Herschlag 36

A Catastrophic Turn of Events

By Jane Berger Herschlag

Content warning: Graphic sexual assault and incest

My therapist wants me to take my skin off and lie spread-eagled on the couch or press myself (I’ve decided to tell my doctor why I can’t) against a wall or mirror to discover who I am, but it is my skin that holds me, torso to limb, keeps my heart in place, spleen tucked neatly in, keeps my blood and tears from leaving me bereft of marrow, a pile of hollow bones. I need my skin even if you call it something else. You say I can’t grow well if I stubbornly refuse to peel my shell. I am left no choice. If well yields vacuity, I must choose sick.

More Sensitive Than Braille Fingers was written to Herb; later, reading my poem to you was a seductive act. So what! It took years of preparation then weeks to build enough courage to trust, follow your gentle urgings to explore and reveal my sexual feelings towards you. I took my boldest, most daring steps, and you assaulted me at our next session, “You were being Karl, you raped me.”

MORE SENSITIVE THAN BRAILLE FINGERS

I teach
your
            silk-velvet-
cock
the contours of my face
            close my eyes
brush you
            with my lashes
Slide you
            against my cheek
around my lips   around
            lick the underside
up to tip
tongue-swirl gently
suck

Down my neck I guide you
            feed your cock
the map of my body
            draw a longitudinal line
from my clavicle
south to navel

up east west
rub press
my nipples

As though connected
groin to mouth and sometimes limbs
nipples and clit bloom

Making sure your blind cock
memorizes
            I slide-press you
against my pubis clitoris

With my vagina’s Ohs
            I scent you
tease you almost
            into around

I want to
            but can’t wait
slide you
fit
A deep breath
motionless   silent
            before we shimmer

Dear doctor Ira, I’ve often admitted how devoid of parenting I am. My mother-craving exceeding my need for a father. Neither is safe but a real mother would not have studied her print dress. She’d have danced, even with a limp, to draw him from me. Her caress would have coaxed my tears. You seem a bit willing to be mother and father but your Victorian reserve is not Mommy-Daddy.

Besides, protectors are swallowers or rejecters. Orphanhood is preferable to squashed, erased. I am grandly lucky with peers of both sexes, loyal friends. You say I’m unreceptive to parenting. Of course. Wouldn’t you be if you were me? Perhaps I keep your fathering at a cool distance, keep you more peer, friend, latent lover, and for moments mother, because fathers are hammer and chisel. You ask, How can it be that you need/want a mother and still have not found her? I reply, I only want a reality-based apron-mother who doesn’t wear blinders. I’ve never met one, male or female. You ask, Isn’t that like a single woman claiming there are no good men out there? But people surround themselves with like types.

I am too broken to befriend a rounded, undented person. I don’t want to feel like a Martian. All my friends are weather-beaten, with smarts; they love nature and the arts. Maybe when seventy I’ll connect to a younger-generation mother. The older generation hides in Fable’s closet. You’re the only one I know not cloaked in myth. Except, you insist you fall into the middle range of female-ogling men. I’ve felt and seen your glances at breasts, ass, legs. A thirsty undressing, imbibing me and others. Average males view the same scenery with less avarice. But since your hands and words remain impeccable, I’m annoyed but also glad your eyes are cat-tongue-lappers. And after reading you my poem, A Mother of My Own to Shade Me, you sprouted leaves, shields against harshness. But safer makes me hungrier.

Maybe I want the ultra-Electra, good-Daddy who fucks me with love, not hate. It seems I have not grown beyond pre-adolescence—I know you’ll remain my doctor and help me, as a real father, to transfer my lusty-love to a more suitable subject beyond these tabooed walls. But as the hours pass, after today’s reading, and your ample shade, my groin calls for you more than ever. I hate wanting what I cannot have. This is precisely what I hoped to avoid but since uncorking my words, my cup runneth over. I hope you too ache for me. Just stay away from my ass and neck, and stay Doctor-protector-father so I can become a real grown-up. I loved your question, Did reading your erotic poem to me make you feel powerful? It didn’t, but your question implies I had power. That broadens my smile. I like power, Doctor Ira, so I’ll read this to you today.

At home I ponder a good defense: I didn’t use violence; I used feminine wiles. This is not your first year as a therapist. You delude yourself if you think calling me a perp will induce me to be more open, forthcoming. You are obligated to explore why you sabotaged my trust. My poem aroused you and you came to my bed, which enraged you. You accused me, rather than acknowledge your adult responsibility for your reaction, which you should have concealed.

My first words that next day: “I’m breaking my pact, eating dessert today.” “What am I supposed to do about it?” “I should have sensed your raised heat, but you seldom act on it so I didn’t recognize its shape. You don’t mind my attraction to you, but if I dare to turn the table, then I’m a power-hungry pervert-perpetrator. How can we resolve what I feel you did to me? I dared trust you with my heart and you spat on it.” “I’m just trying to help you. The last thing I want is to stifle your feelings and expression.”

