Psych Major Syndrome

by Alicia Thompson

  “Freud would say the dream was a manifestation of my infantile sexuality,” I said wryly. “He would put it down to the same pleasure-seeking impulse that babies have to touch their mouths and play with themselves.”

  Ami wrinkled her nose. “Ew,” she said. “All right, well, maybe not Freud, then. What about the other people? What would they say?”

  Dream analysis has never been something I’ve been particularly into, and we hadn’t even gotten there in Intro Psych yet, so I had to struggle to remember what I had learned in AP psychology. “Adler thought that dreams were experiments of possible answers to immediate problems,” I said after a beat.

  “So, maybe Nathan is the answer to your current problem with Andrew. Maybe you secretly want to get with him, and that’s what’s stopping you from committing fully to Andrew.”

  I felt an uncomfortable clenching in my gut. “That’s impossible,” I said. “Maybe the dream is just about opening myself up to being physical in general, and Nathan has nothing to do with it. After all, Jung said that dreams weren’t always unfulfilled wishes, and he often looked for the shadow in them. Maybe Nathan’s my shadow.”

  “What’s your shadow?”

  “The part of ourselves that we don’t like,” I said som-berly. “Maybe Nathan somehow reflects the most negative aspects of myself.”

  Ami wrinkled her forehead in a close approximation of her “psychology” look, with a healthy dose of “you’re crazy” thrown in for good measure. She was on the verge of saying something else when Tim and Li walked up.

  “We’ve been looking for you everywhere!” Tim cried. “I barely recognized you, Leigh—great haircut. Very chic!”

  “Thanks,” I said. In the intense conversation Ami and I had been having, I had quickly forgotten about my hair.

  “Well, girls, we should be going,” Tim said. “Wouldn’t want to get back too late!”

  I realized I hadn’t bought any souvenirs. All I had to mark my trip to San Francisco was a second-place certificate, a braid of my own hair, and a churning in my stomach that could have been because I was slightly lactose-intolerant but was more likely because of that stupid dream.

  “Can we just have a few more minutes?” I said. “I really wanted to buy something.”

  Tim made a production of looking at his SpongeBob SquarePants watch. “All right—five minutes,” he allowed. “But then meet us right back here at the bench.”

  I ran to the store we’d been in before, Ami trailing behind me. Without taking time to look around, I grabbed one of the confetti globes of San Francisco and took it up to the cashier.

  “Who’s that for?” Ami asked.

  “Andrew,” I said. I wanted to buy it as a peace offering, but also because I wanted to have something in my hands when I went over to his suite. It would make it a little easier when I told him that I was finally ready to take the next step.

  It was time Andrew and I had sex.

  FIGHT OR FLIGHT: The emotional experience associated with the sympathetic nervous system and managed by the hypothalamus during high arousal. An individual must respond to a threat by either fleeing or going on the offensive.

  OF course, it seemed utterly ridiculous later, when I was standing outside Andrew’s suite, that a San Francisco confetti globe was supposed to say, I want to have sex. I was trying to figure out if there was any way to shove the whole thing in my purse when Nathan opened the door.

  In my fumbling with the globe, I must have dropped it, but I was only dimly aware of the glass dome breaking open as it hit the linoleum in the hall. Nathan and I just stood there, staring at each other, neither of us reaching for it.

  The dream was still fresh in my mind, and I felt my face grow hot with the memory of what it was like to be held in his arms. I know it’s not like those things really happened, but seeing him now, standing so close I could smell the soap he used (Irish Spring?)—it almost felt as if they had.

  So it was perfectly understandable that I would be staring at him so oddly, given the events of the past weekend, but he was returning my gaze. There was no way he could have known about the dream…could he? Maybe it showed on my face. Or maybe Ami had told him. None of this made logical sense, but somehow nothing seemed impossible, the way his gaze was so intent on me now.

  “Wow,” he said.

