Kenna Barrett is a writer and university fundraiser living in New Haven, CT. Her nonfiction work has appeared
in Currents, a publication for the university advancement community. She holds an MA in philosophy from the
University of California, San Diego, and a BA from Wellesley College.
in Currents, a publication for the university advancement community. She holds an MA in philosophy from the
University of California, San Diego, and a BA from Wellesley College.
Kenna Barrett
Tantric Abstinence
The club was empty when Daniel Rivera and Emily arrived for salsa night. Daniel knew how to do his country's national dance, but
it was the music of his parents' generation. He preferred, in order: classical music, rock en español, and deep Southern blues --
acoustic. Offensive was the crap that they played nowadays -- salsa romantic -- a bunch of bleating horseshit exhorting people
to shake their asses while comparing love to the proverbial burning flame.
Emily, of course, had pressed him to go. By her calculation, playing first clarinet in her high school's West Side Story production
made her an honorary Latina. The first hour at the club was a beginners' lesson. Daniel slogged through a beer and watched
meaty Emily hustle and slide her way through elementary moves with a line of students. A stocky DJ spun easy beats. Finally,
the lesson ended and the floor filled with a mix of beginners and old hands -- chubby men with phones clipped to their belts and
skinny septuagenarians.
Making her way to the next table was a graceful woman with shoulder-length hair that flipped a la Jackie Onassis. She wore a
navy business suit, toffee pumps and a matching bag. She seemed to have been born in heels. Her hips turned out ballet-style,
giving a grace to her walk. Her makeup job was professional-grade and her nails were manicured. Yet none of it looked overdone
or alien on her. You could not have imagined this woman any other way.
Her couture was out-of-place for women in this club, whose wardrobes consisted of tasseled skirts and bustiers if they were
under 45 and oversized polyester button-downs with stretch pants if they were senoras.
Daniel's beer was depleted. The bartender wore an earring, a rainbow bracelet and a look of ennui. Getting his refill, Daniel
noticed Jackie O. approaching the bar.
Jackie leaned against the leather bumper. "Stinger."
The bartender served up an amber concoction and Jackie was gone. She was darker-toned than Daniel, and could have been
Puerto Rican too, except for her American voice. His eyes followed her back to her table, then drifted to Emily, who was scanning
the crowd for her next partner. Emily's tangled blond hair and Rubenesque frame weren't entirely objectionable. Next to Jackie
was a man in a navy suit, thumbs whirring on Blackberry. I am man -- hear me roar, thought Daniel.
When Daniel returned to Emily's table, she mocked his fixation. Was it that obvious?
"She's a minor celebrity on campus," Emily said. "Ask her to dance."
"I don't think so."
Instead, he tolerated one song with Emily. They returned past Jackie O.'s table. Emily, listing from the effect of two tequila
shots, sauntered toward her and said,
"You should dance with my friend Daniel. He is a great dancer, you know, not bossy but not limpid?" Then she merengued off.
The blue-suited man looked up from his Blackberry. His face was as finely cut as his suit. Aquiline nose, high cheekbones, hair
mousse. Mr. Muy Europeo smiled upon Daniel.
"Please." His voice was broadcaster deep.
Pulsing through the speakers was an old song that conjured childhood Christmas parties. When Daniel wasn't busy playing guns,
his mother would gather him into her arms, placing his feet on top of hers to follow the pattern of her steps. The rhythm of his
parents' generation had the ability to innervate his muscles without warning, and he looked at Jackie.
"I haven't done this in ages," she said.
She tipped her glass to suck the last rivulets of alcohol then led Daniel to the floor. Her hand in his gave him butterflies (it was
the dopamine). Her style was like nothing he'd experienced -- isolated movements, body upright, the surety of a ballerina. She
was a ballerina, he realized. The subject of that feature in the campus bulletin last week…
Jackie kept up with him perfectly. At the end of a song, dancers customarily led their partners through a series of spins then
caught them in an embrace. When he caught her, their bodies met with full momentum.
She laughed. "Thank you."
"I'm Daniel Rivera."
He wouldn't have prayed for this moment, but he might have imagined it in a daydream.
***
Daniel had his own personal theory on dreams. It was the anti-Freud view. Instead of being expressions of complex unconscious
beliefs and desires, dreams were simple expressions of bodily needs. Expressions from the reptilian brain. For example: water
dreams. Daniel dreamt of motorboating on Lake Champlain, of drifting in the Caribbean surf, and recurringly of swimming in an
outdoor pool, with the black line painted on the bottom of the brominated, shimmering cavity. These swimming pool dreams
usually involved his being on his college swim team and his coach bellowing, "Get in!" A Freudian might build on the student-
coach aspect, inverting it to say that his coach represented, perhaps, a particularly menacing client of Daniel's. The anxiety of
endless laps in the aqueous solution represented a fear that his client would be, through some fault of Daniel's, endlessly mired in
the initial stages of therapy, unable to resolve his most basic conflicts.
But sometime last year, Daniel realized that these water dreams were simply his body's signal that he had to pee and he had
better wake up. The anxiety about the pool was about waking the hell up so as to not wet the bed. After that, he applied his
dreams-as-physical-indicators view to other types of dreams.
Dreams of running toward a spaceship but not quite making it before the gangplank closed, were his mind's way of trying to
break free from the sleep state that imprisoned it. "Wake up," his reptilian brain was saying while his cortex slept, "you're late,
fucker." Once he dreamt absurdly that a rubber chicken had wrapped its neck tight around his left leg. He tried in vain to kick
free. Upon waking, his leg was painfully asleep. He loved this view of dreams: our lower-order bodies trying to tell us things
through vivid imaginings, like foreigners scratching out pictures on napkins to tell us where the hell the train station is.
***
The name on Daniel's daily planner read Michelle D'Avila. A new client Janice had pencilled in. Two p.m. was the worst time to do
psychotherapy; all energy for higher thought was redirected to peristalsis. Especially a new client. He concentrated on stowing
his other agenda --lunch meeting, undergraduate advisees, and too much else to think about -- into a mental overhead bin
somewhere else. The trick was to get into that space where the new client felt as if she were important, that her interests and
concerns were unique, like her voyage of self-discovery mattered to the cosmos. After eight years of training, then licensing, it
was good to have arrived.
He opened the door to the waiting room and came face to face with Jackie O. His voice became the wind.
"Dr. Daniel Rivera," he breathed.
"Michelle D'Avila."
He escorted Michelle into the small rectangular office, antiseptic save for five or six houseplants. The door closed too loudly
behind her.
He asked, "Could you tell me what brings you here?"
"Sure -- there are a few specific issues I'd like to explore about myself."
"Is there somewhere in particular you'd like to start?"
Michelle D'Avila rummaged in her handbag and switched her cell phone off.
"I have some questions for you first." Rummaging again, she switched off another phone. She continued, "I don't generally like
you people. You psychodynamic therapists."
"You don't like psychodynamic therapists. But you're here, so--"
"Look, I'm just going to need my therapist to be a real person. Not be afraid to admit when his interpretations are wrong."
"I guess," said Daniel, "I'm interested in why you assign a particular weight to my opinions."
And the conversation continued like this for a few minutes, until Michelle had both hands on the chair, ready to stand up.
He should let her go. He should refer her to Ben.
"Let's take a step back. I'm sure we can find a way to work together."
That was humanizing enough for Michelle to begin disclosing. She was a ballet prodigy since the age of 12. Two years ago, her
hip gave out and she turned to choreography. Invited to the university by the dance department head, her first work was to
premiere at semester's end.
Daniel had once treated the dance chair. He was a happy endomorph until his brother's chopper crashed in a training exercise.
Therapy was of such little help in these situations, once clients discovered life really was a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing.
Daniel learned also that Mr. Muy Europeo was a successful tech executive with a brilliant math mind. Haitian via Quebec City, he
was funny, charming, and cute. He had Narcissus's self-absorption and Hamlet's indecision. Every conversation devolved into
solipsism. You could start out talking about who at the party was gay... how to re-balance a mutual fund portfolio... why the
GPS Satellites VP transferred to Global Systems... and it descended into whether Alain should transfer to Global Systems... or
stick with GPS Satellites... the neighbor thinks he should choose Global Systems... the VP thinks he should choose Satellites,,,
systems, satellites, systems, satellites…
Satélite, it was in Spanish… Sa-TEL-i-te… the mantra looped in Daniel's mind.
"Are you happy with Alain?"
Her shoe dug at the rug.
"I'm not even sure what that means."
The clock on a side table, only viewable to Daniel, ticked past quitting time.
***
After writing the day's case notes, Daniel returned in the drizzle to his apartment downtown. He could have afforded more than a
one-bedroom, but he liked saving for retirement. He opened a bottle of Chilean Merlot and poured himself a glass, holding the
bottle from the bottom, waiter-style. He sat down in the brown leather easy chair his father had given him when he had turned
65, retired, and left his mother for a woman with a master's degree.
