Hot Pink (14 page)

“I hate this,” I said in her ear.

She said, “It doesn't feel like you hate it.”

Still, after that, Tell quit getting Ricked in front of me.

The school year ended and I got a job washing windows and cleaning gutters on the North Shore with a small crew run by the son of a friend of my father's. They were good guys. They didn't try to make me talk a lot. The job paid twenty-five an hour and it tired me out. If it wasn't raining, they'd pick me up at six in the morning in an old Jetta with a ladder bungeed to the roof and drop me back at home around four. I started eating three full meals a day and I came to appreciate sleep. Tell mourned the scrapes and then the calluses on my hands.

In the week or so after the Pep Boys Ricking, I'd panicked in my car another three or four times. I didn't “sense” leaning needles, think I had a tumor, or imagine I'd explode, though. Rather, I'd fear I'd have a panic attack, and my fear of an attack would itself trigger one. I determined pretty quickly that I had become motorphobic, and I knew that the origins of my motorphobia—the automotive-related occupations of the Ricks I'd met and the close proximity of cars to the Rickings I'd witnessed—were nothing more than what Skinner would call “accidental contingencies” of my behavioral shaping. I knew, without a doubt, that cars were not connected in any relevant, causative way to Tell's getting Ricked or my post-Ricking sex with her, and I told myself so whenever I got near a car, but it didn't really help. The panic's irrationality was a fact the way that death is a fact: the more able I was to accept it, the more convinced I became that it wouldn't go away, and, soon enough, as any behaviorist could have predicted, the act of noting the irrationality became, itself, a trigger of the panic.

One morning I would walk toward my boss's Jetta, and five steps away I'd start thinking, “There's nothing to fear, go make your money,” and the next morning I'd have to start from six steps away, and seven the morning after that. Overall, though, the Jetta was manageable; the panic was low-grade. Riding in the back of it wasn't any worse than sitting shotgun in my car had been on the night we'd gone for ice cream. Once we started rolling, I'd get a little dizzy and have to crack the window and think about fucking to distract myself from the sickness in my chest, but I wouldn't throw up or pass out or anything.

My own car, however, was much, much worse, and the panic it incited was anything but low-grade, especially when I rode with Tell—the attacks were at least as intense as the first one, and their increasing frequency lowered my tolerance. I panicked in the backseat, thinking about sitting shotgun where the last time I'd panicked while thinking about driving, and I fled the car in under a minute. Then I panicked outside the open car-door, thinking about sitting in the backseat where the last time I'd panicked while thinking about sitting shotgun, and I fled the car in under thirty seconds.

Within two weeks of the Ricking at Pep Boys, I'd quit the thing entirely.

Tell couldn't fix her truck herself, and even though I was making more money than I had when I was selling pot—more than enough to buy scores of new books I was too tired to read and a cell phone when there was no one I wanted to call—I didn't offer her any money to pay for a mechanic. I wanted to help her out, but the thought of a mechanic got my heart banging and I'd hyperventilate.

She took a minimum-wage job at an art-supply store a couple miles from the apartment. She'd drive my car there on mornings she was running late. Otherwise she'd walk to work and I'd walk to meet her halfway at the tracks or the park at half past seven in the evening.

Sometimes I'd notice she had a new bruise or cut. Sometimes I couldn't tell if it was new or reopened. The first few times, she'd say who'd done it to her: a bank teller, a sculptor, a plumber, a guy who contracted faux-finishing crews out to restaurants and hotels. I'd ask her to stop telling me about it. Then one evening by the tracks she showed up with a new gash on her shoulder she didn't speak of and I asked her who did it.

“I thought you didn't want to know,” she said.

I said, “I want to know it's not happening.”

“You want me to lie to you.”

“I want you to stop,” I said.

She said, “I'm there when you come. I see you.”

“That's what you always say, but I still feel guilty, Tell. I can't help it.”

She looked around for something to hurt herself with, and when she couldn't find anything, she let her legs go out beneath her and landed on the rail, hard, on her tailbone.

I didn't move. I said, “I'm gonna leave you if you don't stop.”

