TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Are you there? Can you hear me?

CLIENT: Is that you?

THERAPIST: Yeah, it's me.

CLIENT: Okay. We'll talk about Deborah.

THERAPIST: Is she there right now?

CLIENT: [Ally] (ph?) has a cousin who I had a fight with yesterday on the phone, Mary.

THERAPIST: Is Mary there with you?

CLIENT: Oh, no. She's home, but she's trying to call. She put me through hell yesterday, Mary.

THERAPIST: She did? [00:00:45]

CLIENT: Yes. She asked if she could do anything for me and I said, "Yes. Can you take me shopping?" Well Mary is a night person; I'm not. I'm set in my ways with my TV shows and I don't want to be bothered during that time talking on the phone. I don't want anything to do with anybody. I finally got her to take me shopping yesterday. First we went and got our haircut. I wanted my hair cut before I had surgery. I paid for Mary's haircut, too. I had my eyes waxed and all the good shit, you know?

THERAPIST: Is that her calling?

CLIENT: Yeah. I just put it on "Ignore." So I paid for her because she has no money, which is par for the course. We went food shopping over to the mall. [00:02:15] She went into the bookstore and came looking for me. She found me. Meantime, she's getting calls from this kid. She says her phone is not working, so she's using my cell phone now. Little did I know she had asked me for ten Percocets until her prescription came in. She was calling this kid to sell them.

THERAPIST: Oh, my gosh.

CLIENT: She was making $7 on each pill. So now she has the money like $70 from the guy. Her driving was awful. She stopped right in the middle of the road for nothing. I'm going, "Mary, why are you doing that?" "Well, there are no cars behind me." I said, "You just don't stop because you feel like stopping." She wasn't in the lane that's supposed to take the turn, so the guy that was in the lane correctly, she almost clipped his car. ‘s supposed to take the turn, so the guy that was in the lane correctly, she almost clipped his car. [00:03:26] I just said, "Just take me home. You're driving fucking awful. I'll never get in the car with you again." We get into the house and she was sitting here and the next thing I know she's [cross-tracking] (ph?) for the kid that she sold the Percs to and he's going to take her out to eat and pay for it, so she left; which was fine by me. Before she left, though, she said to me, "Do you have $10 for gas?"

THERAPIST: Oh, gosh. [00:04:01]

CLIENT: I said, "What? You just made out like a fucking bandit, Mary, and you want $10 for gas from me? Fuck it." Then I said, "Well, no." I took out the $10 and said, "Here. It's in your pocket." Well evidently when she left she threw it on the table. I was totally, completely pissed. (chuckles) I don't believe it. I know she only gets her check once a month and it's the third Wednesday of every month. I've given her money to help out buying some food and this and that. Even the time for Christmas I invited her over for Christmas dinner because she bitched because she had nowhere to go. I had to pay for the gas for her to come here to eat and go home. [00:04:58]

THERAPIST: It must be terrible to feel like she's just taking more and more as much as she can from you. It sounds like you reached your limit. You reached your limit of how much she can take off you before you... you hit a wall with her.

CLIENT: Yes. When I say to people, "My cousin charges me for gas," they're like, "Is she your real relative?" I said, "Oh, yeah. We're like first cousins. Of course she's my real relative." They're like, "I don't fucking believe it." I go, "Believe it."

THERAPIST: It also sounds like the behavior of an addict. She'll sell out her own cousin so she can have one more pill or two more pills. She'll offend you and take as much as she can until...

CLIENT: Until I get so pissed off.

THERAPIST: Until you get so pissed off that finally you're like, "Forget it. I'm not doing it anymore." [00:06:15]

CLIENT: I don't even want to talk to her.

THERAPIST: It's tricky for you because I think you're really used to having people take liberties with you and it takes you a while to get to that point; but you're like anybody else. You reach that point and then you're gone.

CLIENT: I know I wouldn't do these things so, of course, I expect my own relative wouldn't do these things.

THERAPIST: An aside is do you think Mary would do this ten years ago?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: She would?

CLIENT: I told her, "Mary, ever since your doctor left you've gone fucking downhill so bad that it's been unbelievable. I know you don't have any money because your fucking son took it all, but that's not my problem, Mary. You let him take over $180,000 from you." "I know." "So don't cry to me." Oh, yeah. (chuckles)

THERAPIST: [...] (inaudible at 00:07:35)

CLIENT: I wonder why she's up so early today. She generally sleeps in until 4:00.