His father was strong, he'd always thought, but it was just anger that gripped Efren Rivera, especially during those vain attempts
to quit cigarettes. Now, looking back at his childhood, Daniel saw his father was a weak person, so sadly weak, that anger was a
trick of last resort, a "fight" posture before the flight. Angry at Daniel's mom for not being what he wanted, too weak to leave
earlier, he chose the escape valve of the affair.
Daniel caressed the top of the glass until it made a low humming sound, a pretty sound, and for a moment he imagined several
glasses in tune, making a chord, and longed for Mozart. He looked into the fireplace that hadn't been lit for probably a decade. It
smelled valiantly of firewood.
It was in graduate school that his real life began. Friends, pot, sex, here and there a line of coke for rebellion's sake. The word
"halcyon" came to mind, imagining it all. Now everyone was spread out, having landed teaching positions elsewhere. Ben Green
was still here, and Emily, and Daniel. The last ones. Ben had always wanted to be a real therapist, not a professor. Sitting now
in his father's chair, noticing the textbooks on his mantle, Daniel was alive in the embers of those days.
***
Daniel practiced psychodynamic therapy -- Freudian therapy without Oedipus and hysteria. There was a distance to it, an
acceptance of the therapist as both scribe and demagogue. It fit. But he had a longing for Carl Rogers, a man ahead of his time
in believing that the client knew the route to his or her own cure, that the therapist was a medium. To empower the client was to
make one's own ego disappear into the infinite. But humility was not engrained in school. Why else would the therapist be the
one to begin and end the sessions, to opacify his personal life, and to say things like, "I'm interested in why you assign a
particular weight to my opinion"? Playing the part of an oracle was hard to resist, and Daniel often became momentarily
imprisoned in the role of benevolent, directive god. What he loved about his profession was what nagged him as well -- the rush
of nudging a life along.
Daniel contemplated his client today. She wore sweatpants, a sweater and a winter scarf. Her hair was pulled into a bun. In the
chair facing him, she sat tea-party straight.
Michelle's commissioned work had to do with Buddha — Daniel couldn't catch all of it. But it was a modern retelling of the
Buddha myth by the poor people he encountered in his wanderings.
"Why does this interest you?"
"The guy was a prince of the warrior caste. He had every type of luxury imaginable... then he rescinds it to become a pauper.
Chose living with the poor instead of doing something to elevate them."
"What do you make of this?"
"Daniel. If you were writing Buddha's history, and you were poor, would you really have him give it all up? Poverty is no space
from which to enlighten yourself."
"I'm not sure it would help to say I would or I wouldn't," said Daniel, "but I'm wondering if there's something personally significant
in his choice for you?"
And then he saw it for the first time. His client's face was a rock, but he read in her eyes resistance, hate, and... was it fear?
Yes, fear. Some temblor vanished as quickly as it had come. The length of her reticence was two long breaths.
She had lived in the projects with her grandmother until the age of three. After that, she and her mom moved from town to
town. One year, her mom married well. Michelle was proud to arrive at school in this guy's limo.
"Then one day I came home. I remember it so clearly. I rushed in to tell mom and my little sister about some good grade. They
were in the kitchen cooking. Then I heard this huge noise and felt a big force knock me down. I remember my head hitting the
tile. Hearing my little sister next to me, crying. Thinking, 'Is it my time?'
Michelle would have told this story many times, but she was about to cry.
"And then a voice goes, 'Let them up, they're just the stepdaughters.' FBI had been following my stepdad for months. Got him
on narcotics trafficking. Big time."
"I'm so sorry to hear that."
That summer, Michelle turned 12 and a social service group brought ballet lessons to her neighborhood -- one of those tame the
savages with fine arts programs. Michelle had the frame and the athleticism for ballet, plus the ability to remember the steps in
one go.
She smiled, not a joyous smile. "And the rest is history."
Age 12. Daniel had one principle memory of age 12. He was at the beach with his family, outlining a motionless jellyfish with a
stick. Then people started pointing and he saw a child bobbing in the waves. Frozen, Daniel heard Efren shout something he
could not understand. Then Efren dashed past him with Daniel's small inner tube. Father and tube splashed into the water,
struggling out to the boy, father thrusting the tube to the boy, and then struggling back to the shore, grasping the hands of
others who had waded out to help. Moments later, the boy's own father embracing Efren. Both laughing by that point,
gesturing at the little black tube. Daniel realized his father had been shouting for him to pass the inner tube. He never
understood what had made his father go out to the boy -- his father, who could not swim but three yards.
So Daniel said, "It seems as if ballet was something that came relatively easy to you in a childhood with some challenges."
"It seems that way," Michelle said.
"When you were dancing, how did it make you feel?"
"Like I didn't have to."
***
That evening, Daniel met Ben for a beer in Ben's favorite transition bar. Transition because of the buzz-cut Navy men that dared
traverse campus to frequent it. Mobile-Alabama-Ben had grown up in a brick railroad ranch, a photo of which always appeared in
Ben's living room, no matter where he lived. Too young to have experienced it himself, Ben revered 1960s counterculture. He
favored ripped purple jeans, black punk-rock boots, a buzz cut and sideburns. An art film buff, he made Daniel sit through the
classic movies he'd never bothered to see: Casablanca, His Girl Friday, Citizen Kane. Daniel only liked His Girl Friday. Being a
therapist was his calling. Ben made you want to talk, to roll out your sorrows, to seek his ablution.
After a few beers, Daniel said he was treating a new dancer-in-residence. Ben looked at him as if to decipher the rationale for the
remark, but Daniel only sipped his beer.
"A dancer," Ben finally said, after a beat. "Those guys are wound tight. I once treated a dancer. Straight male ballerina. A
minority in a sea of minorities."
Ben continued, "And yet dancers do have nice legs. What about your dancer?"
"She has nice legs."
Now Ben's nod was omniscient and Daniel just drank another swig.
There was a dull ache that Daniel sometimes had in his chest. He'd been the lone Puerto Rican student in his department.
Nobody mocked him; he wasn't comic relief pronouncing "whistle" and "job" as "weasle" and "yob." There were no nasty phrases
scrawled on his locker. It was an acute awareness of difference when he entered a room full of middle aged white-haired men in
sweater vests. Or introduced himself to the administrative assistants. His accent was barely perceptible, his grammar better than
theirs. And yet, there was a palpable alienation. How many times had he explained which surname to use or how to spell his
hometown? Once, he and Emily had been pulled over for speeding and the cop wanted to see Daniel's green card. Quizzically,
the rookie weighed their contention that Puerto Ricans were indeed U.S. citizens, finally giving them the benefit of his doubt. On
the one hand, Daniel loved America. On the other, he ached for home.
Of the old gang, only Ben had gotten to know Daniel deeply. And boy, had he gotten to know him. It was physically painful to
give up that kind of intelligence. In a stream of consciousness walking home from the transition bar, Daniel's confessions played
out before him: a schoolyard punch thrown by a bully... his first kiss at el Faro and the moment ending with her necklace falling to
the sand... the silhouette of his high school best friend against the sunset (bisexuality, Ben said, was in us all)... losing his
virginity to his second cousin (an accident)... his parents' divorce and his mother's solitude -- a onetime happy salsera now with
only a pillow to hedge the night. Ben had helped him string these impossible strands together for a more coherent
understanding of this self that answered to the name Dan Rivera.
***
Daniel was in his office writing case notes. Five to two. Michelle D'Avila batted fourth today. Daniel knew he was dispassionate
and came across as non-judgmental. That people felt comfortable around him. As a payoff, he got to hear tales of indiscretions,
addictions, eternal frustrations, yearnings, and dreams.
His surface kindness had made clients fall for him romantically. Sure, they'd read Kundera in school, but Daniel's experience was
nothing like that of the doctor in Unbearable Lightness of Being. Nothing about bipolar, depressed, or dysthymic clients made
him want to seduce them. Indeed, one woman had tried to seduce him, showing up in a tight white shirt and a miniskirt through
which a triangle of underwear was visible.
As she sat with her legs paired together and tucked in at the ankle, stilettos in place, Daniel felt pity more than anything.
Why did Michelle stick with Alain, she who had everything and he who was an avatar? Looking in from the outside, it was so hard
to tell why any couples ever made it. So he began the third session by asking.
At first Alain had displayed the requisite interest. Their first date, where he had beseeched her to "tell me everything." But as
the relationship wore on, the spotlight turned inward, and everything was to be ruminated over. Michelle soon felt like another
project for this man, another item on his tickler list:
1. Talk with Michelle this evening
2. Listen to her
3. Bond over the way Mozart's early work was an afterthought of God.
Alain had approached her with the same panache as tracking his expenses in an Excel spreadsheet; his love for her was
tantamount to his love for inhabiting a theory. I know Mozart, Daniel thought.
