TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

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THERAPIST: How's it going?

CLIENT: Good. I'm just looking on my phone for a barbershop around here. I need to get my...Avery shaved all my hair off.

THERAPIST: Really?

CLIENT: I had Avery do that. Yeah. I don't know why. I'm just getting sick of it.

THERAPIST: Is that right?

CLIENT: Yeah. It's funny. I want to do it and I want to start like going to the...I'd like to try to go down through [inaudible] tomorrow or something. It seems like something it would be like a fresh start or something. You know what I mean. Don't do things like that; it's sort of like they mark it. You want to do whatever.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I think I'm going to do that.

THERAPIST: What's the fresh start?

CLIENT: I don't know. I just want to start...I don't even know. I think...I don't know. One of the things I think about is trying to get gym membership and start going to the gym. Stop smoking. Those are the two things that really come to mind. That's about it. I mean in terms of specifics.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I guess and I understand that it will have a ripple effect and it will be more than just that, but you know. A step towards feeling better or whatever.

THERAPIST: But is it hair that hair equates with anything today? Does your hair mean...?

CLIENT: Not really. I don't know. It would just be different, you know what I mean. It just feels really different. I'm at that point now where I would need to get a haircut at some point. So I'd rather just go all the way off with it, I think.

THERAPIST: Have you done that ever before?

CLIENT: Yeah, back in the day, a long time ago. Like my dad used to be the only person that ever cut my hair. To this day, I think, like maybe two other people in the world have cut my hair apart from my dad. He used to be a barber.

THERAPIST: Oh. Out in what was it?

CLIENT: Yeah, he owned a shop for a long time. I think he used to work at a barbershop in this area for a little while. Yeah, he owned a shop. When we lived together, it was just natural, you know what I mean? I would never go to a barbershop at all. He would just cut my hair in the kitchen or something, you know. And then even when I moved out, probably more just because I didn't want to spend the money than to have anyone else do it, I just had him do it. And then maybe one or two other times and I had gone to a barbershop. But when we weren't living together, typically I would just get a haircut from him and then just let it get so unruly, and I would just wait until I saw him and then he would give it a cut.

THERAPIST: Cut at home. He had his own kit?

CLIENT: Yeah, I mean he doesn't cut hair anymore, but he still has the stuff from way back.

CLIENT: And sometimes in between them, when I would just get fed up with it, if one of my friends had a buzzer, I would just shave it off.

THERAPIST: Is that right?

CLIENT: Yeah.

CLIENT: My dad would always get kind of, I don't know; he's always...he used to be a barber, so I guess it would make sense that he's kind of...you know, I guess a barber more than someone else would really pay attention to someone's hair, you know what I mean. I mean a person in to shoes, would probably pay more attention to someone's shoes than another person, you know. But he always would, you know; he would always pay attention to my hair and if I had someone else do it, I think it was almost kind of like subverting his role in some way. You know what I mean.

THERAPIST: Sure, I could see that.

CLIENT: But he never liked when I would just get it shaved off. He never liked that. He always thought that looked kind of...I don't know; maybe just because it wasn't, it didn't require any barber skills or something. But yeah, I'm just going to shave it all off tonight. It'll feel good I think.

THERAPIST: Yeah, I mean I was thinking about the significance of that, of shaving your head and what it would mean; what it kind of means in that context of the relationship with your dad.

CLIENT: Yeah, I thought about that a lot. Yeah, a lot. There's definitely like something there that is just kind of noticeable. It's kind of his kind of...it's an activity that's sort of fathership or something. You know what I mean. The way, it was like Laney's dad being the dad of a girl always changes the oil in a car for her and stuff. You know what I mean. It's just sort of the thing that he does as dad, you know.

THERAPIST: Was he the last person that has cut your hair, your dad?

CLIENT: No, the second time; you remember when I got the restaurant job and I had the longer hair and it got cut down, that I did it at a place in my neighborhood. I haven't seen my dad much, you know what I mean. I would just be in town to wait for him to cut it, you know. A guy in the neighborhood did that.

THERAPIST: And that was number two then?