  Oh my God, he knew. I had had impure thoughts about him, and he knew. It disgusted him, the fact that I had been so disloyal to Andrew. Even if not in the real world, I had betrayed Andrew in the dream world, and that’s just as bad, right? I had tried to convince myself it wasn’t, but who was I kidding? In my dream, I had let my boyfriend’s roommate put his tongue in my mouth!

  I licked my lips. “Okay, listen—”

  Nathan reached out to touch my hair. Just a slight touch, flipping a strand over his finger, but I felt my breath catch. Maybe he knew about the dream but wasn’t mad. Maybe he actually thought we could start something. Oh, crap, what if he wanted to start something?

  “Your hair, it’s…” There was a bemused look on his face.

  I’m such an idiot. Of course that’s why he’d been staring at me kind of funny—my haircut. I almost laughed out loud. And here I was stressing about a stupid dream.

  “It’s what?” I asked, a weirdly breathless note in my voice. What did it matter what Nathan thought?

  But I never got to hear the rest of his thought. At that point, Andrew appeared, pushing himself between Nathan and the door frame.

  His gaze was on Nathan as he said, “Well? You going to let her in or are you two just going to stand there?”

  Nathan moved out of the way, dark red streaking across his cheekbones, and I stepped into the suite.

  Finally Andrew turned, his head jerking back a little when he got his first full view of me. “You cut your hair,” he said flatly.

  I reached a reflexive hand up to the silky strands. “It was too long,” I said.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  Those four words, and already I could feel the self-confidence that had filled me with such happiness in San Francisco run down the drain. It angered me that he could make me feel this way, but it didn’t stop it from happening.

  “Don’t you like it?” I asked, my voice small.

  “Not particularly.”

  Nathan cleared his throat. “I think it looks great,” he said. I glanced at him, only just remembering that he was still in the room, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at Andrew.

  Andrew’s jaw clenched. “Stay out of this, Nate.”

  I expected Nathan to leave then, or to at least retreat to his room to play guitar the way he usually did. But he just stood there, glaring at Andrew. Finally, he turned to me.

  “Your long hair was beautiful, but shorter, it’s cute and spunky,” he said. “It’s very you.”

  He delivered the compliment almost aggressively, the words clipped. But somehow I didn’t doubt his sincerity. Nathan thought my hair was beautiful? And was he saying that he thought I was cute and spunky? Even as the warmth of his words spread through me, I felt more confused than ever.

  It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Andrew would react this way. While I hate change, he’s pathologically phobic about it. Over time, he would get used to my hair, and then he would love it. But for right now, I would have to accept that he didn’t like it.

  It wasn’t just my hair, either. There was a weird tension crackling in the room, as though there were a secret subtext and I didn’t have my decoder ring. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to figure it out.

  Then I remembered my original reason for the visit. “Oh!” I said, my voice falsely bright. “I almost forgot, Andrew. I brought you a sex present!”

  It took a few moments for the reality of what I’d just said to sink in, that stupid smile still pinned on my face. I had just said, “sex present.” I said it in front of Nathan, who was looking at me with a weird mixture of pity and something else, something I couldn’t pinpoint. Di
d he pity me because I had just made a royal ass of myself, or because he knew about my massive insecurities when it came to sex?

  But it wasn’t even pity, either. It was more like the look you might give a kid who was sure they would win that contest on the back of a cereal box, when really you knew the odds were against it. It was the look of someone who knew something but didn’t have the heart to tell you.

  “Leigh.” Andrew pinched the bridge of his nose as though he had a headache. “Why don’t we go in my room, and we can talk in there?”

  There was nothing unusual in that, so why did my insides twist? I followed Andrew into his room without glancing back at Nathan. I didn’t think I could stand to see that look on his face again.

  I had spent the entire drive over here rehearsing a little speech, and I decided to jump right in before I could be sidetracked. “I know these past few weeks have been hard,” I began.

  “You didn’t call, Leigh,” Andrew said. “You were gone for what, two days? And you didn’t call once.”

  “Last I checked, I didn’t have any missed calls from you, either,” I pointed out.