The guy traveled a lot, always away to the farthest corners: two weeks in Burkina Faso, a week in Hong Kong, three weeks in
Tokyo. Sometimes, Michelle didn't even know where he was.
Daniel had seen couples like this. No matter how bad the conversations got, they would never split. Not unless something
extraordinary happened. Like chemical compounds, couples required a certain activation energy to break apart.
"So it sounds like there's some level of frustration, but something keeps you together," Daniel said. Of course: in her deepest
heart, Michelle still believed Alain would change.
"We have the same consciousness," was the reply.
Daniel asked what she meant.
"We like the same music, same travel destinations. We're really very similar."
"And yet, you're conflicted about being with him."
"Of course. He's a whack job."
"Do you think you could find someone who has your same consciousness, but makes you happy in an emotional sense?"
"I've really, really come to doubt that, Daniel."
And that was all she needed to say.
***
Later that week, Emily came by with some beers. From Efren's chair, Daniel closed down his laptop. He'd just given in to the
bizarre urge to type "what is love" into Google. He'd gotten a web dictionary and something about Charlize Theron.
Emily and Daniel fought like brother and sister sometimes; only last year did they start sleeping together. What surprised Daniel
about Emily, and maybe about sex itself, was its playing-field-leveling ability. That a typically intelligent young woman like Emily
could become someone who submitted to him, who wended herself around his way of lovemaking. It was nothing vocalized, it
was just the way she looked at him airily, asked him to sway his hips "like Vladimir," some friend of hers formerly of Havana, or
offered to try whatever sexual position. It was the leading-following distinction of partner dances. A number of white women had
a similar response to him. Or maybe it was just Midwesterners.
He knew that if he found some pretext he could get turned on. Tonight's excuse was the vaguely flamenco music that Emily
produced from her bag and put on the player. There was a familiarity to Emily and he traced the contour of her "Kiss Me I'm
Finnish" T-shirt, resting his hands around her modest breasts. He knew that if he lifted her shirt, her back would arch, pink
nipples offering themselves. That if he stood before her and swayed his hips in the manner requested, she would soon pull him
down on top of her, ready for whatever was next. She was so eager, excitable, and pliant that the ritual foreseen made him
hard. He pulled her over to his chair. In another minute he had rolled on a condom and positioned Emily on top, obliging her to
do the work of aligning their bodies and docking them together. He closed his eyes and for a moment she was another person, a
taut body that was also strong. She moved and he moved, and separate interference waves of motion finally connected and
became one. His orgasm was almost virginal in its sloppiness, and as he came, an image of Michelle D'Avila flashed through his
mind.
***
In her fourth session, Michelle said she had dreamed of Santorini.
Santorini. The volcanic island of ashen beaches -- the weathered pebbles from the Minoan eruption. These "black sand" beaches
were its modern-day marketing allure, and Daniel had sampled them eagerly during a junior year abroad trip. But they were a
shadow of the Caribbean's offerings.
On Santorini, Daniel had purchased a book about the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient, gear-driven calculator of astronomical
coordinates. He had mailed the book to Efren, who ate that kind of stuff up.
"What was your dream about?"
"Imagery. Clothes drying on a hill, the Mediterranean, a trembling noise, a grey sky... blackness."
"How did the dream make you feel?"
"Suffocated."
"Could it have related to your experience of the FBI raid?"
"Possibly. More likely about Alain."
Years ago, Michelle and Alain had vacationed on Santorini. Alain had gotten called by work and boarded the next flight to
Athens. Back in the hotel bar, Michelle had ordered a double Martini and did not look at the man with the page-boy bob who
plopped down beside her. He spoke anyway.
"I always get a Stinger if I'm in the mood for brandy."
"Why should you assume we have the same taste in alcohol?"
"Try and see," he had said, ordering one for her too.
That night, the squire's story spun out to Michelle. He was a Cuban ex-pat who knew his way around a bar. He made friends
with the hotel band on Santorini, who played Cole Porter for the Americans and Duke Ellington for the Europeans. That night, he
convinced them to play a lingering rumba and taught this ballerina to dance the son. Social dance was a world apart from ballet.
It was sensual, improvisational, human. She liked this guy's thigh on hers and his face -- campishly serious but deep down,
believing it all.
"What does Alain think about your dance career?"
"He says I look hot or 'it was a great score' or 'love those banana hammocks on the guys.'"
Daniel said, "That's got to be hard, feeling like people close to you aren't accepting of you."
Michelle looked toward the plants in the window and nodded.
***
This is a piece of shit. Emily had again persuaded Daniel to attend salsa night. He dared not hope for the unthinkable. As soon
as the instructor started lining people on the floor for the lesson, Emily melted away. In the thinned crowd of drink-sippers left
behind, Daniel imagined Michelle. Wearing glittering gold heels, a black mini skirt and a sequined tank top that spun with her.
He felt someone press into him. It was the DJ, hands raised high, gripping four beers, squeezing by. The man smiled at Daniel.
"Good crowd today, eh bro?"
After the club, Emily wanted to spend the night but Daniel made some excuse. On his answering machine was a message from
his mom. A forcibly cheery inquiry into when he could next visit -- Easter? He would call tomorrow. Rummaging in his dresser,
Daniel found an ancient pack of smokes, opened his bedroom window and puffed into the gray empty city. His window had a view
of the expressway. The new adopt-a-highway sign read: "This highway sponsored by Assault Craft Unit Five."
***
There was something about it that wouldn't last. He'd fantasized about how it would happen: she would walk in, push him back
into his chair, and bestride him like an Amazon. No, please, he would say. I'm just a farm boy from Tatooine. And then he
would place her with Ben so that they could go on maintaining their affair.
Reality was more mundane. After eight sessions, Michelle handed him a glossy flyer advertising her Buddha production. No time
for therapy this month. Maybe after the run. She invited him to opening night.
"It's more obtuse than some people can tolerate," she said. "But too bad. I'm at the point where there is more than just being
the best."
Just being the best. What was it like to be the best? There was nothing Daniel was best at. Well, no, his high school chemistry
teacher used to say there was something that each of us was best at. Mrs. Boxer's husband happened to be the best potato
peeler. But what was it like to be the best at something important? Were those people just more talented or more motivated?
What did it feel like to go home and say, damn, I'm the best miller or the best physicist? He wondered if he would be spiteful,
push away cameras, wave off autograph seekers, get bitchy with some kid who besieged him during dinner.
By the time he set out for home that afternoon, it had started to rain. The street smelled of earthworms and water oozed
through his shoes.
***
In Daniel's old department was a series of offices where graduate students treated clients. Ben still kept his office there. After
Michelle's last session, Daniel went to see him. Ben had taken the time to paint his standard-issue office a warm, coral orange.
An Asian-style floor lamp next to his chair glowed softly. Near the client chair was a splendid tropical plant, one of those luscious
succulents like a rubber tree. What Daniel would give for the attention to detail to personalize his office. He settled into the
therapy chair, fingering a leaf from the big plant.
"You ever done something entirely... antithetical to what you've been socialized to believe is right?
"Daniel. I'm a gay man from the South."
"What triggered you to overcome all those internalizations?"
"Eventually you develop a sense of self. An internal compass."
"I was raised to think lying was wrong," said Daniel. "Got nailed once when Efren caught me. And now he goes and pulls the
biggest deception of all."
"Some of us make rules to keep ourselves in control," Ben replied. "And at some point, these rules become meaningless.
Because ultimately life is beyond our control."
At home Daniel sifted through mail. He thought he might cry but no tears came. He retrieved the little flyer from his knapsack,
which had a picture of a woman in a lotus pose. He turned it over in his hands, located the phone number and left a message on
one of Michelle's cell phones.
***
The Buddha production was well-attended, more so than Daniel anticipated. It was also mesmerizing. By the end of Michelle's
sessions, he had succeeded in psychologizing the production entirely, so that the Buddha character embodied her jealousy of the
rich and the mendicant narrator represented her childhood. With such deconstruction, it was hard to expect anything to be art.
Just two seats down from Daniel was Alain, hair gelled and collar erect. Definitely collar stays. Dapper fuck. He spent the whole
intermission on his Blackberry. Finally disconnecting, Alain looked up and down the evacuated rows, his eyes settling on Daniel.
"Excuse me, sir?"
Daniel almost looked behind himself.
"I'm Alain D'Avila. My wife is producing this show. Might I ask a favor? I've got to run. Could I trouble you to bring these roses
to my wife?"
"Thanks, man," and a wink were Daniel's remuneration for taking the exaggerated bundle. Alain recessed into the depths of the
auditorium, then vanished.