CLIENT: That was, I think, probably number two. Yeah. I think literally the second time. I don't know that I ever actually went in to a barbershop. You know. One time when I was really young, it was funny; he brought me in to a barbershop. He said it was a guy that was applying for a job in the barbershop that he owned. So my dad brought me in and let that guy cut my hair and he didn't know who my dad was. He had put the application in the mail or something. So my dad wanted to watch him cut my hair, and he ended up firing him. And then there was one other time he went to see an old friend that he used to cut hair with, so we both got our hair cut there. But then it was still sort of like within his domain, you know what I mean. Still kind of. Making the exception yourself kind of. You know what I mean. That might be the first time. I don't even know. Like literally by myself.

THERAPIST: Wow.

CLIENT: Which is kind of funny. But.

THERAPIST: Yeah, that's kind of funny.

CLIENT: Yeah, that was always kind of like a thing that he did though. I remembered it was a thing that I just never really even thought other kids didn't do. You know I guess I just sort of assumed that every kid's dad cut their hair in the kitchen for them, you know. But he would always do that. I always liked it. It was always kind of fun.

THERAPIST: Yeah?

CLIENT: Yeah. He would do stuff like that. He would do stuff like...it reminds me. He would always brush my teeth for me at night too. That was something he always used to do regularly whenever he was around. And it was always like a thing. I could tell he was always trying to like impress upon me the importance of brushing your teeth every night and stuff.

THERAPIST: He'd brush them for you?

CLIENT: Sort of, yeah. I mean he would do it almost like you'd play like a little like dentist thing. He'd pretend to be like the dentist. I imagine because he thought I probably just didn't brush them very well myself, and I probably didn't. You know. He's very; looking back on it, in the way that he grew up, he grew up like destitute conditions in Ireland. Like horribly poor. And he didn't have a light bulb or anything until he was like 11 in his house. He grew up in like the country; slept in a bed with like two of his brothers until he was a teenager.

THERAPIST: Wow.

CLIENT: So he has very much like cleanliness it's next to Godliness type thing sort of impressed upon him, do you know what I mean? If you didn't keep yourself clean in the lifestyle like that, it would probably be just unhealthy, not even just gross, but you know what I mean? So he's very very anal about it and stuff like that.

And then I always clashed with my mom a bit because my mom is not like that. My mom is very messy.

THERAPIST: Was he very hygienic and...?

CLIENT: He's very hygienic. It's a good way to put it. He's very hygienic and he was very, in essence, grooming kind of came naturally. But also just very kind of clean and not cluttered the way that my mom is. My mom is just a pack rat. She just keeps everything, you know. There's just tons of stuff lying around everywhere. And I think that was always like a thing between my mom and my dad that yeah; my dad would get frustrated because she just, you know, seem just you know, seemed to be messy or you know, she had too much stuff that she was stowing in the basement.

I can remember we moved it was sort of a thing. Like he would get frustrated that we had all this stuff that he thought that we didn't need to keep and stuff and my mom didn't want to get rid of it. My dad has like nothing; no personal possessions really. My mom has boxes of stuff like when she was a kid photographs and papers that she wrote and stuff like that. My dad has nothing of the sort. I've never even seen a picture of my dad when he was younger than like 25. I don't even think anyone has one.

THERAPIST: He made a clean break, so to speak.

CLIENT: Yeah, and that...I always noticed those two things, you know. In a way, it didn't kind of surprise me. My mom would be lugging around all this baggage from years ago. He just genuinely had nothing. I think he has like a stack of like six photographs in his house from like before he was 30 or something. And then even all of the photographs are of family, which technically my mom took. Literally, they took the pictures. I mean I guess it just didn't; it wasn't even like a decision that that stuff would stay with my mom when he moved out. Like if my mom was moving out and someone else wanted some of them, she would try to get and hang on as many of them as she could. Not that she looks at them often, but she wants to have them. I mean it just wasn't even a thing for my dad, which is interesting too. Because you'd think that maybe he would want some of those, you know what I mean, but he doesn't really.