Liar! Professionally true, but personally, that’s precisely your aim! If my seduction has such severe repercussions that your personal agenda takes precedence over your professional agenda, then it’s not safe for me to continue treatment with you. For four-and-a-half-years we worked to build my trust, but when I take that leap of faith, you show me parents can’t be trusted. In my frivolous whim of self-indulgence, an assertive seduction, you threw out years of baby-steps and my giant-step. I’m only one of your many patients, but you are my only doctor!

I’m not supposed to engage the Private Ira, only Doctor Ira, but you brought in P.I’s. ego, so I must deal with him. He attacked me, so I must address him to re-establish my freedom, express my sexual attachment to Doctor Ira. P.I’s. ego perceived my poem as usurping his power, through domination with my sexuality. This reveals your unconscious fear of the all-consuming mother-woman. It does not reveal my hidden agenda for control, but rather my wanting to seduce you, to equalize the distribution of power. If it’s only me who wants, and not you who wants, there’s a great disparity.

If we both want, there’s a balance of power. You don’t know how to, you refuse to analyze my poem. Had I not been attracted, but merely wanted to seduce, that would have been a power play. Your perception is fed by the almost universal male belief, often unconscious, of woman as snake, castrator, and smotherer. By making me the culprit you desexualize me, make me a viper whose poisonous Eros you must remove.

At the end of my last session, I saw a tension in your face. I assume it was there most of the hour. I hadn’t noticed since I was so focused on trying to be assertive while I was a physical cripple from the recent auto accident in which I was taken by ambulance to the hospital. A Porsche driver who had no brakes plowed full speed into the van that plowed into my tiny Corolla, squeezing the trunk into an accordion and seriously damaging my spine. The few doctors who thought it was whiplash aggravated what turned out to be torn ligaments and ruptured discs. No wonder in that context your rejection is super stressful. I thought, good, after all the anxiety and suffering you caused me. I relished my meanness, and momentary power. I had the goods on you, and you knew it. So, you too are human and vulnerable. Luckily you are willing to admit it; that’s why you are a good therapist.

Okay, it’s another new year, and since the beginning of October when I read my seductive poem, a serious rift developed. My car accident trauma a couple days later took precedence, but the last two sessions I addressed Ira’s rape accusation. True, I took him to bed without his consent, made him an unwilling participant. In that sense I raped him. But had he stayed D.I., and not become Private Ira, my sex partner, he’d have realized what was going on and not imputed negatives. He’d have understood that I was on a playing field, not a battlefield, and recalled that I sporadically over the years expressed my attraction, and known where I was coming from: an incest survivor who’s far more embroiled with the taboo therapist than most other patients. Opting to not always be on the wanting side, I tried to make him a wanter, to level the field. No hostile machinations to make him uncomfortable or subservient.

It’s a natural process outside the treatment room. One person attracted to another tries to lure the other, make the other desirous without evil intent. Had Ira remained the wise doctor whom a patient was seducing, he’d have been aroused but not felt guilty or gone public with his arousal, but maintained his anonymity, been objective about the seducer’s aims.

He discarded his medical robe and abandoned me as a patient, altering our relationship, and has maintained his flawed perception for months. Two weeks ago, three months after my reading, he convinced part of me that my words raped him. I was upset about doing that to someone I’m fond of. But my vision has cleared; I don’t buy his propaganda. I offered him a gift of my poem to metaphorically entice him.

Several years ago, reticent about discussing my attachment, he said, “It’s pleasurable to want even what you can’t have. That’s what movies, literature, theater is all about.” Never did I imagine he’d construe my seduction as hostile. I don’t try to win people over with hostility. Instead of wallowing in his wounded self, he should don his white coat and analyze his reaction. I’m pissed. The longer he persists in misreading my intent, the bigger the divide he creates.

I just plunged into a renewed self-defense mode after feeling fluish for several days. Feeling attacked by the world, I let the cold germs have free reign, but now my arms are raised and my psyche is in combat mode against Ira and my cold germs. It gives me a headache, but I’m not folding under the assaults. My pen found more gall at Ira, so I’m less saddened by the chasm between my staunchest ally and me, yet hope it can be filled.

I will read this long harangue to him! Why was I so reluctant to write about this? Except initially, the accident and its aftermath dominated. He and the car crash suppressed my libido, making it easy to avoid my attraction.

For the most part, women’s seduction of men has nothing to do with rape. Rarely does the weaker sex attempt to rape. Some men rape, some woo with words, gifts, or affection to get the woman to consent to sex. I wooed with words, not for consent, but for fantasy sex, wanting Ira to want me. That’s not rape! Creating desire is not overpowering someone.

Ira is a good arguer and plays semantics, “No therapist is ever objective,” refuting my claim that he stepped out of his therapist’s role and into his personal role. Degree is relevant, how much of the doctor’s interpretation is bias, and how much is objective. Success requires a large percentage of neutrality. A therapist must step back to analyze the client’s and his own behavior. He’s had three months to self-analyze.