  “Don’t do that. I’m sick of you making it all about me.”

  “It’s at least half about you,” I said. “You are half of this relationship, believe it or not.”

  Andrew sighed. “But I’m not the half that needs to be fixed.”

  At first I was speechless, so incapable of comprehending this attack that I couldn’t even find the words. When I finally spoke, my voice came out in a whisper. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Come on,” Andrew said impatiently. “I’m talking about your massive insecurities, neuroses, complexes, whatever the hell you want to ‘diagnose’ them as. You can’t just let go. You can’t have fun. You can’t stop analyzing anything for just one second and think about what I may want or what our relationship might need.”

  “You’re talking about sex.”

  Andrew arched his eyebrows. “Among other things.”

  “Didn’t you even hear what I blurted out earlier?” My breath escaped in a sad approximation of a laugh. “I bought you a stupid confetti globe in San Francisco as a peace offering, as a sex present, for Christ’s sake. I wanted to show you that I am ready, that I want to take that next step in our relationship.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  I knew he wasn’t just talking about the globe. What do you mean? I wanted to ask, but I knew. And I didn’t want to hear it. I couldn’t stand the thought of all that subtext being put into words that couldn’t be taken back.

  Apparently Andrew had no such compunction, because he continued in the same voice he might use to tell an acquaintance the reading assignment for a class. “It’s too late, Leigh. I needed someone who’s a little more open, freer, more…sensual. At first, I thought if I just gave you time, you’d eventually get there. But it’s just not worth the effort anymore. You know me, Leigh. I don’t want to drive a Gremlin. I want the BMW, with a warranty and full maintenance.”

  Andrew’s car analogy was so ridiculous it was almost surreal, but my mind was still hung up on the first words he’d said. I needed someone. Needed. Someone.

  Needed. Past tense.

  “So who’s the BMW?” I asked.

  For the first time since I’d arrived, Andrew looked ill at ease. “It’s not what you think,” he said. “Nothing has happened. We only just started talking over the last week or so, really. And we just have this amazing chemistry, you know? I’ve never met anyone like her—such a free spirit.”

  I couldn’t think of anyone further from being a free spirit than Andrew. But right now I just wanted to know one thing. “Who. Is. She.”

  He hesitated. “Heather.”

  “Heather,” I repeated, the name twisting in my gut like a knife. And why not? If there was one thing anyone knew about Heather, it was that she liked sex. No waiting for a year, no condom drama with Heather. I thought of that night, of the way he’d touched me right there on that bed, and I wanted to throw up.

  “Like I said, nothing’s happened,” Andrew said, anxious for what—absolution? My heart was broken, scattered on the floor in little pieces that screamed out the name Heather, and still he cared only about himself. “Just hanging out, talking. I haven’t cheated on you, if that’s what you think.”

  “How does Nathan feel about this?” After all, Heather had been his kind-of girlfriend, even if he was going out with Sydney now. I don’t know why the answer was so important to me, but it was.

  Andrew blinked. “Nathan? There was nothing between them. They went out on one date, that was all, and Nathan said she wasn’t really his type. End of story.”

  Apparently not. That was only the beginning of the story, as far as I was concerned. “So you’re breaking up with me,” I said flatly.

  Andrew gave me that exasperated look again, as if frustrated that this was taking so long. “I thought that’s what I was saying,” he said, “when I was telling you that I think Heather is really more…what I’m looking for.”

  “You know this after a week,” I said. I flinched as though I’d been punched, the realization hitting me in my gut. “You knew this a few days ago, when I left. But still you talked about making it work and buying”—I choked on the words—“ribbed condoms, because you knew that’s what girls liked. You had her in mind, even then.”

  Tears were streaming down my face, the last sentence mangled in undignified hiccups that racked my body and left me gulping for air. Andrew tried to pat me on the back, as though I could be soothed, like one of those stupid robotic babies at the mentoring program. I shoved him away, knowing that if he touched me, somehow it would just be too much to bear. I wouldn’t fall apart as long as he didn’t touch me.