THERAPIST: It must have something to do with you really getting through to her.

CLIENT: Oh, yeah. No.

THERAPIST: Or, in some way when she slammed that money back down on the table, it must have registered that you're really upset with her.

CLIENT: She said, "Well you offered to pay for my haircut." I said, "That's not the point, Mary. The whole point is you turned around and told me that you were in so much pain and you didn't get your prescription until Thursday, so you asked me if you could borrow ten and you would give me the ten back when you got your script. But, no, that wasn't your plan at all." [00:08:42] Oh, God. I tell you.

THERAPIST: What was she selling them for? Was she selling them for another pill that she wanted?

CLIENT: She took my ten Percs supposedly for her pain. She turned around and sold them for $70.

THERAPIST: And what did she want to do with the $70?

CLIENT: I have no idea. Probably buy more drugs off of Dolores.

THERAPIST: Yeah, I was thinking, what else is she taking?

CLIENT: Oh, she takes everything. You name it, she takes it.

THERAPIST: So she might have wanted a different pill than the Percocets.

CLIENT: She probably wanted the [Suboxone] (ph?) [00:09:26]

THERAPIST: Okay. Really? The Suboxone instead of the Percocet?

CLIENT: I don't know why, but she likes the Suboxone. She buys them and gives them to her son, who is going through a bad time trying to get off drugs.

THERAPIST: So he might be abusing Suboxone?

CLIENT: Yeah. She gives him her Ambien because he can't sleep nights and stuff like this. Then she says to me, "I don't have any of my pills because I give them to Jodie." I said, "That ain't my fault." "But he cries." I said, "Well, what can I tell you." [00:10:20]

THERAPIST: It seems to me, Louise, you're picking up on a quality in Mary that, because she's giving so much to Lee, she wants you to make up the void in some way.

CLIENT: He's not my problem, you know? That's her problem for letting him get away with all this shit. I've got my own problems with Deborah. I threw her out Saturday morning.

THERAPIST: Which is two days ago.

CLIENT: She was back an hour later because she was sick. She was throwing up. She had the diarrhea. She had the throwing up. This went on all day long, so she was in the bathtub every 15-20 minutes, so there goes another towel, another pair of pajamas. I have like eight loads of wash to do. [00:11:30]

THERAPIST: She's getting sick all over them?

CLIENT: Yes. She was here all day, but during the night she must have snuck out and gone over to Dolores's.

THERAPIST: She snuck out, huh?

CLIENT: Yeah. She was here yesterday, she and Dolores, to watch the football game. Mary met Dolores and Dolores met Mary and then when Mary left, Dolores couldn't believe that she charged me for a ride if I want to go someplace. I said to Dolores, "I went to the hospital once for surgery and she charged me $10 for the ride over there and $10 for the ride back. That was $20 worth of gas from my house to the hospital." [00:12:35]

THERAPIST: It's cheaper getting a cab.

CLIENT: You've got that right.

THERAPIST: She's just trying to take any angle she could. What happened with you and Deborah on Saturday?

CLIENT: I couldn't do anything. I wasn't feeling well. My back is killing me. I was all set to go lay down on my bed when she's in the bed coughing and getting sick and "Oh, my God," and all that stuff. She wound up staying here all day and the night.

THERAPIST: What happened? What led you to throw her out?

CLIENT: Her lying. "I'll be right down in a half-hour." Did she show up? No. [00:13:30]

THERAPIST: What was that about?

CLIENT: It's her new thing. Like last night, when she went upstairs with Dolores, "I'll be right down. I'm staying the night here." She wasn't here by 1:30 last night. I don't think she came here until about 6:30 this morning, got sick, went in the shower, right into the bed with me but then she started getting sick again, so she came out on the couch; and the next thing, she's gone.

THERAPIST: Back to Dolores's. What has that been like for you, Louise, for her to be doing that? What do you feel? She's been saying that she's going to be home sooner than she actually is. What has that meant to you? [00:14:28]

CLIENT: That pisses me off. It really does.

THERAPIST: Tell me about it. What do you feel? Tell me about that.

CLIENT: She bends over backwards for Dolores. Dolores is sick also. When they were here yesterday during the game, Dolores is sitting in my rocking chair with a pillow behind her and a couple of my ice packs on her back. Dolores needs to watch it in the bathroom, so Deborah puts the light on in the bathroom and opens the door to make sure there's nothing she can trip on or anything. Then she helps Dolores up from the chair and into the bathroom. [00:15:17]

THERAPIST: Is that right?

