Photo #11 (‘A Sociopath Trying To Look Sad’)

                                                     CHAPTER THIRTEEN

He had felt like a man rushing to catch a train he was anxious to miss.

                                                                            Helen Hudson

Two weeks after election night, in the creepy aftermath of George W. Bush’s popular approval, I’m up in New York sitting in a witch doctor’s office, Lisa in a chair to my left, the witch doctor himself, whom Lisa and I refer to as Doc Bruce, benignly facing us from his just slightly-elevated chair, Piled Higher and Deeper [P.H.d] diplomas plastered on the wall behind him – but Christ he a deeply-piled fellow! A full-blown shrink!

A good question, two or three actually: A witch doctor’s office? With Lisa? Whaddam I, nuts?

I’d written a letter to Lisa’s brother, Marc, detailing Lisa’s sociopathic behavior, her various infidelities and deceptions and treacheries and blurts and bizarre gaslighting maneuvers, which were motivated by the domination game she was playing with my sorry ass: Imagine that all the dispiriting Lisa-behaviors I’ve so far chronicled are lifted and strung together in a 40-page, single-spaced, 16,000-word, Joe-Friday-nothing-but- the-facts-ma’am epic. The document was not a work of literary genius; I readily admit. (On a certain level Dante-esque, it fell short of the Italian’s flare for imagery.)

As I knew there would be, there was a shit storm, with Marc and with Lisa herself. But unlike most shit storms I’ve created simply by telling the truth, this shit storm had an upside once it ran its course, blew out to sea, so to speak. After tearful Lisa-entreaties of the usual sort, Lisa herself came up with this doozey of a concept: She would reply to my version of events point by point and then I would come up to New York [from my farm in Costa Rica], where we would consult with a shrink to see if we could “work things out.” We would use our co-written document as a counseling device.

To repeat: Whaddam I, nuts? Yes, no question, but there was method in it. That Lisa would lie in her response to the letter was a given, but since aside from something being wrong with Lisa, there is something wrong with her, I also knew she would fuck up (from her point of view) and reveal many truths while in the process of lying. [See my point about Biden’s speech?]

See, I needed proof for this narrative that everything happened as I describe. My hope was that Lisa – rather than completely rewriting history – would try to perception–manage events, leaving the facts more or less intact. That she would do this in writing was vital – she would not later be able to call me delusional or a liar regarding what had happened between us. Yes, as clear-cut an example of the uncertainty principle as you’ll ever come across, as the events of the tale are directly affected by the telling. 

Lisa’s response to my letter would exceed all expectations. 

But the real upside, at least in my deranged mind, was that, head up his ass or no, a witch doctor, with his extensive observations of sociopaths and nutcases of other ilks, will surely see the handwriting on this metaphorical wall.

I’d be vindicated by the very situation Lisa had set up!

Talk about hoisted by her own petard!

The ending I so craved was at hand!

But right: The Banana Peel Effect was about to kick in.

Back to Doc Bruce’s office, Lisa and I facing him. Although the following is not Doc Bruce’s opening line, it’s nearly so: “I’m not interested in facts.” (As usual, quotes mean exact words.)

Doc Bruce issues this beaut in response to my defining why Lisa and I are there, which is to have a third party mediate a disagreement between us, my side being that Lisa is a sociopath obsessed with copping uncommitted dick, then, having copped said dick, pathologically lying about it, and, further, engaging in a relentless attempt to make me and everyone Lisa and I know (plus sundry strangers) on two continents* believe that I’ve lost my mind, in order to cover up the truth of her obsession with copping uncommitted dick and then lying about it. I leave out the domination of my sorry ass as Lisa’s underlying motive so as not to confuse Doc Bruce with causation theory, fearing he might be working on some sort of syndrome of his own. Christ, I could end up with one being named after me, which would be depressing.

