TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: I was a bit angry this morning. I kicked the coat hanger that was in the middle of the floor. I was mad with drivers. I played chicken with a school bus. I'm saying to myself that I'm getting mad at all of these people for driving crazy, and then this school bus honks at this truck that was clearly kind of waiting for an easy spot to move forward. It's right there where Mass Ave and that big crazy circle there by the Common. It comes up from underneath, Harbor or whatever. I'm like what are you fucking honking for? You're a school bus. Shouldn't you be relaxed? So I played chicken with him and I won. (chuckles) But as soon as –I came, I got here and sat in my car for a while and played some Big Win Football, listened to some music, got out of my car, and felt fine. It was like manic, you know? I was flying in and out of these emotions of discouragement from this whole, stupid online dating thing because you want instant gratification. You send the message to someone and you want them to... [00:01:34]

THERAPIST: Instantly get it.

CLIENT: And it makes it even worse because you see that they visit your profile. Okay, all the percentages match. So you send them some stupid, creepy message, right? They check your profile out again, but then you don't hear anything. There's no lag. I haven't had the lag time yet. One woman responded. I kind of begged her to. I said, "If you don't want to reply, tell me why." (both laugh) Her response was, "I would normally block at that." But since I was a newbie, because of course I said I didn't have a fucking clue what I'm doing... [00:02:19] But it's so hard to tell if these people have any interest in you whatever because – you know she asked me a couple of questions. She's in law school so we talked about a bar and why I became an attorney. So I wrote this epic novel and then I realized, other than asking her name, I didn't ask her anything about herself; so I sent another message asking her about – she mentioned some stuff about music, so I asked her about that. Then I said, "I'll stop pestering you." But, you know, there's that one woman who gave me four stars. She's probably a little chunky and I thought I'd be nice and respond and – whatever. Who knows. Maybe she'll buy me a beer. [00:03:11] She lives in Needham, so I asked her about the farm. She checks out my profile again. Nothing. I was like, "You're clearly interested because you give me four or five stars." They don't tell you which one it is, but then nothing. I don't know if there's this " I don't want to respond right away and seem desperate" or "I want to be thoughtful about my response." I'm going to wait until I have a moment." A lot of people have it on their phone. It's discouraging. I haven't even gotten to the point of asking someone for coffee and I'm already on this emotional roller coaster. I wasn't happy with the occasional rejection, but this is like rapid-fire rejection. [00:04:00]

They have this blog that tells you – I'm googling "help with first messaging". What do I say in the first message? I'm a "howdy" guy. I always say "howdy". My first line in the thing is "howdy". The most popular word that gets a reply in the first message – they do that statistical analysis – is howdy. Atheists get the most replies. It's driving me fucking crazy. It really is totally preoccupying my mind. One moment I'm discouraged and the next moment I'm like, "Oh, you know, they're just busy. They're – whatever." I waited a day to respond to that law student, you know? She's way too classy for me anyway. I'm sure they look at my picture and are just like, "Uhh. Creepy old man." You give me a look when I say that. [00:05:09]

THERAPIST: What do you mean?

CLIENT: You kind of narrowed you face a little bit.

THERAPIST: I'm like that's not a very nice thing to say about yourself. That was the look I gave you.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Well, it's true that's not a very nice thing to say about yourself.

CLIENT: Somewhere in your training did they teach you about being judgmental?

THERAPIST: I feel like we're talking at cross purposes. I'm saying things supportive.

CLIENT: How is that supportive if you're criticizing me?

THERAPIST: J, you're saying, "Uhh. They thing I'm some creepy old man." And I'm saying, "That's not a nice thing to say about yourself." Like don't call yourself a creepy old man. That's not very nice.

CLIENT: You didn't say that. You gave me a look.

THERAPIST: And then, when you were concerned about it, I explained that's what the look conveyed. And then you told me I was being critical. [00:06:04]

CLIENT: I'm overwhelmed by Jess's looks, you know.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: I like to show little things to Ian that I know he can't do, like take your finger off, or (slapping sounds) that kind of stuff. So I remembered – (slapping sounds). You know – the dip can. You probably don't know... I don't know if you...

