Love Creeps

Six

During the next seven months, something extraordinary happened. With the help of Stalkaholics Anonymous in conjunction with the emotional support he was getting from Pancake, Alan began to believe that perhaps he could turn his life around, improve it drastically.

The beginning of Alan’s transformation happened on the subway one day, when he was thinking about an article he had read that morning entitled “Looking for Alternatives to the Rat Race.” He had recently realized that he was not, at this point in his life, interested in climbing the corporate ladder and making lots of money. He wanted to be happy, sane, and not stalk. But happiness could be expensive. Not to mention sanity. He had therefore followed the article’s advice and checked out the Web site FrugalLifestyle.com, but had been turned off by the method called Alternative Acquisition Methods, or Dumpster Diving, which translated as rummaging through garbage.

Nevertheless, he would seek out fullness in his life, even if that meant decreasing his chances for a promotion. He would do things that were enriching. Perhaps he would even try to demand three-day weekends. He wanted to balance work and personal life.

He was standing in the middle of the subway car, holding on to the pole, letting his body sway gently to the movements of his train of thoughts. Feeling uplifted, his eyes naturally lifted, and happened to land upon an advertisement for NYU’s continuing education program. The timing could not have been more perfect for either Alan or the advertisers. Alan got off at the next stop and took the subway to NYU and got their course catalog. He then got catalogs at Parsons, the New School, and the YWCA. And then he got more catalogs from bins on the street for the Learning Annex and the Seminar Center. He went home and stretched out on his couch with Pancake and his catalogs.

He was immediately drawn to classes like, How to Get Anyone to Return Your Phone Call, and Create Your Ideal Life, and The Confidence Course.

But he was also extremely attracted to a section in the NYU catalog entitled “Fire Safety and Security in Buildings,” and particularly to the class called Disaster Management for High-rise Office and Residential Buildings. He dwelled on its description: “This intensive workshop surveys the appropriate and necessary procedures to minimize injury and avoid loss of life in the event of major fires and explosions, bomb threats, terrorist actions and hostage situations, earthquakes, toxic accidents, and nuclear attacks.”

Building safety and getting his phone calls returned were not his only interests. There was a third. He envied artistic people and had a great desire to explore his artistic side, which, as far as he knew, did not exist. He just wanted to poke it gently and see if it moved. He didn’t want to take an art class that was too difficult and would highlight his incompetence. He was therefore delighted to find a fair number of classes that would probably not put too much pressure on him: Tin Decorating, How to Create a Tabletop Fountain Garden, Puppetry, and Potpourri for Beginners, to name but a few.

Alan read the catalogs for so many hours that he began coming across classes that sounded even more intriguing — downright fascinating — and he was always disappointed when, on second glance, he’d realize he had misread the classes’ names, and that the school did not offer courses called Internship in Poverty, Be a Maggot to Money, How to Tempt Your Way to the Top, Decorative Yoga, and Intuitive Poisoning for Beginners. The schools did, however, offer pale versions of those classes, such as: Internship in Property Management, Be a Magnet to Money, How to Temp Your Way to the Top, Restorative Yoga, and Intuitive Positioning for Beginners (also Yoga). Reality is so dull, Alan thought. Any mistake in one’s perception of it is inevitably more interesting than the real thing, and lucky are those who remain uninformed of their error.

When Alan’s bloodshot eyes finally made contact with How to Access the Goodness Within You, in the Seminar Center catalog, he was stunned. Goodness: what an idea. He suddenly felt that goodness was the way to go. What was more, the class met just one time and took place the very next day, which was perfect for Alan, who was eager to begin his transformative journey.

Alan slept well that night and arrived early Saturday morning for class, held at the Hungarian Church, in a room containing a large table around which the students sat. He was the only man. He hoped the women appreciated how rare it was to find a man who had any interest in accessing the goodness within him, and therefore how special a man he was.

The teacher arrived. She was middle-aged, heavyset, nunlike. Her gray hair was pulled back in a tight bun. He could easily picture her helping him access his inner goodness.