CLIENT: Yeah. That's what I said. And, of course, Deborah is sick, too, so she doesn't feel good either. I could have died on the fucking floor and it would have been just walk over her. Walk around her.

THERAPIST: She's been really, really attending to Dolores and not to you. Not to you at all. Kind of stepping over you, huh? What does that mean to you, Louise? That's got to be enormously meaningful that she does that, really hard.

CLIENT: Oh, yeah. I'm having surgery on Wednesday and Dolores is having surgery on Thursday, so you know where Deborah is going to be. [00:16:13]

THERAPIST: With Dolores. With Dolores.

CLIENT: To hell with that.

THERAPIST: So you get passed over. No wonder you're so it's so upsetting to you.

CLIENT: What am I going to do call up to Dolores's knowing she's not going to answer her phone? She doesn't answer when I call. She doesn't answer when I text message her.

THERAPIST: Because...?

CLIENT: Because she shuts the phone off so that she doesn't get the message.

THERAPIST: It's that same quality as Bennett in that way that you described that Bennett would seem to get a lot of the care and the nurturing side of Deborah that she only rarely shows you, if ever.

CLIENT: I know.

THERAPIST: And I think what you end up feeling like "I'm bending over backwards for my daughter and she's not giving anything in return."

CLIENT: So it's like fine. That's why I end up throwing her out. If you want to live there, then move there. It's a simple as that. Don't go running around telling people I threw you out. No, you want to be out. You don't want to be here. [00:18:02]

THERAPIST: She wants to be upstairs with Dolores.

CLIENT: Dolores has a handicapped bathroom. She has a shower with a chair in it no tub whatsoever and Deborah is a tub person. One of the days I had lunch up there and there is no furniture. There is a bed and in the bedroom there's also a recliner. There's no couch to sit on. There are no parlor things to sit on and, if you sit at the table to eat, all three chairs are broken. You have to be careful where you sit because you never know whether or not the chair is going to break. [00:19:01] It kind of pisses me off.

THERAPIST: What about that?

CLIENT: I said to Deborah, "How come you told me that when you sleep up there there's a couch for you to sleep on? Where's the couch? Is it invisible? The only place I see for you to sleep, Deborah, is in the bed with her."

THERAPIST: Yeah, she's sleeping with her.

CLIENT: And I said, "And, Deborah, don't tell me that you and she aren't doing anything in the bed because I know you are. Deny it all you want, but I don't believe it."

THERAPIST: Let me ask you how do you feel about these two being together? That's your sense of what's going on. What do you feel about it? What do you think of it? [00:20:00]

CLIENT: I fit were somebody that was nice looking I wouldn't mind; but there is nothing nice looking about Dolores about. She's 42 years old and she looks like she's older than me.

THERAPIST: She's really had a hard road, huh?

CLIENT: Yes. This is how it is with me, you know? Last week Deborah said, "Dolores wants to know if she can borrow $50." I said, "Fine." All I got back so far was $20. I said, "Deborah, are you sure the money was for Dolores and not for you?" I just don't know what to believe out of my daughter anymore.

THERAPIST: Anymore?

CLIENT: Well, yeah. She's really totally taken me for a loop on this one. All of a sudden at the age of 34, she decides she's a lesbian? [00:21:06]

THERAPIST: Yeah, I get the feeling, too, that for you, that has a lot of significance. It has a lot of significance that she's going this direction.

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. I mean everybody in the building knows it.

THERAPIST: Yeah, how's that been for you for everybody to know?

CLIENT: Ehh. It sucks. I just don't know how to react to it, really.

THERAPIST: It sounds like one way your first reaction is that it just doesn't sit well with you.

CLIENT: Yeah. One minute we're dying over the maintenance guy you like him and want to date him and then, all of a sudden after Christmastime, you're going to turn lesbian because she can give you marijuana 24 hours a day, seven days a week? I don't know. I don't buy it. Now I'm like, "What do I tell Darla?" [00:22:26]

THERAPIST: Yeah, what about that?

CLIENT: I don't know.

THERAPIST: What do you think you'll tell her?

CLIENT: I can't see me writing anything online. The only thing I can think of is to write her a letter and explain it in a letter.

THERAPIST: What do you think you'd say?