THERAPIST: Yeah, I don't think I can do it.

CLIENT: I occasionally do that and just the look on Jess's face. It's like I don't have a dip can, I'm not saying that's why I do it, there's nothing...

THERAPIST: All right, how does it relate to a dip can?

CLIENT: When you're packing it. It's all loose and you want it packed. (slapping sounds) You're throwing it down and you're hitting it. That packs it all down. Not that I did a lot of dip or anything like that. [00:06:59] I played baseball so... And that was a skill you needed to have at summer camp. There's this stuff, Hawken, I don't even think there's any nicotine in it because you didn't get a buzz at all. Then you do Copenhagen and you'd be like whoa. Ready to throw up. She gave me a bizarre look with that. And then my next trick was to go over and went like this right next to Stella. (clapping sounds) Lucille's farting. And they're giggling. Lucille's trying to do it. Ian runs and gets some water. I don't know if it was me or him that did it, but it didn't make any noise and I went, "Ooh. That's an SBD." And Jess just... it was like I asked him if he knew what sex was. He's like, "What does SBD mean?" Silent but deadly. He's a seven-year-old kid. [00:08:04] What do you think the kids at school talk about, you know? What is wrong with it? Kids don't even get offended by your farts. I don't think they can smell them – or they like the smell. I don't know. But I'm offended by them. They're just sitting in a room playing with the cars. So she's annoying the fuck out of me. Now she doesn't want Ian to go to that school. Change your mind much? That's driving me crazy, the way she changes her mind about things. [00:08:43]

THERAPIST: Why not?

CLIENT: Number one, she doesn't want to pull him out of the school he's in. He really likes it there. It's a really good school. He'll have the same exact class in second grade because of the looping. You get the impression she really doesn't want to move to Springfield. She wants to stay in Plymouth, but she says she can't afford it. It's like, "Well fucking do some networking." She's like, "I'm never in the office. I'm going to get rid of the office." It's like do you understand it's because you have no clients? Do you want to figure out why you have no clients? It's because you turn away work that you find is too emotional for you and then you don't do a single bit of networking. At least join the chamber and show up once a month. I mean, she does nothing because, for some reason, everybody we live with appears to be happily engaged with it or happily married. There is no divorce. Even Pearl (sp?), her daughter Adele and Ian were really good friends. They kind of drifted apart because they go to different schools now. But she was the only single mom we knew – and she's married now. I don't know where I was going with that. [00:10:01]

It's like she doesn't even have this network of people, except for Claire sends her business. She has clients who will send her business, but she's not fishing. I try and do all of these things. The sole reason I volunteered for soccer was business. I don't want to fucking go to soccer. But the coordinator of his age group wants to do an estate plan. (chuckles) Well, they've been wanting to do it for a while. A woman in the Cub Scouts is doing an estate plan; and her sister. All I did was I got this list and I just replied and cut and pasted my signature into the reply that I'm an attorney and all of that. She had spoken to Jess when we were still married about the estate planning. [00:11:03] I mean you have to do things that you're uncomfortable with. You can't complain that you can't afford $1,600 a month in rent and just complain about it. She's going to ask me for the money, you know? I'm going to be paying you $4,000 a year. She's got a car payment. I can't afford a car payment. I'm just sick of her. That's why I don't like the looks, or I find the looks to be judgmental. I don't know if it's because I'm forgetting to take my Lamotrigine at night, which is the larger dose. Maybe that's why I was a little angry. I wasn't taking it as much as I should be. Maybe my levels are down. [00:12:14]

THERAPIST: This is kind of – aside from therapy stuff – but you should be careful with that because I don't know what the details are but I know it can be a big deal if you're going on and off quickly.

CLIENT: I always take my morning dose and I miss my evening dose once or twice a week. I'm not going to stop it.

THERAPIST: I would imagine that wouldn't trigger it, and I don't really know. I just know I talk to people who take that and I know you have to wean off it really, really slowly because otherwise it can be dangerous.

CLIENT: Yeah, you can get like a rash that's really bad. You can get that.

