TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

(pause) [00:01:37]

CLIENT: They've got all of those World Fairs and stuff where they show the future like how amazingly convenient all of these machines and robots are and new video teleconferencing or whatever devices would be. I didn't think about it as like the nature of the person who has access to all of these things or the nature of being human when you have access to all of these conveniences. I think Oscar Wilde said something like well, it doesn't matter. You obtain purpose through being useful. I think a lot of what exists came into form because it was useful; that's what makes it what it is. It's sort of a struggle for existence. Purpose is part of that. [00:02:49] And so we have all of these conveniences. I think that's quite a bit of [ ] (inaudible at 00:02:55) sake, of human beings. It's a strange aspect of my life that I never could have anticipated is that I can just kind of get by without really doing anything. Like I can work a little bit and that cash will see me through for a while and then, in my case, if I get into trouble I can just get an extension from my family for like $1,000. That's fine to go another two months for whatever else I do. Like you kind of noticed, I think I'm built for crisis situations. [00:03:40] I see it transferring for me like that frame makes sense of impulsive thoughts I have like send an e-mail at this time or you're doomed or if you wear these pants or not these pants, then evil will follow you. It's like the urgency is displaced. There's just no place for it. My present life is sort of a bland continuum, for the sake of articulating it. Breaking it in to comprehensible parts, it's make the necessary setup to impute imperative evaluations onto very minor decisions. (pause) [00:05:01] I think I do well in actual crisis situations, but I just don't [ ] (inaudible at 00:05:07) pressure or . . . yeah, it's a strange I used to call it purgatory, but it's a strange and sedentary life. (pause) [00:05:49]

THERAPIST: In some way you feel like another way is you don't feel put to use in some way as much as you could if there was pressure on.

CLIENT: Yeah. I'm pretty useless. Which isn't to say I couldn't be valuable, but I don't think I'm very valuable in my present employment that's (sniggers) nowhere, reclusive, contemplative or whatever. Really just I eat pretty well. That's a very tangible thing that I focus on. Not like health-food crazy, but I make good, well-balanced meals. Like a tuna sandwich, lettuce and tomato and bugles and orange juice. That's a good lunch. Simple things, you know? [00:07:00] I want to do more. I wanted to do more when my friend committed suicide. I felt like if I had been more invested in making and shaping my environment, meaning the college where we both went, I felt like he would have been okay. I like my roommates now a lot. Not for the obvious reasons, but I like my roommates like who they are and the fact that they're different from me and yet we get on. At the same time I sort of recognize that I don't think I'm very good for them. [00:07:58] Cleo with her fianc� or Edgar, who spends a lot of his time in his room. I sort of joked with you about when I took Cleo away I made sure it was loud so he could hear. Those kind of things which I feel [sharp] (ph?). In the long run, they . . . I really care about Edgar more than Cleo. (laughs) I guess what I mean is that I feel like a dead it sounds too serious when I say that I feel like a dead weight, but I wish I weren't wishing for these things. I guess what I mean is that I feel like a dead it sounds too serious when I say that I feel like a dead weight, but I wish I weren't wishing for these things. [00:09:01] I wish I felt like we were more aristocratic, more well-bound, more moving towards doing well, basically. I just feel like . . .

THERAPIST: Yeah, what sense do . . ?

CLIENT: I mean I guess I wish there was a sense of health and honesty that pervaded our apartment. [00:10:04]

THERAPIST: What would that health look like?

CLIENT: For Edgar, if he was out of his room, or talking with Cleo or talking with me. I think I sort of intimidated one or both of them into not interacting much. I'm not sure by what exact means, but . . .

THERAPIST: I see. (pause)

CLIENT: On the other hand, I think I'm doing great things at George Washington Friends meeting. I'm connecting people, bringing some much needed sense of humor into the environment. It's good. [00:11:05]

THERAPIST: Yeah, the whole stuff with Edgar and Cleo kind of left you feeling like the atmosphere of the house has been . . . It's taken its toll on the atmosphere of the house in some way.

