During the next two weeks she called him twice. He seemed delighted to hear from her. He asked her how 'that tooth' was doing. He talked about his work. His tone was jolly and defeated, as if Jill naturally understood--as if anybody would understand--that defeat and boredom were inevitable, and there was something jolly and comforting about that. Jill told him about the masochistic performance artist, how he had suffered as a child and how that had informed his masochism. The dentist seemed interested. He said he liked "freak shows," the old-style carnival ones. "A good geek is hard to find," he said. Jill said that she didn't think this particular masochist was about a geek thing.
"He encourages people to relate to him," she said, "to see how his masochism is just a different way of dealing with pain that everybody has."
"Yeah, well, I--"
"I mean, look at the flap about recovered memories of sex abuse," she chattered. "As a subject, sex abuse had become a metaphor for a lot of different kinds of pain. The problem is--"
"But sex abuse isn't a metaphor, it's--"
"What I mean is, I think many people with these recovered memories are really describing psychic abuse when they say they were molested, only they don't have the language to describe that even to themselves. Lots and lots of people have experienced some severe neglect or emotional disregard as children. So when their therapists give them these suggestions of sexual violation, it rings true to them. Even though they may not have been literally violated."
"But that's shit," blurted the dentist. "Families are being destroyed over these accusations, because somebody thinks they didn't get enough attention when they were five?"
Excited by this thrilling friction, Jill shoved forward. "I don't know how you were raised, George. But in this culture, in lots of families the level of emotional vibrancy is so low and so bland, and there's so much emphasis on conformity--"
"I hate it when people talk about this culture as if it's worse than anywhere else," he said.
"Well, maybe other places are like that too; I don't know. I'm just saying that for really bright, open kids, that denial of depth and intensity--it's like having their arms and legs chopped off. It is violent. Besides, a lot of people are literally molested, and a lot of them do forget it."
"But they've done studies that show that kids almost never forget traumatic experiences. The more traumatic and painful it is, the more likely you'll remember it."
"Well, I was molested when I was five and I forgot it. I remembered it when I was ten, when I was watching some old cartoons with bad animation, where the lips on the characters moved really stiff and disconnectedly from the rest of the face. I think it was because when the guy molested me, he didn't look at me while he was doing it--he kept talking about other subjects, like nothing was happening. So when I saw those weird, jerking lips I got so excited I had to go masturbate, and while I was masturbating, I remembered being molested."
There was silence on the other end of the phone. Jill had the distinct sense that the dentist had not liked hearing about her masturbating as a child but didn't feel he could say so. She felt him move away. She moved forward.
"So," she said, "I think the reason those cartoons made me remember was that the guy who molested me--his mouth and eyes were totally stiff and disconnected." She did not tell him how she had felt before she got up to masturbate, of her embarrassment, her terrible sense of vulnerability, her feeling that everyone in the room--her brother, her sister, her father--could see what she was feeling. She did not tell him that after she had finished masturbating, her embarrassment became shame, and that the shame was so intense that she had gone to hide in her parents' closet, way in the back, under her mother's coat, where she held herself tight and tried to breathe.
Silence.
"George?" she said. "Does it make you uncomfortable that I'm talking like this?"
He said no, she could talk about whatever she wanted, but he had to go now. He said he would call her, except that he might be too busy.
Jill hung up feeling a little funny that she'd talked about being molested and the resultant masturbation. But she had wanted so badly for him to see what she'd meant. Since people talked about sex abuse all the time anyway, she had thought it was okay. But in retrospect, she thought, he'd probably just felt the intensity of her want pressing upon him without knowing what it was about, while being forced to think about her genitals. It must've been pretty confusing.
|