After the finale, Daniel parted the heavy curtains. Michelle was directing the storage of various boxes while receiving various
congratulators. Daniel explained what had happened, forcing himself to look at her, to read her face. In place of the
disappointment he expected was something like resolve. She accepted the roses, placing them on top of a file cabinet.
Someone wheeled a dolly stacked with boxes to her.
"I'm going to have to take these home," she said. "I'll take them to my car."
She smiled at Daniel. "Unbelievable. In my old life I had a team of assistants. Why are they called ivory towers again?"
Daniel offered to help with the boxes. They didn't all fit in Michelle's car, so Daniel followed her to her condo. Michelle and Alain
lived in a converted corset factory that once thrived before manufacturing had moved south and eventually overseas. There was
a spacious brick fireplace in the living room.
After accommodating the last box, Michelle asked Daniel to wait and disappeared into the kitchen. Daniel found the fire starter
and flicked it on and off. Why did lighters work? How did any technology work? What was it like to be the first man on the
moon, stepping out into the surface in an untested spacesuit, untried weight boots, and the knowledge that you could fly off into
space instantly? In his mind came an image of floating away from his landing module, tether severed. The surface of the moon
receding from all sides and behind it rising the luscious blue, white and brown marble. Kissing it all goodbye.
"We think the fireplace used to be a furnace," reached Michelle's voice from the kitchen.
A flat-screen television was mounted on an adjacent wall. Daniel ran his fingers over the pine casement. He fingered the remote
perched on top, inadvertently powering the TV. A show about penguins came on. The sound was off but the penguins waddled
purposively through the Antarctic.
Materializing at Daniel's side, Michelle tilted a wine glass to his lips. The aura was grapes from some goddess. Who was that
archer, Venus?
Daniel took the glass from her and set it on the mantle.
"I shouldn't have come," he said.
Her face made a question mark.
"Pursuing a personal relationship with a client is potential grounds for revocation of my license. And it's unethical."
"You're really saying this."
"It's well-documented that dual relationships with clients can have lifelong consequences."
Michelle formulated a social smile.
Daniel continued, "It's also for the therapist's good -- avoiding the appearance of impropriety."
"Daniel, it's me," she said. "I'm not interested in getting you into trouble. Look, I hereby fire you as my therapist. Now, enjoy
the Chateau Haut Brion."
Daniel picked up the fire starter again and set it back down. No more therapy? Was that a Merlot or... ? Michelle must have
sensed he was digging in, because she said,
"Ok, look. It's all my doing, okay? You bear no responsibility."
Now Daniel looked quizzical.
"Confession: before our first session, I went to your office -- as I said, I research my professionals. And Janice told me I might
find you at the club."
She stood beside him again, slightly taller than he in heels, close enough that he could smell a fruity perfume that made him want
to devour her. But he said,
"That's not why you went to that club, Michelle. You went to feel something you hadn't for a while."
"Is this about Alain? Because it's just a question of extricating myself at this point."
Daniel knew that was bullshit.
"Why are you so tense?" asked Michelle. "My acupressurist says it starts from the neck. Right here."
Her strong hands pressed the nape of his neck and temples. She led him to the couch and depleted her glass of wine. He
sagged into the plush softness.
"Where are you from, Daniel?" she said, still working her magic on his forsaken body.
"Puerto Rico."
"Before that."
"My father's family is from Cordoba. My mother's -- some from Spain, some from West Africa, as near we can tell."
Her hand ran through his hair. "You have Taino sensibilities."
"What in God's name does that mean?"
Michelle laughed one of her beautiful free laughs. "I don't know. Just came to me."
On the television, under the images of the Antarctic, a news ticker read, "5 soldiers killed in shootout with insurgents... "
Daniel said, "There's something I wanted to tell you. Your dream about Santorini wasn't about the FBI. It wasn't about Alain. It
had nothing to do with a metaphorical breathlessness."
"What now?"
"It was about a bodily breathlessness. A moment of apnea or something."
"Seriously?"
"Never mind. What I should really be saying is that I'm a real person, Michelle."
She raised his glass to his lips again and this time Daniel drank. He was so close he could see the pores on Michelle's divine face
and the frizz of her hairline. Therapy and dance were intimate in exactly the opposite way. Dance was joyfully intimate, therapy
painfully so. Dance partners knew the feel of each other's bodies, the rhythm of their movement. Therapists knew the little turns
of phrase and distractions used to keep real issues in the unconscious. If they were lucky, they got to know the real psyche. If
they were lucky.
"What are we doing?" he asked.
"Nothing bad." Her fingers traced his ear.
Then Daniel turned and kissed her. The external world receded and there was nothing but the energy of her mouth. Her strong
back finally again in his arms. Holding her.
Michelle whispered, "God, there was something about you when we first met. Let me see you, Daniel."
Acquiescing, undoing his zipper and wrangling off his khakis and shirt, Daniel stood before her in white briefs, their rigid contour
exposing his secrets. She looked him over and, taking his hands in hers, sat him back on the couch. Her hands, curious,
lingering, then discovered him the way he would have imagined. Daniel caressed her strong legs, sliding off her pants, then
stroking the softness between. He became aware of his own voice, coming from another part of his being, whispering something
about I can't wait until you have all of me. Sooner than he expected, Michelle began to say "yes" over and over, surrendering in
a soprano aria. Her hand closed around his and pushed his fingers further into her body, beating like a heart.
Then, Michelle freed his erection from his briefs, stroking and tasting like she hadn't seen its likeness in forever. He closed his
eyes and imagined she was... Michelle D'Avila. Here. Consuming him. And soon he, too, went to that place he wished he could
stay forever. Then he lay together with her on the couch, drifting into a dream. But one thing about his dream theory still
stumped him. What was encoded in those dreams of falling from a great height?
***
The next week Michelle did not call, as promised. Nor the week after. So Daniel immersed himself in the lives of clients. He took
up with Emily again. He read, he listened to Mozart. He did everything possible to ride out the dopamine spike. It was too risky,
too fucked-up to call, the therapist coveting the patient. There was nothing to be done. As they days went on and became
weeks, their encounter became like a dream. So this was missing someone fiercely.
He went back to Ben's office one windy day when the crocuses had gone and the tulips were in stride. At Ben's door, he heard
his friend's calm voice on the phone,
"Well it's going to be hard if you've got these things staring atcha... there's a clinic at the military hospital... yes, I'll wait outside."
Daniel slipped into the group therapy room nearby and Ben dashed by. After Ben was out of sight, Daniel left the building. And
outside its brick walls, Daniel confessed his transgression.
"What are you going to do now?" asked Imaginary Ben.
"I have no fucking clue."
***
One day, when university was out for the summer, the town wrung dry of students, Janice handed him a message:
Michelle DeAvila (203) 432-5555. Your former client?
He left a voicemail. Michelle materialized that afternoon.
"How are you?" Daniel whispered into the soundproof room.
It was over between her and Alain. Ended two months ago. Daniel asked her what she planned to do.
"Take some time for myself. Travel, maybe."
"You know -- I missed you," he said.
"Yes. I'm so sorry, Daniel."
"I guess I wonder if you felt that too," said Daniel.
"Of course I did. I just feel so depleted right now. I just... "
His therapy clock stared at him from the desktop. Michelle went to write out a check, and Daniel shook his head no. Then he got
up and took her in his arms. A sigh left Michelle's lips, of pleasure and torment at the same time. If he had been asked to paint
the moment, he would have likely painted helix shards of a fallen building.
"I'm sorry I didn't call," Michelle said. "I need to go slow, Daniel."
Then, with some rationale related to her vibrating phone, Michelle was gone. A torrent of thoughts besieged Daniel -- a flood of
emotions, really, centered around the concept that changing a person was so terribly hard to do. He thought of Efren and the
woman with the master's degree. Did she make him feel this much?
Daniel opened his desk drawer. He removed the old book about the Antikythera Mechanism, which he had retrieved from a box of
Efren's stuff when his parents divorced and sold their house. One page was dog-eared, a page that contained an illustration of
the various gear assemblies making the thing run. Efren would have spent time studying that page.
For the first time Daniel noticed, tucked in the back cover of the book, a folded printout of one of Efren's favorite poems. It was
from the book of poetry Efren kept in his old study, propped against the computer monitor. The Portuguese gradually revealed
itself to Daniel, and his eyes came upon a familiar line:
Mas eu te possuirei como ninguem porque poderei partir.
But I will possess you like no one because I will be able to leave.
That was a lie. He'd possessed her not at all -- what they'd had was tantric abstinence.