CLIENT: It's really minor. It's still going on, but it could change any day. I'm conscious of the fact that I made them both sign the lease and, yet, I collect the rent payments, too, So it's not entirely like equal ground. They're responsible to the lease and (pause) I don't know. I guess I feel guilty for tying them down in that sense, even though it's made me happy. [00:12:12] (pause) I visited my family Saturday because my brother and sister are home from college. We had a nice dinner. My mother, though, she wouldn't meet my eyes. I don't know what it was. There's always something up with her and I can't rectify it. If it's not one thing, it's something else. If I'm not baiting her, I'm pissed off with her. [00:13:11]

THERAPIST: Yeah, what did you make of it when she wasn't meeting your eye?

CLIENT: My immediate thought was to think it was something I did, you know? Weird scenarios like maybe the cousin talked to her mother and her mother talked to my mother and my mother is ashamed of something of me liking my cousin or something. That's what came to mind, although it seems unlikely. Always with her . . . (pause) I had this traumatic episode when I was like 13 or 14 where the aunt I told you about who had a stillborn -from premarital sex. She accused me of looking at porn on her computer when I was visiting my cousin there. [00:14:16] My cousin wasn't there, so I had to wait for him so she introduced me to the computer and my cousin later told me that she had told her family that I had looked at porn on their computer, which I hadn't done. I was shocked that someone would suspect that kind of thing of me. The way it worked in my mind was there are two possibilities and possibly they could overlap. Probably my uncle or Seth or my cousin. My cousins looked at porn on the computer and she couldn't quite process it as being her husband or her kids so she attributed it to me, like it wouldn't register. [00:15:12] The other possibility is that I had previously looked at some pictures. [ ] (inaudible at 00:15:16) I don't use those words, but I was into Star Wars and I had looked at they must have been Photoshopped pictures of Princess Leia and they gave her something (laughs) on the computer at home and that was in seventh grade or something. That was the only thing I was interested in at that time. I don't think I looked for anything else besides Princess Leia or Carrie Fisher. I did it like twice. My other thought was my mom probably told my aunts or other people about that, and from that my aunt got the conclusion that I had looked at pornography, that that was something I did. [00:15:57] That is somehow a more painful possibility because it would, in a sense, be my mother had sort of betrayed me; or I felt betrayed by that. She never even talked to me about it, I don't think. I don't think, my mother, but it seems possible. That was when I was 13, I think. It wasn't conceivable to me that someone in the extended family could look at me in a pejorative way or sort of compute this dubious sexuality to me. I wasn't in a position to talk to her, my aunt, about it. [00:16:39]

THERAPIST: It had to do with an accusation of your sexual mindset.

CLIENT: Yeah. I haven't trusted her since.

THERAPIST: Yeah. She saw it. What did you feel she saw in you? What was the quality of that kind of . . ?

CLIENT: Like someone . . . (long pause) [00:18:30] That there's someone wrong, I guess.

THERAPIST: Wrong, huh? (pause) I imagine, though, that it was very shaming.

CLIENT: Yeah, very much.

THERAPIST: And you said that someone would look at you that way?

CLIENT: Yeah. I felt ostracized and abject. I felt a little helpless, too, like older, more mature people gossiping about me or something and I couldn't do anything about it. [00:19:27]

THERAPIST: What a complicated situation. I was thinking about, first of all, the accusation was out of your hands and it became a certain truth about you.

CLIENT: Truth to who?

THERAPIST: I guess to your aunt, right? And then do you think to your mom?

CLIENT: Well I thought it was from my mom to my aunt or something.

THERAPIST: Okay. (pause) Yeah, then the other complicated thing is just the fact that somehow looking at porn would be this really terrible thing. The implication is that it is.

