The Mind Game
Page 4
“If you ask me, Jack—and you are asking me—you’re taking it too seriously,” Bob Shumway said, sipping at his drink. “That’s what women are like, is all. ”
They were sitting at the bar at the Celebrity Center, and for once Weller wasn’t even noticing who was and who wasn’t in the place. He felt spooky and strange discussing Annie with Bob. He had never been one to chew over his relationship with his wife with one of the boys, considering it a kind of treason to the primary loyalty in his life. But lately he had come more and more to feel the need to share his troubles with someone, particularly since Annie’s growing obsession with Transformationalism was beginning to seem like the same land of treason to the primary loyalty she owed him. So here I am, he thought, crying in my beer with Bob at the Celebrity Center while Annie is downtown being processed by the same people who run this place. It had a kind of awful symmetry to it.
“If you notice,” Bob said, “it’s women who tend to get involved in these mind games more than men. Est, Arica, Esalon, the ladies get involved in it first and drag the old man along for the ride. Why, you may ask?”
“Why, I may ask. ”
“Because while we’re out working and home worrying about work, they’ve got all those empty hours to fill.”
“That sounds like obsolete piggery to me,” Weller said. “Besides, Annie isn’t a bored housewife; she’s got her career.”
“Which at this stage consists mainly of sitting around waiting for her agent to call, right?” Bob said.
“Sorry. You can’t sell me Annie as a victim of the bored-hausfrau syndrome.”
“Okay, then look at women’s lib—”
“You can’t sell me Annie as a women’s libber either. ”
“Well, then,” Bob said out of the side of his mouth, “would you like to buy a duck? Seriously, Jack, what I mean is that women have been cut loose from their old housewifely roles, and they’re thrashing around trying to figure out how the world works now, so they try their consciousness-raising groups, this guru, that guru, Transformationalism, whatever. It’s a phase, it’ll pass, you’re taking it too seriously. After all, what’s Annie really doing? Going to the L.A. Transformation Center twice a week. Big deal. Believe me, better that than she should be hanging around with bull-dyke storm-trooper feminists; that I have lived through.”
“It’s not the lousy two nights a week at the Center,” Weller said, “it’s living full-time with the deathless words of John B. Steinhardt.” Only last night it had even penetrated the bedroom… .
Sexually, things had been screwed up lately to begin with. Something had been keeping them from making love on nights that Annie went for processing. Weller could not bring himself to make an approach. It seemed to him that Annie was putting out totally turned-off vibes, as if what went on at the center was absorbing the same kind of energy that went into sex, or as if his attitude toward the processing made him an object of distaste. Of course, it could also be that his resentment drove the possibility of intimacy from his psyche, but whatever it was, never-on-Tuesdays-or-Thursdays was becoming an iron-clad rule.
It was the first time in their marriage that their lovemaking had ritualized into pattern. Spontaneity was lacking, and when they did make love, Annie had trouble coming, or was punishing him by making it difficult, withholding her passion and moving her body from some deep inner distance. And Weller found himself having trouble lasting, or caring less and less about satisfying her. Sex had become an ambiguous battlefield.
Last night they had reached the pits. Weller found himself lying atop her, flesh moving on flesh in a strange, passionless silence, and all at once he perceived himself as a machine, pumping away on another machine to produce a mechanical response. On and on it went, in, out, in, out, like an oil-field pump doggedly working a dry well, and he felt an anger building within him, a trapped weariness not of the flesh.
Finally he got petulantly tired of waiting for her to come; he just didn’t give a damn, and he let himself go in an orgasm that was a mere relief from sexual constipation, even an act of self-involved aggression. Then he rolled off her, and they lay side by side glaring at each other in the semidarkness.
Annie finally broke the awful silence. “Don’t you think it’s time we finally talked about this?” The very reasonableness of her voice made Weller sick inside. They had never gone into sexual postmortems before; they had never had to. Talking about it seemed to be a terrible confrontation with the possibility that something between them might be in mortal danger.
“We’ve really developed a block in the sexual area,” Annie went on relentlessly. “I’ve completed my psychomap, so I know where my blocks are. Creative commitment. Motherhood. Competitiveness. But my processor hasn’t uncovered any blocks in the sexual area, so it’s got to be something you’re generating, Jack. I really think you should begin processing now. It’s beginning to seem essential to our relationship.”
“Listen to you!” Weller exploded. “Listen to how you’re talking about us, like some goddamn Transformationalist textbook, like we were bugs under John Steinhardt’s microscope! It’s unreal, it’s inhuman. Can’t you see that it’s this Transformationalism garbage that’s causing the trouble in the first place?”
“Your reaction to Transformationalism is the problem,” Annie said. “You’re blocking on my Transformation. You feel threatened, left out, even jealous.” Her calm, clinical voice spouting the damn jargon was totally, patronizingly, infuriating.
“How long is this crap going to continue?” Weller asked. “Aren’t the four weeks up this Thursday?” After that, he hoped, things would get back to normal.
“I’ve signed up for the next six weeks at the regular rate,” she told him.
“Jesus H. Christ!”