Yeah, that was always a thing between my mom and my dad. My mom being messy and my dad being kind of anal retentive with his neatness and not wanting to have stuff around. My mom would just be cluttered with things. Like on Mondays, which was his day, he'd be home and my mom would be off from work all day, and I'd hang out with him after school, he'd always like clean up the house like crazy. I would come home and it would like it only ever looked on Mondays after he was alone in the place for six hours or something.

It's funny because now my mom's house is just like unrestrained in that sense. I think the only thing that probably kept things from getting super messy with my mom around was having my dad as sort of a force to keep it in check. But now the house is like just the...it's not messy, but it's very much the way my mom would have it. There's just stuff everywhere. You know what I mean. My mom always made a distinction between the house being messy and the house being dirty. That was always her way to sort of she'd say yeah it's messy, but it's not dirty. There would be stuff everywhere, but it was clean; there wasn't dirt anywhere or anything.

I remember one time when my dad, he was driving me home when I was living at my mom's house, it was one of those awkward times when he was going to drive me home because I didn't have a car. So it was going to be this moment when they were like within 100 ft. of each other, at least. There was the likelihood that they would were going to talk and I was going to be there. I remember being nervous about it. And my dad ended up going in to the house for a little bit. I guess my mom invited him in or something, and she had...and I called her before saying dad was going to drop me off and she liked cleaned the house like crazy, just at the thought that maybe he would come inside.

THERAPIST: And the concern being?

CLIENT: The same reason that she would have cleaned things up when they were living together. I don't know. Maybe she didn't want him to see it like that or something.

THERAPIST: She had [inaudible 14:29].

CLIENT: Well he doesn't live there anymore.

THERAPIST: Yeah right.

CLIENT: It wouldn't have mattered, but for some reason...

THERAPIST: Some concern over that; there's some concern over that there's some reason she was concerned he would see it.

CLIENT: Yeah, just don't know what it is. And he wouldn't have been upset about it. Maybe he probably would have just like chuckled to himself. Of course, it's like this. Sort of like, giving a nod to the pat or something. But it struck me as odd that she would have felt compelled to clean the place up.

THERAPIST: Yeah, she wasn't like oh this is the way; I'm glad I have it my way now.

CLIENT: Yeah, maybe he was just going to drop me off in the driveway. I was surprised that he even went in. But maybe she thought it was a small possibility he would come inside, but it was enough that she probably spent a good 30 minutes cleaning the place up.

I remember feeling just kind of mad about that.

THERAPIST: You did.

CLIENT: I was mad that just like my dad's presence. I could tell my mom did it out of anxiety or something. I could hear in her voice that I was coming by, and she was like, "You're going to come with dad? Okay, okay." And I could just tell. I knew what she was going to do. She was going to go and clean the place up or whatever.

THERAPIST: You even had an instinct that she was going to do it.

CLIENT: Yeah, I mean I wasn't surprised in that sense. I guess I was...it was an impulse that I would probably have too. There was a period of time when my dad moved out, when he was down the street. And he was living, at the time he was living at this place like ten minutes down the street and it was before my mom moved out of the house that they had both, at one time, lived in. And during that time, my dad would come pick me up, he would come over and we'd go out and do something and he'd come in and he'd walk around because it wasn't really not his house anymore. Just the way that he would come in; he wasn't going in to my mom's house the way it would have been if my mom had owned the place that he moved in to, you know. And I could remember he would come by sometimes and without my dad living there anymore, it would get messier than it would if he was there. And it was always sort of like an anxious feeling when he would do that. I could tell that he thought my mom all riled up.

THERAPIST: Anxious or upset?

CLIENT: Yeah. You know, it was [inaudible 17:30]. It's not like she could get in trouble or something. It was just what I imagined what I saw her feeling like. Yeah, it's just it always kind of...I remembered those moments. And that's what it kind of felt like. It was just weird timing like; it wasn't...my dad hadn't moved out to the point where they were in like two different houses. There was this like weird, I don't know, zone of indistinction. He would come over and they were both there and it was still both of their homes.

