Exiles in America(15)

Fay’s problem. The boy kept his eyes averted when she introduced Dr.

Knowles, but no teenager is going to be happy his mother is seeing a psy-

chiatrist. Fay had brought them together in order to declare, “See, I am not

ashamed.”

“You have my number if you need anything,” Zack told her. “But you’re in

good shape. I’ll see you next week. Nice to meet you, Malvern. Goodbye.”

Zack went back inside and found Carter in his office, sitting smugly in the

black leather chair.

“Hello, Dr. Knowles. You have a good week? I know I did,” he said in his

usual robotic tones. “I made out like a bandit.”

Carter was twenty-nine years old, a cold, affectless, unhappy man who

loved crafting silver and pewter but could connect with people only through

sex. He connected constantly, nearly every night in fact, usually with men but

sometimes with women. He met them on the computer or through phone sex

lines—there were phone sex lines even in Virginia.

“Did you meet anyone you liked?” asked Zack.

“No, they were all jerks.”

Carter claimed to prefer women, insisting he was straight. Zack thought

this was possible. The man was schizoidal and unable to form any kind of re-

lationship. A previous therapist had convinced Carter that he’d been sexually

abused as a child. Zack didn’t think this was the case, but Carter had con-

structed a shell identity around the idea and Zack was afraid to crack it. The

man had a terrible temper. His remoteness could be broken only in orgasm or

anger.

“All right then,” said Zack. “Let’s talk about the people you met. Maybe

they weren’t all total jerks. And concentrate on what you felt. We don’t need

to talk about the sex.”

Zack heard too many sad, dreary tales about bad, dreary sex. There was a

time when therapists had to work at getting patients to talk about their sex

lives. No more. Zack had to work through the sex, at least with patients like

Carter, to get at the rest of life. No wonder he enjoyed meeting someone like

Fay Dawson.

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3 5

Listening to Carter describe his week of tricks, Zack found himself miss-

ing Fay. And he suddenly realized who she reminded him of: his mother. She

had Doris Knowles’s confusing mix of timidity and boldness, convention and

rebellion, Southern other-directedness and deeply private dreaming. Was that

why he’d been so quick to assure Fay that she didn’t hate her family? Zack

couldn’t guess if Mom ever imagined their family dead, but he couldn’t ask

her. She had died seven years ago.

This was a special variety of countertransference, of course. There are

more dangerous forms, but it couldn’t be healthy for a psychiatrist to confuse

a patient with his mother. Besides, Zack knew he usually reminded patients of

their mothers.

8

The semester began, and Daniel was actually happy. He always found

the first weeks of school oddly invigorating. There was the challenge of

classes, the thrill of performing. His days were suddenly full again, and he had

no time to worry about his own life and work.

“Welcome to Fine Arts 101, Fundamentals of Form. My name is Daniel

Wexler. You can call me Daniel or Mr. Wexler or even Wexler. But don’t call

me doctor or professor, because I’m neither.”

He looked out on the usual assortment of bland, blank faces, like clock

faces without hands. The students continued to appear younger and younger,

despite recent efforts to age themselves with piercings and tattoos. The guys

were never very interesting as people or artists. Oh, some were cute, but

Daniel had learned long ago that chicken was more trouble than it was worth.

Occasionally there was a talented female—Daniel liked the girls and they

liked him—but the talented boys went to other schools.

“Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Don’t be afraid of feeling frustrated.

Let yourself get angry. Henri Matisse, the creator of so much perfect beauty,

once said, ‘I work like a drunken brute trying to kick the door down.’ We’re

all trying kick a door down.”

But these kids did not believe in struggle. They wanted instant product,

E x i l e s i n A m e r i c a

3 7

immediate results: conceptual art, collage, found-object sculpture, digital

photography, video. Painting required too much work. “We’re here to put the

pain into painting,” Daniel told his First Year Painting class and assigned

their opening project, the White Box, where they put objects in a box,

painted the whole thing white, then painted paintings of that. It was a great

exercise for studying light and shadow, but students complained that Daniel