“You seek an angel, a pure and virtuous therapist to trust.” He’s done many annoying things, momentarily wounding or angering, but I got over it. I don’t expect or want perfection. It would only make me feel more inadequate. Trust is key in therapy, but he forced me to don a new layer of protection and a white coat.

While seducing him I also bared myself; to attack me then is hitting below the belt. I could impute bad motives—he lures me into safety, requests that I bare my soul, then slams me. But that wasn’t his intention; intention counts for a lot.

It’s four months; his hostility endures, “Were you a virgin when you got married?” That’s tantamount to asking if I’m Jewish or a poet. Part of me was glad to appear like other women, but it constricted my chest, sent a shockwave through me. I should have spoken up, but instinctively held back. “How do you feel about my asking that?” “It warrants an explanation. You, also were stunned by it, went on the offense.” “For a moment I forgot, as though you were normal.” “Had you not acted out you might have said, I forgot, as though you had a normal childhood. What sparked your initial question or retaliatory remark, leftover aggression from feeling raped by me? The air should be cleared, but I can’t retract having read that poem.”

“Thursday’s issue, my aggression with Toyota in demanding a loaner car—Your residual anger interprets my healthy assertion as aggression. If Toyota wants to overcharge me and I oppose them, is that aggression? When someone wants to knock me down and I don’t let him, that’s assertive, not aggressive. My desire to equalize the playing field blinded me from your obvious opposition to it; or did your sexualizing things by resting your eyes on my breasts, and saying that wanting is what makes the world go round, lead me to believe you weren’t really opposed if your feelings remained concealed, as I expected?”

I continue, “You say I make an absurd distinction between aggressive and assertive.   I want to be vehemently assertive, not permit being bullied; I don’t want to go on the offense when not provoked. I was determined not to cry about your virgin question. You sensed my wound and mended it by repeating my phrase, ‘I sold my body to Karl to gain safety.’ But if you forget who I am, I am not safe, I am furious. The car accident heightens my sense of a damaged body and psyche. I again want to quit and want to flee my past.”

Ira claims, “You were indirectly hurting me by keeping your decreased intestinal pain and hair loss from me so I’d keep feeling like a perp.”   “I never knew you felt responsible. I assumed you thought I construed you as the perp for hurting me, not that you felt responsible.”

Beset with post-accident pain that woke me, as did my right arm falling asleep, I didn’t notice the latest improvement. For a short time that also eased, then I went to the chiropractor and my gut pain worsened, that’s when I noticed that it had improved in contrast to the new intensity. That was in January; two weeks later I told Ira about it. That’s not concealing it.

I was never reluctant to share with him my growing assertiveness, his helping me express myself to Anne, thus improving our relationship, his helping my writing get freer, etc. With my gifts of chocolate, I show how much I appreciate his making me stronger, making my immune system feisty. Why would I withhold improved physical health? His readiness to see negatives lights my fuse. Ira made himself the analysand, forcing me into the role of analyst.

Ira accuses me of tolerating my father’s abuse. Tolerate: to allow, permit, without hindrance, to endure without repugnance, to undergo, sustain, as hardship or pain. Support, endure, or accept. The only word partially applicable to me is endure. But I didn’t endure most of his worst abuse because I vacated my body, disappeared from the scene.

I didn’t read Ira my tirade notes but said, “I’m very angry at you.” He replied, “When you called, I didn’t want to talk to you because of the time pressure. I didn’t have free time that day.” He forgot he began the phone call at 10:13, two minutes before a patient was due, but had not yet arrived. “I have a couple minutes now; if we don’t finish, we can talk later.” It was so apparent that he didn’t want to talk so I didn’t pursue it.

“You make it very hard for a patient to call you if they are desperate. This just endorsed it.” “Did you feel that way prior to Friday?” “Yes.” “I know that about myself.” He’s usually honest about his misdeeds. “If you listened more carefully, you’d know crying is necessary before rage-digging. But you’re too busy with your own agenda, causing you to see negatives where none exist: my withholding my improved health, my tolerating Karl’s abuse, and my metaphoric rape of you. In reference to the health issue, I don’t have a right to be angry since you didn’t know that my accident pains had blocked my awareness of my decreased gut pain.” He says, “But you still have a right to be mad since my interpretation was along the same lines of finding negatives where there were none.”

“My gut pain is bad again, is that why I wonder anew if I’m making up the whole rape, or does my seesaw denial exacerbate the pain?” “To help you cry without an eye-witness, maybe we should have a phone session.” “It should be a regular session, if I made it up then there’s nothing to cry over.”

These last few sessions left me wiped and too agitated to sleep. Anal rape is far less frequent than oral rape. If Ira had more patients who were anally raped, he’d have understood the shit-tears connection years ago. That’s the benefit of seeing an incest survivor therapist. I may ask if he has had other patients who were anally raped. Sometimes he’s amazingly insightful; with this he’s bat-blind.

