DEADLY TOXIC POISONS
NEGATIVITY
PESSIMISM
HOSTILITY
On the other side of the bottles were the words:
DEADLY TOXIC POISONS
HATE, FEAR, DEFEAT
LOW SELF-ESTEEM
BLAME, GUILT
Sammy grinned self-consciously. “Okay, teach. I get the message. See ya when I see ya, and I really am beginning to think maybe some day I’ll permanently make it out of the dark woods.”
“Maybe?”
He poked me in the arm with a single finger. “I’ll let you know that for sure after our session…with you know who.”
SUMMARY OF SESSION
Sammy finally faces seeing his father use cocaine. Sammy uses.
His father finds him stoned and having spilled his complete cocaine stash into the heavy carpet, Lance sadistically violently abuses Sammy.
Thursday, September 22
Sammy left the following note in my mail box.
Dear Doctor B:
I stayed awake most of last night rethinking my West Coast nightmare. I can’t believe a nice kid like me, from a nice family and home like mine, could ever have sunk so totally into such an insane hellhole. The more sanely I try to disconnect each single incident and go over it in the tiniest possible detail, the more I know now FOR CERTAIN that a lot of the stuff I thought I did do, or did witness, I didn’t actually do or personally see! Does that make sense to you? Probably not. Well, I’ll try to explain. When I was trashed out on drugs and stuff to the point where I didn’t know which way was up, I didn’t know the difference between movies and videos and me watching them or being a part of them. Like I thought I was part of the wetback thing, now I know I really wasn’t because I remember the rest of the movie. It’s weird! Scary black weirder than weird! Anyway, now I’m positively, absolutely positive I did not do some of the stuff I told you I did.
I feel sooooo good to know that, and I think you’ll feel good too! It’s 3:00 A.M. and now that I’ve delivered this note to you maybe I’ll be able to sleep.
See ya soon,
Sammy (with all kind of flourishes)
Samuel, Paula, Lance Gordon Family Chart
Saturday, September 24, 2:00 P.M.
Eleventh Visit
Sammy and his mother came early. Sammy sat in his chair, looking pale, small, and vulnerable, as he tensely waited for Lance. I had never learned to be comfortable around child abusers and suspected I never would, but at least I could be professional, fair, detached and…with a sharp, painful twinge I realized that for Sammy I felt the same mother tiger protective urges that spring forth from all in the female nurturing species. My kid clients were my kids! I could detach from them and put their problems in a better perspective than I could with my own offspring, but still I was, and always would be, a protective mother figure fighting for their safety and sanctity!
I had just started a relaxation exercise for the three of us when Lance entered. It was like a cold wind came in with him. I held out my hand. “Hello, I’m Dr. B. Sparks.”
The look on his face was that of a wounded animal as he stared soberly at his ex-wife and son. “Paula tells me you’ve done a lot for Sammy.”
“He’s done a lot for himself, with a little guidance from me. I’m very proud of him!”
Lance hung his head. “I’m proud of him, too.”
Sammy’s body tightened. His face flushed, and he began mumbling things under his breath.
I touched his arm gently. “Relax, Sammy, and say anything you are feeling out loud. That is the only way we can understand where we’re coming from, and how we can get from here to where we want to go.”
Sammy tightened his lips until they were just a slash across the bottom of his face. An agonized nonhuman noise escaped, and tears began to form on his eyelashes.
Lance leaned toward him. “Oh Sammy, Sammy, Sammy, forgive me. Can you ever, ever forgive me?”
Sammy pulled back from him and screamed, “Get the shit away from me, you bastard creep!” He pulled himself into an even tighter little snarl of body parts. “I hate your guts. I hate your liver. I hate your heart. I…”
Lance’s face turned white as Sammy looked away from him in revulsion. “I deserve that, son. I deserve anything and everything vile you can say.”
“You’re not fit to be a father…”
“I know that only too well…”
They both began talking at once. Words bumping into and careening past each other but never getting through. They were both so absorbed in their own worlds of pain.
