Adam Levin - The Instructions

I don’t know, I said. I said, Why’s he in the Cage with us if he’s not that kind of person?

“No one knows,” Vincie said. “It’s probably a mistake.”

Eliyahu said, “Mistake mishmake, it’s always better to give tzedaka than withhold it.”

“I hate that guy’s voice and I don’t know what he has to do with anything we’re talking about, Eliyahu,” Vincie said.

“What guy?” said Eliyahu.

“That singing fuckface asshole Sedaka who my fuckface old smelly asshole stepdad loves, what do you mean what guy?”

“I’m talking about tzedaka, and you’re talking about a singer?”

“Who do you think I’m talking about, man? Are you trying to make me crazy? He’s that fuckface asshole who sings that fuckface asshole song about breaking up is hard to do and commacomma down doobydoo downdown and now it’s stuck in my head and I’m going crazy and there’s an even more annoying one than that, and what’s really fucken sick is that for some reason I’m trying to remember it anyway and, when I do, that’s the one that’s gonna be stuck in my head. Any second now. Any fucken second now.”

Tzedaka is charity, Vincie, I said.

“Sedaka is a fucking asshole fuckface, Gurion!” shouted Vincie, hand on his eye throughout.

Do any of you know where Ben-Wa’s locker is? I said.

Nakamook said, “Nope.”

“If I knew, I would say so,” said Eliyahu.

“‘Run Samson Run,’” said Vincie.

“And why would Samson run?” said Eliyahu. “The strongest man in Israel? He should run? He shouldn’t run, unless—”

“He should run because Sedaka would sooner trust a hungry lion than a gal with a cheating heart because he. Is. A. Fucking. Asshole. Fuckface. Shithead. Fuckface. Asshole. Fuck. Face. Shit. Fuck. Wang…”

“Well,” Eliyahu said, “Sedaka may in fact be right in that case — if, that is, Delilah is the gal to whom he’s referring. I don’t usually think of her as a gal , for although a gal’s looks may fall on the attractive side, they surely wouldn’t do so in a spectacular way, whereas Delilah’s beauty is believed to have exceeded that of all other women during the era in which Samson reigned — and I’d believe it, too. He was a judge of Israel, and Delilah a Philistine. Would a judge marry a Gentile, let alone a Philistine, were that Philistine not a stunner? I would tend to doubt it. However, given the context in which gal appears, Delilah would seem to be the one your Sedaka is advising Samson about. Samson surely would have been better off avoiding her, though who is to say whether Israel would have been better off? At the end there, Samson killed a lot of important Philistines, Vincie. Any one of them might have been a plague on Israel, and who’s to say Samson would have ever gotten to kill that one — assuming such a one did, in fact, exist — if he hadn’t run toward Delilah? It’s a rhetorical question, so you don’t have to respond.”

Vincie was punching the sides of his own head.

Nakamook said, “Why did Samson kill so many people?”

“You want the short or the long answer?” said Eliyahu.

“I don’t trust long answers,” Nakamook said.

“The short answer is Samson was a holy man, devoted to God, and God wanted some people killed because they were trying to hurt the Israelites, who God was loyal to, so Samson did it. For God. And the Israelites.”

“Out of loyalty,” Nakamook said.

“For justice,” said Eliyahu. “Loyalty’s the short answer. Justice — takes a while to explain.”

I said, Does anyone ride Ben-Wa’s bus in the morning?

“Nope,” said Nakamook, who was leaning back on a locker now, his eyes closed and squinty at the edges.

“I do,” Vincie said.

I tore off three hall-passes and handed them over, told him to give them to Ben-Wa in the morning.

“What about for me?” Vincie said.

Nakamook said, “I told you I’d give you some.” He gave him some.

“Instead of breaking up, I wish that we were making up again,” said Vincie.

“And this is how you thank a friend for a gift? With nonsense?” said Nakamook.

“You would make fun of the way I speak?” said Eliyahu.

And Benji said, “So what good is an homage without a little fun?”

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

4:45 p.m.–6:15 p.m.

AN ASSESSMENT OF A CLIENT:

Gurion Maccabee

(Week Three Assignment)

Sandra Billings

9/25/06

Psychodynamic Methods I, SSA 545

Professor Lakey

Introduction

Over the past three weeks, I have had five forty-minute individual sessions with the client, Gurion Maccabee, who has also participated in three thirty-minute group sessions. *******

A ten-year-old Jewish-American boy of mixed racial background, Gurion lives in the West Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, from where he commutes to Aptakisic Junior High School (my first-year field placement) in Deerbrook Park by means of Metra, el-train, and school-bus. For most of his life, he has flourished at school, both socially and academically. Historically, his grade-reports are glowing, particularly those authored by his Reading and Bible Study teachers. It was not until May of last year that Gurion began to violently act out. The incidents of violence, which are duly represented in the accompanying documents, led to his expulsion from three separate Chicagoland-area middle schools: the Solomon Schecter School of Chicago, Northside Hebrew Day School, and Martin Luther King Middle School. Owing to the nature of his expulsions (see Admissions Record , attached), Gurion was placed in the Aptakisic Cage program for a three-week probational-observational period and, based on the assumption that he would enter into the regular student population at the termination of this period, he was demoted from the seventh to the fifth grade, the rationale behind this decision being based the assumption of myself and my supervisor (Bonnie Wilkes, PsyD ********) that Gurion’s difficulties had their roots, at least partially, in his being surrounded by classmates two years his senior. Since meeting with Gurion, I have revised my opinion about the origin of the difficulties’ roots. Beyond that, I am going to recommend that Gurion remain indefinitely in the Cage and, because grade-level is socially irrelevant in the Cage anyway, I will also recommend that he be re-promoted to Grade 7, the schoolwork of which would at least be a bit more suitable to his intellectual gifts than that of Grade 5. I do not anticipate any resistance from my supervisor or from the principal in either of these regards.

Psychosocial History

MEDICAL

The client is of average height and weight for his age. His medical records and self-reports offer no indication of his having suffered head trauma or any other physical ailment that might provide an organic account of his behavior.

PARENTAL

Gurion is the only child of Judah, a civil rights lawyer, and Tamar, a clinical psychologist.

Since he was added to my caseload three weeks ago, I have been in sporadic telephone contact with the client’s mother. Mrs. Maccabee has refused to allow my supervisor (Bonnie Wilkes, PsyD), to administer any standardized Psych. or IQ tests to her son (the trial-by-fire-type challenge that this lack of cooperation on the part of a client’s primary caregiver provides a new caseworker being, I believe, a feature reason for why Ms. Wilkes, PsyD, added Gurion to my caseload ********), and has displayed some measured hostility toward the probational-observational process. On one occasion, the mother stated, “I know about Cage programs, Ms. Billings. I know that there is no such thing as an appropriate candidate for a Cage program. Furthermore, I know what a behavioral disorder is, and I can assure you that Gurion does not have one.” On another occasion: “You lack the capacity to fathom my son.”