Lisa’s side of the disagreement being that I’m irrational and delusional due to chronic substance abuse and the inevitable upshot thereof, the dreaded Othello Syndrome (plus a dose of Morbid Jealousy). It’s one or the other, I tell Doc Bruce, meaning Lisa is a sociopath or I’m delusional, and

* Three continents, if you count when Lisa lied to her mom Fran when Fran was in Italy.

the facts needed to bear out my version are contained in the document he’s read, meaning my Marc letter and Lisa’s reply to it.

To repeat Doc Bruce’s response to this: “I’m not interested in facts.”

While I’m absorbing this, a statement the magnitude of which is up there with you’ll never change my mind about anything in its dispiritedness [said to me by my In Search of Captain Zero book editor, the first time I spoke to her] , my eyes wander to Doc Bruce’s wall-mounted bona fides, his glut of Piled Higher and Deepers, the sum total of which equal Doc Bruce defining himself as a scientist. Being an M.D., he’s studied all the physical sciences, from chemistry to physics to biology and so forth, and, I assume, has at least heard of the scientific method, which involves the attempt to understand phenomena. Facts would seem relevant in this quest.

Yet Doc Bruce is not interested in facts.

I forcibly fold my hands in my lap; I’m shaking in anticipation of strangulation urges which have not yet actively surfaced. But okay. Without my asking, and possibly in response to my pained expression and white knuckles, Doc Bruce explains what he is interested in: “What I’m interested in is exploring the dynamics of your relationship with Lisa.” To my surprise, Doc Bruce does not light a pipe, smugly or otherwise, as he says this. He just sits there looking wise and benign.

What I want to know is how Doc Bruce could possibly understand the dynamics of my relationship with Lisa without knowing if one of us is a sociopath, or the other delusional. This is the question I pose. Seems like a good one, no? While Doc Bruce talks a lot to this query but says nothing, I rummage in my bag for the Holiday Inn tape that got “screwed up.” [Long story behind this, the upshot being that Lisa sabotaged a tape on which was her talking to one of her fuckbuddies.]

Look, I say to Doc Bruce… I gather my logic… You read about the Holiday Inn Taping Incident in our relationship epic (with Lisa’s reply, 73 pages, which is now piled on Doc Bruce’s table under his wall-mounted Piled Higher and Deepers). Why don’t we listen to the tape and see if either “it got bumped in the luggage” or “the maid did it” is plausible, in this world or even in a slightly stranger one, maybe a world where the laws of physics take days off down in Costa Rica to rest up.

I lead off with the Tape Incident because Lisa did not take issue with the facts as I put them forth in the Marc letter; the same facts I have put forth here. And since the tape is physical evidence, my being delusional is irrelevant to Lisa’s status as a sociopath. (Which in turn is evidence that you can suffer from The Othello Syndrome while simultaneously your girlfriend is fucking around on you.) Further, since Lisa had – I’ll use a lawyerly term here – stipulated to my version of events, and even put in writing the above ridiculous explanations for the gap on the tape, all one need to do is listen to the tape to know she herself had “screwed it up.” Which would mean – extrapolating to the other incidents (the Fleabag Hotel Incident, to name just one) – that without doubt Lisa is guilty of… well… everything. And therefore is a sociopath. This logic has the feel of inarguability, no?

No, no! Doc Bruce holds up his hands to halt my rummaging for the tape. Doc Bruce quite adamantly does not want to hear the tape.

Doc Bruce: The important aspect of the tape is why you went to that length. It seems excessive behavior.

What? Hasn’t he read the goddamn fucking letter? I mean, why I went to that length is because…

Lisa loves this. She brings up my drug and alcohol addictions as the underlying reason for the taping. This throws the discussion onto a tangent from the real point, but the tangent’s upshot is a bummer for Lisa. After querying me on my codeine and alcohol intake, Doc Bruce says that although it’s a problem, it is not the cause of my delusions, if any. In fact, he says, codeine, being an opiate (if a very mild one), if anything would lessen that sort of delusional thinking.

A big-time setback for Lisa; she’ll now have to come up with an alternate pathology for me being nuts. Weeks of research and Googling and multi- national gaslighting defenestrated. Sitting to my left, the love of my life visibly deflates. Has nothing to say.