THERAPIST: He had moved out, though.

CLIENT: He had moved out, but they still owned it together. He moved out for a couple of months, you know.

THERAPIST: There was still that kind of ambiguous kind of whose house is this still. How much is it mine?

CLIENT: Yeah, how much do I get to determine I'm messy? All those things weren't, you know, like if two people own something. Like a car. One can say I'll take care of it, but she wasn't taking care of the house almost, in that sense. And that's what it felt like when he came back in to the house that time with my mom. And it made me really frustrated just to see that my mom was still able to be sort of brought within that dynamic so strongly, even not living with each other for years and years and years; that there was still this something that exist in part from their marriage or whatever.

THERAPIST: He had that type of influence.

CLIENT: Yeah. That she would have cared that much still about his impression. It was really weird. I can remember like one or two times since my parents moved out that they've been in like the same place together. Maybe like two or three times including my graduation and me going to court, which led to two other times.

THERAPIST: Court being one of the ones.

CLIENT: That was like the first time, yeah, that they came back together. My mom surprised me. She didn't even tell me she was coming. I didn't want her to come. I mean now I had that whole triangle on top of just going through the court thing which was tough enough, you know.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Well you know, just to get back to the where you were talking about with the home and your mom and the state of the home; does it all...it kind of linked up in my mind, but I'm wondering is it kind of resonating anywhere with the feeling about what it's meant to have your hair in a certain way with your father?

CLIENT: It's very much the same dynamic. Yeah, it's very very much the same dynamic. It's something to be inspected and it's something to be held up to certain expectations of your father or something, you know, that is sort of set by him and just try to, and you think about them and you care about them, just because they're there. It's what you do, you know. So it's easy, I guess, to see how there's like a rebellious element to me just cutting all my hair off.

THERAPIST: Rebellious, but I think; I was thinking in some way as opposed to your mom's sense of...your sense of your mom's identity with the house, in some way you're trying to make it really, your hair to be yours in some way as opposed to it being kind of still under the; under some sort of defining body by your father in some way. Like your mother can go, alright, this is the way my house is now. That was the way you had it. It's almost like I was thinking in some way your hair is kind of like listen, I know that's what you say about my hair. I want to be able to define my own in my own way separate from you.

CLIENT: And I thought this before too with my hair is that you even going and having someone else cut my hair and then going to see my dad, he's still look at it and he'll still impart whatever judgment upon it that he's going to as if I didn't cut my hair for a long time, as if I didn't let him cut it for a long time and it looked crazy or if I didn't comb it right or something. That dynamic can still take a form. You know it's not breaking with it completely. But cutting it all off and there's nothing there. And I remember thinking that like that's what it feels kind of...without the hair, there's no, "what are you going to do with my head now?" Yeah, that feels good.

THERAPIST: What do you notice about it? What do you notice feels good?

CLIENT: Yeah, it feels very...there's nothing for my dad to come at me with like that. Even silly things, you know what I mean, that sounds really innocent, but like I'm washing your hair now. Your hair is not combed enough, or it's not combed right. It's not this, it's not that. It just...it just cuts the legs off of all that stuff. He refuses to play in that game, you know. Yeah.

THERAPIST: I can see that.

CLIENT: Even like the times when he's like washing my hair, even when he's sort of seeing it and been like, oh, I like your hair. It's still frustrating because there's this like, I don't know; it's very infantile, but it's like I don't care. I don't want you to say that. You can't even get out of it that way. You just cut it off. You can't talk about hair anymore.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I don't know. I like that.

THERAPIST: Yes. You're free of that in a way.

CLIENT: Yeah. I don't know that's something that you've done with other things so much. We're moving things. Things that relate to it, get away, whatever. But my dad came over last night, actually. Maybe that's why he's on my mind so much, but came over because we were going to be doing this work together.

THERAPIST: He came over to your place?