I ponder unconnected evidence: The first year or two of marriage, after sex I had a compulsion to move my bowels, clean myself out. I hold back gas and tears. Each car accident, when hit in the rear, caused intestinal bleeding. The trip to Home Depot to return the cinder blocks in the back of my car caused my fear of being crushed and slammed into, reminding me of Karl slamming into me. I claimed he hadn’t penetrated me rectally, just used my rectum to jerk-off against. Now I’m quite sure he penetrated. I connect the inability to cry since recalling fifteen years ago, particularly in front of someone, when I cried the hardest, after anal rape. When he left the room I sobbed almost silently, but my tears, shit and blood coming out of my rectum, made me the most disgusting thing alive. Also, I never met a woman who doesn’t know how to cry, except for Bronia Brandman, my Holocaust survivor friend.

Two days ago, I relived the need for my sphincter muscles to eject Karl and his sperm. This was forbidden, but when he left the room, I did it. Yet it still felt like his penis was inside me. Was it the internal swelling, or that I felt I could never expel all of him? There was more in my head but my mind evaporated.

The bloody shit is evidence of anal rape. My tears will release the shit but then I can’t deny it anymore. This writing nauseates and makes me moan. Crying, letting it touch my core, is admitting that it happened; then I can’t retract it. I used to turn to stone, try not to breathe if I stayed inside my body. Ira once said, “Not crying is also a way of staying in the victim position to prevent moving into the aggressor’s position.”

The Home Depot return was five years ago, yet I still struggle with accepting what my body has been shouting about. They say, if three men say you are drunk, go home and lie down. My problem is, not one relative from my pre-marriage family would believe any of this. They’d think I’m delusional; maybe not Karl. He’d never have admitted it, but may have known what he did. Probably not; even after murder, people convince themselves of their innocence.

If Anne, my twin, ever reads my memoir, she’ll also seesaw. But without photographic evidence she’ll deny it. Not letting go is infinitely fatiguing. By 5pm, I can barely stay awake unless I’m in class, in the larger sphere of writers, away from my microscopic world.

Color and texture always were my friends. Looking at black and white family photos from my early years, I know the precise color and feel of most fabrics. They were my indoor garden.   I tuned out so much, but flowers and fabrics were safe, predictable. True, many recall fabrics from childhood, but I recall little else, except for splinters that my body repeatedly screams out till I relent and listen.

Along with all the bad, which only constituted a few hours per day, into the waste bin went the rest of the day, leaving me bereft, a Swiss-cheese-holey history, with major sections missing. Therapy stitched a scrim around the holes, yielding a thin film of story.

You’d think if crying could release internal pressure and lessen gut pain and hair loss, it would be a grand motivator. But fear of being a Karl-like lunatic hammers the nails into the prison bars around feelings. I need assurance that they won’t unleash a berserk rage in me. I DON’T WANT TO AGGRESS. Ira says I must, in order to climb out of victim status; it’s reflexive when one has been aggressed. No, I must feel aggression, not act on it.

Momentarily I see/hear/feel what happened, but quickly revert to blackout denial. Survival was predicated upon not knowing, enabling me to exist in a limited state. Acceptance is like saying I don’t need a safety net when I jump out a fifth-floor window. Denial is not stubbornness; it’s my survival mechanism, to be construed as a healthy sign; my urge to stay alive, akin to Holocaust survivors’ belief things will improve. To see reality is to relinquish hope; it means death.

Not that it was easy or quick, but I could admit to the choking since it only happened once. I could admit to the pseudo-drownings since they only happened once or twice each summer. The rapes were frequent. I could not stay alive, go to school, do homework, play with friends, or most of all go to sleep, if I knew what might happen. Having adopted, in my early years, the fanatical religion of Denial, it’s difficult now to switch from fundamentalist to enlightened rationalist. That change flings me out the window.

My previous analyst’s ban, refusing to let me explore more of my past, weakened my immune system, put a crushing weight on my lungs. Bob was a loving, wonderful person, but misguidedly believed one must steer clear of trauma after its initial discovery. I’d never have achieved what I did with Ira but for Bob’s gentle nurturing, intuitive insights, and poetic soul.

Ira is the opposite, totally unafraid to explore my past while not diminishing the need to live in the present. His probing questions simultaneously make me angry and grateful. Like a hard slap, a penetration past my mummified wrapping, into my raw flesh, while validating my claims, and accepting me with all the slime and filth. His questions say it happened yet his voice and mood remain unchanged. That enables me, though it has taken years, to accept myself. But his inability to nurture and his accusations increase tension.

“The other abuses were easier to accept, they occurred once or seldom, but the oral and anal and vaginal were endless.” “How often?” “I don’t know.” “What do you think?” “Every week or two.” “When did it start, how long did it go on?” “It started when I was three. I think it stopped when I was twelve or thirteen. What he did later was much milder.” “What did he do later?” “He squeezed my breasts under my pajamas. He soul kissed me.” “He soul kissed you in bed?” “No. We were obligated to meet him at the inner garage door when he came home, to kiss him, hello. Then he’d soul kiss me, and other times.”