In my bag I also have the cell phone cord Lisa stashed in my drawer upon my return from my brink hovering; among my evidentiary props I also have a t-shirt (a Stanford particle accelerator t-shirt, as a brink-hovering or Meaning of Life or What Happened in the Beginning reminder, perhaps). I want Lisa to demonstrate how the three-foot long phone cord could have gotten “accidentally” folded in a shirt, which was the only way it could have gotten “lost” in the clothes drawer innocently – as I already know, a physical impossibility. This is important as proof that Lisa was not only copping uncommitted dick and then lying about it – the implications of the tape would nail that one down – but trying to gaslight me into thinking I had lost my mind. [Lisa had taken to hiding my things to make me think I’d lost my mind.]

Only a sociopath, I say, would try to make the love of her life think he’s lost his mind because he figured out she was fuckfesting with someone in San José while she thought the love of her life’s life was in danger, among other times, one being when he is away researching The Meaning of Life (plus brink-hovering) [this refers to my trip to the Stanford Particle Accelerator as research for my Cosmic Banditos screenplay for John Cusack’s company]; fuckfesting in the love of her life’s own bed in the house he built in paradise, and using the love of her life’s expensive piña colada-flavored sex oil in doing so.

Doc Bruce will have none of it, no demonstrations as proof that Lisa has been gaslighting me, or, indeed, that she is a sociopath. That knowing this one way or the other is the purpose of our $300 session with the guy is irrelevant to him.

Facts, who needs em?

A scientist?

Remember my Head Up Your Ass Syndrome?

HUYA!

But it quickly gets worse with Doc Bruce, as Lisa further demonstrates why she was successful at her former line of work, public relations crisis management – institutional gaslighting. As it turns out, Doc Bruce, notwithstanding his Piled Higher & Deepers – or possibly because of them – is fish-in-a-barrel time for Lisa. Keeping in mind that perception is truth is the bedrock of Lisa’s worldview, let’s look at the first of the Ten Commandments brought down from Mount Orwell by the original PM messiah:

Perception Management (PM) Commandment 1: Thou shalt always maintain plausible deniability.

The problem is that plausible deniability is usually an obvious illusion, if one pays even a modicum of attention; the lies become self-contained (still another self word!). Self-contained lies meaning that it’s not even necessary to outside fact check to notice them. Bush’s lies about why he bombs and invades other countries are a good example here: you merely connect his speeches together, consider them one, and go back over them. In this case, even less than a modicum of attention-paying is necessary. [See?]

As an example of Lisa’s perception management/gaslighting that is not contestable I bring up a whopper in Lisa’s reply to the Marc letter – her new version of the New Year’s Eve fuckfest: ‘I found my night with Robert (the New Year’s Eve Guy) to be unsatisfying and realized later on what a dumb thing I had done, while at the time I thought I was being so liberated.’

Whoa! What happened to the sex being top-notch because it was “uncommitted” and the guy knew how to please a woman and Lisa had orgasms and they needed two condoms because they did it again in the morning and then she bragged to Vanessa about how great it was with the Brando look-alike? Now it was unsatisfying? Lisa was lying right in my face, knowing that I know she’s lying, to give a positive impression to Doc Bruce, trying to say she’s not really “that kind of girl.”

As I try to point all this out Doc Bruce cuts me off with “He said, she said.”

What?

“‘He said, she said’ is not useful.” Plausible deniability.

I believe I growled here, involuntary and low and way back in my throat, like Fang used to do when a Costa Rican approached within five feet of me or spoke to me in above a whisper.