Paula tried to placate them. “Please, Sammy, don’t be so cruel. Your father’s hurting, too. And, Lance, you’ve got to understand how critically…” She was simply adding more decibels to the negative, dissonant sound level.
I broke the escalating tension by tinkling a melodic little crystal bell I keep on my desk for such occasions. “I think it is appropriate at this time to introduce the Gordon family to Listening Therapy. We’ll put this two-minute sand timer on and take turns talking and listening, if that’s all right with each of you.”
Sammy shrugged. Paula and Lance, somewhat embarrassed, nodded affirmatively.
“The rules for LISTENING THERAPY ARE SIMPLE BUT ABSOLUTE! Let’s take turns reading them. Sammy, will you be first?”
SAMMY: When one person is talking, each of the others in the group must remain silent. The speaker will have up to two minutes to say what he/she has to say.
PAULA: During the time someone is speaking, the others must force themselves to listen to what that person is saying! They don’t have to agree, but they have to listen.
LANCE: When the speaker has finished, if someone doesn’t volunteer, he/she can ask anyone in the group to repeat what he/she has said.
DR. B: The chosen person does that in as honest and unbiased a way as possible.
SAMMY: The original speaker then may try to straighten out discrepancies between what he/she was trying to say and what the hearer thought he/she had said.
PAULA: Others may speak for up to two minutes when they think they can add something constructive without getting off the subject.
DR. B: Only POSITIVE, BUILDING suggestions are allowed. Negative past experiences or thoughts can be brought in only when necessary to start restructuring.
SAMMY: Each questionable statement made must be followed up by one or two listeners telling what they thought the speaker said.
DR. B: “Listening Therapy is the most reliable method I’ve found to settle family grievances—in fact, any mode of grievances.”
Lance raised his hand. “I’d like to start by telling Sammy how much I love him and how precious he is in my life—”
I interrupted as I looked at Sammy. “I forgot to inform you that according to the Listening Therapy rules, nonverbal expressions are not allowed either. Listening intently can no more be accomplished with nonverbal talking-back than it can be with verbal interruptions.”
Sammy grinned sheepishly and sat up in his chair.
Lance continued with tears running down his face and onto the front of his shirt. “I hope someday you can forgive me, dear Sammy, and you too, Paula. I was such a Peter Pan for so many years. I wanted to do what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it, how I wanted to do it. Something inside me, bigger than I was, nicer than I was, always made me send money, but maybe that was just to salve my conscience.” He stopped for a couple of seconds, then proceeded.
“I’m going to blurt it all out, every horrendous bit, then if you never want to see or hear from me again I’ll understand. I’ll…I’ll send you money, but I’ll never bother you. I promise, on everything I hold sacred, which is mainly you, whether you believe it or not. Anyway, after Sammy and Dana and Dorie were born and I was beginning to climb up the corporate ladder I began to feel…oh, this hurts…that I was”—he sniffed—“too good for you”—he sniffed deeply again—“that I was the big shot, the…how could I have been so stupid? By the ti
me I went to work in Silicon Valley I was as synthetic as it was, and the more successful I became, according to the ways of the world, the more empty and unhappy I was. Then I started drinking and using drugs, just socially, I thought, but after a while I wasn’t using them, they were using me! I couldn’t understand what was happening in my life. I…”
The sand ran out of the timer, and I asked Lance who he would like to review what he had said.
He bit his lip. “Sammy.”
“I heard you say you were the biggest sleazeball in the world, that you thought you were better than us, too good for us, that you were selfish and self-centered and a dirty rotten, lowest-of-the-low asshole…sorry, Mom. You said you were plastic and you are. A phony, a wannabe, a rotten dad, a rotten husband, a rotten everything, except a good runner-awayer and a drug addict! The lowest of all, fancy on the outside and on the inside, a disgusting, nauseating, verminous coke-head.”
“Mr. Gordon, would you like to clarify what you really said?” I asked.
“No! He’s right. He’s absolutely, perfectly, totally right.”
“Paula and Sammy, is it all right to give him another two minutes to go on with whatever he has to say?”
Paula was in shock. Sammy was patting and rubbing her hands. They nodded.
