Empathy Read online

  Libraries are good for two reasons: One, the demographic of a certain type of library patron tends to skew in my favor—lower income, solitary, afraid to move into the light. Libraries are a place of hiding for so many and inevitably I sniff out the right combination of fear and isolation. Two, I can spend hours in a single spot near my potential client and never raise suspicion. Today I was in luck and found an aroma of deep anxiety around a subject from something of an unlikely source.

  In spite of the jeans and sweatshirt, I could tell she was a prostitute almost as soon as she sat down at the table across from mine. Pretty-ish, but burned out, smell of cigarettes on the surface and hyper-vigilance underneath. I’m fairly certain she got a danger-vibe off of me, but didn’t know what to make of it. Appearing to read and take notes from back copies of Psychology Today from a white male in his forties didn’t strike her as worth a third look. Oh, but I paid a lot of attention to her. She had two books open in front of her. One she kept on the same page, only reading a bit at a time. The other was full of glossy photographs, but of what I couldn’t tell. Her anxiety increased incrementally with almost every page she turned of the photo-book. She was only able to get about halfway through it before her fear spiked so high I couldn’t help but sigh out loud. She glanced over and I turned it into a yawn, but had she not been so distracted by what I can confidently term “terror”, she would have caught me rolling in her fear like a mongrel in road kill.

  She left and I forced myself to wait twenty seconds before getting up to follow her. We walked for a few blocks before she got into a late model Nissan. I recorded the plates before returning the library. I was in luck—the books she was reading were still on the table. I was familiar with the first: A Cognitive Approach to Self-Treatment of Phobias. The other I had never seen, but made sure to look up on-line for later study: National Geographic’s Guide to Spiders.

  No dreams or recordable impressions.

  Experienced 109 distinct emotions from the cloud. New “client” prospect identified. Arachnophobia...just classic.

  2 bowel movements, dun colored, bad consistency.

  Urinated 7 times.

  Breakfast: 1 cup Special K, 1 cup skim milk, coffee.

  Lunch: 16 ounces yoghurt, V8 drink.

  Dinner: seared tuna steak, white rice, saki (warm).

  Water: 64 ounces.

  --DF

  Monday, April 29th, 1:27am

  It’s done: my seventeenth session since P.H. and arguably the most intricate. Gathering the spiders was less difficult than I had imagined. One would expect at least some kind of security presence so near the laboratories of a major New York university—all that formaldehyde and so many illicit uses—but there was only one guard that I could see and he was on a rotation. Spiders went into a non-descript cardboard box and that was that.

  The next period between sessions will have to be shorter. My boundaries were blurred to the point where concentration was extremely difficult. I passed a custodian in the corridor on the way out—some hollowed out, old black. He looked at me and his emotions… It was like peering into a mirror and finding nothing. There was no fear there, but he knew me. There was evaluation. He muttered something as we passed. Felt like a prayer, but for or against me? I could hear the spiders rustling in the box.

  Collecting the client was nearly as easy as collecting the arachnids. I left the box in an alley near her usual “walk” and approached. The sting of insecurity from the countless other “Johns” pushed into me as if I were skinless. Felt like acid rain, but it was useful. When I approached the client, she picked up on the John feelings and subtle reflections of her own. The feedback worked and she followed me back to the alley, emitting a mixture of pity and caution. The handcuffs and gag were right where I left them. The spiders found her face interesting. She kicked and kicked.

  The world’s gone quiet again. The cloud has pulled back and revealed me. I have the impression of the peak of The Chrysler Building emerging from a low cloud. My skin has crystallized and my feelings are again solitary.

  No bowel movements.

  Urinated 2 times.

  Breakfast: NA.

  Lunch: NA.

  Dinner: NA.

  Water: NA.