THERAPIST: I would imagine... I just wanted to kind of check in. [00:13:04]

CLIENT: Yeah. I know the whole weaning thing. I dealt with that for the Prednisone for my Crohn's Disease. I had a doctor down in Miami wean me off (snaps fingers) like that. The doctor up here took months to wean me off. It sucks. That stuff is awful. Talk about making me angry.

THERAPIST: Really?

CLIENT: Yeah. Just very irritable. It just sucked. Of course, I probably was irritable without it so... Yeah, I'm completely preoccupied with this fucking – just don't even log on for a day – and there I am 15 minutes later seeing who visited me. Of course, none of these women sent me a message, initiated a message, so there's something wrong with my profile. [00:14:05] I had a couple of quotes that I thought would be... One was Jimmy Valvano's quote about – are you familiar with his SD speech he gave 20 years ago? Do you know who Jimmy Valvano is? He was the coach of NC State and they were this huge Cinderella winner of the NCAA. He became this huge motivational figure and he came down with cancer. His mantra was "Don't give up. Don't ever give up." He was supposed to give this five-minute speech at the SBA and it turned into this really long speech. One of the things he said was if you think you laugh and you cry, you've had a full day. Now the preface to that is the crying is just showing emotion. It could be laughter, crying out of happiness, it doesn't have to be sadness. He was like if you do that... [00:15:13]

THERAPIST: Or like if you think you feel, then you're...

CLIENT: Yeah. And if you do that every day for seven days, that's something special. To me it's kind of a good quote. I put it on Facebook every so often. I really like it, so I put that quote there. And then I put a big Head Todd quote. All of these women are all concerned about love and stuff like that. Like there's this one question about what do you think about more sex or true live? I, of course, put sex because I do. You're in a room, you're in a meeting, you're bored, you're looking around the room – I'd do her. I wouldn't do her. That's thinking about sex. I'm not thinking, "I'm going to fall in love with her." [00:15:57] All the women – I'm checking my answers – they all have true love, so I change mine to true love. There's a big Head Todd song where the line is "If your heart is breaking, you're lucky just to be in love," which I kind of feel like. It would be nice to at least have – you know. That's better than being completely alone.

THERAPIST: Right. Better to love than not.

CLIENT: Yeah, than to never have – basically, yeah, that's what it's saying. So I put that there to show I'm a love guy. I'm a lover, not a fighter. Some of these questions I can't answer because, truthfully, they'd just make me look bad. What about the people who see you change them? I guess you can't worry about – you know – literally throwing fucking paint or whatever against the wall and seeing what sticks. [00:17:01] I go through these moments of being completely discouraged. Like am I that horrible of a person? They even tell you how often people reply. "Replies frequently," they get a little green light. "Replies often"...

THERAPIST: To you or...?

CLIENT: Just to any message.

THERAPIST: Across everybody?

CLIENT: Yeah. And then "Replies selectively." I don't even want to send something to a selective replier.

THERAPIST: I see. You mean when you look at somebody else's profile?

CLIENT: When I send someone a message, they're keeping track of whether they would reply to that message or not.

THERAPIST: Right. You send a message to Jane Doe and you can see something on Jane Doe's profile or somewhere that says Jane Doe is a frequent replier, an infrequent replier, in the middle... [00:17:58]