“You won't,” she said.

She was right. “Then I won't fuck you anymore,” I said.

“Sure,” she said.

It wasn't all bad. In the evenings, before bed, I'd come out of the shower and she'd sit behind me on the couch, wrap her legs around my waist, rub cold hand lotion into the skin of my knuckles. On Thursdays we had the day off together. Tell would paint small pictures in the living room on the canvas snippets she took home for free from the art store, and I'd smoke at my desk, examining the spines and covers of the books I'd bought. Sometimes I'd re-read bits of Skinner. When the sunlight faded, we'd go for a walk to the tracks or the park. If there was rain forecast for Friday morning, my boss would cancel work, and Tell and I would walk to Denny's after midnight.

At the start of the instructional portion of meeting number thirty, the therapist maniacally flipped through the tear-away pad and said, “This evening, I'm going to let you in on the secret to everything.” He stepped aside and pointed to the pad, on which was written:

      
JAKE: Actually, I do feel a little bit insulted. In fact, very insulted.

      
BEN: That's pretty effing ridiculous!

Sally raised her hand and held it in the air to get the therapist's attention. The therapist didn't call on her. Sally's hand stayed elevated until the first time he used the word
constancy
.

According to Skinner, the way to extinguish an undesirable behavior is to stop reinforcing it.

The therapist said, “People act in order to make the world predictable. To maintain constancy. To keep to the simplest and most readable patterns. People don't move toward what we often call
pleasure
. They often do not move in the direction of what is best for them. It's constancy.” Here, the therapist paused to take a sip from a styrofoam cup of water.

Sally's hand shot up into the air again, and she waved it back and forth until the therapist said the word
whom
. Skinner found that before a behavior became extinct, it would increase in either frequency or intensity or both. Take a pigeon conditioned with food pellets to lift its left wing and peck the bolt on the door of its cage. If you stop reinforcing it with food pellets, you eventually extinguish the wing-lifting, bolt-pecking behavior. Before the behavior becomes extinct, though, the pigeon will frantically wing-lift and/or bolt-peck.

The therapist said, “Evidence? How about something extreme? How about take a look at the children of abusive parents. Is being sexually molested what's best for them? Is being beaten something they enjoy? Come on. Of course not. Nonetheless, when we try to get them away from their abusive parents, they cling. They don't want to go, guys. They want to stay with their abusers. Why? I'll tell you why: constancy. Predictability. A world in which they know when and by whom they'll get beaten and sexually molested is less scary to them than a world in which they have no idea about what could happen next.” His face smiled. He took a breath.

Sally raised her hand again and waved it furiously, along with her head. Some of her hair came out of its barrette. She started tapping her foot and the thing was this: it doesn't matter what kind of pigeon it is. It doesn't matter if the pigeon has a soul or not. It doesn't matter if I love the pigeon or if the pigeon loves me. If I give it food for pecking the bolt with its wing up, it will peck the bolt with its wing up. If I quit giving it food, it will eventually quit pecking the bolt with its wing up. It doesn't matter if it knows why it has stopped pecking the bolt with its wing up or if it knows why it ever started pecking the bolt with its wing up. And once it stops, I can get it to start again by conditioning it with food pellets.

“They act to stay with their abusers, these kids. Because why? Because constancy. Constancy constancy constancy. Constancy is based on experience. Without constancy, we fear that the foundations of our individual worlds could crumble. Without constancy we face the unknown. So we repeat. We pattern. To maintain constancy.

“How can we apply this knowledge? Well, judging by the interaction between Jake and Ben that we see here on the tear-away pad, I would guess that Ben comes from a background in which honest statements of feelings, e.g.”—the therapist pointed to the tear-away pad—“‘I do feel insulted,' have been regularly met with abject cruelty. What does this mean to Ben? This means that if Ben had not acted in an abjectly cruel manner when he responded to Jake's honest statement of feelings, Ben's world could have crumbled! Or so Ben would think. Of course it's not true. That's the good news. That's the miracle. It wouldn't have crumbled! Can you see that, Ben? Of course you can't. Not yet. But that's why we're all here.”

