Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel

by Peter Cameron

  “No,” I said. “It’s the other way around. Happy people make good food and fashion. If you’re happy you don’t want to eat potted meat or haggis. If you’re happy you want to wear clothes that make you look beautiful, not sensible shoes and woolens. I guess one’s mood doesn’t affect the weather, but it might. It’s possible.”

  Dr. Adler was quiet for a moment, and then said, “I’m surprised to hear that you don’t like to talk.”

  I know she meant this as an encouraging observation and not an accusation, but something prevented me from responding accordingly. “Well, I don’t,” I said.

  “I don’t doubt you,” she said. “I’m just surprised. You sound quite articulate to me, and it also seems as if you enjoy talking.”

  “Well, I don’t,” I said, and I could hear how ridiculously petulant I sounded.

  “Why? What is it about talking that you don’t like?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t enjoy it.”

  “Is there anyone you enjoy talking with?”

  I thought immediately of my grandmother, and then I thought of John: I liked talking to him, or listening to him. “Yes,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “My grandmother and the guy that runs my mother’s gallery.”

  “And what is it about them that makes you feel that way?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “They’re both smart, and funny. They don’t say stupid or boring things. Or obvious things. Most of what people say seems so obvious to me. And then they repeat it about thirteen times.”

  “And what is it about them as listeners that makes you enjoy talking to them?”

  “I just like them. I respect them. It seems worthwhile to talk to them. I don’t feel that way about many people.”

  “I see,” she said. “So if you met more people that you liked and respected, you would enjoy talking more?”

  “You would be free to conclude that,” I said.

  “And you don’t think you might meet people like that at college? You’re going to Brown, correct?”

  “Supposedly,” I said.

  “I don’t understand. Don’t you think you might meet interesting people you would respect at Brown?”

  “No,” I said. “I do not.”

  “Why do you think that? What do you base that assumption upon?”

  “Because I don’t like people my age very much. Especially when they are gathered in large groups. Which is exactly what I believe college is all about.”

  “So you’d be opposed to going to any college?”

  “Well, any college comprised of a large group of people my age.”

  “What is it about people your age you don’t like?”

  “I just don’t like them. I find them boring.”

  “Boring?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you find them boring? What do you base that judgment on?”

  “It’s not a judgment,” I said. “It’s just a fact. It’s how I feel.”

  “So you think it’s all right to feel something generally about a large segment of the population, a certain group of people, a race or a creed of people, and conclude it is a fact that they are that way?”

  “I didn’t say it was a fact that people my age are boring. I said it was a fact that I find them boring.”

  “And you’re comfortable with that distinction?”

  “Yes. It’s not as if I want to gas them or lynch them. I just don’t particularly want to go to college with them.”

  “I see,” she said.

  “I know I’m not supposed to comment on what you say, but I really wish you would stop saying ‘I see.’”

  “Why?”

  I said nothing.

  “Does it bother you that I see?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then why don’t you like me to say it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t really think it means that you see. Or I guess it means that you see, but not only that. It means that you see, and you don’t approve. It implies a judgment, I think—an unfavorable judgment.”

  “It’s a very neutral statement,” she said. “It implies no judgment whatsoever. Perhaps you’re projecting a judgment upon me.”

  “Perhaps I am,” I said. “But can something be very neutral? Isn’t neutrality an absolute, like uniqueness?”

  She was silent a moment, and then she said, “Why do you think it’s so important for you to control how other people speak?”

  I hate questions that presuppose an idea. People think they can get away with things by doing that. “I wasn’t aware I did that,” I said.

  “Really?” she asked. “You have no awareness of that?”

  “That is what I said,” I said.

  “I know it’s what you said. I’m asking you if it’s true.”

  “Do you think I would lie to you?”

  “My question indicates that I do,” she said.

  I was a bit taken aback by the tone of her voice. “I suppose yes, I am aware of something like that. But I don’t think I control how other people speak.”