The film End of An Affair reminded me, Karl was jealous of my sailor boyfriend. He’d grill me about Don when I came home from Lynn’s. That was odd since he never spoke to me except to give me orders or reprimand me, mostly when I was younger. I had a trace of power as a teen, but early-bred fear and hatred numbed me to it.

It’s magical the way people pair up. Don was a twenty-one-year-old gambling alcoholic sailor; I was fourteen. We were an unlikely couple. Both of us were skinny and seriously love-starved from birth. Our ages and height were miles apart, 5’1 ½” and 6’2”, and I come from an unsailorish upper middle class, educated family; his is southern white trash.

We were a perfect match sexually, both emotionally about twelve. We spent hours lying on Lynn’s living room couch and did little more than relish the physical contact of our bodies connecting, hugging. We did some exploratory kissing, but I could keep seeing him since he made no sexual demands. I felt his penis against my pubic bone and he felt my breasts against his chest, but we craved human contact more than sex.

Oblivious to the stunted aspect of our relationship, we were blissful in giving and receiving affection. I knew little about Don except that his unmarried Texas mom had him at sixteen. I suspect that he never knew his father. He usually lost most of his paycheck to card games with his shipmates, and liquor to keep numb, as I did without liquor.

Mostly, I lived on automatic pilot, oblivious to my depression despite suicidal fantasies and childish murderous thoughts. I wore my sadness, as did my two best friends; it was obvious if one cared to look, but we were unaware. An unconscious magnetism drew us to each other, we belonged together.

Don was a bit stooped, the world being too heavy on his shoulders. I was a bit round-shouldered, needing to conceal my breasts. I assumed all men were threats; male teens were not, and he acted like a young teen. Both of us were soft-spoken, minimal conversationalists. His abandonment of anything intellectual was probably his buffer against knowing or feeling, as it was for me. Lynn, and Don’s shipmate Mervin, made out on one couch; Don and I used her other couch.

I’m pooped but keep writing at a fiendish pitch, to write myself out of where I am. I just wrote two good poems. Something great happened in school. Looking for the Graduate English Secretary at CCNY, I popped into a room with a baby shower for a teacher. I saw my English Lit Professor from last year. “Hi, look who’s here, my favorite student.” “It makes me so happy that you feel that way.” “I mean it. I’m not just saying it. You are my favorite of all time.” I’m deliriously happy. She has about forty-five students per semester and remembers me. Wow! That’s twice in one week. Monday a classmate said, “You are a great teacher, far better than mine. In one day, you taught me the essence of line breaks, which Ms. P has been trying to teach us for one-and-a-half semesters.” I just need to win another writing contest or residency to rise above the stench of childhood. Fatigue turns on the boob tube.

I regret not going to an incest survivor specialist—slow progress, continued gut pain, and tension. I timidly reveal, “I’m reluctant to vent my fury since you are the only one who ever helped me explore my past.” “You use this reason as an excuse to control and minimize your anger, but you have every right to resent my deficiencies despite my helping you investigate it.”

I’m stone-tired and need to fall to the bottom of my bed, sleep deeper so that dreams can’t prey on me, a mini-coma to recuperate in. Ira gave me a going-away gift, an anger-headache. I’ll shout at him, Stop. I’m paying you to fix my head and heal my body, not decimate it. Find a way to do it. Read up on incest survivor specialists. Dr. Mary Gail Frawley is an impressive expert. Have you made this effort? It shouldn’t take me to figure this out. You are obligated to learn more or refer me to a specialist.

It’s too late to switch doctors, reestablish trust. I want to be empowered to hold myself together if I cry, and, so no one can invade me, to control my rage so I don’t go berserk-psychotic-violent. I want to be fixed without being violated, penetrated! It’s permanently damaging to have inflamed intestines for fifteen years. I need a mother to hold me, maybe a female survivor therapist, herself a survivor. I MUST CRY!

AN AMBIVALENT RANT

Ira when your ears are not hyena-keen
they’re stuffed with wads
of preconceived ideas
a wounded self

Your generosity does an about face—
how many minutes have you shorted me
Yes I know it’s quality not quantity

Yes you lowered your fee and
despite money I found in Mother’s coffin
mine hard-earned
you have not asked for more
nor have I offered

Yes you’re most generous
no charge for vacation absences
and you patiently wait
for late insurance payments

But too often
phone messages or bathroom—
you start 2 3 minutes late
yet end on time
though no patient waits

My real gripe—
though you wish therapy hadn’t
gouged my intestines and plucked out my hair—
these five years you’ve never
consulted an abuse-survivor expert
nor researched the excesses
of my body’s responses

A creative cook
you’ve mastered many entrées
altered your recipes often
to heal my head-wounds
but your ingredients still cause gout

Your chef’s ego stops you
from asking a saucier
for some hints

My last two sessions seem to have unclogged the stalemate. Twice I cried at home, silently, with great reserve, but tears trickle-streamed down my face as I read for the tenth time I Don’t Want to Be Me. Yesterday I said, “You’re not maternal enough for me to cry.”