She stood at the head of the table, and began: “I will show you how the knowledge, passion, and nurturing of the goddesses can help transform your life.”

Alan didn’t really understand why the teacher was referring to goddesses. He glanced down at his school catalog, which he had brought along. His pupils constricted when he saw that he had misread the title of the class.

He rose and began tiptoeing out.

“Where are you going!” the teacher exclaimed.

“I’m sorry, I thought this class was, How to Access the Goodness Within You, not the Goddess.” He chuckled sheepishly.

“If you leave, you are doing a disservice to the women in this room. You are creating negative energy — the energy of withdrawal — which men love creating, and which is why we need classes like these. And you will certainly not have achieved your goal of accessing the goodness within you.”

“But isn’t this a class for women?”

“Look at your bulletin. It says, ‘A Workshop for Men and Women.’”

Alan found it easier to sit back down than to create the energy of withdrawal.

Everyone was then told that during this seminar they were to address each other by their first names, preceded by the words “Sister Goddess.”

Alan thought they might make an exception in his case and call him “Brother God Alan.” But they didn’t. The teacher said that since gods, in our sexist world, were still considered more important and powerful than goddesses, it would be unfair toward the others if Alan got to be a god. He would therefore be Sister Goddess Alan. No special treatment.

After embarking on a short lecture regarding the Greek goddesses, Sister Goddess Jane (the teacher) said, “Part of accepting who you are as a woman is your crotch. Those confident about their crotches are happy. By the end of this seminar, you all will be.”

The students were then each given a lump of Play-Doh and ordered to make a sculpture of their vaginas, from a gynecologist’s perspective.

Alan sat staring at his clump of pink clay, stunned. He tried to imagine what his vagina would have looked like had he had one. The other women began sculpting theirs right away, and Alan, wanting to fit in, began kneading. When he could no longer look natural kneading, he placed his lump of clay down on the table and, with a trembling finger, poked a hole in it and left it at that.

He sat on his hands, to make it clear he was done. Sister Goddess Jane immediately told him he had to make his vagina more detailed.

So he added a fish tail to the back of the ball of clay.

The teacher loomed over him. “What is that creature?”

“My vagina. If I had one,” Alan mumbled.

“It’s very offensive!”

Alan quickly collapsed the tail against the body and smoothed it out, which shrank the hole, which upset Sister Goddess Jane. She found it offensive that he had made the hole so small. She said it was a typical sign of men wanting to hurt women, of being excited by women’s pain. She added, “You probably wish there was no hole at all, right? Or just a pinprick of a hole, so that you could go in there and rip it open, and have it be tight, tight, because that’s all you really care about, your pleasure.” She walked away.

He applied his fingers to the clay, trying to feel as cool as a gynecologist. In his mind, he told the chunk of clay to relax, to take a deep breath. He even placed a little Kleenex over the back part of it. The goddess came back and pointed to the Kleenex. “Sister Goddess Alan. What is that?”

“It makes me feel more comfortable that way. It’s more … clinical, impersonal.”

She snorted and let him be, for the moment.

He made the hole big. Like a grotto. So big that having sex with it would be like having sex with air. But he had to be careful, for if he made it too big, Goddess Jane would say something. He knew she would say it was offensive. So he shrank it slightly, but still left it quite big.

“Sister Goddess Alan?”

“Yes, mistress,” he replied, meekly.

“Goddess! Not mistress,” she said, looking shocked.

“Sorry! I mean Goddess. Yes, Goddess. Sister Goddess Jane.”

“You couldn’t leave it big, could you? You had to make it smaller. You just couldn’t make it a big vagina. You couldn’t bear the sight of a big vagina.”

It sounded to Alan as if she had a Japanese accent when she uttered that word, “vagina.” Her teeth sliced the air like guillotines, coming down three times on “va-gi-na.”

“No, I thought you wouldn’t like it too big,” Alan said.

“Don’t you think mine is big?”

“I’m sure yours is big. No! I don’t know,” Alan said, traumatized, enlarging the opening with his thumbs.

