce,” Diane said.

  “Yeah. The death blow. It killed me.”

  “And you left.”

  “I left. And I know why I haven’t gotten seriously involved with another woman since. Part of me never wants to hurt like that again. But God, this hurts even when I’m alone.” He glanced around but there was nothing to throw.

  “It’s your heart,” Diane said, getting up herself and retrieving the tissue box. “Your heart is breaking.”

  “It’s breaking now? I can’t do this again.”

  “That would be a fair statement except you never did it the first time.” She set the box in his lap. “You can throw it again, just aim over my head.”

  “I didn’t do it the first time?”

  “Did you? Did you feel it at the time? You lost the love of your life. Did you take the time to feel all that grief and pain? Loss is trauma, same as a shooting incident or any act of violence. It’s emotional violence. You don’t forget. You simply suppress. And while you suppress, the grief gathers strength to come back at a later time. With more power to kill you. You may want to trust me on this one, Erik, because I see it a lot.”

  He sighed, spinning the tissue box in his hands. “You think I have trust issues?”

  “I think a Tibetan monk would have trust issues after your experiences. Who do you trust now, Erik?”

  He gave up his most charming smile. “I trust you.”

  “And I’m glad to hear it. But outside this office, who are the people closest to you? How many people do you let into your heart?”

  “Not. Many.”

  “I’m not surprised. You were eight and trusting in the world, and your father left. You were twenty-one and trusting in the world, and James came into the theater with a gun. Then you were trusting in your relationship with Daisy, and she slept with your friend. We have a lot going on here,” she said

  Erik glared, thinking she sounding a little too pleased, as if he were a project. “I just want to stop hurting. I want to stop waking up in the morning and feeling like the day is already out to get me. Stop fucking crying all the time. Jesus, it’s like I don’t even recognize myself anymore.”

  “I don’t know if it will ever cease to be a painful subject, Erik. Possibly this is always going to matter to you. The goal now is to learn to open your heart and trust. Not so much trust in love or trust in people, but trust in yourself. So if you do get hurt—and that’s probably a when not an if—you will be able to survive. Because you have survived.”

  “But I’m a wreck. I’m on meds, I’m in therapy. This fucking woman ruined my life.”

  “You’re alive. You’re here in this office taking it on. This is it, Erik, this is surviving. It’s not one event, it’s a process. And it’s not a linear process. You don’t start at point A and just get to point B and you’re fine again. It’s a matrix. It’s a three-dimensional scaffold you build around your life. You’ll find it’s cyclical. And seasonal. April might always be a tough month for you, it might be your haunted time of year. Or it might not. The point is you can lean into your weak moments the same way you can lean into joy. Pain makes joy sweeter. And joy helps you survive pain. You can’t have one without the other. If you open yourself to both, you are, by default, surviving.”

  Erik nodded, his eyes far away, but his entire being listening to her.

  “Do you feel all right about leaving it here, are you safe?”

  “I think so.”

  “If you get home and you’re not, you call me.”

  “All right.”

  “Call me. We’ll come back as many times as it takes.”

  He paused for a moment, feeling out the professional line between them. “I like we,” he said.

  “You won’t do this alone,” she said. “I’m on your team.”

  “Thanks, doc.”

  “I’ll see you next week, if not before.”

  Part Five: Melanie

  Adjunct Asshole

  Miles called Erik one night in late summer of 1998, full of gossip and intrigue. The technical theater director at Brockport State had just resigned in disgrace, in a scandal involving not one, but two freshmen girls, and a boatload of video tapes.

  “Video,” Erik said, eyebrows raised. “Impressive. Did you see any of it?”

  “No, goddammit.”

  The college was desperate to distance itself, sweep out the closet before any skeletons could take residence. They needed to regroup and replace as soon as humanly possible.

  “And, let me guess,” Erik said. “Distract everyone’s attention away from the video tape to a big main stage production.”

  “Big,” Miles said. “Big-ass, I believe was the expression used.”

  Big-ass productions required big-ass stagecraft, but big-ass applicants were proving hard to find. “So I said I knew this guy down in Brockport,” Miles said. “No formal teaching experience—”

  “Try no experience,” Erik said.

  “But he’s good. A natural with kids—”

  “Kids. Not college students. Kids.”

  “And a born leader.”

  “Miles, are you saying my ass is big?”

  “I’m saying, is your resume up to date?”

  “I’m incredibly flattered. Thank you for thinking of me, Miles. You’re a prince. And they will never give me the job.”

  “Come up,” Miles said. “Come up and visit us. Janey misses you. And go interview for the hell of it. Chance of a lifetime, Fish. What’s the worst that could happen? They say ‘Thanks but no thanks,’ and you go back to Geneseo.”

  He went for the hell of it. And he got the job.

  “I got the part,” he said. This was the theater, after all.

  “Someone must have liked your ass,” Miles said.

  Packing his possessions into a jumble of boxes, duffel bags and laundry baskets, Erik felt a new man. After a year of intensive therapy he was seeing Diane just once a month. His regular doctor had been dialing down the dosage of the antidepressants. He was nearly off them and any episodes of anxiety were few and far between. He was feeling good. Head shrunk, almost med-free and shit together. Things were interesting again. Food tasted good, sleep was a friend. He was back in shape and ready for a change.

  He still felt woefully underqualified for the position, but as he toured the performing arts complex and got to know his colleagues, he couldn’t help but feel a rejuvenated excitement. People were happy he was there. Grateful he was there. Miles and Janey fussed around, helping him get settled. He had an office. And a business card, for crying out loud: Erik Fiskare, Adjunct Professor of Technical Theater.


  “So now it’s Professor Asshole,” Miles said, as they went for a run in Corbett Park.

  “Adjunct asshole. Sounds kind of sexy.”

  “Sounds like a medical condition I wouldn’t want.”

  Brockport is a village in the town of Sweden. Erik got an ancestral kick out of that. He liked the feel of the place. Beautiful Victorian houses nestled on tree-lined streets and the stately Erie Canal gave Brockport its old world charm and quaint village air. State College brought a buzzing modern energy to downtown, where Erik had his apartment on Apple Street.

  He moved from Geneseo in a hurry, dove straight into the new job and never completely unpacked. He didn’t hang any pictures or buy himself mugs or a bathmat. A skeleton kitchen was good enough. He made sure the windows facing the street were decently covered and hooked up the stereo and TV. The rest was just floors and walls and a drafting table.

  The fall semester was a blur of activity. The theater director pitched Noises Off as the main stage production. Erik wasn’t familiar with it. He picked up a copy of the script at the library, took it home to read and blanched. It was a British play-within-a play comedy, dependent on a thousand technical cues and effects. This was no open the curtain, close the curtain affair. He’d have to build a set on a turntable, a set to be viewed from both sides.

  “I’m screwed,” he said to Miles on their daily run. “This is way too big an ass.”

  “Then you’ll have to build big pants.”

  In his small, Spartan apartment, Erik paced, thought and panicked. What would Leo Graham do?

  “He’d get to work,” he said. He talked to himself a lot lately.

  He made tea, sat down and read the play again. A thought tapped his shoulder and he reached for a pad of paper. An idea sat in his lap. He filled page after page with notes and sketches. The high of creative flow began to creep through his veins. He touched the groove. Took a careful taste. Put one foot on the bedrock of his own capability and tested it. Then the other foot. His talent felt solid beneath him. He trusted it. He could pull this off.