In Touch (The Vassi Collection)

by Marco Vassi

  Fantasy, she now saw, was nothing more than the warehousing of information which could not be telepathically shared.

  Doctor Monroe floated down off the cloud of visionary grandiloquence which had pushed all the buttons in the pleasure centers of his brain.

  “So you see,” he went on, “the more you do, the less you accomplish. All your private researches into fantasy, and fantastic reality, and socially conditioned perceptions, whether you use meditative techniques or erotic excess, are nothing but admirable. But their result must find you a more dimensional, more balanced, and, above all, more transcendent human being. Otherwise you become one of the vulgar little mechanics like Janov or Lowen, sticking your fingers into people’s mouths and your dogmatic ideas into their minds.” He waved his hand violently in the air. “Stay away from that, stay away from it. It’s only a masked form of violence.”

  Lydia stood up abruptly and walked to the window. It was her turn to think things through. Doctor Monroe fell back into his chair, lit a cigarette, and puffed contentedly. He enjoyed his sessions with Lydia. They provided precisely the proper edge of tension which allowed for the fullest expression of the interpersonal game. They’d been working together for four years. After the end of the second year, he’d fucked her, arguing that when a man and a woman work together they build a certain tension that must be resolved erotically or they will begin to get on one another’s nerves. It had been a lovely and courtly night, and he had asked if she minded getting on top because at his age he couldn’t stand too much strain. The next morning they parted cleanly and no reference was made to the event again.

  Now he wondered whether they might not be ready for another fuck. As he grew closer to dying, his world view simplified, and he sometimes viewed his entire education as one long distraction from appreciating the basic pleasures of being alive: good eating, hearty drinking, lusty fucking and sound sleeping. He would have liked, in a way, to tell Lydia precisely that, advise her to drop the absurd notion that we have to understand why we do what we do, and just go ahead and enjoy it. But that would be interfering with his own credo of non-interference. Besides, what was applicable to an old man might not be right for a young woman. He was certain that her present experimentation was healthy and he wanted to encourage her, but at the same time warn her not to be precipitous for she could do real damage to people who made themselves vulnerable to her. The masturbation incident with Mrs. Norwood was potentially quite dangerous. He knew how most people require some authority to tell them what to do, when to get up, where to work, what to believe. What was Hitler, after all, but a man who evoked a racial fantasy in a people and then set them to acting it out? He knew Lydia had no evil intentions, but as much harm could come out of ignorance.

  Doctor Monroe watched her. The shapely calves disappearing under her full skirt, the pinched waist, the pert breasts, and the utterly lascivious mouth, all inspired in him an abstract lust. He experienced very little active desire any longer, but could still remember the taste of erotic need on his tongue, and realized that if he were younger, Lydia would be a true torment to him. He recalled the soft resiliency of her buttocks under his fingers as she straddled his thighs and urged her cunt onto his twitching rod. She had been so serious! Had tried so hard to do it right! He was aware of the whopping transference she carried, and of his own equally powerful counter-transference. It was important that she see him as just a man, and he had justified his behavior by reasoning that fucking was the royal road to the conscious mind.

  “By Jove, it would be delightful to ram my prod into that juicy young snatch,” he said to himself, and decided that for this occasion he would use the same rationalization as he had used the last time.

  “It’s not even scratched,” he argued.

  Lydia turned slowly.

  “Maybe there’s something to it,” she said. “On the other hand, if you see someone about to get hit by a car, don’t you try to pull them out of the way? And what about the people who have such a low energy level that they can barely speak without constant prodding. I suppose what I’m asking is, to what degree is a therapist a doctor, or even a savior?”

  “Ninety-five percent of all the people you will ever see are suffering from some form of dietary deficiency, even though they may be overfed. Most have no healthy exercise for their bodies. They are weighed down by pollution, noise, anxiety, the fear of nuclear war, threats of starvation, unemployment, not to mention the routine wear and tear of relationship in a competitive society. They wear restrictive clothing and don’t even know how to sleep properly. Their entire civilization is out of kilter. And they have practically no contact with their biological rhythms. Now, what are you supposed to do? Clearly, one wants to do everything, to solve the total world problem at once. But how much is possible? At best, a human being can hope to bring some order and light into his or her own life, and if that much is accomplished, perhaps to illuminate the way for others. But to meddle . . . why, that’s monstrous.”

  “And what about Marsha?”

  “What about her? If someone wants to commit suicide, what can you do? Keep a twenty-four hour guard?”

  Doctor Monroe looked at her steadily, his eyes half-hooded. While the rational portion of his mind had been listening to her and speaking coherently, the sexual center had begun to throb with a deep booming resonance.

  There are moments between a man and a woman which don’t require much explanation. Times when the lips fall open and leave a sentence half finished. When the eyes start to glow with an ancient flame. There are a number of ways to understand such times, but the simplest is probably the truest. It is then that the god Eros enters the space, and what had simply been an interaction between two people now becomes a hallowed ritual, the dance of a god whose spirit ruled half the earth. The visitation of the god can be ignored, or misinterpreted, or taken as a private triumph of seductive charm. But if we can see through all those devices to the vibrant reality of the god, then a great grace is given, and those so honored can taste immortality for a few brief hours, grow heady on the elixir of eternal life, and know such beauty that the human heart bursts in its attempts to encompass its own rapture. The god is capricious, and visits when and where it wills. One can cajole or pray or demand, and sometimes meet with a response, but the most ecstatic of all experiences is feeling the sudden embrace from behind.