Following the dictum that you should get right back on the horse from which you have just fallen, Alan immediately signed up for another class, making sure to read it correctly this time. He took Acupressure for Your Pet: Alternative Health Care for Your Dog or Cat. Or rat, he thought to himself. The course description was, “Acupressure consists of gentle massage techniques that can be used by any pet owner in the treatment of various illnesses and behavioral disturbances. Bring Your Pet to Class.”

Alan and Pancake went to class and enjoyed it very much. They were popular among the traditional pet owners, except for one or two hysterical types.

Through tremendous willpower, Alan succeeded in not thinking too much about Lynn. He attended Stalkaholics Anonymous regularly. People talked about their itch to stalk. He embraced Step One of their twelve-step recovery program, which was: “I admit I am powerless over my stalking compulsion and my life has become unmanageable.” And he adopted their belief that “once an addict always an addict.” He knew he would probably have to attend those meetings for the rest of his life, just like the alcoholics.

Alan’s new life went well. He wasn’t absent from work as much anymore.

Alan tried to improve himself in certain ways. Pancake’s nervous body language had made Alan acutely aware of his own. He practiced moving in a calm and confident manner. He edited his movements, eliminating all the unnecessary gestures that cluttered his image.

He also developed a personal philosophy of mental health. After spending hours trying to figure out the one thing that could be responsible for stalking tendencies, he concluded that it came down to a difficulty in letting go. Stalkers had trouble letting go of the person they were obsessed with.

So he practiced letting go. He bought a rope, tied it to his bathroom’s doorknob, and pulled on the rope regularly, for many minutes at a time, until his muscles hurt and his face was red and the tendons in his neck were taut. Then he slowly let go of the rope, trying to appreciate the pleasures of letting go.

He came to believe that stress-related health problems were caused by not letting go, by clenching one’s muscles, being afraid of releasing them. So he got massages and forced his muscles to unclench, to let go.

Alan slowly changed. The change was internal, mostly, but sometimes internal things emanate.

He took more classes. He made friends. Some were recovering stalkaholics, like himself. He went out with them and met more new people. Before he knew it, and to his astonishment, he believed he didn’t care about Lynn anymore.

He met Jessica, a woman with a gun license, who became his girlfriend and moved in with him after three weeks. Alan marveled at how making just a few changes in one’s life, like taking a class, or getting massages to relax, could bring about a whole positive chain reaction. They were happy, the three of them. She and his rat got along well.

Ray the homeless man noticed the change in Alan and whispered little reinforcing tidbits whenever he passed, such as, “I’m proud of you,” and “You’ve come a long way, baby,” and “Super new girlfriend.”

During those same several months, Lynn and Roland sublet their apartments in the city and moved into Roland’s country house.

Lynn was taking a break from managing her gallery full-time, leaving it to Patricia, except on Tuesdays and Fridays, when she drove in with Roland, who commuted every day. Patricia would update her on everything, including the recent rejections Lynn had received in the mail.

Lynn had diligently gotten the five follow-up shots against rabies and had been fortunate to get no side effects.

She spent most of her week in the country, painting, not because she had a passion for it or any ambition to develop as an artist, but because she found it enjoyable.

As long as there was still uncertainty about whether Lynn’s desire for Roland would remain, the excitement and chemistry continued. Things changed the day Lynn finally felt confident enough to say, “Your appeal and my desire are here to stay. I know it. I can feel it.”

A few days later, Roland told Lynn, “Listen, I think you should have your weekend with Alan.”

She just stared at him, stunned, and finally said, “Are you insane?”

Roland sighed. “For my sake. I just feel that it wasn’t right, what I did. It wasn’t right what we did.”

“Forget it. It’s out of the question.” She got up and left the room.

He followed her. “I believe it’s important to act decently.”

“Why now? What’s going on?” she asked.

He threw up his hands and went outside to his lounge chair to tan. He liked to get tan, she didn’t, said it was dangerous, that he might develop a melanoma. The more she urged him not to tan, the more he did, until his face was all crispy.