Maybe this was his life: Ben, Emily, his mom -- even Efren. Maybe these were the people on his journey. Maybe his clients were
too, God help them, casualties as they were of life, biology, and sometimes war. What a measure of gratitude he owed the
universe for the luxury to suffer existentially. Daniel checked his schedule, saw that one more client was due, leaned back in his
chair, and concentrated on clearing his mind of extraneous thought.
The club was empty when Daniel Rivera and Emily arrived for salsa night. Daniel knew how to do his country's national dance, but
it was the music of his parents' generation. He preferred, in order: classical music, rock en español, and deep Southern blues --
acoustic. Offensive was the crap that they played nowadays -- salsa romantic -- a bunch of bleating horseshit exhorting people
to shake their asses while comparing love to the proverbial burning flame.
Emily, of course, had pressed him to go. By her calculation, playing first clarinet in her high school's West Side Story production
made her an honorary Latina. The first hour at the club was a beginners' lesson. Daniel slogged through a beer and watched
meaty Emily hustle and slide her way through elementary moves with a line of students. A stocky DJ spun easy beats. Finally,
the lesson ended and the floor filled with a mix of beginners and old hands -- chubby men with phones clipped to their belts and
skinny septuagenarians.
Making her way to the next table was a graceful woman with shoulder-length hair that flipped a la Jackie Onassis. She wore a
navy business suit, toffee pumps and a matching bag. She seemed to have been born in heels. Her hips turned out ballet-style,
giving a grace to her walk. Her makeup job was professional-grade and her nails were manicured. Yet none of it looked overdone
or alien on her. You could not have imagined this woman any other way.
Her couture was out-of-place for women in this club, whose wardrobes consisted of tasseled skirts and bustiers if they were
under 45 and oversized polyester button-downs with stretch pants if they were senoras.
Daniel's beer was depleted. The bartender wore an earring, a rainbow bracelet and a look of ennui. Getting his refill, Daniel
noticed Jackie O. approaching the bar.
Jackie leaned against the leather bumper. "Stinger."
The bartender served up an amber concoction and Jackie was gone. She was darker-toned than Daniel, and could have been
Puerto Rican too, except for her American voice. His eyes followed her back to her table, then drifted to Emily, who was scanning
the crowd for her next partner. Emily's tangled blond hair and Rubenesque frame weren't entirely objectionable. Next to Jackie
was a man in a navy suit, thumbs whirring on Blackberry. I am man -- hear me roar, thought Daniel.
When Daniel returned to Emily's table, she mocked his fixation. Was it that obvious?
"She's a minor celebrity on campus," Emily said. "Ask her to dance."
"I don't think so."
Instead, he tolerated one song with Emily. They returned past Jackie O.'s table. Emily, listing from the effect of two tequila
shots, sauntered toward her and said,
"You should dance with my friend Daniel. He is a great dancer, you know, not bossy but not limpid?" Then she merengued off.
The blue-suited man looked up from his Blackberry. His face was as finely cut as his suit. Aquiline nose, high cheekbones, hair
mousse. Mr. Muy Europeo smiled upon Daniel.
"Please." His voice was broadcaster deep.
Pulsing through the speakers was an old song that conjured childhood Christmas parties. When Daniel wasn't busy playing guns,
his mother would gather him into her arms, placing his feet on top of hers to follow the pattern of her steps. The rhythm of his
parents' generation had the ability to innervate his muscles without warning, and he looked at Jackie.
"I haven't done this in ages," she said.
She tipped her glass to suck the last rivulets of alcohol then led Daniel to the floor. Her hand in his gave him butterflies (it was
the dopamine). Her style was like nothing he'd experienced -- isolated movements, body upright, the surety of a ballerina. She
was a ballerina, he realized. The subject of that feature in the campus bulletin last week…
Jackie kept up with him perfectly. At the end of a song, dancers customarily led their partners through a series of spins then
caught them in an embrace. When he caught her, their bodies met with full momentum.
She laughed. "Thank you."
"I'm Daniel Rivera."
He wouldn't have prayed for this moment, but he might have imagined it in a daydream.
***
Daniel had his own personal theory on dreams. It was the anti-Freud view. Instead of being expressions of complex unconscious
beliefs and desires, dreams were simple expressions of bodily needs. Expressions from the reptilian brain. For example: water
dreams. Daniel dreamt of motorboating on Lake Champlain, of drifting in the Caribbean surf, and recurringly of swimming in an
outdoor pool, with the black line painted on the bottom of the brominated, shimmering cavity. These swimming pool dreams
usually involved his being on his college swim team and his coach bellowing, "Get in!" A Freudian might build on the student-
coach aspect, inverting it to say that his coach represented, perhaps, a particularly menacing client of Daniel's. The anxiety of
endless laps in the aqueous solution represented a fear that his client would be, through some fault of Daniel's, endlessly mired in
the initial stages of therapy, unable to resolve his most basic conflicts.
But sometime last year, Daniel realized that these water dreams were simply his body's signal that he had to pee and he had
better wake up. The anxiety about the pool was about waking the hell up so as to not wet the bed. After that, he applied his
dreams-as-physical-indicators view to other types of dreams.
Dreams of running toward a spaceship but not quite making it before the gangplank closed, were his mind's way of trying to
break free from the sleep state that imprisoned it. "Wake up," his reptilian brain was saying while his cortex slept, "you're late,
fucker." Once he dreamt absurdly that a rubber chicken had wrapped its neck tight around his left leg. He tried in vain to kick
free. Upon waking, his leg was painfully asleep. He loved this view of dreams: our lower-order bodies trying to tell us things
through vivid imaginings, like foreigners scratching out pictures on napkins to tell us where the hell the train station is.
***
The name on Daniel's daily planner read Michelle D'Avila. A new client Janice had pencilled in. Two p.m. was the worst time to do
psychotherapy; all energy for higher thought was redirected to peristalsis. Especially a new client. He concentrated on stowing
his other agenda --lunch meeting, undergraduate advisees, and too much else to think about -- into a mental overhead bin
somewhere else. The trick was to get into that space where the new client felt as if she were important, that her interests and
concerns were unique, like her voyage of self-discovery mattered to the cosmos. After eight years of training, then licensing, it
was good to have arrived.
He opened the door to the waiting room and came face to face with Jackie O. His voice became the wind.
"Dr. Daniel Rivera," he breathed.
"Michelle D'Avila."
He escorted Michelle into the small rectangular office, antiseptic save for five or six houseplants. The door closed too loudly
behind her.
He asked, "Could you tell me what brings you here?"
"Sure -- there are a few specific issues I'd like to explore about myself."
"Is there somewhere in particular you'd like to start?"
Michelle D'Avila rummaged in her handbag and switched her cell phone off.
"I have some questions for you first." Rummaging again, she switched off another phone. She continued, "I don't generally like
you people. You psychodynamic therapists."
"You don't like psychodynamic therapists. But you're here, so--"
"Look, I'm just going to need my therapist to be a real person. Not be afraid to admit when his interpretations are wrong."
"I guess," said Daniel, "I'm interested in why you assign a particular weight to my opinions."
And the conversation continued like this for a few minutes, until Michelle had both hands on the chair, ready to stand up.
He should let her go. He should refer her to Ben.
"Let's take a step back. I'm sure we can find a way to work together."
That was humanizing enough for Michelle to begin disclosing. She was a ballet prodigy since the age of 12. Two years ago, her
hip gave out and she turned to choreography. Invited to the university by the dance department head, her first work was to
premiere at semester's end.
Daniel had once treated the dance chair. He was a happy endomorph until his brother's chopper crashed in a training exercise.
Therapy was of such little help in these situations, once clients discovered life really was a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing.
Daniel learned also that Mr. Muy Europeo was a successful tech executive with a brilliant math mind. Haitian via Quebec City, he
was funny, charming, and cute. He had Narcissus's self-absorption and Hamlet's indecision. Every conversation devolved into
solipsism. You could start out talking about who at the party was gay... how to re-balance a mutual fund portfolio... why the
GPS Satellites VP transferred to Global Systems... and it descended into whether Alain should transfer to Global Systems... or
stick with GPS Satellites... the neighbor thinks he should choose Global Systems... the VP thinks he should choose Satellites,,,
systems, satellites, systems, satellites…
Satélite, it was in Spanish… Sa-TEL-i-te… the mantra looped in Daniel's mind.
"Are you happy with Alain?"
Her shoe dug at the rug.
"I'm not even sure what that means."
The clock on a side table, only viewable to Daniel, ticked past quitting time.
***
After writing the day's case notes, Daniel returned in the drizzle to his apartment downtown. He could have afforded more than a
one-bedroom, but he liked saving for retirement. He opened a bottle of Chilean Merlot and poured himself a glass, holding the
bottle from the bottom, waiter-style. He sat down in the brown leather easy chair his father had given him when he had turned
65, retired, and left his mother for a woman with a master's degree.