CLIENT: Just that I want to let you know that your mother is giving me a hard time again and that your mother has decided to become a lesbian. I think my Darla would shit.

THERAPIST: What do you think she'd think of it? [00:23:18]

CLIENT: Darla would be very shocked and hurt.

THERAPIST: Hurt? Huh. What do you think would hurt her? What would that be like for her?

CLIENT: For 12 years she's been with me. She even gave up her daughter for a man and now all of a sudden bingo. "I don't like men anymore. I like lesbians." The hell with her.

THERAPIST: Then maybe she'd be hurt because it's just another way she's [...] (inaudible at 00:24:28)

CLIENT: Nothing I can do there.

THERAPIST: Do you think Darla might be bothered, too, that her mom's attention and love is going somewhere else than to her?

CLIENT: Yeah. Darla wrote on Facebook that Deborah doesn't even want to know what she wrote. I said, "Okay, fine." [00:25:07]

THERAPIST: It does kind of, again, have that quality of you getting butted out, too, in a way you getting pushed aside for this new lover of hers somebody that Deborah will really go to bat for and take care of.

CLIENT: Oh, yeah. I have people knock on the door and ask for Deborah and I say, "She doesn't live here anymore. She lives upstairs at Dolores's."

THERAPIST: It sounds really upsetting to you that she would really be so kind of quick and ready to give herself over to this woman and put you aside.

CLIENT: It's been a wonderful time. [00:26:08]

THERAPIST: Really hard for you.

CLIENT: Yeah, it is. Thanks to this lovely daughter of mine who's going to do wash today but who will probably put it off because Dolores wants to go shopping later.

THERAPIST: Yeah, so she'll bail on you.

CLIENT: Yeah. I didn't tell her this, but I'm only washing my clothes. She can wash all the rest. Life sucks and then you die. Mark's been really good. He did leave here pissed on Wednesday because I went to kiss him and Deborah was here in the apartment. [00:27:06]

THERAPIST: He got pissed about that?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: How come?

CLIENT: "You know I won't kiss you when Deborah is here." I said, "So it's okay for you to kiss me when Deborah is here, but if I go to give you a peck on the lips it's not okay?"

THERAPIST: Is that right?

CLIENT: Yes. He said, "No, because you would have wanted my tongue." "Like hell," I said. "I was just giving you a kiss hello." He got up and left. It didn't bother me any. He came back Thursday and apologized.

THERAPIST: What did he say?

CLIENT: He said, "I apologize for yesterday. I had no right to do so. I have a lot on my mind." I said, "I know. That's why I'm not bugging you. Fine." So I guess Keisha tried to kill herself again.

THERAPIST: She did? [00:27:58]

CLIENT: Yep. She's cutting her wrists. I said, "Just like Deborah. Maybe they should get together." She wants to be a boy. She doesn't want her breasts. I said, "Do you know what that means, Mark? When you and she go to work one day, Keisha's going to come home and decide she's going to start slashing her breasts." This is how bad she wants to be a guy.

THERAPIST: She wants to cut off her breasts so she can be a man, huh?

CLIENT: I said, "You and Deborah just think it's all a big deal, but let me tell you, Mark, kids at the age of five years old and younger know want they want to be. She should have been on hormone treatments by now, she should have been getting injections and other things that they need. You and Deborah are putting her in a place she doesn't want to be. The two of you told her that you only know her as Keisha and that's how you love her as Keisha. So if Keisha becomes Ted, does that mean you're not going to love her anymore?" [00:29:25] I don't know. If it was my kid and my kid was as miserable as that, then put her through it. Whoever her psychiatrist is doesn't know anything about trans-gender relationships or how a person changes. No, she's not a psychiatrist or a psychologist who deals in that. If she did, she would have been on your ass and Deborah's ass to get this kid into therapy.

THERAPIST: It could help everybody to be okay with her being a boy?

CLIENT: Yes. I said, "But, no, you and Deborah keep prolonging it and prolonging it; and the more she wants to cut herself." He said, "But she only takes little razor marks." Little razor marks lead into bigger razor marks. I said, "What are you going to do hide all the razors from her? It's not going to work." She'll say, "Daddy, can I walk up to the store?" and she'll get herself a pack of razorblades. I said, "What are you two, stupid?" [00:30:52] So Mark asked her what she likes boys or girls. She said, "I like boys." Mark thought that meant that she meant she'd like to be in a relationship with a boy as a girl. I said, "No, Mark. That means she wants boy on boy."