CLIENT: Right. Right. (pause) For me, it's going to say, "No one has contacted him in the last week." That's what they put on people who haven't been messaged. And then I'm thinking to myself, "Okay." There is this woman who has five pictures and she looks like a different person in every picture – just a different angle, lighting, everything. Like in one picture she has a lot of freckles. Five different people. She's going on about how she's super progressive and she wants to change the world which is fine with me. We matched on a lot of topics and whatever. Where was I going with this? (pause) Damned ADD. (chuckles) [00:19:01] I'm not sure. What was I talking about? (pause) I don't know. Just ranting. Oh – I know what I was talking about. She's 38 years old. Never been married. No kids. People have busy lives. Maybe they haven't met the right person, but she's 38 years old and she's single. She's got some crazy ideas about the world and she looks like five different people. They're all attractive. It's in my head. I'm like... (sighs) I mean obviously I'm no catch. (chuckles) But you've got to wonder. How does someone become 38 years old who has no... You know – if you're kind of homely. You know what I'm trying to say. [00:20:22] To make it better I'm making it worse because now I'm just trying to message every woman who visits me, I can look at her without puking and we have high matching percentages and very low "enemy" with "no enemy at all", whatever the "enemy" means. Some question that they consider very important, I answered the wrong way. Like one of the questions was, "Have you had a cigarette in the last six months?" [00:20:58] I was drunk. I had a cigarette. Am I a bad person because of it? Does it change you? I smoke cigars. They don't ask if you smoke cigars. It doesn't apply to women so you can't match the answer, I guess. "Have you ever abused a dog, a cat, or another furry animal?" Honestly. That should be honest. Am I supposed to just go with just the... I mean, first of all, what woman would be harming these little furry animals anyway? It's like I wouldn't – you know. And I enjoyed it. I don't want to go out with someone who's squirrel hunting. You can check off what answers you'll accept. If you check all the answers off they consider it irrelevant, so I checked off "no, never," whatever. [00:21:57]

It's all in cutesy language, you know? Then there's "yes, but I regret it". I can accept a "yes, but I regret it" answer. It really applies more to a guy. A guy, when he was six years old, pulled the wings off of a bird, he may be fine when he's 42. I'm not saying I pulled the wings off a bird. There's a folk song by – you know the band, The Nields? They're kind of local. They used to be big. They're not that big anymore, but they have a song about pulling the wings off of a bird. Boring. Whatever. It's really been just draining, kind of exhausting. I'm like is it worth it? And then I'm like yeah, just... I can keep telling myself I'm not ready for it. I don't know what is worse. (pause) [00:23:23]

I'm really not meeting any prospects in my normal life. There are all of these women in Plymouth and they want me to meet them for coffee. Jess comes rolling in with the stroller and Lucille. Hey – here's my wife and my daughter. (laughs) I finally put a picture of Lucille looking into the camera really close up, a shot of me and her, because you're supposed to be in every picture. Ultimately, they will take it down. I really don't have a good picture of me and Ian. Either I look bad or he looks bad, isn't smiling. I just don't have a lot of pictures of myself. I kind of have my professional head shot. Maybe that's a bad idea to have that there. I don't know. I don't know if that makes me too conservative. Maybe I should put something funny under that. Who's this Republican asshole? (chuckles) (pause) [00:24:56] A liberal in Republican's clothing – maybe that's what I should have put. For political I have "other", because on most things I'm liberal on, I'm not 100 percent that way. There is the way I think things should go fiscally, but I know we'll never do that so I go with the liberal – something like minimum wage. I think, in theory, it's a good idea; but time and time again price fixing has shown to actually cause prices to be higher so, if you're trying to make prices higher, then you're actually going to cause things to be lower. So you're going to have wages that are closer to minimum wage then higher than minimum wage because the way you fix prices. It's supply and demand. [00:26:02] So if you force employers to spend more money on employees, that means they're going to have less money to spend on other employees, so they're going to pay them less. Hawaii put price controls on gasoline and all it did was cause gas shortages because supply and demand wasn't in effect. There was no motivation for the gas and oil companies to go to the expense of getting oil and gasoline to Hawaii and sell it – so they didn't. But, in theory, I think trying to do those to help people out are a good thing. [00:26:57]

It's like I know the government is going to spend money, so they better spend it on something that I'm – instead of the rich, I just think they should be spending it on the poor and middle class – at least in my economic theories. So it's hard for me to just say, "I'm a liberal." I think you ultimately have to lie on these things. I go back and change some of my answers. What's one? The reason that I feel it's a bad answer is because it's like same answer, same answer, same answer, same answer. And then it comes to this touchy-feely one and I've got the wrong answer. I thought, "Should you communicate with your significant other every day – phone, text, whatever?" They gave a bunch of options. I was like, "Yeah." I have yet to come across a woman who has put "yeah". "Not necessarily," or something like that. I've got to go back and change that, but you've got to wait 24 hours before you can change it. You know, it's gaming the system and I lost. I should have just gone with what I really thought which is no, you don't have to. It's like all-consuming. [00:28:41]

THERAPIST: You sound consumed and helpless.