  “What is it that you do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t like it when language is misused. I think people should speak correctly and clearly. Accurately.”

  “Why do you think that’s important to you?”

  I didn’t say anything, because I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Do you think that tendency encourages people to talk to you?”

  The answer was obvious, so I refused to give it.

  We sat there for a long moment, shrouded in a hostile, somewhat sad silence. Finally she said, “Well, our time is up. I’ll see you back here at the same time on Thursday. Does that work for you?”

  “I thought I was coming once a week.”

  “I think two sessions a week would be better,” she said. “At least for now. Is that a problem for you?”

  “Not logistically,” I said.

  “Is it a problem in any other way?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Good,” she said. “Then I’ll see you on Thursday at four-thirty.”

  8

  June 2003

  MY SESSIONS WITH DR. ADLER OFTEN BEGAN IN SILENCE. Actually they often progressed in silence, for Dr. Adler quickly made it clear that she was primarily, if not exclusively, a reactive therapist: apparently her methodology did not condone the initial asking of questions. So unless I had something to say, which I often did not, we would spend much of our sessions sitting in our chairs facing each other. She would smile at me with her false, unvarying smile, trying to look open and accepting, I suppose, as if all I needed to spill my guts was a friendly face. My silence was, I admit, often a response to hers: I didn’t see why the burden of speaking should always be mine. And so I would often remain silent even when I could think of something to say, because the idea of articulating whatever it was I thought seemed too expected of me, too cooperative, too responsive. There are people who are uncomfortable with a silence, who rush to fill it by saying anything, thinking that anything is better than nothing, but I am not one of those people. I am not at all disquieted by silence. And neither, apparently, was Dr. Adler.

  One day our session began in this quiet (silent) way, but it was not wholly due to my recalcitrance—I just couldn’t think of anything to say. Dr. Adler had instructed me to always say whatever I was thinking, but this was difficult for me, for the act of thinking and the act of articulating those thoughts were not synchronous to me, or even necessarily consecutive. I knew that I thought and spoke in the same language and that theoretically there should be no reason why I could not express my thoughts as they occurred or soon thereafter, but the language in which I thought and the language in which I spoke, though both English, often seemed divided by a gap that could not be simultaneously, or even retrospectively, bridged.

  I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of simultaneous translation, like at the UN where everyo
ne is wearing little transmitters in their ears and you know that somewhere behind the scenes the simultaneous translators are listening and transforming what is said from one language into another. I understand how such a process is possible, but to me it seems miraculous—the idea that words can be thrown up into the air in one language and alight in another as quickly as a ball is thrown into the air and caught. I think there is some sort of sieve in my mind that prohibits the rapid (let alone simultaneous) transference of my thoughts into speech. Like one of those mesh drain guards in a bathtub, there is something that prevents my thoughts from leaving my mind, and so they collect, like those nasty damp coils of hair stuck to the mesh, and have to be forcibly removed.

  I was thinking about these notions of speech and thought, thinking how difficult it would be for me to articulate them—or not difficult, but wearisome, as if thinking them was enough and expressing them would be redundant or inferior, for everyone knows things are diminished by translation, it is always best to read a book in its original language (À la recherche du temps perdu). Translations are merely subjective approximations and that is how I feel about everything I say: it is not what I am thinking but merely the closest I can get to it using the faulty reductive constraints of language. And so I often think it is better to say nothing than to express myself inexactly. This is what I was thinking when I realized that Dr. Adler was speaking. “What?” I said.

  “You seem preoccupied. What are you thinking?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  She made a face indicating how lame she thought that was.

  “Sometimes I resent having to express my thoughts,” I said. “I was thinking about that.”

  “And why is that?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just that they’re mine. People don’t go around sharing their blood or whatever. I don’t see why we should always be expected to share such intimate parts of ourselves.”

  “People give blood,” she said.

  “Yes, but not constantly. Just a little bit, like once a year.”

  “So you’re saying you should only share your thoughts a little bit, once a year?”