CLIENT: Yeah. That doesn't happen very often. That's the second time he's been over. You know, I needed to get some materials for him to start doing this work that we're going to be doing together and we needed to physically see each other. We couldn't just e-mail it all. That's what I was going to offer to him, like oh, I'll come over and get it from you or something, you know. I'll come up; I'll drive out there and make it easy for you. And it didn't really work out that way. He said I'll come down to you on Wednesday night. I was like, alright if you want to. He made me a little nervous just imagining him getting lost and me not being able to give him directions on the phone and him getting frustrated or something. That's why I didn't want him to initially. Because I don't know; it just seemed like there was more potential for something uncomfortable to happen.

But he came down and it's funny, I was just thinking about this, when I was talking about my mom. But I cleaned up my house the same way that my mom does; like really cleaned it. My dad did the same sort of like walk through inspection when he came in. In the way that if somebody else looked at it, they might have just been oh, that's just dad checking out where the kid's living. They're just curious and want to see it.

THERAPIST: You knew it was something what he was looking at. What was he looking for? What was he looking at?

CLIENT: There's a context; these things aren't removed from context, you know what I mean. And yeah, I knew what he would have been looking for, you know. I knew the things that he would make comments about or something. I mean he would he would come back by the other house: I suppose I was offering the same thing before that my mom was when she cleaned up her place before he came over. But what I did was like big thing when he was coming over and I was thinking about it. And I thought, yeah, and to the lead up to it I felt kind of silly or at a loss. I don't know to explain it. Like all yesterday it was like, dad's coming over. Can't be late. Got to be home. Make sure things are clean. Like my whole day was...it was like when you go to the airport and like there's just nothing else on that day you do besides go to the airport. Like if you go at 5 at night, you get there like 11. It's like that.

THERAPIST: It's hanging over your head and you know you've got to get there on time.

CLIENT: The entire day was framed around making sure that that happened right, you know. I remember feeling kind of like strange about it. Even Harold, picked up on the fact that I was getting...making sure all the pieces were...and I even kind of noticed that I think is it bounced off Harold a little bit, but I noticed myself getting a little antsy about it. I didn't think too much about it, but it bothered me a little bit too. I wasn't really thinking about it in the context of that story I just told you about my mom, but it seems very similar now. I did a very similar thing that she did, you know. And I didn't even think about it.

THERAPIST: Yeah, I was just having the...my association just to share with you, is that, and I wonder if it's maybe is a way to kind of see if I've got it right.

CLIENT: It's like; I had the fantasy of a former drill sergeant in the Marines coming over to inspect the quarters in a way, but now you're discharged from the Army, but you still have that same feeling.

THERAPIST: But now you're discharged from the Army, but you still have that same feeling; the drill sergeant's coming over for dinner or something like that. You're still going to have, I'm always going to look at my bunk and I know he's going to look to see if the head is clean and even though you're now discharged or you're not under his...there's still that feeling.

CLIENT: Yeah, I know, very similar. It's very very very similar. It's powerful.

THERAPIST: Uh huh. And kind of knowing, too, that he'd be looking, that it's not just a one-way look; you know your old drill sergeant's going to...that's his eye; that's where his eye goes. You know he's got attention to detail what the bunk looks like.

CLIENT: Yeah, it's bizarre because in a way, and I guess this is what I worry about with my mom is like it's not like he'd be looking for things that are so bizarre that you couldn't justify not having them no, you know what I mean, like it's not like he was going to looking to make sure there was a blue sticker on every wall and you knew he was going to get mad if he didn't see a blue sticker on every wall. Because then you would just say that's stupid; I'm not going to do that. And he can get mad. There's something about like the things like the cleanliness and stuff; it's almost like an implicit admission and the need to do so much in preparation for him to come over that you're not doing the right thing when he's not around. And that's like, it's not just like just random things, you know; it's things that are very I guess like I was tell you before, very sort of like infused with a sense of virtue when I was very young.

THERAPIST: Cleanliness, order.

CLIENT: Cleanliness. Yeah. Clean and not messy. I mean that's really; that's not a preference, that's a vice. I don't know. At least you know the context. And I think that's why it made me feel bad about when I saw mom did. In doing that, in running around and cleaning up when dad came over, it's like this implicit shame in what you're doing when he's not around. And the same thing, I guess, with like when my dad came over. My place is usually pretty clean. During the week I work a lot. I may put dishes off or something. But that justification doesn't really hold or something with dad or whatever. It's a different kind of thing.