CLIENT: Yeah. And it hit me in a sensitive spot because it's not like it was beyond me to look at the porn, but I hadn't so . . . (chuckles) I would never do it on someone else's computer. [00:20:50]

THERAPIST: Right. Right. Those moments can be so deep and, as you say, traumatic. It made me think about when you were talking about masturbation and what it all means to you. (pause)

CLIENT: Yeah. Actually, that tied right in because it wasn't long after I started masturbating, I think. It started randomly, but . . . maybe 16. My thinking was like they already think of me this way, so I may as well just be a pervert or a jack-off or whatever; so it doesn't really matter because they already think I'm [ ] (inaudible at 00:21:56). I wouldn't say it was constantly on my mind, but it was something I could not resolve. My extended family was my social base and it was a betrayal that I felt. I wouldn't say I held onto it, but I would say I wasn't able to let it go. Still, I don't think I trust that particular aunt; or I can't, no matter how nice she is or she says. [00:22:41]

Also implicated is the idea that, possibly one of her motivations are subconscious, to discredit my name because the family was set up in such a way it worked to counter-balance my own influence or my own reputation as compared to her son's, who was also my age. The way it was set up is that my grandparents were benevolent and sort of coordinated everybody and then their children, their five children, brought spouses into the family. And so they were kind of a second tier of adults. Then there were their kids. I might have said this before but I do think she has taken to sort of advancing her own children over me, or at my expense. If anyone else was . . . yeah, probably my sisters, too, because she has a kid who is my sister's age as well. The extended family was such a wholesome environment because people like my mother or an aunt I have, many of the aunts and uncles just viewed it as a collective. We take care of everyone. There's no possibility of being un-accepted or not being part of the whole, or there wasn't. But her take was just her kids, this particular aunt, it was her kids. Everyone else would say if there were some of us going out for ice cream this was during the summer at the summer home on Cape Canaveral (ph?) if anyone was going out for ice cream, you would take everyone there. But this one family would take just their family out to eat or they would take just their family on a sailing trip. Possibly that's built off the fact that they were ostracized when they had a baby out of wedlock. Potentially a more healthy set of relationships with themselves; but I felt ashamed, guilty, betrayed, and angry, incapable of addressing my detractor. [00:25:51]

THERAPIST: Yeah, not to be dramatic, but it's almost like you got accused of eating forbidden fruit or something like that.

CLIENT: (laughs) Yeah.

THERAPIST: But in this complicated way. You were having even when you were 13 you were having your own kind of relationship to emerging sexual kind of feelings; and yet you were accused of something you didn't do and seen in a very different light. In a light that, when it came out that way to your aunt, your mom it was not wholesome any longer. Some kind of they weren't wholesome; you weren't wholesome. [00:26:37]

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah.

THERAPIST: It must have been really terrible for you, given what you've been describing about that family feeling.

CLIENT: Yeah, it was. It wasn't good. I was also going away to Lawrenceville at the time.

THERAPIST: I guess I made the allusion to the forbidden fruit is that it has a kind of "eat it" quality.

CLIENT: Yeah, I got kicked out of the garden. Absolutely. We both stopped sharing. We were a bunch of kids running through the woods. (pause) There is a power dynamic that I seem to be the only cousin conscious of her. There are eight cousins, so that's my age group. We always get together and I love my cousins. I like (chuckles) one particular one in a certain way, but I like them all in different ways. [00:28:05] They're with the adults and that's what they like to do; but the cousins haven't been very successful in establishing what this may be a baby-boomer issue, too but the younger generation hasn't been very successful in setting their collective agenda or what we like to do when we gather together. We still sing 50's songs and stuff, which is not the worst thing. [00:28:41] I've said this, we played football Thanksgiving and I was captain of the younger team and I wanted to win, but (laughs) this guy who's like 31 or 32 now was saying it doesn't matter how old he was but he was saying, "They're not counting 'one-one thousand, two-one thousand.'" Shut the fuck up and just play the game.

THERAPIST: Come one, we're younger. We should be able to beat these guys, that kind of thing? (both laugh)

CLIENT: I didn't say that, but it's apparent; it's implicit. We lost three to one.

THERAPIST: That's right. They beat you. [00:29:29]

CLIENT: Yeah. We've been running the same plays for like fifty years. We don't practice. It's back to when I felt sort of sad when the patriarch looked sort of downfallen when I sang a better song than he did. It's almost like . . . I don't know what it's like.

