5. Neptune and Ariel

5.1 It is said that dentists have the worst teeth. I am not sure that is true. However, I do think that hairdressers tend to have terrible haircuts. And, from my experience of graduate school so far, it would seem that psychology graduates are very stressed and struggle to achieve balance in their own lives. One of my professors said that grad school is too stressful to be able to maintain a romantic relationship. I mean, please; it's not like going to war. But then, I can’t really comment, since I am on the moderated program with less modules per semester, and very grateful for it.

I have decided to do some drawings of local wildlife when I am not studying. It is a good way to ensure balance. You should not rush a drawing.


5.2 In my Intercultural Awareness Development’ module I had to list the five cultural groups/ populations with whom I feel least comfortable. The groups could be very loosely defined - race, ethnicity, nationality, social demographic status, sexual orientation etc. At first I thought that I don’t feel uncomfortable with any group; I only feel uncomfortable with individuals who feel uncomfortable with or resentful towards me because I am a white male born into privilege. But then I thought of people who are severely disfigured. People with terrible deformities. That is probably the only group with whom I am not at all comfortable. I feel very sorry for them, I am revolted by their mutations and at the same time ghoulishly fascinated. In any case, I can certainly not engage in any normal way. At least, I don’t think I can, though I am not sure I have ever tried.

The following week the assignment was returned to us, along with the next assignment. In my case it was to find someone with a disability and interview them for 8 to 10 hours over the next two months in order to come to understand them, their lives, their experiences and their relationship to disability.

There was no guidance in terms of how or where to find our interviewee, and since I barely know anyone in this city and certainly do not have access to a network of contacts, I was a little stuck. However, that very afternoon I went swimming in the bay at the Dolphin Club. I was minding my own business and happily splashing from buoy to buoy when I heard loud, repeated shouts of ‘blue cheese!’. I looked up to see a huge man with a white beard who looked like Neptune; he was treading water a few metres away from me. There was a lady swimming a few metres beyond him. I looked at him as inquisitively as possible through my swimming goggles; was this the drowning cry of a maniac? However, he continued to shout at the lady and ignored me, so I swam on and thought to myself that it takes all types.

I was sitting in the sauna after my swim when the enormous Neptune man came in. He had moved to San Francisco from Texas to play ‘go’ several decades ago. He had a very idiosyncratic way of speaking, punctuating his conversation with what appeared to be a slight variant of the Indian acha-cha-cha-cha-cha. I asked him why he had been shouting ‘blue cheese’ while swimming. He explained that the lady he was swimming with was blind and this was one of their code words.

When I next saw Neptune I asked him whether his blind friend might consent to being interviewed by me. This was of course slightly delicate since I wanted, as far as possible, to avoid having to confess my own discomfort with disability. I wanted to present myself as having a desire to learn about disability, rather than admitting that I had been given an assignment based on my own personal shortcomings. So, I wrote a letter to the blind lady which I left in Neptune’s locker at the Dolphin Club and I am very happy to say that she has agreed to be interviewed by me.


5.3 Last week I met the blind lady for the first time. I am going to call her Ariel; she has tattoos of mermaids and dolphins all over her arms and shoulders. She suggested that we meet at the Bombay Bazaar, an Indian ice cream parlour in the Mission district. Ariel is 47 years old. She arrived in a flowing dress with a thick garland of leaves and flowers on her head. Her arms and shoulders were bare; I observed on them the tattoos which she has never seen. Ariel grew up in South Africa; she had her eyes removed when she was eight months old owing to retinal cancer. Since then she has used glass or plastic eyes which she takes out when she goes to sleep. I did not realize that her eyes were plastic until halfway through our meeting. Ariel arrived accompanied by her boyfriend who then left us.

My remit for the initial interview was to establish Ariel’s biography. I stuck pretty much to the facts of her life. However, I think this may be a very interesting and illuminating assignment, not least because of Ariel’s openness and warmth. I walked the two blocks home with her from the Bombay Bazaar. She very lightly held my elbow, or rather, her hand hovered with my elbow in the gap between her thumb and index finger. Then she hugged me on her doorstep.

5.4 A few days after the interview I was shopping in my local supermarket when I saw a middle aged lady with a truly horrific facial disfigurement. She had an enormous livid tumour covering half her face, distorting her mouth so it hung half open and squeezing shut one eye; she reminded me of Joseph Merrick. The thought that makes me wither within is to imagine that happening to my own child. That truly makes it real and breaks down the distancing defences. I realised that is the lady I ought to be interviewing. I considered approaching her and asking her, but how on earth to do that? How to ask anything, especially when you are already struggling to control your emotions? Well, needless to say, I chickened out.