  “No,” I said. “Of course I wasn’t saying that. And if you honestly thought I was saying that, it only proves my point that talking is ridiculous because it’s impossible to communicate precisely what you think.”

  “Do you really believe that?” Dr. Adler asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I do.”

  She paused for a moment, as if she was considering this statement, and then she said, “Well, why don’t you tell me about what happened in Washington?”

  I was shocked. She had never asked me a specific question like that or expressed interest in any particular event in my life. “What?” I asked.

  “I said, Why don’t you tell me about what happened in Washington. I’ve realized we’ve never talked about it. I think it would be good if we did.”

  “I really don’t want to talk about what happened in Washington,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It’s stupid. I was—I couldn’t deal with it and I did something stupid. But it’s over, it’s in the past. I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “You don’t know? My parents didn’t tell you?”

  “No,” she said. “I wouldn’t be asking you if I knew.”

  I didn’t believe that for a moment.

  “It was some sort of youth government seminar you attended?”

  I could tell she was trying to trick me into talking about it by asking innocuous questions.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Tell me about it,” she said.

  “It was this stupid supposedly nonpartisan program that brings two supposedly intelligent students from each state to Washington, D.C., for a week so they can be indoctrinated in how wonderful the American government is.”

  “And so your problem had to do with the nature of the program?”

  “Well, no. I mean, that was certainly a problem, but I could deal with that.”

  “Yes, I think you’d be rather resistant to indoctrination.”

  I chose not to respond to this blatant attempt at flattery, but Dr. Adler was not deterred. “So what was it, then?” she asked. “What was the problem?”

  “That question presupposes many things,” I said.

  She said nothing but made a motion with her hand, encouraging me to enumerate.

  “It presupposes there was a ‘problem.’ It presupposes that I know what the problem was. It presupposes I know how to articulate the problem. It presupposes that I want, or am willing, to articulate the problem.”

  “I wouldn’t argue with any of that,” said Dr. Adler. “But the question itself remains.”

  “I hate this idea,” I said. “This idea that there’s a problem, that there is something as simple as a problem, and you can identify the problem, and then fix the problem, and then there isn’t any problem. I didn’t have a problem in Washington. I had a thousand problems, maybe. A million.”

  “Well, what was the problem that led to your being arrested?”

  “I wasn’t arrested. Did my parents tell you I was arrested?”

  “No,” Dr. Adler said. “I’m sorry. They said there was some trouble with the police.”

  “So you assumed I was arrested?”

  “I suppose I did.”

  “Well, I wasn’t arrested. And the so-called trouble with the police wasn’t my fault. It was my parents’. They got the police involved. They filed a missing persons report. If they hadn’t done that, everything would have been fine. Or finer. Or less bad.”

  “Were you missing?”

  I realized she had tricked me into talking about what had happened in Washington, and even though I felt okay about talking about it, I wanted to make it clear I was aware I had been tricked, so I didn’t answer.

  After a moment she repeated the question, very quietly, as if asking it gently would have a better effect.

  “Yes,” I said. “I was missing.”

  “For how long?”

  “Two days,” I said. “It was only two days.”

  “Two days is a long time to be missing.”

  “Well, I wasn’t missing. I knew where I was.”

  “Is that what you think ‘not missing’ means?”

  “‘Not missing’ means ‘found.’”

  “And were you found?”

  “Eventually. Or not really found. I turned up. I reappeared.”

  “Where had you been?”

  “In Washington. Mostly in the National Gallery. I stayed in a hotel for two nights.”

  “So you left the seminar?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I thought if I stayed there I would kill myself.”

  “Why? What was so bad about the seminar that made you feel that way?”

  “I told you. It wasn’t just one thing. Or two things. Or twenty things. It was a million things. It was everything. Every moment hurt. I hated every moment.”

  Dr. Adler was quiet. She was holding her hands in that way she liked to hold her hands, her fingers extended, each fingertip touching its correspondent, waiting patiently for me to continue.