THERAPIST: It's similar, I imagine, to wanting to beat them in football. It's like in some way your claiming your ascension in some way. (pause) The sexual stuff can even be seen that way, too. You're no longer a child. You're turning into something else, somebody else. [00:30:47]

CLIENT: My cousin came over last Friday no, wait Friday before that? Friday before last. Hermione (ph?), the one I like. She brought a friend. So . . . That was good. There's like this baseline relationship of trust and intimacy there, and then I want to push the sexual agenda because to me, having sex mandates a deeper intimacy, for whatever reason. I mean, I don't think I'd go into it being like "all right, let's get really deep and honest here". I'd get into it manipulatively. (laughs) That's my recent experience. It's like all right, let's hook this bitch. And then afterwards it's like I trick them into having sex so I can have pillow talk afterwards. That's what it is for me. (laughs) [00:32:17] We had a good time, but then I had the cousin Hermione into my room and we played bananagrams and her words started out like a word and then like what were the words? Alert, not suspicious, but (laughs) like these words: Alert, bound. Then some of her later words were like cute and lips and stuff like that. So I took that as a good sign. I took her into my bed to watch a movie and I picked a terrible movie. Bruno. I don't know if you've seen that, but it's not a good intimacy movie. [00:33:16]

THERAPIST: Yeah, the [ ] (inaudible at 00:33:17)

CLIENT: Yeah. (laughs) [ ] (inaudible at 00:33:21) Okay. I like when they're sitting on the human beings and we talked about how upset we are with other people. I was in that state which I've been describing where I was sort of looking to her, my 21-year-old cousin. And of course, her friend is in the other room, but at this point the door is closed and her friend is sleeping. [00:33:59] I've been looking at her for the okay and the intimacy and the funny thing is that she's already there. She's completely comfortable. I put my arm around her and she lifts up her head like that and just goes into my arm like no problem. I'm focusing on her and she's watching the movie, laughing at the movie. I'm just like, "Okay, what's going to happen? Is this okay?" I'm waiting for a sign, when really I should have pushed what I wanted. But then you have that whole relationship on the line which, I think, through my fear of jeopardizing it, I probably did just the innate trust. For her I don't think it was an issue. It's just my own hang-ups. [00:34:44] Also, she's not the same person that she was. She's not completely innocent anymore. She has alabaster skin. Her mother is very prudish and so she's trying to erase that sense, but her mother also wanted her to be concerned about the environment, animals, and you know. A lot of that is gone. [00:35:22]

THERAPIST: It is, huh? What are you noticing now?

CLIENT: More mature, knows how to ask for what she wants. What did I say . . ? (pause) Something like I have a pool at my house. Yeah, we have a pool. Something in the way she answered. She's kind of a pro. She knows how to ask for what she wants. I think we've already cultivated an emotional intimacy, but I don't know if she actually likes me. That's the thing. I suppose that's sort of suspended, being in fear, in that prolonged moment where we're lying under the covers watching Bruno.

THERAPIST: Yeah. That's pretty ambiguous. [00:36:23]

CLIENT: Yeah, that's a . . . (both chuckle)

THERAPIST: Understatement of the year. What were you feeling? What were you just going on within yourself?

CLIENT: Right now?

THERAPIST: Sure, but I was thinking at that moment.

CLIENT: At that moment I wasn't turned on physically. Well, I was wondering, almost grasping. It's a phrase in Virginia Woolf like a hand sort of grasping at a veil. (laughs) I was. Eventually my body language, too, I was fingering her opposite arm with the arm that was around her neck sort of tentatively. I was thinking I should probably kiss her on the cheek or something. But then the movie was grossly inappropriate, so I guess I was using that as some sort of excuse. I suppose I was also a little surprised. It was like she was already there. She's totally comfortable. No problem. And I'm the one who's like ohh. I'm looking for some sort of cue and it's not coming because she's 200 percent cooler than I am, so I don't know a cool phrase. [00:38:20]

THERAPIST: When you say that she was already there, what did you mean?

CLIENT: It was one of those imperatives, almost like use these pants, not these pants, or talk to this person. The things I was talking about at the beginning of our session, I had to have sex with her that night, like it had to happen.