His father was strong, he'd always thought, but it was just anger that gripped Efren Rivera, especially during those vain attempts
to quit cigarettes. Now, looking back at his childhood, Daniel saw his father was a weak person, so sadly weak, that anger was a
trick of last resort, a "fight" posture before the flight. Angry at Daniel's mom for not being what he wanted, too weak to leave
earlier, he chose the escape valve of the affair.
Daniel caressed the top of the glass until it made a low humming sound, a pretty sound, and for a moment he imagined several
glasses in tune, making a chord, and longed for Mozart. He looked into the fireplace that hadn't been lit for probably a decade. It
smelled valiantly of firewood.
It was in graduate school that his real life began. Friends, pot, sex, here and there a line of coke for rebellion's sake. The word
"halcyon" came to mind, imagining it all. Now everyone was spread out, having landed teaching positions elsewhere. Ben Green
was still here, and Emily, and Daniel. The last ones. Ben had always wanted to be a real therapist, not a professor. Sitting now
in his father's chair, noticing the textbooks on his mantle, Daniel was alive in the embers of those days.
***
Daniel practiced psychodynamic therapy -- Freudian therapy without Oedipus and hysteria. There was a distance to it, an
acceptance of the therapist as both scribe and demagogue. It fit. But he had a longing for Carl Rogers, a man ahead of his time
in believing that the client knew the route to his or her own cure, that the therapist was a medium. To empower the client was to
make one's own ego disappear into the infinite. But humility was not engrained in school. Why else would the therapist be the
one to begin and end the sessions, to opacify his personal life, and to say things like, "I'm interested in why you assign a
particular weight to my opinion"? Playing the part of an oracle was hard to resist, and Daniel often became momentarily
imprisoned in the role of benevolent, directive god. What he loved about his profession was what nagged him as well -- the rush
of nudging a life along.
Daniel contemplated his client today. She wore sweatpants, a sweater and a winter scarf. Her hair was pulled into a bun. In the
chair facing him, she sat tea-party straight.
Michelle's commissioned work had to do with Buddha — Daniel couldn't catch all of it. But it was a modern retelling of the
Buddha myth by the poor people he encountered in his wanderings.
"Why does this interest you?"
"The guy was a prince of the warrior caste. He had every type of luxury imaginable... then he rescinds it to become a pauper.
Chose living with the poor instead of doing something to elevate them."
"What do you make of this?"
"Daniel. If you were writing Buddha's history, and you were poor, would you really have him give it all up? Poverty is no space
from which to enlighten yourself."
"I'm not sure it would help to say I would or I wouldn't," said Daniel, "but I'm wondering if there's something personally significant
in his choice for you?"
And then he saw it for the first time. His client's face was a rock, but he read in her eyes resistance, hate, and... was it fear?
Yes, fear. Some temblor vanished as quickly as it had come. The length of her reticence was two long breaths.
She had lived in the projects with her grandmother until the age of three. After that, she and her mom moved from town to
town. One year, her mom married well. Michelle was proud to arrive at school in this guy's limo.
"Then one day I came home. I remember it so clearly. I rushed in to tell mom and my little sister about some good grade. They
were in the kitchen cooking. Then I heard this huge noise and felt a big force knock me down. I remember my head hitting the
tile. Hearing my little sister next to me, crying. Thinking, 'Is it my time?'
Michelle would have told this story many times, but she was about to cry.
"And then a voice goes, 'Let them up, they're just the stepdaughters.' FBI had been following my stepdad for months. Got him
on narcotics trafficking. Big time."
"I'm so sorry to hear that."
That summer, Michelle turned 12 and a social service group brought ballet lessons to her neighborhood -- one of those tame the
savages with fine arts programs. Michelle had the frame and the athleticism for ballet, plus the ability to remember the steps in
one go.
She smiled, not a joyous smile. "And the rest is history."
Age 12. Daniel had one principle memory of age 12. He was at the beach with his family, outlining a motionless jellyfish with a
stick. Then people started pointing and he saw a child bobbing in the waves. Frozen, Daniel heard Efren shout something he
could not understand. Then Efren dashed past him with Daniel's small inner tube. Father and tube splashed into the water,
struggling out to the boy, father thrusting the tube to the boy, and then struggling back to the shore, grasping the hands of
others who had waded out to help. Moments later, the boy's own father embracing Efren. Both laughing by that point,
gesturing at the little black tube. Daniel realized his father had been shouting for him to pass the inner tube. He never
understood what had made his father go out to the boy -- his father, who could not swim but three yards.
So Daniel said, "It seems as if ballet was something that came relatively easy to you in a childhood with some challenges."
"It seems that way," Michelle said.
"When you were dancing, how did it make you feel?"
"Like I didn't have to."
***
That evening, Daniel met Ben for a beer in Ben's favorite transition bar. Transition because of the buzz-cut Navy men that dared
traverse campus to frequent it. Mobile-Alabama-Ben had grown up in a brick railroad ranch, a photo of which always appeared in
Ben's living room, no matter where he lived. Too young to have experienced it himself, Ben revered 1960s counterculture. He
favored ripped purple jeans, black punk-rock boots, a buzz cut and sideburns. An art film buff, he made Daniel sit through the
classic movies he'd never bothered to see: Casablanca, His Girl Friday, Citizen Kane. Daniel only liked His Girl Friday. Being a
therapist was his calling. Ben made you want to talk, to roll out your sorrows, to seek his ablution.
After a few beers, Daniel said he was treating a new dancer-in-residence. Ben looked at him as if to decipher the rationale for the
remark, but Daniel only sipped his beer.
"A dancer," Ben finally said, after a beat. "Those guys are wound tight. I once treated a dancer. Straight male ballerina. A
minority in a sea of minorities."
Ben continued, "And yet dancers do have nice legs. What about your dancer?"
"She has nice legs."
Now Ben's nod was omniscient and Daniel just drank another swig.
There was a dull ache that Daniel sometimes had in his chest. He'd been the lone Puerto Rican student in his department.
Nobody mocked him; he wasn't comic relief pronouncing "whistle" and "job" as "weasle" and "yob." There were no nasty phrases
scrawled on his locker. It was an acute awareness of difference when he entered a room full of middle aged white-haired men in
sweater vests. Or introduced himself to the administrative assistants. His accent was barely perceptible, his grammar better than
theirs. And yet, there was a palpable alienation. How many times had he explained which surname to use or how to spell his
hometown? Once, he and Emily had been pulled over for speeding and the cop wanted to see Daniel's green card. Quizzically,
the rookie weighed their contention that Puerto Ricans were indeed U.S. citizens, finally giving them the benefit of his doubt. On
the one hand, Daniel loved America. On the other, he ached for home.
Of the old gang, only Ben had gotten to know Daniel deeply. And boy, had he gotten to know him. It was physically painful to
give up that kind of intelligence. In a stream of consciousness walking home from the transition bar, Daniel's confessions played
out before him: a schoolyard punch thrown by a bully... his first kiss at el Faro and the moment ending with her necklace falling to
the sand... the silhouette of his high school best friend against the sunset (bisexuality, Ben said, was in us all)... losing his
virginity to his second cousin (an accident)... his parents' divorce and his mother's solitude -- a onetime happy salsera now with
only a pillow to hedge the night. Ben had helped him string these impossible strands together for a more coherent
understanding of this self that answered to the name Dan Rivera.
***
Daniel was in his office writing case notes. Five to two. Michelle D'Avila batted fourth today. Daniel knew he was dispassionate
and came across as non-judgmental. That people felt comfortable around him. As a payoff, he got to hear tales of indiscretions,
addictions, eternal frustrations, yearnings, and dreams.
His surface kindness had made clients fall for him romantically. Sure, they'd read Kundera in school, but Daniel's experience was
nothing like that of the doctor in Unbearable Lightness of Being. Nothing about bipolar, depressed, or dysthymic clients made
him want to seduce them. Indeed, one woman had tried to seduce him, showing up in a tight white shirt and a miniskirt through
which a triangle of underwear was visible.
As she sat with her legs paired together and tucked in at the ankle, stilettos in place, Daniel felt pity more than anything.
Why did Michelle stick with Alain, she who had everything and he who was an avatar? Looking in from the outside, it was so hard
to tell why any couples ever made it. So he began the third session by asking.
At first Alain had displayed the requisite interest. Their first date, where he had beseeched her to "tell me everything." But as
the relationship wore on, the spotlight turned inward, and everything was to be ruminated over. Michelle soon felt like another
project for this man, another item on his tickler list:
1. Talk with Michelle this evening
2. Listen to her
3. Bond over the way Mozart's early work was an afterthought of God.
Alain had approached her with the same panache as tracking his expenses in an Excel spreadsheet; his love for her was
tantamount to his love for inhabiting a theory. I know Mozart, Daniel thought.