“I know you’re blocking on this,” she said in a tone of maddening sympathy, “but try to understand. I’ve completed my psychomap, so we know where my blocks are, but I’ve just started working on them with meditative deconditioning. If I had some disease, you wouldn’t want me to stop going to the doctor as soon as it had been diagnosed. You’d want me to keep on till I was cured. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
“What’s the point indeed!” Weller snarled.
She laid her head on his bare chest. “Won’t you give it a try?” she cooed softly. “Even without a brainwave monitor I can feel the block you have on my Transformation. A processor could map it in a single session. I’m transforming, Jack. I feel that I’m near the takeoff point where transformation becomes permanent and ongoing. I don’t want to look back and see you trapped in the same old instantaneous persona while I keep growing. It would break my heart. Don’t you want to know why you’re reacting this way to my Transformation? Don’t you want to get rid of the block?”
Weller stroked her hair, feeling sad, feeling shut out, and yet at the same time determined not to be sucked in. Poor baby, he thought, what are they doing to you? “I want to get rid of this whole business,” he said. “Can’t you just forget about it? For me. For us.”
“No, I can’t,” she said. “Not even for you. Not even if I wanted to. If only you’d try it, Jack, you’d see what I mean. …”
“It’s even screwing us up in bed,” Weller told Bob Shumway softly.
Bob frowned sympathetically. “Have you tried putting your foot down?” he suggested.
“All the way to the floor.”
“I mean making it a me-or-it proposition,” Bob said.
A bubble of chill formed in Weller’s gut. “I think maybe I’m afraid to do that,” he said. “Besides, it’s not the way I feel.”
Bob’s expression brightened artificially. He glanced around the room, bobbing his head at a couple of attractive women. “Well then, maybe a little fresh pussy,” he said. “Make you feel livelier, and the smell of it on you just might put the old lady back on her toes.”
Weller grimaced distastefully. “I’m not into playing those games,” he said.
Bob Shumway laugh
ed brittlely. He looked down into the depths of his drink. “You do have a problem, boy,” he said.
“—no, Harry’—”
“—I don’t care—”
“—well, maybe I should look for a new agent—”
“—all right, if you want to talk—”
“—not till next Wednesday—”
Annie hung up the phone and walked back to the kitchen table where Weller was finishing up the remains of his big Sunday brunch. “What was that?” he asked.
“Harry,” Annie said. “The actress who was cast in a refrigerator commercial they’re shooting Tuesday got appendicitis, and he got me the assignment to fill in.”
“Great.”
“Great?” Annie said, taking a sip of coffee. “I turned it down.”
“What?”
“I had to. I’ve got a processing session on Tuesday, and I would’ve missed it. Besides, I’ve decided that there’s no point in expending energy on something as meaningless as a commercial.”
Weller leaned back in his chair and stared at this strange creature his wife was becoming. “Don’t you think this has gone far enough?” he said. “Now you’re turning down a part because you don’t want to miss a processing session and making up an artsy-fartsy rationalization. Don’t you think you’ve lost your sense of proportion?”
“There’s a rule that you’re not supposed to miss a session unless you’re sick,” Annie said. “It would show a lack of commitment.”
“What about your commitment to your career?” Weller snapped.
“To what?” Annie said. “To making meaningless commercials? To doing walk-ons in stupid television segments? It’s all ego, Jack. I’m beginning to understand that now. It’s nothing. A maximized person has to have a sense of commitment to something beyond ego-feeding games, to something of absolute value. That’s why they have the rule, and it makes sense. ”
“Annie, Annie,” Weller sighed, “can’t you see what’s happening to you? I’m really getting worried. ”
“So am I. About us. I think were in danger of drifting apart.”
Hearing her voice his own formless dread sent a pang of fear through Weller. Through career frustrations, swinging, arguments, occasional bad sex, money problems, it had never come to this. Breaking up had never before been a possibility in their universe. However bad things had looked, the assumption had always been that they would work through it together. At the same time, having it out on the table gave him a certain hope. Maybe she was finally ready to face up to what was going on. “It hurts me to hear you say that,” he said, “but I’m glad you’re at least facing the problem.”
“Game it through from my side,” Annie said. “I’m beginning to ride the wavefront. I’m working through my blocks, which means I’m changing, and I can’t stop changing. I love you, and I look back and see you frozen in the same old static matrix. I’m moving, and you’re standing still. How can we not drift apart? You’ve got to begin Transformational processing, Jack. You’ve got to open yourself up to the changes I’ve opened myself up to. Don’t you see how your block on the subject is just a sign of how desperately you need processing? I don’t want to have to travel on alone, but I’ve got to travel on. I don’t want to lose you, I want you to share this with me.”
Her voice was so tender, her face so sincere, and the thought of losing her to this thing such an ache in his chest, that Weller made the effort to see it through her eyes. What if it were really true? What if her personality really were expanding and deepening and he was fighting it out of some mingyness of the soul? What if it were his head that was screwed on crooked … ?
