Very LeFreak (14 page)

CHAPTER 21

Very was wary of making new friends or even going on her typical hunt for crush prospects at ESCAPE. She was starting to worry she might be a toxic personality. She didn’t want to cause undue harm to unwitting rehabbers. They had enough going on without worrying about whether Very needed someone to take care of her, or if she might cause them to be unfaithful to their significant other, or if she might suddenly have the desire to kill them.

She was bad news. Very understood that much. She still didn’t think she was such a problem as to have warranted being sent to ESCAPE, but she also knew enough to know she didn’t want to be the person who created new problems for other people. For as long as she was stuck at ESCAPE, Very vowed, she would do her best not to form attachments, in either the friends or the friends-with-benefits category. She would be as celibate as … a stick of celery—a pleasant enough filler, especially with peanut butter or cream cheese slathered inside, but not a dangerous tool of emotional fortification or caloric fornication, either.

Yet still, Very had one very important question she couldn’t help but reach out and ask: “What the fuck am I supposed to do with my hands?”

Gesturing
jazz hands
, Very directed this question to the boy and girl sitting on a couch in Jones’s den, who looked up at her from the atlas they were poring over. The boy wore green eyeliner, so Very already knew how he’d gotten to ESCAPE. The girl Very immediately recognized from an unfortunate high school prom night after-party video that a mean prom king had recorded on his phone, then posted on YouTube, where it had gone viral. The drunk prom queen from the clip was known to the world as “Big Gulp.”

The boy said, “You’re new?”

Very nodded.

The girl said, “That’s the toughest part the first few days. Trying to figure out what to do with your hands if you’re not texting or holding a joystick or typing. Right?”

“Exactly!” Very said.

“Do you smoke?” the boy asked. “That’s the first line of defense.”

“No,” Very said, feeling like it wasn’t a lie. She didn’t. Anymore.

“Needlepoint?” the girl asked.

“Ew,” Very said.

“Try it!” the boy and girl said, in unison.

The boy’s name was Erick; the girl was Kate. Erick had lost it after a
Dreams
game at Harvard. He jumped into the Charles River, thinking he could go after underwater prey there. Problem was, he didn’t know how to swim in actual water. Pretty blond Kate from Atlanta … Well, everyone knew Kate’s story. There was even a Yahoo! group created by 7-Eleven employees who wanted to marry her. She obviously never joined that group. She had to drop out of her freshman year at the University of Georgia because she was too famous. No sorority house would have her, not even the really slutty ones.

They were nice, this Erick and Kate, and helpful, too. They located a spare needlepoint kit for Very to help her get started. For their art therapy projects, Erick was working on a needlepoint cat that somehow looked more like a dolphin, and Kate was working on a hydrangea bloom that somehow had evolved into a picture of a cell phone that was also a gun.

“Freedom of expression,” Kate said.

Erick said, “Needlepoint is a really awesome and safe way to keep your hands occupied, but go deep down, like, in the sea of your soul to see what’s really in there.”

“Cool,” Very said.

Over coffee, vegan cookies, and stitching, Erick and Kate filled Very in on how to survive her ESCAPE tenure.

“The first week is the hardest,” Erick said. “Figuring out how to stay occupied. Trying to figure out how to breathe when there’s no wireless energy source you can practically feel pulsing through your body.”

These kids really got it!

“Yes!” Very said, excited for the first time in a long time. Jean-Wayne had been the only one of her outside friends to really understand this—the hunger that felt like it burned through and pillaged your body, the infinite lust to connect, to game, to be online all the time.

Kate agreed. “Yeah, when I first got here, just learning what to, like, think about, if you’re not hitting Refresh on your friends’ pages every two minutes, or IM-ing, or texting, or video chatting, was way hard.”

“Or meme-ing!” Very said.

“Or listening to music!” Kate said.

“
Dream
ing!” Erick sighed.

Kate said, “You know what’s been the weird part about making friends here? Getting to know people in the first-person present instead of through their third-person updates. It’s a bit disconcerting at first. But then you get used to it.”

Erick said, “Yeah. After a while, you get used to not checking e-mail, or browsing your friend lists, or needing to be in an online game round-the-clock. It seems to just happen. It gets to be pretty mellow to hang out in the real world, and do needlepoint, and play tennis and stuff. I’m not saying it’s better like this. It’s just … different. But okay. Like, totally survivable.”

“Really?” Very said.

“Really!” Erick and Kate answered.

But they warned her: Beware the ones who weren’t serious. You could tell the ones who were going to fall off the wagon. They tried to flag down passing boats from the dock to ask to borrow sailors’ cell phones. They stood at the road to wait for SUVs to go by, hoping to get a glimpse of a GPS system or the backseat video screens playing
Wall-E
for the kiddies on a long road trip. They gnawed at the empty electrical outlets in their cabins, pining to be re-electrified. They stood on the roofs of their cabins, framing their hands as if they were holding a phone to try to find a good connection out in the boonies, then gestured wildly like they were having an actual conversation, when their hands were actually empty and they were alone up there.