Lance continued. “Well, maybe I shouldn’t have been so honest, but I had to be, otherwise there is no way in the world Sammy could ever understand my undoing. It was like some subtle evil force was drawing me slowly and painstakingly down into a no-way-out whirlpool. The deeper I got in, the more impossible it was to get out.
“I don’t want that kind of thing to happen to Sammy. It’s self-destructive, which also means it’s destructive to other people, and it can take over so slowly, so subtly, that you’re hardly aware that it’s become your master. I grew up poor and powerless and some little part of me continued to feel poor and powerless till I started making good money. Then…I guess the money and the power became my god.”
Paula moaned softly. Lance’s hand reached out toward her, then pulled back. He looked at the timer and continued.
“I never stopped loving any of you, though! In fact, I think, the more entangled I became, the more I knew I needed you and wanted you. After each of Sammy’s visits, I vowed I would get my life in order, but I didn’t when I could have and then…I couldn’t! I remember after Sammy had visited me for two weeks the summer before last, I’d stayed clean and sober for a time, and I was feeling pretty good. I thought I’d licked my problems, and I’d get better and we’d all live happily ever after….”
The last grain of sand slid from the upper part of the timer. For a couple of seconds the four of us looked at each other in silence, then Lance turned to Sammy. “What did you hear me say that time, son?”
Sammy pulled away and spoke almost to himself. “I heard you say you grew up poor so you were powerless to resist whatever. That’s a pile of horse hockey! You were powerless because you’re a weak-willed wimp! A Peter Pan who won’t grow up and be a man, a decent dad! Mom grew up poor, and she’s okay. Poor is no excuse! You have no valid, acceptable excuse. You said you loved us. Lies! Friggin’ bullshit lies! Black as your heart! Evil as you admit you are! I want outta here. I’m going to throw up. Come on, Mom. We don’t need to listen to this crap.”
She ran her hand through his hair. “I think we do, Sammy. I really think we do. I’d like to hear the rest of what Lance has to say. At least we should give him that chance, don’t you think?”
Sammy muttered, “If it will make you feel better, I guess I can wade through a little more of his flyblown bull-crap lies.”
Lance started speaking again. His voice was raspy, and his eyes brimmed with tears. “I deserve that. I deserve everything you’ve said. I’ve been a deceitful father, a disloyal husband, a despicable human being, but I’ve changed, believe me I’ve changed. The night after you ran away, Sammy, I wanted to kill myself, I felt so unworthy, so controlled by all my weaknesses and evil. I almost did it, too, till I remembered that at least you needed me for the money it would take to get you and the girls through college. That was the only reason I didn’t overdose at that moment, and before I could weaken again I drove to a rehab center and committed myself. They called my company and told them I would be hospitalized for a few weeks. They didn’t tell them what kind of hospital it was.
“As soon as I’d dried out a little and felt pretty sure that I’d make it, I started calling you, Sammy, and writing to you, and trying to contact you in every other way I could think of, but you’d shut me out. I wanted back into your lives so much that my fingernails and toenails ached, but I knew I wouldn’t ever be able to win back your mother’s and the girls’ love and respect until I first won back yours. And I couldn’t love and respect myself until you all loved and respected me. Do you think you ever will be able to do that, Sammy?”
Sammy cringed. “How could I ever, ever, EVER respect anyone who abused me, beat me, and cursed me, and”—his words were barely audible—“loved his shit (cocaine) more than he loved me.”
“Oh, Sammy, I have never before, and never will, love anything like I love my family. You are the air I breathe, the sunshine that warms my soul, part of the God I worship. Haven’t you read any of the letters I’ve written or the telegrams I’ve sent?”
“No! I tear them up! Then I toss them in the trash where they belong.”
“What about the letters I sent to Paula?”
Paula replied, “Like I told you on the phone, Sammy made me promise I’d never mention your name around him.”
“I said I’d disappear again and never come back if she did. I’m only suffering through this waste of time now because she pleaded with me to. After all the crap you’ve put her through, I finally felt I had to do it, but I want you to understand it’s just for her! We don’t need you in our lives. Why don’t you get the hell out? Why didn’t you just O.D. when you knew you should?”