Last week Ira said, “You never fully submitted to Karl, just as you don’t fully submit your tears, symbolic orgasm—to me. Yet masturbating after your father leaves the room is also submitting to him.” That’s hostile and wrong. If Karl didn’t know I masturbated, he didn’t sense my submission. Why doesn’t Ira know that? Now I get it, masturbating after he left was a physical response to his sexual stimulation. My arousal and submission to it was not submission to Karl. It was reclamation. It’s mine! I repeated that over and over, perhaps till orgasm convinced me that I could feel, and it was mine.

I learned Ira supervised a prominent sexual abuse therapist in a postdoctoral program, whom he should have consulted to unlock my vigilance. If he had chronic pain, he’d have wanted his doctor to consult with others. Only ego prevented it, at my financial and physical expense. But he is gentle, astute and empathic, so I got Dr. Mary Gail Frawley’s book, co-written with Dr. Jody Messler Davies, Treating the Adult Survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse from the library, and did some of Ira’s work.

I avoided her chapter on self-abuse and the eroticization of fear. My claim, it doesn’t relate to me, was a lie, though I don’t mutilate my body, cut and burn. The last three words in the title sent me running. When I finished her book, I returned to Chapter 7, Exposure to Danger, The Erotization of Fear, and Compulsive Self-Abuse. It spoke to my most shameful feelings, which at moments push themselves into awareness. Sadism and eroticism are my conjoined twins. Letting them speak louder unlocked my tear ducts a bit. Luckily, eroticism is also an entity unto itself.

Re-reading aloud my poem I Don’t Want to Be Me, for the first time I felt Karl’s sexual energy as he made me inhale beach water. Reciting the poem, my flat, curt, out-loud delivery became tear-moistened. I let myself sensately enter her experience, then masturbated. Karl’s violence bred a pervert inside me who gets turned on by brutality. I’ve kept that beast as hidden as my tears and rage. It’s one of my finest poems. They say rape is really violence, not sex. But the violence becomes sex. His beatings and pseudo-drownings were his libido sublimated. I’m so tired and afraid to sleep.

Having an Electra attachment to Ira, when he said, You refuse to submit to me, I thought, No, I’m willing to reach orgasm with you in mind but crying is way too dangerous. Orgasm can’t drag me into insanity. I have good orgasms, but crying-orgasms bring me too close to dissociated child-me.

The anal rape more than any other, perhaps the most painful, braided sex/pain/arousal, so I still can’t let Herb’s hand travel near my anus or a balloon of rage fills me. After revealing this latest stuff, I’ll probably start recalling dreams. I’ve barely journalized; too busy. So much brain-time in the past makes me shit-heavy. No session-relief, just turmoil since I’m closer to letting go of my tears, and more dependent on Ira.

BLOOD TEARS OCEAN WATER

Nights
the salt of my vagina
he mixes with the salt
of my rectal blood
I must swallow his salty sperm
when he’s done I’m not allowed
to leave my room for water
I wash my mouth with my spit
that I spit and spit
on my tear-damp pillow

Summer days
he holds me deep
in Jones Beach waves
I hack
saltwater spittle
days nights
my tears run salty
as my mucous

I am a salt-lick
a salt stick
a stick-girl
the only salt
not spilled onto my sheets
bladder water
a girl with a hammer
for a heart
with one-way eyes
that can’t see in
to anything
a fright-child
full of holes

I am nothing
that resembles a girl
yet I bleed
salty blood
down there
the earth must be filled with salt
Rain water tastes sweet
If stars are not salty
I will learn to fly

“Though I’m very sad to end treatment before it’s finished, and I’m not normally a quitter, I can’t leave it open-ended. The body trauma can’t go on. Let’s agree on a time-frame.” “What do you have in mind?” “I think three more months.” “What is it, why can’t we go past this, what can I do to alleviate it?” “I have no idea, other than your being more maternal. That might help.” “In what ways am I not maternal?” I resisted then, “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t like admitting how badly I need a mother, and I hate asking for things; it sets me up for not getting them. Mothers accept their children even if they are bratty. I want to be acceptable, not vulnerable.” I sort of hid as I spoke, exerting great effort to keep my tears inside. Ira persisted with a subtle pleading that bespoke injury, so I continued.

When dating, if a guy I liked wanted to be sexual and was not demanding or aggressive, but sort of pleaded, I’d accommodate, masturbate him, but didn’t yield my body. I complied with Ira’s wishes but still withheld my tears/orgasm. Ira was flabbergasted at my perception of his neutrality, my not recognizing that he cares for me. I’m equally stunned by his reaction. Why didn’t he sense this in my two-to-three times weekly sessions? He was incredulous, “How could you perceive a long-term relationship as neutral; it must be either positive or negative.” “No, some relationships have pluses and minuses that cancel each other out.”