I turn the growl into a throat clearing to conceal my feral reaction. Okay. All right. I move on. I have a trump and by God I’m going to play it and I assume Lisa is dreading this because she knows about it. I tell Doc Bruce that I’ve exchanged a flurry of emails with Lisa’s ex-boyfriend after I sent him the Marc letter to offset Lisa’s gaslighting of him about me, the back and forth Q & A that resulted clearly putting the lie to virtually everything Lisa wrote or said about her relationships to the two of us, going back to the very beginning. Everything is a lie: what she did, when she did it, how many times she did it, and how she felt about doing everything she did. As I bend to my bag to extract the relevant email printouts, Doc Bruce once again holds up his hand to stop me. Given that “He said, she said is not useful” will not really work here (since Lisa’s ex and I are together on this – a sort of bonding-of-the-saps – it would be more like “He said, he agreed, she said”), he says, “He’s probably lying.” Doc Bruce adds that Lisa’s ex wants Lisa back and therefore cannot be trusted in what he says. Here I have a rush of insight: Lisa prepared Doc Bruce in advance for my bringing her ex’s correspondences into the fray. How else would he know, or think he knows, what Lisa’s ex wants?*

Perception Management Commandment 2: When plausible deniability is in jeopardy, thou shalt discredit the source of the truth, preemptively if possible.

“How about if we just take a glance at his emails?” I say, and my voice is getting squeaky as I finally intuit the utter hopelessness of this shit. Look, I ramble on in desperation, when the poor bastard read my Marc letter he realized that Lisa had manipulated us both. I wave an email. He says it’s okay to use his emails here and even says to call him from this session! He’s waiting by the phone right now! (I might have added “like a lifeline on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” but didn’t think of it.)

Doc Bruce shakes his head, possibly at my lack of insight into human motivation.

Me: If he wants to get her back why would he expose her as a lying, treacherous sociopath? Mightn’t that sort of piss her off?

Lisa lets fly a snort of derision at this but doesn’t say anything.

* That Lisa set up our appointments allowed her to work in various preemptive lies via her version of the background of our relationship, while subtly indicating how sincere she was in solving our (or, really, my) problems. Also, Lisa wrote the checks to pay for our sessions (I’d reimburse her later, she suggested); this was another subtle maneuver along these lines, I suspect.

Let’s get back to exploring the dynamics of your relationship with Lisa, Doc Bruce says, ignoring the inevitability of my logic.

Now strangulation images actively surface.

I take a moment to review the positives and negatives of strangling Doc Bruce. I would certainly feel better, which is a positive. And isn’t my feeling better what all this is about? So wouldn’t strangling Doc Bruce be behavior that is in the spirit of the tenets of psychotherapy?

On the negative side, were I to strangle Doc Bruce it could buttress Lisa’s theory that I’m nuts, no? I mean it wouldn’t look good: “Allan strangled the psychiatrist we went to see to try to work things out.”

Given everything, this would be an oversimplification, I think, notwithstanding the essential truth of the statement, were I to in fact strangle Doc Bruce.

…please bear with me for a moment…

Imagine a doughy guy in his late forties, slightly florid complexion, russet suit jacket and loosened tie defining him as a serious academic, yet casual and approachable… Hold on. Just imagine a pompous witch doctor so we can get on with it, okay? Imagine the witch doctor appearing wise and benign in his slightly elevated chair facing the love of my life and me, saying he wants to explore the dynamics of…

…and boom! I’m on him, in a whiz-bang blur I have him bent over the table under his framed Piled Higher & Deepers and I’m banging his fucking head onto the Marc letter and meanwhile gripping the bitter end of his tie with my right hand and sliding the knot down tight onto his doughy neck with my left, Doc Bruce’s florid complexion waxing still more so, which complexion is quickly sliding up to the right-hand end of the visible light spectrum, all the way from red and orange on up to violet, past which light is no longer perceptible to the human eye…

Please add a little tongue-protrusion and eye-bulging to the strangulation imagery.

My strangling Doc Bruce is an Up Moment, as opposed to a Down Moment, for this narrative – even though my strangling Doc Bruce didn’t happen, even if it’s made up. An Up Moment unless of course you’re Doc Bruce himself reading. Or Lisa or for that matter Logan the Nutcase or any of the Mora family (reading a translation, except Esteban, who’s pretty fluent in English) or my demented editor or either of my former agents or Sean Penn or anyone involved in the Zero movie deal or…

…and so forth.

For any of these people Up Moments and Down Moments in this narrative are reversed, I think.

There’s either a catch-22 or a syndrome around here somewhere.