The Schopenhauer Cure(110)

“But you’re so much better now, Philip,” said Bonnie. “You’re so much more in touch, so much more approachable. I’ll tell you the truth—the way you were when you first started here…I mean I could never have imagined me or anyone else consulting you as a counselor.”

“Unfortunately,” Philip responded, “being ‘in touch’ here means that I must share everyone’s unhappiness. That simply compounds my misery. Tell me, how can this ‘being in touch’ possibly be useful? When I was ‘in life’ I was miserable. For the past twelve years I have been a visitor to life, an observer of the passing show, and”—Philip spread his fingers and raised and lowered his hands for emphasis—“I have lived in tranquillity. And now that this group has compelled me to once again be ‘in life,’ I am once again in anguish. I mentioned to you my agitation after that group meeting a few weeks ago. I have not regained my former equanimity.”

“I think there’s a flaw in your reasoning, Philip,” said Stuart, “and that has to do with your statement that you were ‘in life.’”

Bonnie leaped in, “I was going to say the same thing. I don’t believe you were ever in life, not really in life. You’ve never talked about having a real loving relationship. I’ve heard nothing about male friends, and, as for women, you say yourself that you were a predator.”

“That true, Philip?” asked Gill. “Have there never been any real relationships?”

Philip shook his head. “Everyone with whom I’ve interacted has caused me pain.”

“Your parents?” asked Stuart.

“My father was distant and, I think, chronically depressed. He took his own life when I was thirteen. My mother died a few years ago, but I had been estranged from her for twenty years. I did not attend her funeral.”

“Brothers? Sisters?” asked Tony.

Philip shook his head. “An only child.”

“You know what comes to my mind?” Tony interjected. “When I was a kid, I wouldn’t eat most things my mother cooked. I’d always say ‘I don’t like it,’ and she’d always come back with ‘How do you know you don’t like it if you’ve never tasted it?’ Your take on life reminds me of that.”

“Many things,” Philip replied, “can be known by virtue of pure reason. All of geometry, for example. Or one may have some partial exposure to a painful experience and extrapolate the whole from that. And one may look about, read, observe others.”

“But your main dude, Schopenhauer,” said Tony, “didn’t you say he made a big deal about listening to your own body, of relying on—what did you say?—your instant experience?”

“Immediate experience.”

“Right, immediate experience. So wouldn’t you say you’re making a major decision on second-rate, secondhand info—I mean info that’s not your own immediate experience?”

“Your point is well taken, Tony, but I had my fill of direct experience after that ‘confession day’ session.”

“Again you go back to that session, Philip. It seems to have been a turning point,” said Julius. “Maybe it’s time to describe what happened to you that day.”

As before, Philip paused, inhaled deeply, and then proceeded to relate, in a methodical manner, his experience after the end of that meeting. As he spoke of his agitation and his inability to marshal his mind-quieting techniques, he grew visibly agitated. Then, as he described how his mental flotsam did not drift away but lodged in his mind, drops of perspiration glistened on his forehead. And then, as Philip spoke of the reemergence of his brutish, rapacious self, a pool of wetness appeared in the armpits of his pale red shirt and rivulets of sweat dripped from his chin and nose and down his neck. The room was very still; everyone was transfixed by Philip’s leakage of words and of water.

He paused, took another deep breath, and continued: “My thoughts lost their coherence; images flooded pell-mell into my mind: memories I had long forgotten. I remembered some things about my two sexual encounters with Pam. And I saw her face, not her face now but her face of fifteen years ago, with a preternatural vividness. It was radiant; I wanted to hold it and…” Philip was prepared to hold nothing back, not his raw jealousy, not the caveman mentality of possessing Pam, not even the image of Tony with the Popeye forearms, but he was now overcome by a massive diaphoresis, which soaked him to the skin. He stood and strode out of the room saying, “I’m drenched; I have to leave.”

Tony bolted out after him. Three or four minutes later the two of them reentered the room, Philip now wearing Tony’s San Francisco Giants sweater, and Tony stripped to his tight black T-shirt.

Philip looked at no one but simply collapsed into his seat, obviously exhausted.

“Bring ‘em back alive,” said Tony.

“If I weren’t married,” said Rebecca, “I could fall in love with both you guys for what you just did.”

“I’m available,” said Tony.

“No comment,” said Philip. “That’s it for me today—I’m drained.”

“Drained? Your first joke here, Philip. I love it,” said Rebecca.





39


Fame, at Last