Those were the ones who’d fall and wouldn’t make it through the program. Watch out for them.

This one guy, he’d been to ESCAPE three times already. He escaped, but kept getting sent back by his rich, angry parents, who didn’t know what else to do with the guy. He was the most fun guy in the world, until the hunger bit him so hard that he turned crazy, and he broke into the church charity store in town in the middle of the night to loot the confiscated equipment supply that ESCAPE donated every week after its new recruits checked in. Stealing from the Congregationalists! What kind of desperate jerk took it that far?

Erick pointed to the collection of framed needlepoint pieces on the wall, which looked like it could be a picture-book window into the minds of past ESCAPEes. “Check out the clown one,” Kate told Very. “It was made by him.”

It was hard not to find the clown-face needlepoint. It was the most disturbing image on the wall, scarier than Kate’s phone/gun-in-progress. The clown face had searing black eyes with pointed red eyebrows, a Star of David for a nose, big purple lips opened to reveal one blue tooth, and bright red cheek rouge like a transvestite. The clown also wore a turban, but like the kindly Auntie Mame kind, not the Indian kind, which was particularly upsetting. The clown looked like the meanest mofo from Mental Clowntopia since, like, ever.

Very shivered. “Yikes!” she said.

On the less serial-killer-potential side of the ESCAPE gossip, Erick and Kate updated Very on ESCAPE’s most winning long-running soap opera: the war between Dr. Killjoy and Jones. He thought she was a New Age quack; she wished the old-school Yankee crank would just move off the property already. They tried to avoid each other, but if you were lucky enough to glimpse Jones walking down to the main lodge, be sure to follow, and listen outside Dr. Joy’s door to the ensuing conversation. The drama was better than any reality TV show, and the dialogue was totally real.

“Outstanding!” Very said. Sign her up to tune the fuck in.

CHAPTER 22

Today’s Talk Time was brought to Very by the letter K and the number 7.

Her therapist’s name was Keisha, and Keisha met with residents in studio number 7 in the main lodge.

Very wasn’t too keen on having to go to regular talk therapy. But if she was going to try to try … she’d
try
. Although she really didn’t see how a stranger who had no emotional investment or personal connection to her could actually give a care about what Very had to say.

It helped that Keisha appeared totally casual. Very couldn’t imagine truly confiding in someone who dressed in Birkenstocks and chinos and sweater sets, like Dr. Joy. But Keisha wore faded, vintage jeans, and she was barefoot with sparkly blue-painted toenails, and she wore a shirt that Very recognized from Threadless.com, a baby blue tee that said, “Let’s ESC together,” but the “ESC” was a picture of a computer Escape key. Her dreadlocked hair was tied back with a piece of twine.

“Is the shirt meant to be ironic?” Very asked as she sat down with Keisha for their first session together.

“What do you think it’s meant to be?” Keisha asked. She wasn’t really old like the rest of the staff at ESCAPE—she looked at least young enough to have come of age after e-mail was created.

“How old are you?” Very asked, sitting down on a sofa opposite Keisha, who’d settled cozily into a cross-legged position on a comfy chair.

“Does it matter?” Keisha asked.

Very thought about it.
Did
it matter? She shrugged. “Guess not.”

“I’m thirty-two,” Keisha said. She pointed toward her diplomas posted on the wall behind her desk. “Undergraduate degree in history from Mount Holyoke, master’s degree in clinical psych from the University of Vermont. Will this package work for you?” She didn’t say that last sentence in a mean way. She had a relaxed, kind manner that Very appreciated.

“Do you have candy?” Very asked.

Keisha reached over to open a drawer from the coffee table that was placed between them. “M&M’s do ya?”

“Plain or peanut?” Very said.

Keisha pulled out a crystal candy dish, so fancy it had a top to it. She placed the candy dish on the table, lifted the top off, and said, “Almond.”

“Almond,” Very said, impressed. “You’re one classy broad.”

“I try,” Keisha said.

Very dipped in for a handful, which went right into her mouth. Crunched, chewed, swallowed: delicious.

Therapy maybe wasn’t so bad.

“So what would you like to talk about, Veronica?”

“Friends call me ‘Very.’”

“So we’re friends?”

“Yeah. I think so. Are we?”

Keisha took a handful of M&M’s for herself. “I hope so, Very.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to talk about,” Very said.

“Talk about whatever’s on your mind. How you got here. Which color M&M’s you like best. How you’re managing this first week here at ESCAPE. Your family. Your friends.”