  --DF

  Friday, May 12th, 9:45pm

  Interesting morning. No office hours as I was a guest lecturer at Columbia Business School. The board chair at the hospital has a daughter in the MBA program and decided to donate his pet psychiatrist. The class itself is a six-week seminar on executive leadership. My lecture focused on overcoming fear in high-stress environments. In this context the word “interesting” modifies the students not the class, nor my particular contribution. (In all honesty, I could care less about training a bunch of trust fund babies to anally savage the working and middle classes while maintaining an attitude of psychological bliss.) What got my attention in that lecture hall was an almost total lack of fear.

  There was some wariness, but it wasn’t of the subject or of the hypothetical rigors of the business world. These young men and women were suspicious of each other and afraid of nothing else. Normally, when I walk into a room full of people (and this was a large lecture hall) I am struck by the miasma of emotional odor as happens when one enters a flower-filled hot house. There, though, it was as if I’d opened the door on a long unused closet in a dry climate; the scent of dust and perhaps an ancient rodent dropping or two, but little else—the scent of emptiness.

  I paused only a moment and delivered the lecture well enough. But that sense of reciting to a room full of video projections instead of living, breathing individuals was disquieting. Many of these people will comprise the richest and most influential one percent in our country. These will be the leaders and movers, some more powerful than heads of state. And they were afraid of nothing.

  Not all sociopaths become mass murders. Some become MBAs.

  Dreamed last night that I stood on the Jersey side of the river. A great white cloud (reminded me a bit of the footage of the smoke from the towers on the 11th, but moving in toward the skyline) boiled and rolled up on the city. It was very quiet and I can remember thinking that I’d never seen a storm like it. The cloud—more a steam if that makes sense; they are the same, after all, but that was the impression—settled over Manhattan. After a moment and through the silence, the first thin screams floated across the water. The cloud was some kind of vaporous acid and was eating the city alive.

  Experienced less than ten distinct emotions from the cloud. Maybe an anomalous low due to special circumstances at Columbia.

  1 bowel movement, deep brown, no blood.

  Urinated 6 times.

  Breakfast: 1 cup Special K, 1 cup skim milk, coffee.

  Lunch: Grilled chicken Panini, mixed fruit.

  Dinner: Steak salad, blue cheese dressing, 1 glass syrah.

  Water: 64 ounces.

  —DF

  Wednesday, May 17th, 9:51pm

  Ended the day with a sense of mild disgust. Began well enough, easy session Y.J. and am making progress with G.P. I’ve begun standard aversion techniques, insisting that he handle a needless hypodermic. Made him practice filling it from a glass of water then squirting the contents into the African Violet I keep next to the couch. Perhaps, I’ll move him up a notch and include the needle next session. From there, I think I’ll have him inject an orange, etc. I’d like to get him to the point where he can draw his own blood in front of me without terror. He’ll always be afraid, but when I get him at least functional within his phobia, G.P. will make an excellent case study for the new book. The rest of the day was uneventful until the end.

  Today was hospital office hours and they’ve got me in that featureless warren on the same floor as the cardiac specialists. Interesting coincidence, but also something of a tease. I can imagine mining the trove of information on potential “clients” from the offices directly across the hall, but as my father used to say, “Don’t shit where you eat, Drum.” Sessions in a dull,
beige box go quickly enough. Perhaps even more quickly than those in my uptown office—the view tends to distract from time to time and the sessions seem to race by when my focus in on the patient. In any event, I was locking the outer door and the damn clasp on my briefcase let go. My notes spilled everywhere and as I stooped to pick them up I almost bumped heads with a man in a dress. Not a dress per se, but clinging, women’s jeans and a mid-drift baring tee-shirt.

  He bent down to help me with my papers and some of the foulest emotions I have ever experienced wafted over me. I’ve never been able to brook the confusion that comes from brushing up against homosexuals. It’s akin to a kind of libidinous vertigo. Usually it’s manageable—most faggots are terrifically uncomfortable with themselves at such a core level that I find my own ego energy dominant—but not with this one. He/she/it (disgusting!) was just as comfy-cozy in his backward skin as any normal person. So thrown I could barely speak when he handed me my papers and wished me a pleasant evening. Felt like screaming.