He wrenched his mind out of that mode, for that was exactly the kind of thinking they used against you. Doubt your own center and you were lost. For facts were facts, and the fact was that Transformationalism was doing real damage to Annie. If only their relationship were suffering, he might be able to persuade himself that it was some failing in himself, a lack of courage to dare the leap into the unknown. But here was Annie turning down a part, becoming indifferent to her career, maybe losing her agent. And none of that had anything to do with his head. Reality had to be dealt with and since she was incapable, he was elected.
“And if you had to choose between me and Transformationalism?” he said.
“Don’t say that! You don’t understand. It’s not a matter of choice. I can’t go back, I can’t be the person I was any more than men can go back to being monkeys. You’ve got to come to me, there is no way on Earth I can go back to where you are. Don’t fight it, Jack. Don’t get left behind.”
When Weller was ten, a group of his friends had gathered in the school yard to plan a childish shoplifting spree. His whole circle of close friends was in the group, and they all urged, indeed demanded, that he go along. But some moral stubbornness in Weller would not let him do it. They had called him chicken, faggot, ball-less wonder, everything boys can inflict on a kid whose courage is called into question. But Weller had stood his ground, and eventually they left him, alone and friendless in the empty school yard. They’ll change their minds, he had thought, through gathering tears, but not really believing it. And eventually they had. After a few days they accepted him back into the group again.
But now Weller felt like that little boy standing alone in the school yard; knowing what was right and feeling forlornly abandoned for his goddamn virtue. It had passed then, and he told himself it would pass now, but a part of him didn’t believe it. A part of him already felt that he might end up standing there forever, little boy lost in the empty school yard.
It had been a week since Weller had set foot inside the Transformationalist Celebrity Center. As Transformationalism’s tendrils insinuated themselves deeper and deeper into the masonry of his marriage, the place had become an object of loathing to him. Indeed he had even begun to conceive a certain irrational dislike for the basically innoccent Bob Shumway who just happened to have introduced them to the Celebrity Center.
But when Annie told him that her processor, Clyde Franker, was going to be there tonight and wanted to meet him, that was more than enough to make Weller willing to invade the enemy’s ground. Face to face, no third-rate used-guru salesman can be a match for me, he thought, sitting at a table alone with Annie, nursing his drink and waiting for Franker to arrive. I’m a trained director and I’ll show this prick up for the phony he is.
Annie sat there nervously, not touching her drink, looking sidewise at the entrance every few minutes. She hadn’t really told him what this was about, only that Franker was interested in meeting him and that she felt it was important to her for him to agree. But that was all right with Weller; he didn’t care what number the processor thought he was going to run, his adrenalin was flowing, and he was going to direct this little charade.
“Clyde! Over here!” Annie was waving at a tall, thin, grayhaired man in a tan suit who had just entered the room. He walked over to the table, nodded to Annie, handed Weller a somewhat moist palm.
“Hello, Mr. Weller,” he said in a smooth bass voice, “I’m Clyde Franker.” His hair was barbered to the point of sculpture, his aging skin looked pink and scrubbed, and his blue eyes radiated insurance-salesman frankness. He looked like a television announcer to Weller, and in fact Weller wondered if he might not have seen him in a local commerical or two.
“Annie’s told me quite a lot about you, Jack,” Franker said.
“Has she?” Weller said, glancing at Annie, whose eyes were shifting nervously back and forth between Franker and himself.
“Indeed,” Franker said. “As her meditative deconditioner, I would naturally learn something of her external environment, of which you, of course, are a major part.”
“Of course,” Weller said evenly.
“And Transformationalism seeks to deal with the whole person, not just the mind in isolation,” Franker said. “So we must concern ourselves with the objective life of the member in addition to the subjective mental reality.”
“Jack!” Annie cried, a look almost of terror on her face. “Don’t—”
But Franker cut her off with a raised palm, a cocking of his head, exhibiting a degree of control that Weller found frightening and infuriating. “Such is your perception, Jack,” he said calmly. “But I hope we can alter that. First, because your attitude is seriously interfering with the progress of Annie’s processing, and second, because we want to help you too.”
Franker paused, as if waiting for a response, for the straight line.
Weller let him wait a good long time, breaking the rhythm. Finally he said: “You might as well make your pitch.”
Franker hesitated, as if he had been thrown off-stride. But he recovered quickly. “Your attitude is not uncommon,” he said. “We know what it is, and we know how to deal with it. Annie has achieved a significant degree of Transformational consciousness. You, without processing, are frozen in a lower evolutionary state. It’s as if both of you had lived together as high-school graduates for years, and then suddenly Annie went to college and got an advanced degree. Surely you can see that that is an unstable situation. Annie’s Transformation makes you feel insecure and threatened—which is not paranoia but an accurate perception of reality—and your lower state of consciousness acts as a drag on Annie’s progress.” Franker paused, smiled ingenuously at Weller, got a fisheyed stare back, then continued, trying to stare Weller down as he spoke. “Experiments have shown that for the first two years of life a human being and a chimpanzee can be raised as equal siblings. However, once the human begins to talk, to develop an inherently higher state of consciousness, such a relationship is no longer possible.”