THERAPIST: Oh. Like a pressure?

CLIENT: Internal. I had to or else the whole thing was blown, and I didn't. You know how it is probably with that, though, if you feel like you have to do something, it's difficult to do it naturally. I mean, I'm not as crestfallen as I think I should be about it. I doubt I'll get another opportunity, in that sense. I would be getting back at the guy who took her and went out dancing. [00:39:37] It was nice, though. We were singing songs and stuff. It was wonderful. Normally I'm just singing songs, but I was playing guitar and we were singing songs, her friend, Hermione and I. Her friend was on the piano singing Regina Spector stuff and I tried to do Fire and Rain by James Taylor, but as she was singing I'd start rubbing her friend's back. Her friend kind of liked me. But also she was at an age where I don't think she is experienced. These are real girls. They're really credulous and really natural. But I don't think her friend was at a place where she's completely convinced that sex is extra moral. I suppose a lot of them feel like this, but advances from men are sort of a dubious thing to be wooed by. (chuckles) [00:40:53]

I'm not being very clear, but at any rate, when I was getting close to her roommate I looked back and saw her on the couch. Her roommate is here and I'm here and I start rubbing her back and singing Fire and Rain and I look back at Hermione and she really looks quite vexed. And I was. It's sort of like my mother before me. When I can't go out and get what I want or arrange things such as I want them, I manipulate other people into creating the situation I want. So by sort of planting seeds of jealousy, I'd hoped to bring Hermione to me because I had it right there. I hadn't reached for it as strongly as I might have, probably because I was afraid of almost certainly because I was afraid of what might happen. [00:42:01]

THERAPIST: So that was after when you were in bed together? The singing?

CLIENT: I think so, yeah. I closed it out. I said, "Hermione, I know I pushed your boundaries this weekend, but I had to try because I care about you more than I care about myself." I said that with her friend present. It's weird, but she wasn't uncomfortable until I said that. We went to see a movie, too, and I put my arm around her at the movie. And at that point her body language suggested that she wasn't totally at ease with it [ ] (inaudible at 00:42:44). It didn't go very well, but I would emphasize it's perhaps not for my personal examination, but for a more general study, it's interesting that there wasn't the slightest sign of discomfort until I actually dropped the elephant in the room. [00:43:11]

THERAPIST: No, I see that. Right.

CLIENT: Which is unusual.

THERAPIST: Yeah, I guess that's why I was asking about the comment you made that she was "already there", really struck me as kind of important.

CLIENT: Or presumptuous.

THERAPIST: Well what I was thinking was she seemed very, very comfortable there and she was already there, in the sense that . . . I was thinking that . . . well I don't know if she was looking. I was imagining maybe she wasn't looking for anything else but that moment and it was already there for her.

CLIENT: Yeah, exactly. And that's what it's all about, actually, is being able to embrace the present moment without reference to concerns or history or anything else. So that's all it is. That's where you drink in all the tastes. [00:44:28]

THERAPIST: But of a very . . . I mean it's like the situation you describe is very ambiguous, too. She's in your bed, you're watching a movie, her friend is in the other room, it's your bedroom. It's not like a black and white thing.

CLIENT: What do you mean? What would be a black or white thing?

THERAPIST: I don't know.

CLIENT: I like ambiguous as a word, but would be black or white? For anything, not just for me.

THERAPIST: It's never black or white, I guess. You know, what I was thinking is what's less ambiguous is if you're with somebody that you've already been with for a while. That situation, you know? I guess in more black and white.

CLIENT: Or predictable.

THERAPIST: Or predictable. Right.