My whole session revolved around his dismay, his feeling inept. Not once could he say that he cares for me, even after I said, “Frawley specifically states that incest survivors are far more needy of parental acceptance than most other patients. Since I was unacceptable to my parents, it’s more of an issue for me.” No matter how I phrased it, he was too uptight to express his caring or it isn’t there, which he can’t admit, it would damage our relationship.

“As a matter of fact, the first year you actively disliked me because of my withdrawals.” He said, “I’m stunned.” “It was very difficult to stay in treatment.” “Why did you?” “Because you weren’t afraid of the incest issues, you were willing to dig into the muck.” “But most doctors are. It’s unusual that Bob couldn’t.” “That’s not my experience. Dr. Frank sexualized everything and was inappropriate, certainly not conducive to exploring incest. And Dr. Stein so rigidly adhered to the Freudian approach that many of our sessions were terrifyingly silent, too reminiscent of Karl’s not speaking to me except for commands.”

Many doctors consider themselves willing but their digging is superficial. They’re afraid to explore deep wounds or reluctant to believe the patient’s claims. I’m glad Ira’s neutrality finally surfaced. I can’t sob in front of someone who’s not fond of me. Does his shock imply attachment? I feel like saying, Don’t tell me now that you do care because I’ll have forcibly extracted it from you, and it won’t have meaning. His not disliking me anymore is not enough to release my tears.

“If you sometimes masturbated when Karl left, to reclaim ownership of your body and your orgasm, why didn’t you reclaim your right to cry? My asking you to sob is my asking you to do what child-Jane could not do.” “But orgasm could be a silent defiance, undetectable to Karl. If I sobbed audibly, he’d likely have smothered me. My sexual rebellion did not put my life at risk; my emotional rebellion would have. Till now I hadn’t made that death-threat connection.” “Did Karl imply that threat or verbalize it?” “I think he forbade all sounds.”

I’m plotzed. I’ll underline Xeroxed pages from Frawley’s book to show Ira what I’m angry at him for mishandling or not knowing. That’s bitchy; so be it.

“This last month or two it’s like my survival is on the line. If I obey, stop flailing, give up my instinctive struggle for survival, submit to possible or likely drowning, as a reward you may carry me to solid ground. But I’ve relinquished my reflexes so often, including flinching, that my reluctance to do it even one more time supersedes my colossal need to cry.”

I continue, “I sense your open ears, eagerness to hear how to make me safe, readiness to alter your therapeutic prescription, but I have no answers. Your question, ‘How can I change my feelings to less invested, more caring, less neutral,” shows your desire to reverse the equation, so crying is once again my issue, not yours, and thus my submission recedes in magnitude. Crying becomes more a victory, not surrender. If I were to surrender to you, I’d want a different type, a giving of myself to you out of generosity, not compliance to a demand.”

Ira’s stubborn adherence to neutrality, despite my requests that he be more maternal, glues my tear ducts shut and feeds my opposition. Mother was neutral, but when needed, she allied herself with Karl by her absence and denial. Neutral-Ira could also easily swing into enemy turf.

I know that neutrality enables patients to more easily impose Mother, Father, sibling, and lover onto the therapist. But Frawley says, “That can also cripple the patient.” It surely stifles me. The day that he said he fantasized lopping off Karl’s dick was almost the first time in five years of writing that I called him my friend. He should know, a motherless child cannot cry, confide; it can only grow a hardened shell.

Bob sharing his isolation with me, being an unwanted boy, his mother’s insistence the hospital erred, she gave birth to a girl, created a bond of mutual trust. He didn’t reveal this to gain my compassion, but for the companionship of another lost soul. I don’t expect Ira to confide to such a degree, but to show his allegiance so that I don’t exist on the edge of quicksand slowly being sucked down, or be an impala drinking at a lake while a lion lurks.

These last few months of therapy were an exhausting hell. I may need two more root canals. “The neutral approach, though standard, does not work for me. You adhere too strictly to it. I need safety!” He points out, “When you talk about difficult things you resort to your usual reluctant speech, your eyes close, you sigh.” “I try not to feel.” “Is that conscious?” “No, it’s automatic.” “Then you don’t want to feel, but you want me to lose it.”

How absurd, I never want him out of control, just playing it less close to the vest —in order to yield to the intensity of my suffering and rage, I must be in the presence of a friend. Ira has kept me on this high-tension wire for too long. I’m not Superwoman; I cannot fly.

On therapy days, I wake and start feverishly working so my mind won’t drift to my session and possible tears. I spoke of Lily’s (mother’s) neutrality, “Except for rare times, like when she forced me outdoors bare-topped after I began puberty.” “I don’t recall you ever mentioning this.” I must have verbally or in a poem; he may have thought it was metaphoric. I had assumed her action was a denial of my entering puberty. “Though it only happened once, she was peddling you. Did she ever offer you to Karl?” I felt hit in my solar plexus. I used to think she’d have preferred if Karl didn’t sexually abuse me, but then realized she may have wanted me to draw Karl away from her. She hated sex and told Anne that on their wedding night he raped her. And my bedsprings, in the fities, could not lie; they squeaked as she closed her ears. How did she offer me? The day that I got my period she announced it to Karl with all five of us around our dinner table. Was it a warning, time to back off?