  I can only hope he was there because of some terminal heart defect. If such is the case, the world will only be improved the moment the time bomb in his shaved chest goes off.

  Woke this morning with the impression that my skull was a house and that I’d only just gotten home in time to chase away some nosey kids who’d broken in to raid the liquor cabinet. Not a full-fledged dream exactly, but a feeling that I’d nearly caught someone else in my mind upon returning to consciousness.

  Experienced thirty-one separate emotions from the cloud, including that horrendous encounter with the homosexual. Seems like a lot this soon. I’ll maintain extra vigilance. Another session may be in order sooner rather than later.

  1 bowel movement, brown, no blood, slightly soft.

  Urinated 5 times.

  Breakfast: 1 cup Special K, 1 cup skim milk, coffee.

  Lunch: Fruit and yoghurt

  Dinner: Enchilada and rice. 2 light beers.

  Water: 64 ounces.

  —DF

  ~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 2

  “OUCH! OH, SNIFFLE!” Martie Jenny said, and hissed backward through her teeth. She reached over the bedspread and grabbed a wadded up piece of tissue, already stained red from when she’d done her toes, and pressed it to the shaving nick. She blotted at the cut, wincing much more than was necessary, it didn’t really hurt. But it was only an hour from show time and melodrama was part of her stage persona. She pressed the tissue into her flesh until red bloomed through into the white and peeled it back, examining the wound. Her voice dropped an octave. In a smooth tenor, she said, “Almost fuckin’ cut off my nipple.”

  Martie Jenny, whose Christian name was Michael McCafferty, stood up and walked across the bedroom to the dressing mirror, pantyhose swishing as his muscular thighs brushed together. Michael had chosen the drag name Martie Jenny using half of the tried and true drag name rule. Ru Paul, her very own fabulous self, had explained the rule in a talkshow interview: Take the name of an old pet for your first name and your mother’s maiden name as your last. Michael hadn’t been about to call himself Mr. Barfo Jenny, so he’d just whittled a little testosterone off the top of his first name and went with Martie.

  Michael plucked his favorite wig, a bell of spun platinum, off the corner of the mirror and snugged it onto his stocking-capped head. Now, he was Martie all the way. She squinted into her reflection. Okay, so she still had to paint on her left eyebrow. Where was her head this fine evening? Well, she was a blonde at the moment. Perhaps a little airheadedness came with the territory. She’d forget her own fucking head if it wasn’t screwed on so tight.

  Now, now, she wasn’t supposed to even think in cuss words when she was the prim and proper Martie Jenny. Fuckin’ was “flipper” and shit was “sniffle”. Martie Jenny never cussed—it just wasn’t lady like. She sang though, that was for dang sure. Most drag shows were based around lip-synching, but that wasn’t her gig. Martie might not have been born with the same anatomy as Liza Minelli, but she could sound like she had. Tonight she was to be the main attraction at the Drag Strip on Avenue D. Not the highest of the high class joints to be sure, but a girl couldn’t always choose where she sang. When singing was your life, you belted wherever they came to hear you. And girl, Martie could sing her motherfuckin’ heart out.

  That reminded her. Martie reached over to the dresser and wrapped her vamp-red nails (matching her toes, of course) around an amber plastic bottle. She shook one of her pretty fuschia “lifesavers” into her palm and popped it into her mouth. Without fail just before and just after Martie’s painted toes hit the stage her heart would pound a real drum solo and that was likely to set off her arrhythmia.

  His doctor had warned Michael time and again to give up Martie for a less exciting career. At twenty-five he had already out-lived the most optimistic prognosis by five years. The doctor called it “tempting fate” but as far as Michael was concerned being Martie Jenny three times a week wasn’t temping fate, it was chasing it. He would take his pills and take his chances. Besides, Martie wasn’t one of those party queens, smoking, drinking, snorting coke and tina and God Knows What. Martie was practical about her condition; she took care of herself, sleeping and eating right, exercising in her own careful way. She just needed to be a little extra cautious before and after a show.