So, I don't know. It's a dynamic that you don't have with a lot of people. You probably wouldn't keep yourself around a lot of people if that was the dynamic that kept forming, you know. It's surely not the dynamic between me and Harold. I couldn't imagine if it was, but what it would be like with somebody I lived with. But it's weird, you know, but you do it.

That's kind of what I thought about last night after he left. I was like this place is so clean now. And it's not like I went and made it dirty again because he left. It's kind of like, gee, you should always have it like this. I'm like that with my mom. There's no; mom can come over the place, I don't get pig sty. And I would have that exact reaction. You don't have to be here; you can leave. You know, unless I invited her over and begged her to come over, and then I would feel like it would be my obligation to have it clean, but otherwise, it would be very different.

But I don't know. I don't know what that...I mean I guess it's like why wouldn't; why do you not, why would I be so quick to clean my place up before he came over? Like what would I be trying to avoid. Like that reaction. Like if he came over and looked disappointed or something.

THERAPIST: Yeah, but what would...?

CLIENT: I mean it just seems to make sense that for some reason that's something that is worth avoiding. You know, to the extent that mom and me, I suppose, both kind of react to it pretty powerfully. I don't know; that's just, that's...

THERAPIST: What is it that you're avoiding, that you want to avoid?

CLIENT: Yeah. It just doesn't seem like the behavior that one exhibits towards someone that they feel like unconditionally safe with, you know what I mean? I'm trying to think about like if I just went to someone else, it seems like what someone does in preparation for someone that they're really concerned about. Feeling that way, you know what I mean? If it felt unconditional; and that's the way with my mom, like I have no concern about like, if I have a messy house could actually get like genuinely upset with me or something. But I guess that's something that like I'm concerned with my dad. Yeah. That doesn't seem like a very; it seems like an uncomfortable dynamic for people to live in.

THERAPIST: Well yeah, it is. Getting to this thing that you were, that kind of the topic that we were talking about on Monday, which is like, it's not only that this whole dynamic exists; it's that the dynamic means something as well. It means something about the relationship you and your dad have; that it's something; like as you were getting at last time, that it's not just his affect on other people, it's how like wait, there's some effect; there's something going on between the two of us. There's something behind all of this dynamic that' a little bit like well what does this mean then? If I'm worried about my dad coming over and somehow getting scrutinized, something then feels amiss about what's going on between you two.

CLIENT: That's the missing link in this conversation. So put it a different way, I suppose when I reflect upon myself running around the house like crazy and cleaning up frantically, it seems like the actions of someone who cares a lot more about the opinions someone has of them and I'd like to admit I have for my father.

THERAPIST: Yeah, right.

CLIENT: It's certainly not the way that I talk about it. You know what I mean?

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: I guess that's the disconnect. It's when someone does and you're terrified of the opinion that someone else has and you want to protect that.

THERAPIST: It means a lot.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Just as you would, hearing his support about, you know, your statements and everything; it means a lot. It's not nothing.

CLIENT: Yeah, my excitement. After the reaction to his comment seems to be the reaction of someone who cared more about the opinion you want to have more than I'm willing to admit, at least anyway.

I guess sometimes I like to talk about him in a way that makes him seem really kind of bold and I don't care; I don't need to see you.

THERAPIST: I see what you're saying.

CLIENT: That's where I feel more comfortable.

THERAPIST: I see what you're saying.

CLIENT: Thinking about that dynamic.

THERAPIST: It's a little bit, yeah, unsettling to know that, to think back on yesterday and go yeah, wow, I was really; I was really concerned about what he thought.

CLIENT: I was scared, yeah.

THERAPIST: Scared.

CLIENT: Scared beyond that.

THERAPIST: Scared huh?