CLIENT: Yes. (pause) And then I haven't even gotten to this point yet, but when do you ask to meet them? The one woman who replied to me, I don't even know her name. That was my last e-mail, the question I asked, "By the way, what's your..."

THERAPIST: So you think that if I say anything I'm going to be telling you you're doing something wrong?

CLIENT: No. Just a look. Just a quick boom look response is all I don't like. You criticize me all the time. (both chuckle) But there's one woman who, I don't even know her name so I asked her, "P.S. What's your name? And if you don't want to tell me, can you tell me why?" I put a little winkie thing on it because that's the woman who "if you don't want to reply to me "....trying to be cute. And then the woman who gave me four stars, her name is PDXBOS Girl. Whatever. Portland Airport, Logan, so she's in Portland. I asked her if she was into all this Portland stuff. She checked out my profile again. No message. [00:30:12] I really didn't even want to message her in the beginning, so it's like I'm being rejected by my rejections, you know? I just felt bad because I thought how would I feel if someone blew me off like that. I guess you've just got to blow people off. I don't know. You never know until you speak to some person. (pause) And then I come up with these really great jokes that I should be writing down as I'm wading through the questions. And one of the questions is "Would you go out with someone who does drugs?" [00:31:04] There are various options: "No way"; "Yes"; "Yes, but only soft stuff like marijuana". A lot of people put "Yes, but only soft stuff like marijuana", which is my answer. I want to say you put that you would only approve of someone who only did soft stuff like marijuana, but isn't marijuana the gateway drug? (chuckles) So I don't know. Anyway, the blog tells you to maybe tell a joke. "Don't use shorthand except for Ha-Ha and LOL". Howdy is a good one. If you're a man, don't say sex or tell them that they're attractive or anything like that. They don't want to hear it, apparently, but men do want to hear that they're attractive. (sighs) This, of course, is all statistical based on the words people use and whether someone replies or not. [00:32:18]

THERAPIST: I guess it sounds like it's...

CLIENT: Now you're self-conscious about your expressions. I'm glad about that.

THERAPIST: (chuckles)

CLIENT: I don't mean to cut you off, but as I was driving here I was thinking about...

THERAPIST: What do you mean you don't mean to cut me off? You totally mean to cut me off. (laughs)

CLIENT: See? You're always criticizing me. (both laugh)

THERAPIST: That's not a criticism.

CLIENT: It's a passive-aggressive criticism.

THERAPIST: No, it isn't.

CLIENT: Yeah, it is. You're calling me out again. I'm thinking to myself that the doctor is always – you know, this guy I see twice a week – he seems pretty laid back, non-stressed, and he's always late in the morning. Why am I never late? Is it because I don't have kids? I wake up, I can watch the news, play on my phone, send some e-mails. I get here and go get coffee. I usually sit and wait until the computers come one. I'm thinking that his kids must be insane, screaming, not wanting to get dressed or "I want to wear that". This, that and the other and your wife is nagging you and you've just got this incredibly, intense, hectic home life; and so you come to work and it's like freedom. It's like, "Ahhhh. All I have to do is listen to crazy people."

THERAPIST: (laughs)

CLIENT: So that's what I thought about on the way in. I'm sorry, what were you thinking about and going to painfully say one word at a time? [00:34:17]

THERAPIST: So you're like doing this for both sides now? (laughs)

CLIENT: I'm allowed to criticize you.

THERAPIST: No, no, no. I don't mean that.

CLIENT: That wasn't a criticism. That was making fun of you. The word thing – you know – doing one word at a time. I wasn't making fun of you and the hectic life. That was a thought I had. I can tell by your reaction that I'm pretty close to...

THERAPIST: (chuckles) I see.

CLIENT: Because if your wife took care of getting the kids out the door in the morning or getting them dressed or getting them breakfast – whatever they had – you'd be on time, wouldn't you? See, this is what online dating is like. You ask a fucking question and you don't get an answer. I'm telling you, I'm just this overly curious person about what people are thinking. [00:35:27]

THERAPIST: I think you're incredibly anxious about what I am thinking.

