“Do you wear these often?” she asked, twirling the underwear in front of me.
I stared at Colleen’s silk panties waving in front of my face. “Um, those were a gift from my neighbor in Arizona.”
“Come here,” Sophia said.
I followed her into the bathroom. She wadded the panties in her fist and dropped the frilly red silk ball in the toilet. She smiled and looked at me as the underwear started darkening as it soaked up the water. “You do the honors,” she said, then guided her eyes downward to the flusher handle.
I pushed my finger on the flusher. We unceremoniously watched the red bundle make a swirly disappearance into the toilet abyss.
“There, that seems to take care of unwanted business,” Sophia said. “Now I can put my clothes away.”
20. The Canyon
The only perceptible sound I registered was the muffled whine of the cable as we ascended the canyon on the side of San Jacinto Mountain. On our third weekend outing, I got bold and decided Sophia and I would take the Palm Springs Tramway to the mountains that rose above the desert. The first weekend trip was to Ojai, a little town nestled inland from Santa Barbara, about ninety miles north from our home. The second weekend we went south to Temecula and visited a few wineries. Those trips were safely accomplished, my car always tethered nearby in case I wanted to escape. Agoraphobic thoughts poked into my head a few times, but Sophia never let it materialize to anything critical.
The Palm Springs tram was more of a challenge. I was stuck in a rotating car suspended hundreds of feet off the ground with strangers and no way to escape. It started feeling like a plane ride as we slithered up the cable away from the tram station situated in the steep Chino Canyon.
“I think I’m having a panic attack,” I whispered to Sophia.
“Remember, it’s just your body chemistry changing. Your carbon dioxide and oxygen levels are adjusting. It’s a normal occurrence. It’s happening in my body also, but I’m just not having the same reactions.”
I didn’t want to believe the bodily realities. “No, I think I’m experiencing difficulties. My breathing is getting shallow. It may be the altitude.”
“Your tie is probably too tight,” Sophia said. She loosened the tie from my collar and unfastened the top button of my dress shirt. “You don’t need to wear a tie for the tram ride.”
“I just wanted to look nice,” I said.
“No, I think you just wanted to look unthreatening and as normal as possible in case you needed help or had an outburst with a panic attack.”
I turned my head in embarrassment. “You learn fast, it’s kind of degrading. But I still feel my lungs clamping from the altitude.”
Sophia unfolded a piece of paper from her backpack and read some specifications. “We just passed the first tower, the highest of the five support towers at two hundred twenty-seven feet. We’re almost—”
“We’re two hundred twenty-seven feet above ground here?” I asked as I saw the base station get smaller in the distance and the ground falling below.
Sophia remained calm. “What I was saying is we’ve already traveled over a fifth of the way up the mountain.” She smiled. “The ride is practically over.”
I tensed my right arm and lifted it to read my digital watch. It was set on the stopwatch so I could see how much time we had left. The attendant at the station told us that the ride was a mere fifteen minutes, if there were no problems. Sophia wouldn’t allow him to elaborate on what could possibly hold up the tram ride, but over three minutes had already elapsed, leaving only a dozen or so agonizing minutes left of suspension.
“How long until the next tower?” I asked.
Sophia consulted the technical specification sheet she had obtained prior to the trip. It made me feel more comfortable to break the larger excursion into smaller segments, getting through the steps one at a time. A fifteen minute tram ride to me was comparable to an overseas journey.
“It’s thirty-two hundred feet between Tower One and Tower Two. Look up in front. You can see the second tower.” She shifted her eyes over to mine. “We’re almost forty percent of the way there… already.”
“How high up are we going to go?”
With patience, Sophia consulted her spec sheet. “The elevation at the mountain station is eight thousand five hundred sixteen feet.”
“That’s high,” I said, narrowing my eyes as I spoke. “The air may be too thin up there for me to breathe.”
“Do you think that eighty-something-year-old lady over there is worried about thin air?” Sophia asked rhetorically, pointing to an elderly woman on the other side of the tram. “There’s no need to worry my Sweet, the air will be crisp and robust at the end of the ride.”
There was not a wavering of fear in her eyes, nor on the faces of any other passengers in the tram. It embarrassed me to make Sophia cite figures on a short tourist tram ride. I finally looked out the window to take in some scenery as we glided upward. The vertical canyon walls looked like lined granite with some vegetation outcroppings. The walls rose to pointed peaks, one after the other. It was beautiful, though I was concerned with how much farther we had to go and if the air would be breathable at the top of the mountain. I looked up at the tram’s roof. With its eight-foot ceiling, I was initially worried about being enclosed with a ceiling comparable to mid-century tract homes. But Sophia got me in there, and now instead of enjoying the scenery, I consumed myself in a phobic wonderland. I looked around the car as riders young and old were intently fixed on the wonders outside the windows, captivated by the nature and awesome scope of the San Jacinto Mountains that were a blink away from the irrigated aridness of the Palm Springs area and Coachella Valley. The view was amazing; I tried to see it that way, if only my mind would let me. Instead of absorbing the incredible mountainous terrain, I thought about how glad I was that we went on the earliest tram ride. We were the first group up the mountain at eight in the morning. Even though rides commenced about every thirty minutes, I wanted to be on the first one because I surmised it would be less crowded in the early morning. The tram had a capacity of eighty people, but I counted only twenty on the ride. All that extra body space made me feel a little less apprehensive, and I believed it would be less painful if I were to embarrass myself in front of a smaller crowd. My anticipatory visions were not based on logic, though my brain plotted scenarios without ceasing—it was illogical thought logically contrived and I prayed the plots would not win over the reality.