  He tried to say something else, but I decided I was done listening. Flinging open the door, I stalked out into the living room. There was Nathan, sitting on the couch. The TV wasn’t on, and I wondered if he’d heard the whole thing. He was sitting as straight as a sentinel, as though he were there to ensure that I would go quietly, and something inside me just snapped.

  “Are you happy now?” I said brokenly. “I know you never thought Andrew and I should be together. Well, I won’t be around to eat your precious cereal and ruin your college experience, and all because you couldn’t keep tabs on your little sex-kitten girlfriend.”

  Nathan looked at me silently, as though this were just as hard for him as it was for me. Well, screw him. He had no idea what this felt like. He had gone on one date with Heather. Andrew and I had been going out for almost a year and a half.

  Okay, just over a year—whatever. All I knew was that I didn’t deserve this.

  “Leigh,” Andrew said, and I heard it again, that note in his voice that said please don’t cause a scene, and not I’m sorry I hurt you.

  I spun to face him. “You leave me alone,” I said. “I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to see you, and I definitely don’t want to hear any more of your pompous, self-centered crap. You’re through with me, fine. Just leave me alone.”

  My fingers were clumsy on the doorknob, but even after I’d opened it I stopped short of leaving. There, scattered on the linoleum, I saw what remained of the San Francisco globe, now just shards of glass and bits of confetti around a little trolley car. I had the weird sensation of knowing I was about to lose it and yet being completely powerless to stop it.

  “And this,” I said, my hiccups now a cross between sobs and hysterical laughter, “this was for you and for our relationship and for our first time. But it’s all broken, right? Everything’s broken.”

  I knelt down, trying to scoop up the glass and confetti—for what, I don’t know. Maybe it seemed symbolic, although all it really meant was that I was acting completely pathetic over a ten-dollar souvenir that could never be whole again. I guess that’s symbolism for you, another term-paper topic to win a contest.

  And then Nathan was there, crouching beside me. Through my tears, I t
hought maybe he was just trying to help me pick up the mess. But then I realized he had my hands in his and was guiding them toward him, away from the glass.

  “Leigh, don’t,” he said, his voice husky and almost tender, but I didn’t want it. I sprang up, jerking my hands back as though they’d been burned, and ran blindly toward the parking lot. I didn’t look back, and this time, no one called after me.

  LEARNED HELPLESSNESS: A condition created by exposure to inescapable aversive events. This retards or prevents learning in subsequent situations in which escape or avoidance is possible.

  IN high school, there was this girl named Kristy Salazar who was always being dumped. She never did the breaking up—she always had it done to her, usually in very public and hurtful ways. Once a guy blasted a song on his car’s system about “ugly-ass bitches” or something like that. Another time, this kid actually raised his hand in class to announce that he no longer wanted to be with her. Most notoriously, her date to prom ditched her for his costar in the school musical. His male costar.

  It would have been really tragic, except that Kristy was a complete drama queen. After each breakup she was inconsolable, carrying on in class as though her best friend had just died. And I started to realize—she’s not crying because she was dumped. She was dumped because she won’t stop crying.

  I never thought I’d become Kristy Salazar, the girl who skips class and lounges around, a box of tissues glued to one hand. Before Andrew broke up with me, I’d just use toilet paper to blow my nose. But now, ever since what Ami was starting to refer to as the WWJD? Incident, I was a complete Kleenex convert. I had to be, for my nose’s sake.

  “You’ve got to snap out of it,” Ami would say. “What would jerkface do?”

  I sniffled. “Break up with his loving girlfriend for some sex maniac?”

  “The same girl he compared to his BMW,” Ami reminded me. “And no, but you’re close. Jerkface would wreck the best thing he’ll ever have, and all because he wanted to get some.”

  It reminded me of when I’d told my group at mentoring that sex wasn’t a competition, and I wasn’t looking to “get” any. How stupid. I burst into fresh tears, and Ami rushed to repair the damage. “Hey, there’s one Coke left in the fridge. What would jerkface do?”