CLIENT: Anxious? Really? Hmm.

THERAPIST: You can't let me get a thought or word in edgewise. Hardly ever. (pause)

CLIENT: I had to explain to Shamus the joke about the dog, the guy who thinks he's a dog and "Well lie on the couch and we'll talk about it." "Well, I'm not allowed on the furniture." So he's telling me this joke yesterday and he asked me, "What does that mean?" I've got to explain all these jokes to him. He talked about his talk doctor. I don't know if it's the speech or... I don't lie on the couch. We play games. Go ahead. I'm sorry. (sarcastically) No, you're not. You were thinking that, weren't you? [00:36:32]

THERAPIST: (laughs) What I'm thinking or might say is you don't let me get a word in edgewise a lot of times. I think it's probably mostly because...

CLIENT: I'm on speed now, so it's even worse.

THERAPIST: I think you feel like anything I say is either taking attention away from what you're trying to talk about or criticizing you in some way. [00:37:03]

CLIENT: Yeah, I guess so. You're right.

THERAPIST: And it's as though...

CLIENT: It always used to be that you'd take everything as criticism. Well, you're criticizing me. Try and beat that argument.

THERAPIST: I wonder why it feels like everything I say is critical of you. I mean my job is to be helpful.

CLIENT: I'm aware of that. I understand that giving advice I construe as criticism and you're trying to be helpful. If I construe it as criticism, then I don't see it as helpful. But maybe when I walk out the door and get to my car and think about it, maybe it will settle in. Not be so paranoid. You're not paranoid. You're way too not-paranoid. [00:38:15] Do you have a garage?

THERAPIST: Why do you ask?

CLIENT: I wonder if you clean off the roof of your car of if you leave the iceberg up there.

THERAPIST: I think you're trying to figure out if... there's something going on here, I think, with you trying to sort of find out how you can feel – I imagine you'd probably (chuckles) think critically of me either way. Either I'm uptight and have to get all the little bits of snow off my car... [00:39:11]

CLIENT: No, I really want... I thought about... I was sitting in my car. I saw a car with an iceberg on top of it and I go, "You know, I wonder how. . ." (phone rings) That's probably... Yeah. No, I don't think it has anything to... It's the same thing with the woman who hasn't told me her name. There's this mystery and I've got to know. It's the same thing as why isn't someone responding to me? I've got to know. Why don't they... You're interested in me, but you don't message. It's the same thing. Part of your job description is don't play any of your own personal cards. Hold your life to the vest. It's not about you, it's about me; so I always want to pry and see what I can get you on. That's why I followed you home – to learn you lived in Medford. [00:40:22]

THERAPIST: Right. That makes me...

CLIENT: That's why I followed you to the festival – to meet your family.

THERAPIST: That makes me wonder why is that so important? What is it that makes you either anxious or out of touch or something?

CLIENT: I don't know. There's something with not knowing.

THERAPIST: I guess so. Yeah, maybe it's feeling pretty disconnected.

CLIENT: I don't know. There is probably some paranoid aspect to it. Not so much with trying to figure out whether you have a home life or not.

THERAPIST: I think it's probably both. I think you're really worried about what I might be thinking. And part of what you do is to kind of drown out what I might say or where I might be coming from, which then leaves you kind of on your own – which isn't what you really want, either. [00:41:30]

CLIENT: I'm in a no-win situation, basically. Whatever I do, I'm a miserable person. It's like they ask you what kind of movie, if you were to describe yourself as a movie, which would it be? Number one, they only give you four options: Adventure, romantic comedy, horror, and one other option. And I'm none of them. I would be like the Three Stooges or Caddyshack or something slapstick or something completely offensive. The closest thing I can think of is horror. Not that my life is horror, but I view it as pretty much sucking. So it's a horror show in that metaphorical sense. But I don't want to put that as an answer. What person is going to want someone who describes their life as a horror show? You do have the option to make it public or not, your answer.

THERAPIST: I see. We should stop for now.

CLIENT: [...] (inaudible at 00:42:46) and drive in this lovely weather.

THERAPIST: Be careful.

END TRANSCRIPT