Tales From A Thousand & One Freudian Nights
By Janine Baker

"...We're in no hurry here," psychiatrist trying to be patient. "It'll take time for me to get to know you..." I am not a story. I am not what I have done. Nor am I a series of feelings because nothing lasts. Things I once cared about turn to nothing, until wind and rain wash in and I'm longing for what I swore I'd never need. Even those words mislead, for a Self is hardly poetry; at best it's graffiti. Scrawled, indiscriminate, selfish. But we humans crush thoughts into neat conforming peg holes to convince ourselves that's how we think. Sequences. I did this, he did that, she said this, we were there. And we all agree that yes, that's how it is when Proust nibbles a cookie and yesterdays cascade like leaves. Remembering is no autumn picnic, darling; it's a dynamite keg that splatters and splinters while you pick up an ion or two and try to make sense of it. It's twenty symphonies playing at once and countless loops of film spliced into one another. The delicious chaos of real human thought is a secret well-kept, for no, we are not mad or ever close to it. We'ree in control, right? I am. You, too? Okay, good. We're cool. God help us.

And now you tell me to talk, to paint a picture that can help you see. So the mask goes on (I was just chatting while I tied it. See the pretty ribbons that secure it to my head?) And it smiles, this nice mask does, and it charms. It is oh, so responsive. Part mirror, part paper - but no sign of flesh or blood. Don't worry, it promises. You'll like me. Everyone always does.


Captured but cunning, she told her tales to the King,
Every night, she told them.
She told her true and remarkable tales to save her very life.


I've spent three decades in bookstores, searching for Me under "Psych" and "Self-Help." In the early 70's it was a waste of time, save for the ever-present Victor Frankl and a few paperbacks on positive thinking. But by the 90's, I felt like a prophet. Suddenly, Barnes & Noble was flaunting 12-step manuals for all things painful. Anxiety and Depression merited their own sections. With the right workbook, we could expect recovery for everything from co-dependency to Satanic abuse. There were more "Multiples" cranking out autobiographies than most doctors agree even exist (let alone have agents).

Mental illness had opened its padded closet.

I ate it up. But in the hundreds of books I bought, few words described me. Self-help was for "regular" functional neurotics, and that was blatantly annoying. Those people aren't anywhere near sick enough to warrant discussion. Their "issues" (gag) revolve around normal lives. Sure, they worry. They fear they're unloveable or suffer insecurities. But they know they're not insane.


"Don't worry, honey." My grandmother's litany. "You're okay." At seventeen, when I devolved before her very eyes, she was willing to consider the possibility of a physical problem. "People get nervous if they don't have enough iron in their blood." So as I imagined things and hid under the kitchen table, my dear grandma (on hands and knees) tried to coax me out with a "good fried liver steak." I loved her so much that I always tried to eat it. "You just don't want anyone to ever think you're 'funny!'" The symptom has not been created that could intimidate her.


"You'll never find yourself in a book." Even two years into it, His Board- Certified Self disapproved of my home library. "I've told ya before, everybody's treatment is unique."

"But I need to know what's wrong with me. Am I psychotic, or would you even tell me..."

"Yes, I would - and no, you're not. If I thought you could resist using it as a weapon against yourself, I might be willing to try and squeeze you into some narrow description... but sorry, my answer is no."

"That I wouldn't use it? Or that you'd be willing..."

"Neither!" That irresistible smile. "We can keep going around about this, but it's not gonna make me change my mind."

"Or mine."

"Oh, I know that." Stalemate? I should be so lucky. He leaned towards me wearing his but seriously though, folks... expression. "There's such an irony here - because the root of your symptoms - oh, that's in plenty of books. In thousands - novels, poems - it's been written about for centuries -- love and loss and aggression and loneliness -- the human condition. And the trouble you cause yourself comes from pretending for so long that you don't have ordinary human needs." I just stare at him, devastated at being so misunderstood. "Now that might not be the 'diagnosis' you're looking for, but it's true!" No one could be charmed by that obnoxious, self-satisfied smile.



Yet, when he looks at me, I melt.
His head cocked to one side, eyes dancing.
He has become every clich.

Waiting for him, I secretly open my compact, keeping it inside my purse, glancing down, checking make-up, smoothing bangs. I've turned into a forty-year old teenager.

He touches my hand. Heat through my body until against better judgment,
I feel a smile - one I didn't even plan. Almost shy. A little hesitant. Filled with hope.
I've become what I spent my life ridiculing.

It can't last. There is comfort in that.
But still...

He knows I've let none in my bed. Knows I grow tired of everything, can feel a lifetime in minutes...no, I used to. This desire has lasted from its first moments through the night our bodies touch. And without hating. Sustained. Over time. The world is upside down.

Feeling his hair, his back. Literally loving what I touch. Even while knowing what it is - just the flesh of an ordinary man.

And my brain searches for some map of how I got here, to this place that is not me.





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