THERAPIST: That she wants to be a boy doesn't mean that she would stop liking boys?

CLIENT: Yeah. I said, "It wouldn't be that she was going to dress up as a girl in a frilly, frilly dress. No, she's going to dress up in guy's pants, too." I say it, but then Mark won't go on it. I said, "Okay, fine." [00:31:55]

THERAPIST: Well, I think you know how fathers can be about girls and wanting them to be a certain way.

CLIENT: Yeah. They want them to be daddy's little girl. But she doesn't want that. She wants to be daddy's little boy. Mark is such a strong figure. He's such a masculine figure. He works out and all this stuff, and she wants to be like him.

THERAPIST: She wants to be like him, yeah.

CLIENT: I said, "I gave you the number of the trans-gender place in Boston. She has her own computer; she has her own laptop. She's up until 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning on the computer. What do you think she's looking up, Mark? Do you think she's not looking up about trans-gender people? No, she is." [00:33:00]

THERAPIST: She's curious about it, yeah.

CLIENT: She doesn't want to see the psychiatrist or psychologist because what do they do? They send her away for two weeks to be in a facility with other girls. She doesn't want to be with other girls.

THERAPIST: She wants to be a boy.

CLIENT: What's so hard about that? He won't listen to me or anything. And I know that Deborah is not that stupid that she can't look it up online, either. She works in a hospital. She's the head chef. She can't question any of these doctors? Give me a break.

THERAPIST: And get her some support to be who she is?

CLIENT: Right. Can't she confide in one doctor and see what the hell is going on? Like I say, I don't want to hear it now. No sense in hearing it if they're not going to do anything about it. What the fuck. (chuckles) Aww, shit. [00:34:22]

THERAPIST: Well, you're certainly trying to make a voice for this this girl wants to be a boy.

CLIENT: I mean if I could, I would let Deborah walk up there and knock on the door, talk to Mark about the [flash] (ph?). Of course, Deborah would think nothing of Keisha becoming a guy.

THERAPIST: She wouldn't? What do you think she would think of it?

CLIENT: She would think it would be fine. She's even told Mark there's nothing wrong with that and I've told him so I don't know what the big deal is. Who knows?

THERAPIST: What do you think it is with him? Why does he have such a hard time?

CLIENT: Because it's his daughter.

THERAPIST: He wants daddy's little girl.

CLIENT: Yep, and so does Deborah. I said, "You can't do it." She was born this way. She has more male hormones than she has girl hormones. I said, "Come on, Mark." So who knows? (laughs) At this rate in the game, who cares? [00:36:01]

THERAPIST: It sounds pretty important to you.

CLIENT: I said, "Why are you asking for my advice if you're not going to work on it?"

THERAPIST: And it seems to me, Louise, that it also resonates and must, in some way, have some parallel to the experience that you had with your own father around the kind of daughter that he wanted; and that he so badly wanted a girly-girl and wanted you to be that kind of girly-girl who liked dresses and playing with dolls, but didn't ever want to ride a bike and behaved, was sugar and spice and everything nice and you weren't. It meant a lot of conflict and battling between you two over that. [00:37:06]

CLIENT: Oh, yes. Definitely.

THERAPIST: I think, in some way, you must be able to relate to Keisha's plight to kind of be who she wants to be.

CLIENT: I know. I don't know about these people. (laughs) Just lay some more problems on me, you know?

THERAPIST: So, listen, you're going into surgery on Wednesday. Why don't we do this should we talk over the phone again next Monday?

CLIENT: Over the phone on Monday? Okay.

THERAPIST: About this time. And then we can pin down do you think you'd be able to meet in person on the following Friday? [00:38:02]

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Oh, you would? Okay. Good. Then we'll nail all of that stuff down on Monday.

CLIENT: So Monday it's the phone and the following week...

THERAPIST: The 25th of that week we could meet in person at the other place; but I'll just have to nail down a time. The thing I'm thinking about, and let me know if it would work for you, would be 10:00 AM on the 25th. Would that be a possible time for us?

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: All right. Thanks.

THERAPIST: Good luck with your surgery, Louise. And I will speak with you on the phone on Monday then.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: You're welcome to call me, too, if you're able to. You let me know. I'll plan on calling you then unless I hear otherwise.

CLIENT: Okay, thanks. Bye-bye.

END TRANSCRIPT