  During a performance, when she sang and shone hotter and brighter than any spot light they could throw at her, Martie Jenny’s heart beat low and strong. She was as steady and even as a plough-horse grazing in the shade. It was just those few minutes before and after she had to watch out for, the pre and post jitters.

  Martie checked her lower half in the mirror, grabbed her t-bar from the top drawer of the dresser and tucked away her showier parts. She turned sideways, smoothing a palm over her washboard stomach and flattened crotch. Martie winked at herself and slipped on the rest of her outfit, a simple black tube skirt and red tank top. (She wasn’t worried about staining her bra with blood from the shaving mishap; it was stuffed to heck and back with Kleenex.) These were just her traveling duds. She’d change into some serious threads when she got to the Strip. Tonight it would be a two-foot high crown of wax fruit and a flower print dress with a slit that ran all the way to heaven.

  Martie threw back her head and belted, “Her name was Lo-lah! She was a show girl!”

  She was answered by a triplet of percussive temper from the floor above. “Shut ya’ fuckin’ trap, ya’ gawd damn perv,” filtered through the ceiling.

  Without a second’s pause, Martie reached down, plucked a platform high-heel from her left foot, and winged it at the ceiling. It resounded with a mighty thunk, leaving a new mark in a flock of old scuffs, and dropped to the bed. “At the Cop-ah! Copa Cabaaaaaanah!” She sang twice as loud through a cherry lipstick smile almost as big as her voice.

  FORTY MINUTES FROM curtain, Martie shifted from heel to heel on a street corner more than twenty blocks from the Drag Strip. She went through her breathing exercises and reminded herself to stay cool, stay chilly. If one of these motherfuckin’ cabs didn’t fuckin’ pull over and pick her sweet ass up soon she’d miss call.

  Martie put one foot in the gutter, her skirt riding up and revealing an angular thigh. She raised her arm in a frantic wave as a yellow Chevy road-boat waded through traffic. The driver, floating in a tight cloud of beard and turban, glanced at Martie then switched on the “On Duty” bubble. Martie jumped back just in time to save her kneecap. “Thank you, honey!” she called after him, waving her middle finger. What the hell was the world coming to when a drag queen couldn’t flag a cab on a Friday night in motherfuckin’ New York City?

  She checked her watch and looked back into the squalling knot of traffic at the corner. If she didn’t get a ride soon she was absolutely screwed. The gig at the Drag Strip had been hard to get. The club might be a sticky, smoky dive but they let her sing for real. None of that lip-synching stuff. If she lost this chance to use her pipes for pay she might not get another one.
And she wouldn’t, couldn’t go back to be being just plaine Michael McCafferty. Martie walked three sidewalk squares to the right, stopped, spun on her spike heel and walked back to the corner. The rims of her eyes began to warm. She shook one splayed hand as if she’d burned it on a stovetop, took another two steps back the way she came. A spike of pain jabbed under her breastbone.

  Martie froze. Her heart skipped a beat. Hit, skipped another, hit, hit.

  With the automatic calm of an escape artist, Martie fell into stillness. Her shoulders and eyelids dropped, her breathing slowed. She began to count in a voice that was not quite Martie and not quite Michael, but stronger and more melodious than both. “One—a thousand, thousand, thousand.” She took a breath. “Two—a thousand, thousand, thousand.” Breath. “Three—a thousand, thousand, thousand.” The talon in her chest relaxed its grip and the great muscle the rest of the world takes for granted remembered how to dance in time. Martie opened her eyes as she might have done at the end of a pleasant afternoon nap and extended one long, elegant arm. A cab docked at the curb in front of her.

  She leaned down to the driver’s open window and said, “Avenue D?”