The truth was that now that Lynn’s desire for Roland appeared permanent, their romance was less appealing to him. Alan’s no longer wanting Lynn also made it hard for Roland to keep wanting her. The couple fought all the time. Roland became verbally abusive, frequently putting Lynn down.

To make matters worse, Lynn got a call from Patricia saying that Judy had been run over by a truck and died. Patricia and Lynn speculated whether Judy had done it on purpose, to “refreshen her zest,” as she had put it, all those months ago. In any case, the news hit Lynn hard.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Roland said, “all her friends should feel responsible for her death.”

“I’m one of her friends,” Lynn said, staring at him.

“I know,” he said, staring back at her.

“You think it was my fault?”

“Absolutely. But no use crying over spilt milk.”

“You call the death of a friend spilt milk?”

“I call it what it must have been to you. If she had meant more to you, you wouldn’t have let her get to this state.”

He knew he wasn’t being nice, but he couldn’t stop. He wasn’t happy and didn’t want her to be either. Anytime she seemed happy, it irritated him.

She told him she was thinking of ending their relationship. He said she couldn’t because he had booked a surprise weekend for them at a pleasure camp he had read about in Hedonism magazine.

They went to the retreat. They were pampered, washed, and groomed by three staff members. Their room had a giant crib filled with pillows for lovemaking, which enhanced the delights of sex. But sex was one of the few things they had no problems with. Lynn had always been impressed by Roland as a lover.

After the weekend, Lynn tried being nice, bought Roland attractive buttons.

When Roland unwrapped the package, he said, “Oh, good, I was out of buttons.”

“You were? But you bought some the other day.”

“If you thought I still had those, then why did you buy me these?”

“For your collection.”

“What collection? I don’t collect buttons. I lose them. I told you that already. If you expect me to collect these, you’re going to be disappointed, because I’m going to lose them. You better return them. They look expensive.”

“Maybe you don’t sew them on well enough. Maybe next time I should try sewing them on.”

“It doesn’t matter how tightly you’ll sew them on. I’ll still lose them.”

“Why?”

“I would give much to know that. I guess I can’t help it.”

Roland made efforts to be a better boyfriend. He tried to show concern and give compliments. The concern came in the form of—

“Does it bother you that your friends don’t really like you?”

“What are you talking about?” she said. “My friends love me.”

“No, not really. I’m good at sensing these things.”

The compliments came in the form of—

“It’s really great that you often read fashion magazines.”

“Why?”

“Because it shows you’re interested in the outside world. It’s better than sitting on the couch, staring at the wall.”

Roland would play pranks on Lynn. Mean jokes. He’d tell her to meet him at a restaurant, and he’d be waiting at another restaurant.

They fought about orange juice.

Occasionally, when he was annoyed, his hand would fly up, as if to slap her, but then it would stay frozen in the air. One time, after his hand had been frozen in the air for a second, it came down against his own face. He slapped himself instead.

Lynn’s self-esteem started to suffer. When she expressed doubts about their relationship, Roland said that despite all her weaknesses and shortcomings, he loved her. He was helpless in his love for her.

Lynn hung on, hoping things would get better.

They discussed the problems in their relationship, tried to come up with solutions. As they talked, Lynn was painting his portrait while he ate grapes and dangled his leg off the arm of his chair.

“We are discontent,” he announced. “We find no pleasure in our life or in each other.”

“Yes, I know,” Lynn said, mixing black with blue to get just the right shade for his eyes — a blue she loved, a blue so black his eyes looked almost dead.

“The reason we’re not happy,” Roland said, “is that in leaving the city, we lost perspective.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, adding a little more black.

“We need to expose ourselves to people whose lives suck more than ours, to remind us of how lucky we are. In brief, I think we need a meeting with Alan.”

She thought about it. It was true that exposing themselves to such a grand degree of wretchedness as Alan’s could be nothing but beneficial. They would no longer take for granted what little good was in their relationship.

And perhaps they could also, while they were at it, try to help Alan, thereby filling their hearts with a pleasant feeling of benevolence.

Roland decided to call Alan immediately and request a meeting.