25. Rickie
Rickie
Later, after the party is over, I pause in the upstairs hallway, listening. And I hear wild laughter from behind Daphne’s door.
I’m rocking a pair of low-slung athletic shorts and nothing else. But it would be rude not to say good night, right? I knock on the door.
“Yes?” Daphne calls. “Come in.”
I open the door and lean against the frame.
“Well hello ,” Violet says from the bed, where she and Daphne are seated together, a laptop propped up between them.
“Evening, ladies. Maybe you could keep the giggling to a low roar? I need a lot of sleep to look this good all the time.”
Daphne tries to roll her eyes at me, but it doesn’t quite work. She’s too busy admiring me. So I cross to the bed and lean down, dropping a kiss to the top of her silky head. “Good night. Have pleasant dreams.”
“Oh, she will,” Violet says.
“You shut up,” Daphne mutters. “Night, McFly.”
“Night, gorgeous.”
I stride out of there without a backward glance. But as I’m closing the door behind me, I hear Violet’s next comments. “Christ on a cruller, that boy is hot. I’d be jealous if I weren’t so happy for you.”
“Shhh,” Daphne hisses.
I step away, grinning. But there’s no fist pump. No victory dance. I’m still a wreck, who locks his door on the way into the room. The chair mocks me from its place against the wall. But I don’t move it against the door. I stay strong.
Then I pick up my phone to text Lenore. Do you have any time for me tomorrow? I had a weird day .
Her response comes almost immediately, and I feel a little guilty texting her so late. Someday that might be me—the guy getting panicky messages from patients at all hours. Could you make it to my office at 10? I could give you thirty minutes.
Sure. I’ll be there .
Are you okay right now? Need to call me?
I’m okay. I promise. See you tomorrow .
* * *
Early in the morning I meet Dylan in the dairy barn. I shovel cow shit at top speed while he does the milking. “Hey, D? I need to go to Burlington at breakfast time. Sorry for the late notice, but I need a couple hours off.”
He pops up from behind a cow. “Yeah, okay. No problem. Is there anything wrong?”
“Nope. Just an appointment I forgot about. You need anything from town? You can text me if you think of something.”
“I’m good,” Dylan says. “You’ll be back for the afternoon? Griff wants to finish the pest traps and do some cleanup from that storm.”
“Yeah—I’ll be back around noon.”
“Hey Rick—cash your checks while you’re in BTV.”
“What?”
“Your paychecks. Stop by the bank when you’re done, and cash them.”
“I don’t really need the money,” I point out.
“Nobody cares,” Dylan says, patting a cow on the rump so that she steps a little closer to the milking machine. “Everybody who works here gets paid. Even if they flake off to Burlington on the hottest day of the summer.”
“I’ll be back for the hottest part of it,” I point out.
“Likely story.” Dylan gives me a careless smile. “You can make it up to me in beer.”
“Now there’s a plan. I’ll pick something up on my way back.”
“I got one more big idea if you want to hear it,” Dylan says.
“Hit me.”
“Let’s fuck off this weekend and go hiking.”
“Where?”
“I was thinking of the Presidentials,” he says. “Ever climb Mount Washington?”
“Yeah, once during high school.” The White Mountains peaks of New Hampshire are some of the best hiking in New England.
“Well, I haven’t,” he says. “If we hike up and take the railway down, it could be a day trip.”
I consider this. “We should probably stay in an AMC hut, right?” That’s what I did in the past. The huts are a really unique experience.
They can each house a couple dozen hikers at a time in barracks-style rooms. For a reasonable fee, you get a bed, a blanket, a pillow and a hot dinner and breakfast. You bring your own sheets, and there aren’t any showers.
But you can refill your water bottle and wash up in the bathrooms.
“I thought of that,” Dylan admits. “But there wouldn’t be locks on the, uh, bedroom doors. So we don’t have to stay up there. We could get cheap hotel rooms and do two different day hikes.”
Dylan doesn’t really have the money for a hotel room. And it’s just stupid that my strange sleeping habits are preventing me from going on the kind of adventure that I’d enjoyed as a teenager.
“Look, why don’t you see if any of the huts have space?” I ask slowly. “I can deal with a couple of nights of crappy sleep.”
Dylan tilts his head to the side, as if trying to read me. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I insist. It’s just dawning on me that this is exactly the aversion therapy setup that I’d been trying to envision. A room full of well-intentioned strangers sleeping on top of a mountain for adventure.
Maybe I’ll conquer this shit. I’m tired of being a mess. I’m so sick of me.