The guy traveled a lot, always away to the farthest corners: two weeks in Burkina Faso, a week in Hong Kong, three weeks in
Tokyo. Sometimes, Michelle didn't even know where he was.
Daniel had seen couples like this. No matter how bad the conversations got, they would never split. Not unless something
extraordinary happened. Like chemical compounds, couples required a certain activation energy to break apart.
"So it sounds like there's some level of frustration, but something keeps you together," Daniel said. Of course: in her deepest
heart, Michelle still believed Alain would change.
"We have the same consciousness," was the reply.
Daniel asked what she meant.
"We like the same music, same travel destinations. We're really very similar."
"And yet, you're conflicted about being with him."
"Of course. He's a whack job."
"Do you think you could find someone who has your same consciousness, but makes you happy in an emotional sense?"
"I've really, really come to doubt that, Daniel."
And that was all she needed to say.
***
Later that week, Emily came by with some beers. From Efren's chair, Daniel closed down his laptop. He'd just given in to the
bizarre urge to type "what is love" into Google. He'd gotten a web dictionary and something about Charlize Theron.
Emily and Daniel fought like brother and sister sometimes; only last year did they start sleeping together. What surprised Daniel
about Emily, and maybe about sex itself, was its playing-field-leveling ability. That a typically intelligent young woman like Emily
could become someone who submitted to him, who wended herself around his way of lovemaking. It was nothing vocalized, it
was just the way she looked at him airily, asked him to sway his hips "like Vladimir," some friend of hers formerly of Havana, or
offered to try whatever sexual position. It was the leading-following distinction of partner dances. A number of white women had
a similar response to him. Or maybe it was just Midwesterners.
He knew that if he found some pretext he could get turned on. Tonight's excuse was the vaguely flamenco music that Emily
produced from her bag and put on the player. There was a familiarity to Emily and he traced the contour of her "Kiss Me I'm
Finnish" T-shirt, resting his hands around her modest breasts. He knew that if he lifted her shirt, her back would arch, pink
nipples offering themselves. That if he stood before her and swayed his hips in the manner requested, she would soon pull him
down on top of her, ready for whatever was next. She was so eager, excitable, and pliant that the ritual foreseen made him
hard. He pulled her over to his chair. In another minute he had rolled on a condom and positioned Emily on top, obliging her to
do the work of aligning their bodies and docking them together. He closed his eyes and for a moment she was another person, a
taut body that was also strong. She moved and he moved, and separate interference waves of motion finally connected and
became one. His orgasm was almost virginal in its sloppiness, and as he came, an image of Michelle D'Avila flashed through his
mind.
***
In her fourth session, Michelle said she had dreamed of Santorini.
Santorini. The volcanic island of ashen beaches -- the weathered pebbles from the Minoan eruption. These "black sand" beaches
were its modern-day marketing allure, and Daniel had sampled them eagerly during a junior year abroad trip. But they were a
shadow of the Caribbean's offerings.
On Santorini, Daniel had purchased a book about the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient, gear-driven calculator of astronomical
coordinates. He had mailed the book to Efren, who ate that kind of stuff up.
"What was your dream about?"
"Imagery. Clothes drying on a hill, the Mediterranean, a trembling noise, a grey sky... blackness."
"How did the dream make you feel?"
"Suffocated."
"Could it have related to your experience of the FBI raid?"
"Possibly. More likely about Alain."
Years ago, Michelle and Alain had vacationed on Santorini. Alain had gotten called by work and boarded the next flight to
Athens. Back in the hotel bar, Michelle had ordered a double Martini and did not look at the man with the page-boy bob who
plopped down beside her. He spoke anyway.
"I always get a Stinger if I'm in the mood for brandy."
"Why should you assume we have the same taste in alcohol?"
"Try and see," he had said, ordering one for her too.
That night, the squire's story spun out to Michelle. He was a Cuban ex-pat who knew his way around a bar. He made friends
with the hotel band on Santorini, who played Cole Porter for the Americans and Duke Ellington for the Europeans. That night, he
convinced them to play a lingering rumba and taught this ballerina to dance the son. Social dance was a world apart from ballet.
It was sensual, improvisational, human. She liked this guy's thigh on hers and his face -- campishly serious but deep down,
believing it all.
"What does Alain think about your dance career?"
"He says I look hot or 'it was a great score' or 'love those banana hammocks on the guys.'"
Daniel said, "That's got to be hard, feeling like people close to you aren't accepting of you."
Michelle looked toward the plants in the window and nodded.
***
This is a piece of shit. Emily had again persuaded Daniel to attend salsa night. He dared not hope for the unthinkable. As soon
as the instructor started lining people on the floor for the lesson, Emily melted away. In the thinned crowd of drink-sippers left
behind, Daniel imagined Michelle. Wearing glittering gold heels, a black mini skirt and a sequined tank top that spun with her.
He felt someone press into him. It was the DJ, hands raised high, gripping four beers, squeezing by. The man smiled at Daniel.
"Good crowd today, eh bro?"
After the club, Emily wanted to spend the night but Daniel made some excuse. On his answering machine was a message from
his mom. A forcibly cheery inquiry into when he could next visit -- Easter? He would call tomorrow. Rummaging in his dresser,
Daniel found an ancient pack of smokes, opened his bedroom window and puffed into the gray empty city. His window had a view
of the expressway. The new adopt-a-highway sign read: "This highway sponsored by Assault Craft Unit Five."
***
There was something about it that wouldn't last. He'd fantasized about how it would happen: she would walk in, push him back
into his chair, and bestride him like an Amazon. No, please, he would say. I'm just a farm boy from Tatooine. And then he
would place her with Ben so that they could go on maintaining their affair.
Reality was more mundane. After eight sessions, Michelle handed him a glossy flyer advertising her Buddha production. No time
for therapy this month. Maybe after the run. She invited him to opening night.
"It's more obtuse than some people can tolerate," she said. "But too bad. I'm at the point where there is more than just being
the best."
Just being the best. What was it like to be the best? There was nothing Daniel was best at. Well, no, his high school chemistry
teacher used to say there was something that each of us was best at. Mrs. Boxer's husband happened to be the best potato
peeler. But what was it like to be the best at something important? Were those people just more talented or more motivated?
What did it feel like to go home and say, damn, I'm the best miller or the best physicist? He wondered if he would be spiteful,
push away cameras, wave off autograph seekers, get bitchy with some kid who besieged him during dinner.
By the time he set out for home that afternoon, it had started to rain. The street smelled of earthworms and water oozed
through his shoes.
***
In Daniel's old department was a series of offices where graduate students treated clients. Ben still kept his office there. After
Michelle's last session, Daniel went to see him. Ben had taken the time to paint his standard-issue office a warm, coral orange.
An Asian-style floor lamp next to his chair glowed softly. Near the client chair was a splendid tropical plant, one of those luscious
succulents like a rubber tree. What Daniel would give for the attention to detail to personalize his office. He settled into the
therapy chair, fingering a leaf from the big plant.
"You ever done something entirely... antithetical to what you've been socialized to believe is right?
"Daniel. I'm a gay man from the South."
"What triggered you to overcome all those internalizations?"
"Eventually you develop a sense of self. An internal compass."
"I was raised to think lying was wrong," said Daniel. "Got nailed once when Efren caught me. And now he goes and pulls the
biggest deception of all."
"Some of us make rules to keep ourselves in control," Ben replied. "And at some point, these rules become meaningless.
Because ultimately life is beyond our control."
At home Daniel sifted through mail. He thought he might cry but no tears came. He retrieved the little flyer from his knapsack,
which had a picture of a woman in a lotus pose. He turned it over in his hands, located the phone number and left a message on
one of Michelle's cell phones.
***
The Buddha production was well-attended, more so than Daniel anticipated. It was also mesmerizing. By the end of Michelle's
sessions, he had succeeded in psychologizing the production entirely, so that the Buddha character embodied her jealousy of the
rich and the mendicant narrator represented her childhood. With such deconstruction, it was hard to expect anything to be art.
Just two seats down from Daniel was Alain, hair gelled and collar erect. Definitely collar stays. Dapper fuck. He spent the whole
intermission on his Blackberry. Finally disconnecting, Alain looked up and down the evacuated rows, his eyes settling on Daniel.
"Excuse me, sir?"
Daniel almost looked behind himself.
"I'm Alain D'Avila. My wife is producing this show. Might I ask a favor? I've got to run. Could I trouble you to bring these roses
to my wife?"
"Thanks, man," and a wink were Daniel's remuneration for taking the exaggerated bundle. Alain recessed into the depths of the
auditorium, then vanished.
After the finale, Daniel parted the heavy curtains. Michelle was directing the storage of various boxes while receiving various
congratulators. Daniel explained what had happened, forcing himself to look at her, to read her face. In place of the
disappointment he expected was something like resolve. She accepted the roses, placing them on top of a file cabinet.