“I’d like to know the name of that nail polish color you’re wearing on your toes.”

“It’s called ‘Am I Blue.’”

“That’s a good one. I hate it when they call the colors something that has nothing to do with an actual color. Like, a really whore-red color gets called ‘Night on the Town.’ And stuff like that.”

“A whore-red color? Describe it.”

Very said, “You don’t need to do that with me.”

“Do what?”

“Use what I say to lead me into something you think I’m supposed to be talking about.”

“Like what?”

“If you want to know if I’m a whore, it’s okay to ask me straight out. I don’t mind.”

“Well, that’s maybe not the word choice I’d go with, but tell me, Very … what do
you
think you are?”

“I’m a bit whore-y,” Very allowed, laughing.

“How so?”

“I like to fool around. Get together. Hook up. You know.”

“Do you have unprotected sex?”

“Fuck no!” Very said, offended.

“Good. So when you ‘fool around,’ tell me about that. Have you been in a long-term relationship, or are you more casual?”

“Casual. Haven’t been lucky in the long-term department.”

“How so? Are there relationships that you’ve had so far in your life that you might have wished to be more than casual?”

Very couldn’t believe she was going to say what she was going to say—she’d never even talked with Lavinia about this stuff, not seriously, at least. “Well, even though I am the first person to make out at a party, I’ve only been with, you know,
really
been with, six people.” Very counted on her hand. “Or wait, seven, if we’re being technical.”

“What’s the distinction?”

Very spoke down low. “Penetration with a guy totally counts. But when it’s with a girl, it’s more … vague.”

“Why?”

“There’s six people I’ve been with. Well, more like six and a half. Okay, seven. Five guys I’ve slept with. And two girls. But the first girl, she was just practicing, although it went as far as it could go.”

“Which is how far?”

Very started to feel exasperated. She was about to tell Keisha something important that she’d never shared, but Keisha was leading her to the wrong story. Very didn’t answer Keisha, but took another handful of M&M’s instead.

Keisha said, “If you don’t feel comfortable talking about it, that’s okay. Our time together is to explore what you feel comfortable discussing.”

Very had always been a girl who put out too soon. Why should therapy be any different? Very let out, “I’m totally comfortable talking about my sexuality. It’s that you’re asking about the wrong girl. It’s the second girl who doesn’t quite count that really got to me. That first girl, she was nothing, just experimentation. She was someone I met at a party when I was in high school. We went upstairs to watch a movie in someone’s bedroom. But there was one of those Skinemax movies on TV when we turned it on—”

“Skinemax?”

“Late-night soft-core movies on the Cinemax channel.”

“Oh. Thank you for clarifying. Please continue.”

“That first girl and me, we were just imitating what was happening on the TV. We were drunk, the usual. I don’t even remember her name. Strictly experimentation.”

“So who was the second girl, who doesn’t quite count as your seventh person, if I’m following you?”

“That’s right. The second girl was Kristy. She would only go so far with me, so that’s why I don’t count her all the way.”

Dammit, Very could feel the potential for tears forming in her eyes. She had been so determined not to even talk about anything meaningful with this stranger, yet here she was, ten minutes into their session, giving it all away.

“How did you know Kristy?” Keisha asked.

“She played on the field hockey team at my high school in New Haven. She was really blond and beautiful, but in that no-makeup, casual, athletic kind of way. She looked like she should be on the cover of, like, rich people’s equestrian magazines.”

“Was Kristy in your classes?”

“Oh, no. She wasn’t that smart. At least academically. She was really into sports. She did okay at school, but she didn’t put in much effort. I was in all Honors classes, got mostly A’s back then; the work was so easy in high school. I met Kristy because I was assigned as her peer tutor.”

“So what happened between you and Kristy?”

“Well, she used to come over to my house to study. I live at my aunt’s house because my mom died. New Haven’s kind of a nothing place, but I have a really nice attic room there, so I didn’t mind it that much. And my aunt is old and doesn’t like to climb stairs, so I had a lot of privacy. Kristy had a big family and her house was always in chaos. So we always studied at my aunt’s place, in my room.”

“How did your mother die, may I ask?”

“Drug overdose,” Very said. She could only get through Kristy today; she couldn’t fathom opening up that other bottle of disaster.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Your father?” Keisha asked, jotting away on a notepad.

“Never knew him.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“Robbed,” Very said.

Keisha placed her notepad on her lap. Very couldn’t read the words, but she could see that whatever Keisha was writing about Very had already taken up a whole page. “This is a lot we’re stepping into, Very. Do you need a break?”

“I’m okay.” Very wasn’t lying. She hadn’t realized how much she needed just to talk. Like,
talk
-talk, to a live person, not online-OMG-talk. “Let’s finish what we started.”

“Okay. Tell me more about Kristy.”