4. Which doctor?

4.1 Over the summer I have been chewing people’s ears off about my plans for a more bohemian existence here in San Francisco. In particular, I said I wanted to build my own furniture. I didn’t think it could be all that difficult. And even if the resulting pieces were a bit haphazard, they would have a rustic charm. So, having moved into my new flat here, I set about finding a timber merchant within walking distance. There weren’t any, so I found one online and phoned to inquire about deliveries. And that is when the full absurdity of the enterprise struck me. I had no idea what type of wood I’d need, or what tools, or how to build even a simple chair. And having a sitting room full of timber and sawdust doesn’t appeal that much either. I am going to wait until I move to a rustic setting before I start making my charming rustic furniture.

However, I thought I could remain half true to my vision by eschewing contemporary urban minimalism and buying cheap antiques instead. I went to a number of antiques malls and warehouses. I saw some stuff I liked – old wooden chairs which looked like they had been left on a beach for half a century; tattered, smoky green leather sofas; rusty wrought iron tables. They were the kind of objects you might see being fly-tipped. The only difference is that, since they are in an antiques mall, they cost ten times more than they did when new.

The only thing I have acquired is an old globe on a stand. For ten days it was my only piece of furniture. It is not very practical but I have always wanted one. And it will be an excellent prop for armchair travel, when I have an armchair.

In the end I swallowed my pride and ordered online from Ikea. It took me four and a half hours to put together my desk yesterday. I did it so badly, and the result is so haphazard, that it looks like an original rustic piece which I built from scratch. That consoles me.

4.2 Earlier today I walked past Ghiradelli’s World (?) Famous Ice Cream Parlor. Inside there were twelve nuns clad in white habits. Some were white, some were African, others were Indian; all were ancient. They looked like missionaries gathered from the distant corners of the globe. Each nun was tucking joyfully into an enormous ice-cream Sunday, bedecked with whipped cream and crowned with a cherry.

4.3 In my Observation and Interviewing class we have to do a fair amount of role-playing. I hate role-plays. I am a dreadful actor and, in any case, there is a lot of material in the literature about the importance of authenticity in the therapist-client relationship. That makes sense to me, which is why I find role-plays such a struggle. I don’t believe in my role or the other person’s.

However, I was asked to be the client in our first session. My partner was a large, cheerful lady in her fifties. I decided to base my client character on one of Irvin Yalom’s psychoanalytic cases from his excellent collection, ‘Love’s Executioner’.; I thought that would make it easier for me to believe in the role. Yalom describes a wealthy, elderly Jewish man (‘I can live off the interest of my interest’) who has started getting migraines. The elderly man’s doctor refers him to Yalom – the psychoanalyst - because wasn’t able to find anything wrong with him. Yalom discovers that the migraines have coincided more or less with the man’s retirement and that, on closer investigation, the retirement has stirred up all sorts of existential anguish.

So, I introduced myself to my ‘therapist’ (the cheerful 50 year old) as an elderly Jewish man, much to her surprise. However, it wasn’t until she started to question me about my wife that I recalled the other salient feature of Yalom’s case, namely that the migraines coincided precisely with the first instances of impotence in the elderly gentleman’s life. My ‘therapist’ was a little taken aback when I announced in front of the class that I couldn’t get it up. However, she diligently pursued her line of inquiry, forcing me to admit that I was only truly happy when my wife held me in her mouth – another case detail. My ‘therapist’ went on to draw me into more and more intimate pseudo-confessions and I was relieved when the session was over. My performance as client was praised and it wasn’t until I was walking home that the full ridiculousness of the situation struck me.


4.4 I have taken to swimming in the bay here. There is a rickety old wooden house on the beach which belongs to the Dolphin Club. You can pay to use their facilities for the day as a guest. The water is pretty cold and murky. Most of the members of the Dolphin Club - they call themselves dolphins - appear to be quite senior citizens, though their hardiness cannot be denied. There is a group of them who swim every morning at 6am, even in winter, in the fog and the darkness.
Shaking with cold after my first swim, I headed straight for the sauna. Inside I listened to three elderly dolphins chewing the fat:

Dolphin 1: I felt a seal brush against my leg today. They’re getting frisky.
Dolphin 2: Yes, I saw him, and smelt him too. Awful fish breath.
Dolphin 3: I had a sea lion jump over my back yesterday.
Dolphin 1: Really? But did you sea the tiger shark last week?


Maybe they were just trying to scare me. They succeeded.


4.5 An interesting excerpt from one of my textbooks:

"In one sense psychotherapists are a genus of the world species of witch doctor. We are a bit more refined, but no less confident, and not much more effective than an Ethiopian spirit doctor, Peruvian curandero, Puerto Rican espiritista, Navaho medicine man, Hindu guru, Tanzanian Mganga, or Nigerian healer. We are faith healers. We all cure people of their suffering by capitalizing on our power, prestige, communication, sensitivity, and rituals while playing on the client's expectations and trust. All healers work by naming what they think is wrong (diagnosis), assigning meaning to the suffering (interpretation), and intervening in some therapeutic way (herbs, medicine, reinforcement)."

The Imperfect Therapist by J. Kottler and D. Blau.