Empathy

by Sarah Schulman

  The doorbell rang. They were here.

  Remember, Doc told himself, lovers can be happy together. Just be nice to each other and let the other one know that you like them. You don’t have to say “I like you” morning, noon, and night. But show it by being caring and compassionate toward them. And let them finish their sentences.

  Doc was excited now.

  “I will show Herr Doktor K. that he is wrong,” Doc swore. “I will show the world how very much people can do.”

  The doorbell rang again. Doc took his place.

  “Break a leg,” he told himself before the lights came up. No more heartbreak for these two. This time Doc would not let them down. This play was called

  FAILURE

  As the lights come up JO and SAM are kissing. Then they separate and stand apart.

  DOC

  So, how are you two feeling today?

  JO

  Doc, I’m so happy today. I was just thinking about how, now that we’re both coming here and trying to work on our relationship, it is so exciting because anything can happen.

  SAM

  Don’t compare yourself to me. I’m older than you. I’ve been in this world a lot longer than you have. You’re always trying to make me be just like you. Well, I’m never going to be just like you. You can’t take it. You’re threatened. You’re threatened because you’re narrow. But I’m universal. That’s why I’m marginalized. Because I’m transcendent.

  That phrase - don’t compare yourself to me - it was exactly what the woman in white leather had said to Doc. The logical and psychological interpretation would be that that woman and Sam felt inferior and so pretended that they were more. But Doc wanted to hear it straight from the patient’s mouth.

  DOC

  Excuse me, Sam. I’m sorry to interrupt your therapy like this, but that phrase, that word compare. Why did you say that? Was it on TV or something? Is that a new “in” insult or something?

  JO

  Stop lecturing me about how terrible I am.

  Shit, thought Doc. Now Jo had to go stick in his two cents just when I was about to get an answer. Now Sam has free reign to react and he won’t have to answer anything at all.

  SAM

  Don’t tell me who I am. Don’t tell me what I’m doing. You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me. You think you know everything but you know nothing. You’re a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong. You’re a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong. You’re a hundred percent wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re a hundred percent wrong. You’re a hundred percent wrong. You’re a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong. You’re a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong. You’re a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong. You’re a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong. You’re wrong. You’re wrong. You’re a hundred percent wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. You’re wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. You’re a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong, a hundred percent wrong. You’re wrong, wrong. You’re wrong, wrong. You’re wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. You’re a hundred percent wrong. Wrong, wrong a hundred percent wrong. A hundred percent wrong. A hundred percent wrong. You’re wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

  BLACKOUT

  “Stop!” Doc said. “Wait!”

  “You!” he said, pointing at Sam. “What did you get out of that?”

  “You’re wrong,” Sam said.

  “What did you get?” Doc asked, pointing to Jo.

  “I wasn’t listened to,” Jo said.

  “Okay!” Doc said. “Okay, if you would only become aware of your behavior, you could change it. People don’t want to be awful. But they do want to repeat the same old stuff and incidentally have it all work out. Now you, Jo, and you, Sam, your brain chemicals aren’t in control. You are. You are. You are!”

  “Well, Doc,” Jo said, “I can offer one thing.”

  “What?”

  “When Sam puts me down, I can’t listen precisely. It’s too hurtful.”

  “Sam,” Doc said, really excited, “we’re finally getting somewhere here. It’s wonderful. We’re inching toward a breakthrough. See, Sam? See, Sam? Jo is making you an offering. Sam, answer this question. What is more important to you? Would you rather put Jo down or be listened to?”

  “I don’t put Jo down,” Sam said. “But Jo is too threatened to realize that.”

  “Why is Jo threatened?”

  “Because Jo cannot compare Jo to me.”

  Doc placed his head in his hands and wept.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “I’m wrong. I’m a hundred percent wrong,” said Doc, hours and hours after the couple was long gone. “I’m wrong. I’m wrong. I’m a hundred percent wrong.”

  Meanwhile, back at her place, Anna was reading through a stack of old People magazines. The covers were really shiny. They glistened.

  TODAY’S LATEST FLAP: NOW IT’S JANE IN THE HOT SEAT

  This is why she was going crazy. Why was Today italicized? How could Today be a euphemism? Especially one expected to be so easily understood that it could appear on a national magazine without any explanation? Then it occurred to her that Today was a product of some kind, or a packaged event and not these twenty-four hours.

  Doc looked up at the empty apartment.

  “I, like others, have been hurt,” Doc said. “I needed to be treated kindly and with love and instead I was interrupted. I looked around outside my door and noticed that virtually nothing in this society gets thought through or completely said. So, I decided to do something about it. I decided to work for change on a one-to-one basis. I took direct action on behalf of listening and nothing happened.”

  Anna grabbed another magazine.

