A. Rich - The Hand That Feeds You

“When am I going to get out?”

“The involuntary admission was over three days ago,” Cilla said. “Your stay at this point is voluntary.”

“Do I have to leave?”

• • •

Odd that I had an erotic dream while I was in a psych ward. Or maybe not.

“Tell me what feels better,” Bennett had said in the dream. He kissed my lips, then he pulled my hair so hard it hurt.

I surprised myself by saying, “My hair.”

He stroked my inner thigh and then bit it. Again he asked me what felt better.

“The bite.”

Bennett said, “Good girl,” then licked my cheek like a dog.

He told me to roll over, and in the dream I felt him enter me twice at the same time. How was this possible?

“What feels better?”

“I can’t choose,” I said, and he continued like two men at once.

When I told Cilla about the dream during our next session, she said it was not unusual for grief to spark feelings of a sexual nature, that my body was bereft as well as my psyche. She said that sex, even in a dream, is life affirming.

• • •

The hands of other men were agile and teasing; Bennett’s touch was assured. He would begin his touch at a point on my body that made the caress feel infinite. And the pressure was never timid — it was the same pressure a sculptor used to mold wet clay.

On our first date, we rented just one room at the Old Orchard Beach Inn in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.

We agreed that our first in-person meeting would be in the privacy of the room. I was surprised to find that I felt shy, having looked forward to this for a month. We also agreed that Bennett would already be in the room waiting for me. At that moment I wished we had planned instead to meet in public, somewhere we might be able to do something — a boat ride, a tour, anything but face each other in a small room with a large bed. Before Bennett I had only been with boys. It didn’t matter what age they were, boys were randy, fun, fast, dangerous, selfish, and hot, but they were not confident. I had barely opened the door when Bennett firmly took my wrist and pulled me in. I saw a man who was not conventionally handsome. And I knew instantly that it didn’t matter. His features were not symmetrical — one side of his mouth turned down slightly. His complexion betrayed a case of teenaged acne. His long-lashed, blue eyes were especially clear, set in the roughened skin. What would have detracted from another man’s looks here contributed to the draw that the young Tommy Lee Jones exerted on women. The power was kinetic: his movements were languid.

His kiss was slow. He sensed when to break away.

And when to resume.

He was holding my face as he kissed me. I held fast to the back of his neck. Women are raised to prize the tall man, but Bennett was no more than five-eight, and I liked the way we fit. I was glad he wore no fragrance; he smelled like clean lake water.

We fell onto the bed and he pulled me closer, but not, this time, by my wrist. What annulled my shyness was his desire for me. When he told me I was more beautiful in person, I believed him. I no longer felt inhibited; it was as though his confidence had transferred to me. I helped him unbutton my blouse; there was no clasp to fumble with as I had worn a silk camisole. He lifted it over my head. He took his time. He took my hand and placed it on his erection. He lifted my hand and kissed the palm. He took each of my fingers in his mouth for a moment. He got on his knees, still fully dressed in jeans and a white shirt, and removed the rest of my clothes. He brushed his chin across me and kissed my inner thighs. I wanted him, but I took my cue from his lead. He was in no rush and neither was I. He had me lie back on the bed and spread my legs, and he put his tongue inside me. None of the boys had done this, not like this. The speed with which I came embarrassed me until I saw the pleasure it had given him. He stood up and now I was the one to kneel. He was wearing an old pair of button-front Levi’s. I undid the buttons, feeling his erection. I leaned over and brushed my breasts against it.

“Come here,” he said.

He put a finger inside me and kissed my throat when he felt how ready for him I was. He made me wait a few seconds more. His movements had authority. He understood that there was power in stillness, and excitement in the pause.

“Come here,” he said again.

• • •

My Bellevue roommate was a Sarah Lawrence freshman who had tried to commit suicide by stuffing her mouth with toilet paper. “I’d drunk all my daddy’s liquor and taken all my grandmother’s pills, but nothing was working,” she told me. Our room was not unlike a standard college dorm room, except the windows were made of impact glass and the “mirror” in the bathroom was stainless steel. Closing our door didn’t give us privacy; in the porthole-shaped view of the hallway the lights never went out. My roommate, Jody, told me that Cilla, our shared psychiatrist, had once been a backup singer for Lou Reed. Jody’s life outside, whatever it had been, had aged her beyond her eighteen years, and the heavy kohl lining her eyes didn’t help. The admitting staff had made her remove her facial studs, and a row of tiny piercings punctuated her lower lip.

By contrast, Cilla wore no makeup, but she still looked younger than I imagined she was. Her unlined face was as calming as her benevolent gaze. It must have taken a conscious effort to perfect that expression — neutral, nonjudgmental, as if she were looking at a patient, not a woman responsible for her fiancé’s death. I had tried for that expression when I met weekly with the Internet scammers and public exhibitionists at Rikers as part of my training.

I sat on her sofa while she sat on a wing chair with an orthopedic cushion. I pictured her back in the day: black leather pants, platform shoes, singing behind the coolest rocker in New York.

She took out her pack of Nicorette gum. “Do you mind?”

The bare, institutional office was painted in soothing earth tones. An orange-and-sienna color-field painting hung behind her desk, the kind of abstract art once considered radical that now graced every therapist’s wall. The painting was the only note of bright color.

“You look like you got some rest last night.”

“If you call nightmares restful.”

“I can increase your Ambien.”

“There is no dosage that will bring me any peace.”

“Maybe peace isn’t the goal just yet.”

“Then what are we doing here?”

“Tell me the last time you felt at peace.”

I didn’t have to coax the memory: it was late June, Bennett’s and my first weekend together. We met again between Montreal and Brooklyn, at an old-fashioned B&B in Bar Harbor that Bennett had found. He drove down and I took the bus up. We were kayaking parallel to the shoreline when a moose came out of the woods. The antlers must have spanned twelve feet — half-animal, half-tree. I’d never seen a creature more majestic. Bennett and I shared a moment of awe, neither needing to say anything.

“What’s making you cry?” Cilla asked.

“I was with him.”

She offered the requisite box of tissue, but I chose not to take one.

“I destroyed what I loved. Can you find the right dosage for me to accept that?”

She said nothing. What was there to say?

“And here’s how twisted I am. I miss my dogs.”

She looked at me with that neutral, still gaze, as though challenging me to find a way to crack it.

“Sometimes I feel as guilty about Cloud as I do about Bennett. Why did I take in those fosters?”

“You were trying to be kind.”

“Was I? This wasn’t the first time.”

“You took in fosters before?”

“Hoarders use animals to self-medicate.”