The therapist's eyebrows climbed to his hairline and he panned his expectant gaze across the six of us. Sally dropped her hand in her lap and left it there.

The troubling thing, for me, about Skinner was this: while the behaviorist is shaping the behavior of his pigeon, the pigeon is shaping the behavior of its behaviorist. Place two video cameras in the lab: one over the shoulder of the behaviorist outside the cage, and one inside the cage over the shoulder of the pigeon. On the first screen you'll see a pigeon doing tricks for food, and on the second a man doling food out for tricks. For the pigeon to receive food, it has to do a trick, that's true, but for the man to receive a trick, he has to dole out food—that's equally true. Granted, there's a cage, and the cage is the man's—he controls the condition called “cage”—so you can accurately see that the behavior of the pigeon is under the man's influence to a much greater degree than the man's behavior is under the pigeon's. That's all in a lab between a man and a bird, though. In the larger world, between human beings, it isn't so easy to know whose cage you're in, or who's in yours. It's hard enough to determine which side of the bars you're on. Maybe you don't even see the bars.

Jake raised his hand.

“Jake?” said the therapist.

“I have something to say to Ben,” Jake said to the therapist. “I'm not very patient,” he said to me. “When we first met, I should have been more compassionate. I wasn't trying to foul up your constancy, Ben. I was trying to maintain my own. I guess I just get insulted when people walk out of meetings like that girl did.”

“Well-said,” said the therapist. “Ben?”

I said, “That's ridiculous.”

The therapist pointed at the tear-away pad and made some noise. He made the noise “But constancy.” He made the noise “And the good news.”

“That's ridiculous,” I said.

And the therapist pointed at the tear-away pad and made some more noise. He made the noise “But constancy. Constancy.” Then he made the noise “And the good news and the good news,” and I made the noise “Ridiculous.”

We kept going like that for a while, until I felt cruel or exhausted or beaten or trapped or guilty and I made the noise “Constancy.”

“Well said,” said the therapist.

I didn't know whether Tell would quit getting Ricked if I quit having sex with her after she'd been Ricked, but I knew that she would continue getting Ricked if I continued having sex with her after she'd been Ricked. And I continued having sex with her after she'd been Ricked, and as the summer began to come to an end, I started to wonder if I had it all reversed, if it wasn't so much that she continued getting Ricked because I continued having sex with her as that I continued having sex with her because she continued getting Ricked. And I started to wonder about every guy I saw. The guys I washed windows with. The fools in the group. The therapist himself. Guys on television. Koppel. Jerry Seinfeld. Ricks? All of them? It was possible. And then it was women I wondered about. Not just which ones were Tells—if there were any other ones—but if they thought I was a Steve. I was pretty sure they didn't think I was a Rick. I didn't know what Tell thought. and I was scared to find out and certain that I wouldn't trust her answer if I asked her; she'd say whatever she thought would hurt me least. And what would hurt me least? I didn't know that either. I didn't completely understand the terms. I'd assumed for awhile that there was a continuum: Ricks at one extreme, Steves at the other, me somewhere in the middle. But maybe there were just Ricks and Steves and then an entirely different scale for everyone else. Then again, maybe Ricks and Steves weren't mutually exclusive: maybe certain Steves were also Ricks in certain contexts, and certain Ricks Steves. Were Steves just Ricks who were too afraid to Rick? Was that the only difference? Was I just too afraid? I kept on fucking her after she'd been Ricked, and kept on thinking I shouldn't keep fucking her. Was that the way of a Steve or a Rick? I didn't know what I was made of.

One day in mid-August, it was raining, and my sister dropped by my place. Tell was at work. Leah pointed at my bald head and asked me, “When'd you do that?”

“A couple months ago,” I said. I watched a spider crawl out of a crack in the baseboard between us.

Leah said, “It looks good. I have a boyfriend now, and—” and she saw the spider.

She froze in mid-gesture for a second, then jumped over it and got behind me. “Fuck!” she said. “Fuck fuck fuck.”