Chapter 9

-4-

"So, I went to the Flying Frog at lunch, and Mack and I got caught up. He's been putting together groups and playing music all these years. He met Cher in high school and they got married right after graduation. They had a group all ready to hit the bar scene when Cher's dad died and left them half the Flying Frog. Mack said it was a choice of staying home and working for a living or going on tour. When Cher told him she was pregnant, that was it. They stayed put and he and Cher have a house band on weeknights and they bring in acts on weekends. I met Crista, their little girl and she's so cute. She has her own little guitar."

"Marilyn," Dr. Tripp looked at her. "We'll come back to your friends in a while, but there's some work we need to do."

"Why? Why do I need to go through all this? I know what I want."

"True," Dr. Tripp said, "but do you know who you are?"

"That doesn't make sense."

"When it does, we'll be close to finished." Dr. Tripp picked up the pad and pen. "You told me Robert went off the rails. Let's start there."

"Fine," Marilyn slouched in the seat. "People thought I was gay. I didn't care if they left me along. Sports made me important and booze and drugs numbed me. I didn't need anything else. Not until I got this huge crush on a guy on the football team. I'd looked at gay porn on the computer. Why not if I was gay? It didn't do anything for me. When I had dreams about him, it wasn't me he was with. That bitch Marilyn was there doing all the things I wanted to, but she had the right parts. I had to hide in the locker room because my body didn't know the difference. So, I hit the booze and shit harder. The coach busted me and threw me off the team.

"Suddenly, I didn't matter. I had nobody. I was nobody.

"At home thinking I'd break into my Dad's liquor and get pissed, I broke the hinges with a crowbar and stole the oldest bottle of scotch there. Mom was at work and so was Dad. I sat in my room and killed most of a half bottle of twenty-five-year-old scotch, until I could barely stand. I can't remember getting undressed or putting the dress on. Sometimes the dress would move from the back of the closet to the front, like I'd been wearing it, though I couldn't ever recall it. This time I remember looking in the mirror. Marilyn was there. She was crying and shaking her head; like Mom when I'd been caught doing another stupid thing. Then she walked away and left me looking at myself. All I could see was a fucked-up bastard wearing a stupid white dress.

"All that time I'd been hating Marilyn, I'd been killing myself. I smashed the mirror with the bottle. It broke in my hand and cut me deep. I sat on the floor and stared at the blood. Only thing was, it didn't hurt. I knew it had to hurt. That's when I cut my wrists with the glass. Then it hurt, it hurt so much. But I deserved it 'cause I killed Marilyn. I tried to cut deeper, but I couldn't hold the bottle any more. I howled, I guess. The police said that's why our neighbor called them; she was scared of the noise. They came in and saw me. The ambulance took me away to the hospital where they sewed up the cuts and filled me with drugs and put me in a psych ward.

"Mom came and cried. Dad didn't come, Mom told me it was too hard on him. I wandered through the ward drugged up to my eyeballs. After a while the psychiatrist decided on a proper medication for me and sent me home. The meds worked. They put a wall between me and reality. Life was fucked up, but I couldn't feel it. Mom bought me this guitar and a book about how to play it. I never learned any songs, but I'd play chords for hours just zoning out.

"I went back to school with these big ugly scars and looked stoned all the time. Mom thought I should try something completely different, so she convinced the music teacher to let me play in Jazz Band. All those hours of playing chords meant I had fingers like leather. I played the chords on the music and starting enjoying myself. Music became my new drug of choice. The psychiatrist let me cut back on the dosage of the pills and the fog lifted. It was my last chance to be a normal guy, so I didn't stop Marlene when she started hitting on me.

"We went out to movies and to dances. I liked her and we had lots of fun, but we never did anything. I couldn't even kiss her good night. We were just friends and I couldn't explain why. She thought it was the medication I was on. We decided I'd stop taking it. I'd taken it so long without a problem it was easy to fool Mom. The fog vanished, and I felt like a complete person again. There wasn't anything between me and the world. Marlene and I went to a dance, but we cut out early and went back to my house. My Mom and Dad had gone to friends for the evening.