Lance’s voice was quiet and slow. “I hear your pain. I know it. It’s been a constant companion of mine for many years. Especially when your mom told me what had happened to you. I accept the blame. I should have told her then about my drug addiction, but for some crazy reason I felt I had to explain it to you first. I guess because I knew if you couldn’t forgive me, she never could. And there’s no way I would ever break you up.”
“As though you could.”
“I know I couldn’t, and, honestly, I wouldn’t want to, but at least let me tell you the rest.”
Sammy shrugged noncommittally. Paula leaned forward.
“While I was in rehab I accepted, and set out to deal with, my being an addict—a literally imprisoned, completely, mind-and-body-controlled salve to drugs. It’s strange how long I’d been in denial. Even when I saw you using my stuff, Sammy, and my heart being smashed to pulp by the anguish and terror that came with the thought of you digging yourself into the dark, irreversible hole that I had dug myself into, I denied it. Those of us who use always know some people who have gone off the deep end, but we keep telling ourselves we aren’t like them.
“I think my fear and pain were the things that derailed me when I saw you stoned, WITH MY STUFF. I felt so responsible, so depraved, so ungodly, such a bad example of a father, such a poor excuse for a human being. Somehow in my nonworking insane mind, it seemed sane that I could force you into submission to the point where you would never want to use drugs again. I could berate you into wanting to be clean and sober, straight and undeviating, for the rest of your life. What an inane fool I was.”
“Yeah, what a crazy fool you were, then and now! You didn’t know the night before I’d seen you and your out in never-never land buddies acting like the asses you really are.”
“Oh, Sammy, I am so sorry! It shows how low I’d sunk to even do it while you were in the house.”
“I’ll buy that.”
“I have no acceptable excuse for my behavior. I just want you to know that that night when I went crazy with you,
I honestly thought in my crippled, diseased mind that I was doing what was right. I wasn’t stoned, but I felt that yelling and shaking you was the way to stop you from getting into what I had so stupidly embraced.”
“Right! You were being sincere and honorable, trying in a most fatherly way to kill me!”
“Sam, I was desperate! I was so far behind with my car payments and my condo payments and my gas and light and credit card payments that I knew I would soon be losing everything. I suspected that even my job was in jeopardy. I sometimes had nightmares of being on the streets begging for just enough to get me a jolt. It was horrible, and yet I couldn’t quit…I still denied being hooked.”
I interrupted since we had gotten to the point where we were no longer using the timer. “Sammy, would you like to repeat what you’ve heard your father say?”
“No.”
“Will you anyway?”
Sammy looked at his mother. She nodded pleadingly. “Okay, only for you,” he said. Suddenly he became very sober. “I was trying hard not to listen, but I couldn’t keep the sharp-arrow words out of my ears and body. He said he was an addict, and he sometimes had nightmares that he’d soon be on skid row panhandling for nickels and dimes and quarters to get enough for a line to keep his body from breaking apart. He said he was afraid he was about to lose his job and he wouldn’t have any money to help Mom support us.” His next words were almost a whisper. “And he said he went crazy on me because he loved me and because he was so scared he had influenced me to follow in his footsteps.”
“How did that make you feel Sammy?” I asked him.
“Well, I dunno.”
“Do think you might have done something similar UNDER THE SAME CIRCUMSTANCES?”
“I’d never have allowed myself to get there!”
“I never in my wildest nightmares dreamed I’d get there either,” Lance said, “until I was already there and couldn’t get out! I tried many, many times, sometimes staying clean and sober for up to a month or so. Then I’d think I was okay and that I could just party occasionally…I couldn’t. I’d be bagged and booted back into the great, deep, dark hole again. I even made semi-attempts at suicide a few times when the loneliness and emptiness and darkness got so great they almost overwhelmed me. I really wanted to do it. In fact, sometimes I thought I’d have to do it. That it was the only way out. Once I even got out all my insurance policies and tried to contrive a suicide that wouldn’t look like a suicide.” He stopped talking and sat breathing heavily and hugging himself as though he felt he were going to fragment.