“I was totally into her. Maybe even thought I loved her. But when we were together, you know, she’d only go so far. Kissing, and cuddling, and sometimes my hand was allowed to wander, but she was so embarrassed by it after. She barely acknowledged me at school. Then one time after school when my aunt was gone, Kristy and I were alone for real for the first time. And she let me go farther.”

“Do you want to tell me how so?”

“My hand in her panties.”

“Did she do that to you also?”

“Never progressed that far. It took so much whispered sweet-talking just for her to let me touch her there. I don’t know how teenage boys put up with all that yes/no, stop/start stuff from teenage girls, let me tell you. Drove me crazy! But then finally one day, like I said, we were truly alone for the first time ever, and she was really into it, and she let me take it farther than just kissing. She let me slip my hand there. Inside.”

“I notice you talk very openly about sex.”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“Frankly, no. Especially at your age. Was your mother very open with you about it?”

“Totally. She walked around naked at home whenever she could; she hated clothes. She had boyfriends over all the time. She took me to the doctor to talk about birth control as soon as she knew I was sexually active.”

“How old were you then?”

“Sixteen,” Very lied.

Jot jot jot
, wrote Keisha. She looked up from her notepad again.

“So. Kristy. What happened when she let you become that intimate with her?”

Very paused.

Jot jot jot
.

“Could you stop writing while I tell you this?” she asked Keisha.

“Of course.” Keisha set the notepad over on her desk and returned to her comfy chair. “Does the notebook bother you?”

“No. But if I’m going to tell someone about this, I’d like to know they’re really paying attention to me. If I see you writing, in my mind, you’re also IM-ing your friends, or returning e-mails to coworkers, or …”

“… technological multitasking? Five screens open at once?”

“Yes, something like that,” Very said.

Keisha said, “The notepad’s gone. You have my full attention. I’d like to hear what you have to say.”

Very hesitated one more time, then let it out. “Kristy let me put my fingers in there. And she seemed like she was really into it. But then she came so fast, I was almost frightened. It was amazing, too, though, to give so much pleasure to someone I cared about so much. Beautiful, even. She smiled at me for a second and then kissed me; it was like this one perfect moment of happiness. But then, just as fast, she turned on me. She shoved me away and started crying, then hitting me, saying she wanted to go home. She completely freaked out.”

“Why do you think that was?”

“Her family was really religious. The conservative Catholic kind or something, not the chilled-out types. I guess she wasn’t ready to accept that she wasn’t straight.”

“So what happened after?”

“Kristy left. And never talked to me again.”

“That must have felt bad.”

“It did. It felt
awful.”
Very felt the sadness and rejection revisiting her body, squeezing the breath from her lungs and making her heart want to collapse as a spray of tears rushed down her face. But the tears felt okay: safe. And when she got her breath back, Very found it was deeper, and better. It seemed weird that letting out something so sad could actually make her feel kind of glad, but she couldn’t deny the sense of relief flooding through her.

Keisha passed a tissue to Very.

“Thanks,” Very said. She sniffled into it.

“Do you think there’s anything you would have done differently then, knowing what you know now?” Keisha asked.

“Yeah. Don’t fall for a girl who won’t admit she likes girls. Pretty simple, if you ask me.”

“Do you prefer girls?” Keisha asked.

“I prefer a pulse,” Very said. “I know it’s lame to say this, but I’m probably one of those It’s the Person, Not the Gender people on the sexual orientation spectrum. I’m pretty equal opportunity. Well … maybe I trust women less than men.”

“Why do you think that is? Because of Kristy?”

Very paused a moment, to give the question fair consideration. “I don’t know, really. I didn’t realize I even felt that way until I just said it. I mean, I feel like I am a feminist, and I was raised by women, and Go, Girl Power! and all that. But yeah … I think I do trust women less than men. Partly because of Kristy. But also, with men, I just don’t expect anything of them, anyway. So they can’t let me down.”

“Sounds to me like you’re saying you don’t trust men
or
women, then? Do you think the feeling of being let down and not able to trust ties in to your feelings about the loss of your mother?”

Very’s head was officially ready to explode, and not with a need to connect to a machine, but from connecting to too much personal feeling.

“Keisha, may I be honest with you?”

“I sure hope so.”

“I really just want a nap all of a sudden.”

Keisha stood up. “You’re not the first to sit on that couch and tell me that before our session is over. It’s good to listen to what your mind and your body are telling you. So go back to your room and rest. We’ll pick up where we left off next time. Deal?”

“The M&M’s will be here?”

“They will. Perhaps, contrary to Dr. Joy’s notes to me, you might not really be a vegan if you’ll eat milk chocolate candies?”

“I was trying to get out of butter churning.”

“Good move.” Keisha smiled and patted Very’s shoulder. “And great work here today.”