  “I . . . suppose . . . you . . . can’t . . .” Lydia said. Her words fell from her lips like sweet sticky drops of nectar from a freshly sliced pear. Her diction was slurred. She spoke very slowly.

  “Then, learn to be, and let what happens happen. Listen, absorb, grow steady. That’s your only responsibility, your only possibility.” As Doctor Monroe spoke he slid down into his chair. He seemed to shrink and fade and disappear. His body was thin, very thin. He gave off a strange light.

  “Does . . . that . . . end . . . the . . . session . . . for . . . today . . . ? she asked, her words catching the molecules of the air like oar tips cutting the water.

  “Be hot cunt,” he said.

  “All right,” she replied.

  She walked toward him, hips swaying, breasts lolling softly under the cloth of her dress. Both hands massaged her belly and she undulated as she moved, as though she were a belly dancer daydreaming with her navel. She had heard the call also, and was surprised at that, for her last erotic encounter with Doctor Monroe had been essentially psychological, an exercise of the body to work out the needs of the emotions. This time, however, there was more of the mood she had experienced in Provincetown, a sense of being captive to a force larger than they were. Of course, on another level, she saw herself as a woman of thirty-four about to fuck a man of seventy-three, a man with whom she had a long, complex, and not always clear relationship. But that level was dry, abstract, in the face of the passionate god who called her to worship.

  The sun was setting over her shoulder, crashing in through the window
of Doctor Monroe’s office set high above the city. The entire space was boiling with light, the great red ball itself booming into the room as it hurled fierce rays through the plate glass and sizzled the air with radiance. The old man squinted and could barely make out Lydia’s figure as she slowly peeled off her clothing. She stood out in total relief, her body a black silhouette. He discerned now a lifted thigh, now a curving breast. He leaned back more deeply into his chair as the naked woman loomed over him.

  It seemed that this single moment, this precious instant, was the culmination and reward for a lifetime of labor. He sat in the center of his working space, where he had seen thousands upon thousands of people, where he had pondered and plumbed the depths of the human psyche, where he had rejoiced in his ability to help, and despaired over his helplessness in the face of human suffering.

  In the next room stood his books, and his collections of letters, and the photographs showing him with an arm around Freud’s shoulder, throwing snowballs with Reich in Maine, playing chess with Jung. He was at the height of his career and life, universally venerated, liked, respected, one of the few who had gone through the entire course of modern analytic and therapeutic history without making bitter enemies. And now, his favorite student, his most cherished follower, his psychologic daughter, was pulling his zipper down, bending over his thighs, sucking his wrinkled cock into hardness, and then lowering her luscious nakedness onto him, her feet on the floor, rocking on her buttocks, enveloping him in warmth, filling the room with the melancholy aroma of female secretions.

  What more could he desire? His mind danced in delight, his loins trembled with pleasure, and his hands roamed delicately over the soft and sensitive flesh of Lydia, the darling of his eye.

  The sun struck directly through the window. From far away he could hear the howl of sirens, of fire engines. He could feel their height above the street, and their immense distance from the globe of fire which now grilled the room with heat. The whole universe swung as nonchalantly as a feather falling through space. He knew that the totality of what he felt and thought at that instant had to be the most any human being could expect from life. All the days of his years passed before him like a sweeping mosaic . . . the loves . . . the friends . . . the early period as a student in Austria, the flight from the Nazis, the struggle in America in the thirties, and then the gradual accumulation of fame and fortune.

  Lydia moved with more cutting urgency. The sun whipped her back and she started to sweat freely. Doctor Monroe’s face was bathed in light, a radiant red-orange, and his silver hair seemed aflame. His eyes were closed and his lips curved into a faint smile. His cock throbbed between her thighs. She felt only waves of pleasure, none of the sharp edges that indicate orgasmic climax. She had no sense of coming, but only to ride like this forever, to mount her father-figure teacher-guide and gallop slowly home into the sunset.

  But he moaned gently, his jaw fell open, and his thighs quivered. He sat up straight. Then, the wet pulsing in her cunt, and the awareness of his sperm filling her. His eyes opened for a split second, he looked at her oddly, gasped, and sank back against the chair.

  For him, the climax had begun in his loins, but moved quickly to his chest. As his cock spurted and his mind tingled, his heart swelled with warmth as rushes of love fell like a series of small waterfalls. But the warmth was suddenly transformed into a stab of heat, and then into a searing lance of white-hot pain. It seemed as though the rays from the sun and the electricity from Lydia’s cunt and the fire in his chest were all one thing, one single bolt of pure energy.

  “I’m dying,” he thought as he came.

  Lydia sensed the sudden and radical change in him and instantly leapt back, his sperm dribbling down her thighs, cooling rapidly.