As the tram car slowed a bit and bumped through another tower, Sophia said, “We’ve gone about seventy-five hundred feet, about sixty percent of the way there.” She gave me a kiss on my dry lips. “You’re doing real good.”
“When did we pass the third tower?” I asked.
“When you were chewing your lower lip thinking about something.”
I noticed during our ascent that the round tram car had rotated, taking us slowly from the back of the car to the front, offering riders a 360-degree experience. “How fast does this thing rotate?” I asked.
Once again, Sophia consulted her fact sheet. “It says here it rotates six millimeters per second.”
“Six millimeters? How much is that in inches?”
She dropped the sheet into her small backpack and gave me a one-eyebrow-raised look. “I didn’t bring along a conversion table with me and don’t have an app on my phone. I’ll have to remember to download one next time. Don’t worry though, it’s a very slow rotation.”
“Do you have my medication?” I asked as I looked down at her backpack.
She lifted two pill bottles in her right hand and gently shook them a couple of times.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just defraying the nerves.”
“That’s okay. What we are doing is ‘desensitization.’ You’re facing your fears head-on. It’s a normal way of dealing with panic attacks and agoraphobia. You’l
l do just fine.”
“You’re talking about oxygen levels in my body and medically accepted recovery terms. Are you going psychiatrist on me?” I asked.
“Maybe. But I bet you never slept with any of your psychiatrists.”
“They were all men, so… no, I haven’t.”
“Well if you’re a good patient, you will tonight,” she said.
As we passed the last tower, Sophia’s eyes widened. “Look, we’re almost to the end.”
I had the feeling then that I was indeed going to make the ascent without incident. It was now time to start churning my stomach for the ride down, that’s the way the routine always panned out. The tram rocked gently and the door opened to let the passengers out.
Outside of the tram I sensed the wilderness setting while a cool forty-degree breeze infiltrated my white dress shirt that I usually reserved for wear as part of a suit outfit. The air was crisp, the green trees were beautiful. I just couldn’t enjoy the atmosphere, too many negative influences were racing in my mind as we entered the mountain station.
“There’s a restaurant up here. Would you like to stop for a while or just go back down?” Sophia asked.
“Let’s just take this one back down when it gets turned around,” I said.
“No nature for you?”
“No, sorry.”
Sophia smiled. “That’s okay. I’m proud you made it up here. We’ll just have to wait a few minutes before the tram goes back down.”
I stood looking down the steep mountain where the Palm Springs area washed out from the bottom of the canyon like an ethological alluvial fan. In the middle of the scene was the large runaway of the Palm Springs airport. I was merely riding in this little tram traveling a couple of miles up Mount San Jacinto. We were only eighty-five hundred feet in the sky, four times lower than the cruising altitude of commercial airliners. My options weighed, it made me feel a lot more secure being on this trifling mountain jaunt instead of strapped to a seat on an airplane. It made the trip a bit easier, especially since I knew we were going back down the mountain in a couple of minutes.
“It’s really nice of you to take me up here. Thank you,” I said. I felt like my eyes were going to water.
Sophia looked up from the map she was studying and smiled. “I’m having fun, you don’t have to thank me.”
“That’s just it, you’re doing this for me, yet having fun doing it.” Tears broke loose and I fervently wiped them. I noticed the tram had made its half circle trip and was ready to go back down the mountain. The attendant was standing by the door awaiting fresh passengers. We walked to the other side of the platform to reboard the tram.
“It looks like we’re going to be the only people on this ride,” Sophia said as we entered the tram.
I scanned the inside of the tram and noticed that nobody else was in there except us. My brief sobbing stopped as I became weary knowing we were locked in and committed to the ride down. I walked to the front and waited.
“We’re moving,” Sophia said. “You see, it’ll be all right. I’m here next to you, no one else is around. It’s like our own personal shuttle.”
Sophia went back to studying the map as I gazed out a side window with my hands firmly gripped on a safety rail. We bumped through the first two support towers in silence. The ride down seemed faster, but my breathing started getting noticeably shallow. It was in proximity to the midpoint anxiety phase of the journey˗˗same distance going back up as it was to the end of the descent. No shorter escape route. My exhalations started producing a subtle wheezing sound. Sophia’s attention was directed out an opposite window, but she suddenly turned to face me after a particularly loud breath.
“Where’s San Gorgonio Mountain?” she asked.