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah, just that, which is not; those are not things that I like to think about as central features of my relationship with my dad. They're not things that I...there are definitely things that I try to minimize the occurrence of, different things, you know what I mean. They're there. I don't really know what to make of that, you know. I really, I don't know what to make of the idea that I would be like scared of the idea that he would be disapproving or something. I don't like to think of myself as, you know, [inaudible 44:17] by those concerns. Even though I suppose that it sounds very similar to things I've spoken with you in the past with other people. It's weird right; because I'm hyper aware of how concerned I am of the approval of other people at this point in my life. I'm so aware of that. It's just obvious to me, because of the experience, you know.

THERAPIST: And while you may not like it, you nonetheless kind of can see it and kind of accept it in yourself or something; it's not like something you go, well I don't like to think of myself maybe you don't, but you don't...

CLIENT: But I do.

THERAPIST: But you do.

CLIENT: Yeah. And while I may not like, it certainly doesn't have the like...it's not threatening, really, to go there.

THERAPIST: You don't say to yourself, "I'm not that person," like you might be more with your father.

CLIENT: Yeah. And I guess it's not like I'm saying now. I've never really thought of it like this with my dad really.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: You know.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: And it gets back to the whole kind of like narrative. I mean it's not; that doesn't fit, you know. I was never not, I don't know; I wasn't scared. I don't know. It just seems silly to me given how farfetched they are with respect to just the idea, you know. My dad helped me through this thing with court. Like I don't know. In a way I was like less scared telling him about that than I was having him come over to my house in some strange way.

THERAPIST: Interesting.

CLIENT: I don't know.

THERAPIST: Yeah, just to say one other thing is that you know there's this interesting thing that you've observed about him and his father and the breaking off of ties in some way. And I was thinking about how in some way, I'm imagining that he wanted to make a clean break from the past and as if that stuff didn't really matter and it didn't really have an impact on him. Or that the past is behind him in some way. And it might be really like getting in to that realm of what really happened, and mean stuff in between him and his father; I was thinking in some way he might have also felt the same way about him being in the role of father and a son. Once you get over it. Once the divorce is over, well that's behind you in some way and that' something that you put in the past. Fathers and sons, clean breaks are possible. And the past is in the past. In some way it's kind of active between you two in some way. How fathers and sons feel about each other and relate to each other is something that; it isn't supposed to carry weight or something afterwards. I was just thinking about something about...

CLIENT: Yeah, I see what you're saying. There are definitely zones of comfort with my dad. And he has definitely constructed one of relative comfort. And yeah, I don't know.

THERAPIST: What are you thinking?

CLIENT: It just reminds me of this quote from, have you seen the movie, "The Life Aquatic?"

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: This one line always stood out to me; this just reminded me of it. When the Wilson actor, Luke Wilson or Owen Wilson, you know, with Bill Murray as his dad. At one point he likes asks him a question and he had never kind of got this kind of deep emotional with Bill Murray's character, but he was like, how come you never got in touch with me? And they had just met and were like...he was like why you never got in touch with me, Bill Murray? And his answer, which was he said I always how did he put it he said I always hated fathers and I never wanted to be one. And I remember the first time I watched it I was like, it stuck out to me for some reason. But I remember thinking to myself, initially, he didn't answer the question. He just said something that he was thinking. The more I thought about it, yeah, he did kind of answer the question, you know. It's just what popped in to my head.

THERAPIST: Yeah, that's interesting.

CLIENT: But with that...

THERAPIST: Okay. Until Monday.

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: Alright.

CLIENT: You know where there's a barbershop called [inaudible] Barbershop? You ever heard of that barbershop before? It's open until 9 apparently.

THERAPIST: Do you know what street?

CLIENT: No, I'll look at a map and figure it out, though.

THERAPIST: I don't know, no, huh?

CLIENT: Yeah, it says it's open until 9.

THERAPIST: There is a barbershop down there. I don't know the name of it. I don't remember it what it's called though. There is a bunch actually.

CLIENT: Yeah, I'll poke around and I'll find one. Do you want me to put the chair up under the sink for you?

THERAPIST: You're fine. That's good. I'll take care of it. Thanks so much.

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