  9

  April 2003

  WEDNESDAY NIGHT WAS “ENTERTAINMENT NIGHT: OUT ON the Town!” As opposed to Monday, which was CIA night, or Tuesday, which was “On the Ground, in the Air, Undersea: Armed Forces Night.” I actually don’t know how I survived until Wednesday, for The American Classroom was unbearable from the very first moments.

  In the hotel room I unfolded the cot that was by process of elimination to be mine, and I felt immediately infantilized and put at a disadvantage. My roommates, Dakin (Dakin sat beside me at dinner that night, and in what I thought was an inspired attempt to engage him in conversation, I asked him if he knew that Tennessee Williams’s younger brother was named Dakin. I knew that because I read Williams’s memoir [which is calle
d Memoirs] and I remembered I thought Dakin would be a good name for a dog [at least better than Miró]. Anyway, when I mentioned this to Dakin he looked at me kind of blankly and asked me if Tennessee Williams was a country singer. [I think he was thinking of Tennessee Ernie Ford.] I told him no, Tennessee Williams was a playwright, and Dakin looked at me like I was crazy and trying to trick him in some way, and turned away and never spoke to me again) and Thomas, sat on their adult-sized beds and watched me. I opened my cot and sort of tossed my suitcase on it in what I thought was an impressively casual masculine way, but the weight of the suitcase caused the two ends to snap back together with an alarming vehemence, swallowing my suitcase and startling me. “Goodness,” I said.

  I don’t know why I said Goodness. I never say Goodness. My grandmother says Goodness, but I don’t think I have ever said it in my life (as an exclamation, I mean), but there was something about the whole situation that had completely unnerved me and so I said Goodness. As soon as I said it I realized how imbecilic it sounded, and I heard my roommates chuckling behind me in that snorting way that always indicates you are being laughed at, not with. I thought about saying Shit or Fuck or Fucking Shit but I knew saying that would only intensify by contrast the patheticness of Goodness. So I said nothing, and cracked the cot back open emphatically, so it stuck.

  It was, as they say, downhill from there. There were a hundred representatives participating in The American Classroom, two from each state, and we were divided into two parties, the Washingtons and the Jeffersons. Two buses took us everywhere—the Washingtons rode in one while the Jeffersons rode in the other—and there was a lot of inane cheering and pounding on the windows when one bus overtook the other. I don’t understand this propensity to turn everything, like driving from the Russell Senate Office Building to Taco Bell, into a competition.

  We were encouraged to sit beside a different person every time we rode the bus, but on our very first trip (to the Capitol on Monday morning) a cadre of students who thought they were, and therefore were perceived as being, cool sat in the back of the bus and clearly claimed the territory. As an urban student who had taken the subway to school ever since I entered fifth grade, the whole world of school buses was foreign to me. I found it rather fascinating, in an anthropological kind of way. Whenever we got back on the bus there was this covert rush to get a seat near the back of the bus, which was interesting to watch because of course it was uncool to appear as though you wanted to be cool enough to sit in the back and uncool to look as if you needed to rush to get a back seat, because if you were genuinely cool the ineluctable rules of the universe would ensure you sat in the back. I usually sat very near the front of the bus with a girl named Sue Kenney from Pennsylvania. She was an earnest, hefty gal who could have used more (or some) deodorant, but she loved everything and everyone and was having THE BEST TIME OF HER LIFE! She seemed in many ways to be the polar opposite of me and in an odd way this seemed to ideally suit us to each other. She didn’t seem to notice that I barely said ten words to her, for she was constantly prattling and pointing out interesting things outside the window that we had just passed. I actually grew fond of her in a nastily superior kind of way, for she was so completely artless and optimistic and clueless, she didn’t care that she smelled bad or was fat or wore clothes unlike everyone else’s, she had some weird disconnect with life that kept her constantly bubbling, and you knew she would go blithely through her long horribly boring life thinking everything was just swell (the opposite of me).