Someone wheeled a dolly stacked with boxes to her.
"I'm going to have to take these home," she said. "I'll take them to my car."
She smiled at Daniel. "Unbelievable. In my old life I had a team of assistants. Why are they called ivory towers again?"
Daniel offered to help with the boxes. They didn't all fit in Michelle's car, so Daniel followed her to her condo. Michelle and Alain
lived in a converted corset factory that once thrived before manufacturing had moved south and eventually overseas. There was
a spacious brick fireplace in the living room.
After accommodating the last box, Michelle asked Daniel to wait and disappeared into the kitchen. Daniel found the fire starter
and flicked it on and off. Why did lighters work? How did any technology work? What was it like to be the first man on the
moon, stepping out into the surface in an untested spacesuit, untried weight boots, and the knowledge that you could fly off into
space instantly? In his mind came an image of floating away from his landing module, tether severed. The surface of the moon
receding from all sides and behind it rising the luscious blue, white and brown marble. Kissing it all goodbye.
"We think the fireplace used to be a furnace," reached Michelle's voice from the kitchen.
A flat-screen television was mounted on an adjacent wall. Daniel ran his fingers over the pine casement. He fingered the remote
perched on top, inadvertently powering the TV. A show about penguins came on. The sound was off but the penguins waddled
purposively through the Antarctic.
Materializing at Daniel's side, Michelle tilted a wine glass to his lips. The aura was grapes from some goddess. Who was that
archer, Venus?
Daniel took the glass from her and set it on the mantle.
"I shouldn't have come," he said.
Her face made a question mark.
"Pursuing a personal relationship with a client is potential grounds for revocation of my license. And it's unethical."
"You're really saying this."
"It's well-documented that dual relationships with clients can have lifelong consequences."
Michelle formulated a social smile.
Daniel continued, "It's also for the therapist's good -- avoiding the appearance of impropriety."
"Daniel, it's me," she said. "I'm not interested in getting you into trouble. Look, I hereby fire you as my therapist. Now, enjoy
the Chateau Haut Brion."
Daniel picked up the fire starter again and set it back down. No more therapy? Was that a Merlot or... ? Michelle must have
sensed he was digging in, because she said,
"Ok, look. It's all my doing, okay? You bear no responsibility."
Now Daniel looked quizzical.
"Confession: before our first session, I went to your office -- as I said, I research my professionals. And Janice told me I might
find you at the club."
She stood beside him again, slightly taller than he in heels, close enough that he could smell a fruity perfume that made him want
to devour her. But he said,
"That's not why you went to that club, Michelle. You went to feel something you hadn't for a while."
"Is this about Alain? Because it's just a question of extricating myself at this point."
Daniel knew that was bullshit.
"Why are you so tense?" asked Michelle. "My acupressurist says it starts from the neck. Right here."
Her strong hands pressed the nape of his neck and temples. She led him to the couch and depleted her glass of wine. He
sagged into the plush softness.
"Where are you from, Daniel?" she said, still working her magic on his forsaken body.
"Puerto Rico."
"Before that."
"My father's family is from Cordoba. My mother's -- some from Spain, some from West Africa, as near we can tell."
Her hand ran through his hair. "You have Taino sensibilities."
"What in God's name does that mean?"
Michelle laughed one of her beautiful free laughs. "I don't know. Just came to me."
On the television, under the images of the Antarctic, a news ticker read, "5 soldiers killed in shootout with insurgents... "
Daniel said, "There's something I wanted to tell you. Your dream about Santorini wasn't about the FBI. It wasn't about Alain. It
had nothing to do with a metaphorical breathlessness."
"What now?"
"It was about a bodily breathlessness. A moment of apnea or something."
"Seriously?"
"Never mind. What I should really be saying is that I'm a real person, Michelle."
She raised his glass to his lips again and this time Daniel drank. He was so close he could see the pores on Michelle's divine face
and the frizz of her hairline. Therapy and dance were intimate in exactly the opposite way. Dance was joyfully intimate, therapy
painfully so. Dance partners knew the feel of each other's bodies, the rhythm of their movement. Therapists knew the little turns
of phrase and distractions used to keep real issues in the unconscious. If they were lucky, they got to know the real psyche. If
they were lucky.
"What are we doing?" he asked.
"Nothing bad." Her fingers traced his ear.
Then Daniel turned and kissed her. The external world receded and there was nothing but the energy of her mouth. Her strong
back finally again in his arms. Holding her.
Michelle whispered, "God, there was something about you when we first met. Let me see you, Daniel."
Acquiescing, undoing his zipper and wrangling off his khakis and shirt, Daniel stood before her in white briefs, their rigid contour
exposing his secrets. She looked him over and, taking his hands in hers, sat him back on the couch. Her hands, curious,
lingering, then discovered him the way he would have imagined. Daniel caressed her strong legs, sliding off her pants, then
stroking the softness between. He became aware of his own voice, coming from another part of his being, whispering something
about I can't wait until you have all of me. Sooner than he expected, Michelle began to say "yes" over and over, surrendering in
a soprano aria. Her hand closed around his and pushed his fingers further into her body, beating like a heart.
Then, Michelle freed his erection from his briefs, stroking and tasting like she hadn't seen its likeness in forever. He closed his
eyes and imagined she was... Michelle D'Avila. Here. Consuming him. And soon he, too, went to that place he wished he could
stay forever. Then he lay together with her on the couch, drifting into a dream. But one thing about his dream theory still
stumped him. What was encoded in those dreams of falling from a great height?
***
The next week Michelle did not call, as promised. Nor the week after. So Daniel immersed himself in the lives of clients. He took
up with Emily again. He read, he listened to Mozart. He did everything possible to ride out the dopamine spike. It was too risky,
too fucked-up to call, the therapist coveting the patient. There was nothing to be done. As they days went on and became
weeks, their encounter became like a dream. So this was missing someone fiercely.
He went back to Ben's office one windy day when the crocuses had gone and the tulips were in stride. At Ben's door, he heard
his friend's calm voice on the phone,
"Well it's going to be hard if you've got these things staring atcha... there's a clinic at the military hospital... yes, I'll wait outside."
Daniel slipped into the group therapy room nearby and Ben dashed by. After Ben was out of sight, Daniel left the building. And
outside its brick walls, Daniel confessed his transgression.
"What are you going to do now?" asked Imaginary Ben.
"I have no fucking clue."
***
One day, when university was out for the summer, the town wrung dry of students, Janice handed him a message:
Michelle DeAvila (203) 432-5555. Your former client?
He left a voicemail. Michelle materialized that afternoon.
"How are you?" Daniel whispered into the soundproof room.
It was over between her and Alain. Ended two months ago. Daniel asked her what she planned to do.
"Take some time for myself. Travel, maybe."
"You know -- I missed you," he said.
"Yes. I'm so sorry, Daniel."
"I guess I wonder if you felt that too," said Daniel.
"Of course I did. I just feel so depleted right now. I just... "
His therapy clock stared at him from the desktop. Michelle went to write out a check, and Daniel shook his head no. Then he got
up and took her in his arms. A sigh left Michelle's lips, of pleasure and torment at the same time. If he had been asked to paint
the moment, he would have likely painted helix shards of a fallen building.
"I'm sorry I didn't call," Michelle said. "I need to go slow, Daniel."
Then, with some rationale related to her vibrating phone, Michelle was gone. A torrent of thoughts besieged Daniel -- a flood of
emotions, really, centered around the concept that changing a person was so terribly hard to do. He thought of Efren and the
woman with the master's degree. Did she make him feel this much?
Daniel opened his desk drawer. He removed the old book about the Antikythera Mechanism, which he had retrieved from a box of
Efren's stuff when his parents divorced and sold their house. One page was dog-eared, a page that contained an illustration of
the various gear assemblies making the thing run. Efren would have spent time studying that page.
For the first time Daniel noticed, tucked in the back cover of the book, a folded printout of one of Efren's favorite poems. It was
from the book of poetry Efren kept in his old study, propped against the computer monitor. The Portuguese gradually revealed
itself to Daniel, and his eyes came upon a familiar line:
Mas eu te possuirei como ninguem porque poderei partir.
But I will possess you like no one because I will be able to leave.
That was a lie. He'd possessed her not at all -- what they'd had was tantric abstinence.
Maybe this was his life: Ben, Emily, his mom -- even Efren. Maybe these were the people on his journey. Maybe his clients were
too, God help them, casualties as they were of life, biology, and sometimes war. What a measure of gratitude he owed the
universe for the luxury to suffer existentially. Daniel checked his schedule, saw that one more client was due, leaned back in his
chair, and concentrated on clearing his mind of extraneous thought.