“No matter where I sat, Anne and I took chances sitting next to Lily to be less in Karl’s view, Lily still served me last, revealing her non-neutrality. We got the same clothes. Anne did more physical chores around the house. I couldn’t mow the lawn because of allergies and asthma. She was considered the strong one and was a bit of a tomboy. We got the same allowance, and Lily was equally unaffectionate to us. She accepted Anne’s caresses and handholding; in contrast I showed her no affection. Our Christmas gifts differed and I imagined hers to be more expensive, but knowing Lily they were probably close in price. She had an image to uphold.” Suddenly my mind went blank.

She railed against me since I didn’t like staying in the house; I preferred Lynn’s house. Virtue, virginity, selflessness, equaled beauty to Lily. Anne was close to that. I feel like a shattered vase that’s been pieced together without glue. If a door slams, a plane flies low, a sudden noise startles me, I will crumble.

I’m pissed at Ira; I don’t want him as a mother or a father. I want him as a peer, friend, safe person. I resent being bullied into submission by a doctor/parent. Even if I cried and discovered that not all parents are bad, it wouldn’t be worth it. He should have been my friend years ago, to release my tears, and spared me this torture.

Now I know why my body aches so much after sessions, I try with all my might to hold myself together without visible signs of doing so, using isometric muscle control. I don’t want to do that anymore; I feel beaten into submission. Did Ira’s fierce adherence to neutrality create this hell? I didn’t think I could be this sad and angry. If I’m right that Ira pushed me into this corner, I must leave; if I’m not crushed like the girl in my poem Genie, the wild child.

I hate parents, and I don’t want him to be mine. Friends don’t lose it when they share. Bob was my friend, but his taboos were harmful. I won’t seek more treatment. I feel disloyal, but remain grateful to both. Am I too fucked up to reap more gains?

I must sleep sitting up on the couch. My bed is too dangerous. Each week I feel more of the terror that I felt when recall first began hammering me. I feel diminished, small. I must escape my body and treatment. Ira should know this by osmosis.

I never spanked my doll. I hugged Ellen a lot and rocked her in my arms and kissed her. She cried, that’s why I had to rock her so much. I need a doll to cry for me. I want to be big and strong and do the consoling, not the crying. That’s why I’d have been a perfect nurse. I always know what hurts someone, and how to make it a bit better. Too many things can’t be fixed but can be eased. Carpal tunnel forces my hand to release this pen.

News flash—feeling pummeled not only from Ira, but nearing my childhood feelings drives me crazy. “I want to take off my shoes and put my feet up.” Ira looks a bit perplexed, but nods and offers his footstool. “No thanks.” I curl my feet up on my chair. “What’s this about?” “To prepare myself for crying, not necessarily today, but eventually.” “What should I do?” “Be more friend, less parent.” “Why parent?” “Because you are the authority.” “Why didn’t you say, I should be more friend, less doctor?” They’re synonymous to me; I don’t trust doctors. Near the end of the session, “I’m not so inflexible. I’m willing to try going there, but I don’t know where there is, and you’ll have to help me along the way.” “Gladly. I must have an ally; neutral isn’t safe.”

I explained my body symptoms, my emotions physicalized, my after-session exhaustion from isometrics so I don’t disintegrate. He said, “Or lose your sanity.” I didn’t admit, I even fear losing control of all body functions: If I uncork the dye and let my black tears gush, I’ll vomit, get the runs, have rectal bleeding, orgasm, and God knows what else! I brought a blanket in case I had to hide. This he does not know.

“I can’t cry in front of anyone including myself because the sex and tears are fused. Soon after Karl’s attacks began, I’d vacate my body, did not know what took place. Karl just fucked a corpse.” “I’m reluctant to believe that since a major goal of the rapist is to have a formidable impact on the victim, except for the rare, and I never met one, necrophiliac.”

Fuck, Ira’s right! Just like a vacated body still bleeds when stabbed, my body got aroused, which he must have sensed even if I was numb to it. Maybe I even reached orgasm, and he felt my vagina weeping.

Jane Berger Herschlag’s full-length poetry collection and photographs, When the Mouth Can’t Speak the Body Will, is published by Finishing Line Press. Her docu-poetry chapbook Bully in The Spotlight is published by Pudding House Publications. An award-winning writer, her poems and prose are included in anthologies, university presses, and online. She seeks publication of her memoir A Failed Analysis Redeemed. Here again, readers are taken on her arduous journey from victim to victor, traveling through her pain of discovery and her joy of gaining selfhood. Going public in writing and at readings frees one from the captivity of abuse. Ivo Review just nominated her for Best of the Net.