* * *
A couple hours later I’m sitting in Lenore’s office, feeling a little foolish. She’s waiting for me to explain my emergency.
Let’s face it—I just drove more than sixty miles because I got pissed off when my penis took a time-out when I was about to have sex.
“So just how weird was your weird day?” she asks into the silence.
“Well…” I clear my throat. “Maybe your hunch was right about me. That there’s something weird going on with me and sex.”
“How do you figure?” she asks.
“You know the dual control model of arousal? Accelerators and brakes?” It’s a dumb question, because of course she does. It’s like asking a shrink if they’ve heard of Freud.
“Of course,” she says. “Excitation versus inhibition.”
“My inhibitions are really easily triggered,” I say in a casual voice. But I don’t feel all that casual about it. “Yesterday we were, uh, fooling around…”
Lenore grins. “You and Daphne, huh?”
“Don’t get too excited. I mean—I did. But then all of a sudden I didn’t.”
“What triggered you?” Her expression is calm and open.
I trust Lenore completely, and therapy is an excellent tool. But this is surprisingly hard to talk about. “It was just a door slamming in the breeze. It was loud, but completely understandable. But my dick didn’t care. I had, like, a full-on panic attack.”
“Tell me exactly how you felt in that moment,” she says.
“Uh, cold. Clammy.” I remember the way my sweat cooled into goose bumps. “And my heart felt jumpy. I was on, like, high alert. And I didn't want anyone to touch me.”
“Okay.” She folds her hands on the desk. “And how did that play out? Was it embarrassing? What did your partner do or say when this happened?”
“I was embarrassed. I still am. But it could have been worse. Daphne’s friend drove up a few seconds later, interrupting us anyway. So I’m not even sure Daphne noticed my…” I cringe.
“Dick deflation?” Lenore provides.
“Is that good clinical practice?” I yelp. “Putting words in the patient’s mouth?”
She merely shrugs. “I hate to break this to you, but losing an erection due to a moment of stress is perfectly normal for any man, at any time. Even a twenty-two year old Casanova. You know this already.”
“But it didn’t feel normal at the time,” I argue. “I felt like a basket case. I still do.”
“All right. So tell me why it feels like an important realization in your life, and not an instance of really unlucky timing.”
“Because I’m so—” I try to put it into words that don’t make me sound trivial. “My sleeping alone thing is already weird, and disruptive. You pushed me to think about why I don’t have sex anymore. And I can’t really explain it. Where’s the connection between head injuries and skittish sex?”
Lenore’s smile fades. “What if there isn’t one?”
“A connection?”
She nods. “Let’s just suppose for a second that your problems are larger than the brush-off I just gave you. Let’s suppose you’re experiencing a true sexual dysfunction. Why would you assume it’s connected to a head trauma?”
“Because that’s the thing that changed .” Isn’t it obvious? “Did you happen to read my file, by the way? I know it’s only been a couple days since I asked.”
“Yes,” she says quietly. “I pulled it Wednesday night and read the whole thing.”
“So… did you find any dates in there?”
“Yes,” she says. She reaches for a sticky note and shows it to me. Saturday, December 10th . No surprises there. “That’s the night you were admitted to the hospital.” Then she swallows uncomfortably.
“Anything else, Lenore? You kind of look like you saw the devil.”
That’s when she chews on her lip. It’s her tell, and I rarely see it. But she’s nervous about something. “I read the whole file twice. Every word. The last time I read it was during the month we began working together. But now I know you better, so it read differently to me.”
“And?”
She sighs. “And there are some things in there that seem strange.”
“Are you going to tell me what they are?”
“Yes, but first I need to tell you that this is all speculation on my part.”
“Just please tell me what you saw.”
“First of all, the information they sent over about your medical treatment is woefully incomplete. It's not actually a medical file, like you would get from the hospital. It's more like a one-page summary that somebody typed out to send to us. And it is barely sufficient.”
“One page? I was in that hospital for weeks.”
“I know that. It’s just a summary of injuries. I know which of your ribs were broken, but I don’t know what drugs you were given for the pain.”
“Do you need to know that?”
She shakes her head. “Not necessarily, because you’re not being treated for addiction. But it’s not right. A request for medical records should never have been answered with this half-assed information. As for your head, it only says that the patient was confused, due to a probable head injury.”
I snort. “Wow. So forthcoming.”
“Right.” She chews her lip again, and I can tell we’re not done yet. “By comparison, the file included much more information about your academic history, including a transcript of your first semester grades. Nice work, by the way, all A’s.”