I walked over to the other side of the tram and stood next to her. “It’s north on the other side of the pass.” I gulped a deep breath. “You can’t see it right now; it’s blocked by the side of the cliff. I climbed it once when I was a kid.”
Sophia studied me intently for a moment. “You climbed San Gorgonio? How high was that?”
“About eleven thousand five hundred as I remember. It was mostly on paths, no ice picks or oxygen masks needed.”
She studied me again. I wondered what she was thinking, but I didn’t want to ask, my sole goal was to make it down the mountain. Sophia looked out again at the craggy cliffs off in the distance and stood silent for a minute. We had already passed the third set of support grids.
“Gorgonio is kind of an odd name,” Sophia said. “Sounds like some kind of cheese served at a fancy party.”
I glanced at her with a somewhat smug look on my face. I tried to pull off the aura of knowledge without revealing the inner terror that still enveloped me within the confines of the tram. “I actually know who that is named after,” I said.
“Who?”
“Well, it is supposedly named after Saint Gorgonius.” I nodded my head as if trying to convince her. “He was a martyr who was tortured to death in the persecution of Christians during the latter years of the Roman Empire.”
“A martyr,” Sophia noted.
“Yeah, he was. Saint Gorgonius was killed during the reign of Diocletian, a Roman pagan. He forbid Christians from assembling for worship and even made some of them torture their own people or face death themselves.”
Sophia’s focus was still concentrated on me. “Who was this Diocletian guy?”
“He was the emperor who divided the Roman Empire into two main empires.”
“And why did he do that?” Sophia asked immediately.
“I guess it was from all the civil wars breaking out within the Empire. It became too cumbersome to keep peace and defend the land. Basically, he divided East and West, with emperors appointed to rule the divided areas.”
Sophia widened her eyes a bit in amusement. “And you know all of this how?”
“I… guess I took a lot of history classes as electives in college. Sorry, my long-term memory is still intact.”
The tram had rotated enough to give us a view from the back. I noticed the slowing of our movement as we glided through another support tower. The surroundings outside the tram had a more arid appearance, thin sprigs of vegetation outcropped from the rocky canyon walls.
“We’re heading for the last tower,” Sophia said. “Your dissertation on the Romans kept your mind off the ride˗˗for at least a tower segment.” Her mouth crooked a one-sided grin, knowing that I knew I was probably going to make the whole ride without incident.
I nodded my head, now realizing why she was looking at me so keenly during my history critique. “So… you were just keeping me talking.”
“No, simply getting you down a mountain.”
Sophia put her arm around me while I stared out the window and noticed our descent had flattened a few degrees. We were almost at the lower tram station, the end of the line. I glanced down at my wrist and noticed that I hadn’t even reset my stopwatch for the second leg of the journey.
After the tram had come to a stop, Sophia grabbed my hand and led me through the station. I welcomed the solid ground though my feelings were very subtle, as if a normal person taking the ride. No real relief, just the ordinariness of enjoying a diversion before going on to the next errand.
“What do you want to do now?” I asked.
“Well, it’s not even nine in the morning, but I’ve got a craving.” Sophia kissed me on my cheek. “Let’s go find a place to stay tonight, but we can take a little nap in the late morning.”
“Oh, I think I get it. What’s the big turn-on? Tram rides make you horny?”
“I just want to sleep with one of my patients,” Sophia teased. “You’ve never slept with any of your psychiatrists, and I don’t want you to feel deprived.”
“Sounds like a great plan. Where would you like this forbidden relationship to take place
?”
Sophia put her index finger to her cheek and slowly rotated her head to view the Palm Springs area that folded out in front of us.
“Any ideas?” I asked.
“Your choice. Anywhere but places in this town you’ve happened to spend with other women.”
I smiled. “No problem, can rule out a few places, but still plenty of options. Let’s go, Doc.”
21. Taking Care
Over the next six weeks, Sophia and I continued our weekend excursions. I would plan our destination and route during the week. Every Friday, we forged through the evening rush hour traffic to wend our way outside the Los Angeles area.
“Did you bring my medication?” I kept asking on the first few journeys.
Sophia would casually reach into the back seat, open her backpack, and reveal two small bottles of medication, one containing Xanax, the other Nardil. I never took any while on the trips, but it made me feel safer having them near in case I needed some pharmaceutical comforting.
With every new outing, my agoraphobia steadily cleared as my geographical prison expanded farther from my safety zone. We went to Las Vegas for a long weekend, took a drive up the coast to Carmel and the Monterey Peninsula, and even camped under the stars near Yosemite. Sophia would busy herself during the extended drives by reading books and online articles on panic disorder and psychology. With every new trip, the back seat held larger stacks of books and articles. She was amassing a small medical library.
Every place we went was a new experience for her. It was as if we were grown kids going out in the world for the first time. Ironically, my boundaries had shrunk extensively from past intercontinental travels, while Sophia was just beginning to broaden her borders. These short trips were monumental to both of us for totally different reasons. I was just happy to be able to travel even a hundred miles. Sophia enjoyed the exposure to new places and my ailment was genuinely an interesting study for her.
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