  His face was grey and his eyes opened slowly. He had trouble focusing, and stared feebly into the light of the sinking sun.

  “The sun and I die together,” he said.

  “Oh, Doctor Monroe,” Lydia said.

  “Please, my dear, after all this time and at such a moment,” he gasped, “surely you can call me by my first name.”

  “Edgar,” she whispered, “Don’t . . . you can’t . . . die.”

  “I hadn’t planned on it,” he said, and then caught at his chest with one hand.

  The spasm passed and he inclined his head slightly, beckoning her forward. She knelt next to his side, and held one of his hands to her breasts.

  “Tell me,” he said in a low trembling voice, “how should I view my death now? Is it real, or is it a fantasy?”

  “How can you . . .?” she began.

  “Now,” he hissed, “is the most important time. Look into my eyes. Listen to me.”

  She leaned forward.

  “I’m at the very edge between the two worlds, and I can tell you something you can’t know until you reach this spot yourself. Listen to me.”

  “Yes, Edgar, yes,” she said, and came to within an inch of his face.

  Then, his lips curved into an imbecilic grin while his eyes raged with unbearable wisdom and in a strained, cracked voice he began to sing . . . “Row . . . row . . . row . . . your boat . . . gently down the stream . . . Merrily . . . merrily . . . merrily . . . merrily . . . Life is . . . but . . . a . . . drea . . . “

  He never pronounced the final consonant. He died with his lips parted. Lydia stared at him a long time, tears flowing down her cheeks. Then, she got to her feet and, unaccountably, began to smile.

  “You old bastard,” she said out loud. “The whole thing’s been a joke, hasn’t it? And you never told the punch line.”

  She dressed rapidly, wiped Doctor Monroe’s cock clean, put it back in his pants, and zipped him up. Then she called the police.

  The next day the Times ran a lengthy obituary in which it was reported that the venerable therapist had died of a heart attack while in the middle of a session with one of his students, and noted that he passed away while doing his work, which had been the keynote of his entire life.

  5

  Lydia brooded over the city. It was a pus-grey day in late November, the air smirking with a sudden chill, the sky invisible through the sheet of pollution particles which aged the air. She wondered how it was possible for anyone to find anything approaching health in such an atmosphere, and was reminded of the experiments done with rats during her undergraduate days. Put a large number of rats in a crowded space and they begin to develop all the symptoms of human neurosis: hostile aggression, apathy, perversion. The term for it was behavioral sink, and that was precisely what New York looked like that morning, the bottom of a sink in which someone was washing out dirty mops.

  The funeral had been that morning, and Fred had gone with her. She had told him about how Doctor Monroe had actually died, expecting him to turn the incident into a bit of black comedy with a quip or a one-liner. She herself, when the police had arrived and were bustling about the office, had thought, “Jesus Christ, can’t I just get laid anymore? It’s always turning into some kind of melodrama.” But Fred had instead become silent and concerned, and then said something which frightened her.

  “Look, Lydia, you know the scene in the old horror movies where the mad scientist’s assistant turns to the doctor and says, ‘There are some things that human beings should not tamper with.’? Well, I’m beginning to feel a little like that with you. I don’t know what’s happened to you since that girl jumped off the tower, but you’re accumulating weirdness the way a vacuum cleaner sucks up dust.”

  The cold wind had whipped around her legs as the small knot of people watched quietly while Doctor Monroe was lowered into the ground. He had requested in his will that his funeral not be turned into a circus, and only his friends were there. No one from his family attended and Lydia discovered, after all the years she had known him, that the old therapist despised all his relatives.

  “Please,” she told Fred as they walked away fro
m the grave, “you’re not going to blame me for his death, are you?”

  “It’s just that you’re beginning to have the look of someone possessed,” he said. “And maybe you’d better just cool it for a while. Take a vacation, get some fresh air and hot sun. It will burn away the morbidity.”

  The very word “sun” sent a shiver through her. She would never forget the eerie orange light which seized the room just as Doctor Monroe died. Then, a second later, the sun had dipped behind the shoreline of the Hudson River, and a darkness immediately enveloped her.

  “I’m not deranged,” she said in a voice too loud, for several of the people walking next to them turned their heads to look at her. “You were there the night Marsha jumped; you know something extraordinary was going on. And I don’t care how much it’s rationalized afterwards, what that woman did had a special meaning. And as far as what happened in Provincetown, that was all on your instigation.”

  “I know,” he replied, “that’s why I feel partially responsible and want to help you out of this funk.”

  “Who are those two?” one of the women walking behind them whispered.

  “She was with him when he died,” another replied.

  “Looks like a hussy,” the first one concluded.

  Lydia and Fred overheard the exchange and smiled at one another, and then fell into a pseudo-respectful silence. He had not said anything further that morning but after they parted, he to his office and she to her day’s roster of patients, she reflected on his words. In less than a week she had been involved in two deaths, an orgy, and an incident of explosive voyeurism. And now the man who more than anyone else had goaded her to break out of the straitjacket of reality orientation was hinting that she might be going off the deep end.