CLIENT: Yeah. We played ping pong. I can stretch out the dining room table to play ping pong and put a net up. Then we played bananagrams and then I went to bed. But I'm curious, curious what would have happened. [00:45:42]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: They came a day early, too. It didn't even register. I just called her. I got this impulse to call her. Maybe after one of our sessions, but I think not. I called her but she didn't answer and then the next day she texted back, "I'm going to Orlando for spring break. Is it okay if me and my friend stay over?" They came a day early and her mom and her boyfriend were calling her. It was like "where are you?" (laughs) It's sort of flattering in a way. I've got these two young women. The other one is also very attractive. Probably to most people, more attractive than my cousin, but not to me. It's flattering but I guess I wasn't sure. I shafted Edgar, too, my roommate, because he came home right as we were about to leave to go bowling. He was starting his business and I basically was like, "Uhh . . "

THERAPIST: Going to worm his way into the whole scenario? [00:46:57]

CLIENT: I started explaining, "Well, there's something I should tell you about Edgar . . ." and then I decided no, he can tell his own story. I don't need to cast it. And then I pulled out his thing on Sunday because it was like this is how he describes social interactions. It's like I said, "What are you doing tonight? " Make him commit to something. It's like, oh, he's going to this place, so I'm like, "Oh, we're going bowling, but we'll be back later tonight playing music." And so he's in his line and brr-brr-brr. And then he said, "What were you going to tell them about me?" I said, "Well, I was going to explain how you cultivate multiple 'loving relationships.'" That's open-ended. It leaves him to elaborate. I was very courteous to him when I was with the girls when we were out to eat and we were bowling and shit. Like I said, he's a very nice guy and they said he's a player. I'm like, "Yeah. He's a nice player." That doesn't compute for them yet that someone can have multiple relationships and also be like a caring person. I shut him out. I shut him out. He would have been helpful because he would have pushed them in a physical direction that I don't have the will yet to do; and they would have been a little bit repulsed by him and clung onto me, so I think I probably should have let that happen. [00:48:18]

There is another reason why I'm not helping Edgar. (laughs) I mean I had two girls, but I'm not willing to take him along. It's prudent, though, and I don't want to stretch the time for banal talk, but it's prudent because when he's with me and a girl he's going to try and marginalize me as much as possible and as callously as possible and build up his own sense of self. And it's not enjoyable.

THERAPIST: He does that?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Oh, okay. Listen, just in terms we were going to touch on the bill. One thing that I thought of is, for now, just pay the copay for that one visit. But tell me what you feel would be you were thinking going forward and all of that stuff. [00:49:15]

CLIENT: Well I'll tell you what I thought when we first started the recordings. I was used to paying $20 a session and then the question that rose in my mind is that the new session, if we're recording it, would I still have to pay the $20 for the one session? In other words, I understood that the new session would be covered by the recording people, the CIA, and I was thinking maybe the third session, the Friday session, that I had been paying $20 for, I wouldn't have to pay any longer. Or maybe I still would, but that is where I was at.

THERAPIST: Oh, okay. I see. Yeah. It's interesting. I hadn't really thought about it enough, but good. Because what I had automatically done was because insurance only picks up one of the two sessions generally. That's their policy now towards psychotherapy, is that they would then pick up that we would use the payment from the audio recordings towards the second session. In my mind I conceptualize that as them paying for what the insurance would cover, but that's not what we need to get covered. To me it's an open negotiation. That doesn't mean it's fair, it's just what I thought and that's why I gave you the bill I gave you. [00:51:19]

CLIENT: To me it sounds good for me to pay for the Friday session, but if they're paying you $50 each for the recordings is that right? That should cover the Tuesday sessions. It doesn't matter which, but I mean it seems like the recordings . . .

THERAPIST: That's true.

CLIENT: Is that okay?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I do have to pay something, though, because from a business person's standpoint, if you're not invested in it financially for whatever reason, it translates it. You're stuck with shafting or not caring as much.

THERAPIST: There's something about that. There's something about it being something that you feel is coming out of your pocket, too, that's important. But [ ] (inaudible at 00:52:12) so I'm fine with that.

CLIENT: Okay. Cool.

THERAPIST: Good deal. Next Friday? We're still on for Friday. And then I'm out next week.

CLIENT: That's right. You have to keep reminding me. So Friday is the last one for a week?

THERAPIST: Yeah. I'm out the 18th and the 22nd. 18th through the 22nd, but for us it's the 18th and the 22nd. I'm sorry the 19th and the 22nd. It's Tuesday.

CLIENT: Okay.

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