  BUILT FOR THE HUMAN RACE, said that week’s ad from Nissan. Then there was an advertisement for a Rabbit Ovulation Computer. It was for that special sector of the population that could no longer easily conceive and not the group that was plagued by the epidemic of unwanted pregnancies, both teenage and adult. The advertisement was a full page but designed to look smaller. It pretended that it did not want to attract your attention. It was designed to ensure that the reader’s infertility would remain a secret. It was black and white so no one would know.

  Doc, on the other hand, sat there complacently for hours. At some point he became aware that there was a shooting going on outside. It was like any other shooting. The guns go off. There’s a moment of silence. People start to scream. Horns start to honk as the screaming and then voyeuring public start to block traffic. Then the sirens come.

  Another gun went off.

  Oh well, someone else got popped, Doc thought.

  Then he realized that there was a continuous knocking at his front door but he did not react. Instead, Doc sat in the vortex of three windows, each reaching out with a vector of light. The spot where they met was called him and was the warmest spot of all. The edges quivered surprisingly because the heart of that point seemed so solid and dependable. But there was some hint of potential erosion, some natural disaster.

  Is that what you’d call a description? he thought.

  Anna turned to the record section. There were some really strange reviews. One said, “The ‘Nuke the Baby Whales’ crowd would oppose many of his positions.”

  What in the world is the “Nuke the Baby Whales crowd”? Anna wondered. Then she read another record review on the same page. “Delighted depravity of drug-afflicted and/or homosexual incidents. Pervo-novelty songs.”

  I wonder who would buy that record as a result of this review?

  The next record was described as “as heartfelt as anything since Janis Joplin.”

  Is that a pick or a pan? Anna wondered.

  The knocking continued.

  If that person really wants to get in, they will. I’
m in no condition to do anything precise about that right now.

  One minute into the book section and Anna noticed that every book had the same name, Nintendo Power, Nintendo Strategies, How to Win at Nintendo, Captain Nintendo.

  Anna could not tell what Nintendo was from the titles, even when she really tried. It seemed like some new kind of generic activity. But she could not get closer than that.

  The door finally opened.

  “Anna,” the stranger said. “Anna, I’ve come to speak with you.”

  Doc looked over his shoulder for Anna but he was the only other person in the room. Then he looked back in the intruder’s direction. Doc recognized her voice the way he recognized machine sounds. That’s when the panic began to set in. That voice had surrounded him every day like the sound of a prewar elevator. Like the refrigerator buzz after the electricity had been turned on. Like that particularly loose floorboard that means your house. Like books always falling in the other room, it was engraved on his gray matter. Suddenly it became obvious how many feelings Doc had left out because they were all contained in that other person’s voice. The air between them was a membrane. She spoke like the neighbors watching TV. The neighbors getting plastered. The neighbors falling down on the other side of the Sheetrock.

  “Anna?” she asked again.

  When she stepped into his line of vision he got smacked by the gestures. Especially by the fact that she had acquired new ones and no longer moved exactly as his mind had recorded her gestures’ greatest hits. She was shorter than he remembered. His memory had not been short because it took place at the top of his head, slightly above eye level. She was wearing her usual outfit, that white-leather-and-chiffon dance thing.

  “Anna,” she said. “I’ve come to speak to you.”

  Then she sat down on the couch and took out the cigarette.

  “Six months after you left me, Anna, I was still in love with you. After nine months, while fucking someone else on a regular basis, I was still in love with you. Now, after a year with that guy, I have to get you back in my life. I have to because my life is less pleasurable without you in it.”

  Doc saw a hole in her stocking. It seemed to be there on purpose.

  “Anna, why are you dressed like a man?”

  Doc looked at her in disbelief. Why was she being so kind? Had she undergone that cathartic trauma that was the only possible mode of transformation into a nice person?

  “How did you find me?”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit,” she said.

  So he knew that nothing had changed.

  “Don’t give me that bullshit. You go traipsing all the way up to my mother’s house with some sob story, leave messages on my phone machine about your fucking birthday, read about me in the newspapers and then make it sound like that’s my fault too. Like it’s all me. All me. Me me me me me me me. All me. All me. Me me me all me all me.”

  “You,” he said, slowly awakening. “Time and time again you chose your rage over me.”

  “Every time I was in the newspaper,” she said. “I knew you were reading it. I couldn’t have any privacy from you. It drove me crazy. Even in my glory you never left me alone.”

  When she exhaled her smoke, it smelled so good. It was instantly calming and intimate.

  “Anna,” the woman said. “Please have some faith. I’m sorry I wasn’t good to you. I’m sorry I didn’t help you. But I’ve been working on myself. I’ve been working toward a place of compassionate awareness.”

  “Is that a new therapy movement?” Doc asked.

  “No, Anna, it’s my own personal goal. Why are you dressed as a man?

  Doc slid off the chair and onto the floor. Then he squatted. Then he touched the floor to the top of his head. Then he climbed back onto the chair and waited.

  “Why are you dressed like a man?”

  “I wanted the sympathy.”

  “Listen, Anna,” she said. “In this entire event of you and me there is only one word that has no meaning and that word is he. Why do you use it? Are you trying to be absurd?”

  “I use he,” said Doc, “because it’s easier and I need all the help I can get.”

  “Huh?”

  “Let’s say,” he continued, “let’s say that a man has a job at a fancy newspaper. He gets up in the morning and all his clothes are wrinkled, but instead of ironing them, he takes the least wrinkled shirt and wears it to work. When he gets there, a message is waiting that his girlfriend tried to commit suicide for the third time. He heads toward the hospital but stops off at a bar where he gets drunk, meets a woman, and goes home with her for sex. Now, how do you feel about his man?”

  “Well,” she said, “he’s not a saint. But if that’s his girl’s third try, then she’s got some problem of her own beyond his control.”

  “Okay,” Doc said, getting really exhausted. “Now, what if we took exactly the same scenario but with a woman. A woman has a job at a fancy newspaper. Okay, already she’s either a frigid workaholic, slept her way to the top, or is an affirmative action hire. She gets up in the morning and all her clothes are wrinkled. How could that be unless she’d stayed up all night downing a pitcher of martinis, fucking the boss, or working till the sun rose, thanks to her addiction to diet pills. We haven’t even considered the ironing board yet and already she’s a candidate for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. If she actually showed up at the office in a wrinkled blouse, we would have to spend the rest of the book justifying it. Now do you understand why I use he?”

  “But Anna, what does that have to do with you being a lesbian?”

  The sky was dead blue. A pool of chestnut, like a bruise.

  What had white leather done to think she deserved such a confidence?

  “I’m not trying to pass,” Doc said. “Except to myself. I mean, how many times can a person be told in a multitude of ways that she will never be fully human because she is not a man? The logical conclusion is to become a man to herself, simply to retain the most basic self-respect.”

  The woman stood there smoking. She didn’t say anything abusive so Doc took that as an encouraging sign.

  “Since I was a child,” he said, “there have been two epithets that I have truly feared. I feared being told ‘You want to be a man,’ and I feared being told ‘You hate men.’ I feared them because they were spoken with such insidious innuendo by so many different kinds of people. And each time the most obvious message was that the man in that sentence was more important than me.”

  Doc took a deep breath.

  “I feared those accusations so much that I did everything I could to prove them both wrong. But it was like trying to avoid both sides of the coin. It was like being accused of belonging to the Jewish-Bolshevik-bankers’ conspiracy. I was trying to prove that I was not something that could actually never exist. It was like the secret of the atom bomb. Freud says I was driven into homosexuality because I wanted to have my father’s child. The end result was that I, Anna O., could not exist. I was nothing. I only existed relationally. I only existed in relation to men. I’m sick of being a reflection. How many times do I have to come out? And do I always have to do it anecdotally? When it’s not a story, but a constant clash of systems. When it’s a traveling implosion?”

  Doc looked closely at the woman in white, waiting for her to reply.

  “You,” she said. “You’re obsessed by your homosexuality.”

  “What about yours?” Doc said.

  “That’s why you left me,” the woman answered, bitterly. “Because I wasn’t a big enough dyke.”

  Things were moving too fast for Doc. He didn’t have time to observe. The only choice seemed to be to get involved or go comatose. He knew his name was Anna, but he didn’t really feel like a woman yet. He still wanted so badly to exist.

  “No, I left you because you don’t listen,” Doc said. “But you weren’t listening when I told you that, so you’ll never ever know.”

  “Forget it, Anna,” the woman screamed. “Don’t
tell me what to do. Don’t tell me how to act. The next thing you know you’ll be comparing yourself to me and trying to force me to invite you to my mother’s house for Christmas.”

  That was just the beginning. She was yelling and yelling. Watching her screams made this woman into an object. There had been a time, now past, when this woman’s body had been a very close thing, sometimes as close as Doc’s own body. Or at least as close as his wrists. Slender, fashionable, or anything that denoted shape, ceased. What Doc saw instead was the meeting of two fleshy thighs that could be parted. Or, the indentation left by elastic. He’d hear a word repeated mercilessly accompanied by a merciless gesture. It was that breakdown into sections that familiarity brings. He was being called Anna but he did not feel like Anna.

  I’ve sometimes had sex with my worst enemies, Doc flashed. Because it was the only way to defeat them. If I have sex with them, then - for that moment-Iam important in their lives. They need me to get off. It’s a triumph, being important.

  “Uhh,” he said.

  “Are you saying that as a man or a woman?” she asked spitefully.

  “What difference does it make?” Doc sputtered. “As long as I mean it the same either way.”

  “You can’t mean it the same either way,” the woman answered. “Believe me. I’m a woman all the time and I know.”

  Doc started to cry.

  “What are you going to do now, Anna, cry in my ear? Crying is a manipulation. Saying how you feel is a manipulation because it gives information with the hopes of impacting on my behavior. Get it? Get it?”

  Dock took out a gun and shot her.