“Dr. Lively,” I rubbed my face and glanced behind me to see if the Boy was listening.
“What’s going on?” he asked, sounding alarmed. Indeed, it was rare for him to get a call from me, especially on a Sunday. He used to see me every other Thursday, though I hadn’t gone to therapy for three years and I was paying the price now. But now I needed his advice because he was the only one who could help me.
“Someone ripped up my drawings. I found the pieces in the bedroom. I didn’t even know they were in there, but it was him. The Boy did it!” I explained rapidly, my voice also trembling. There was a long silence on the other end of the line. I started to wonder if he’d hung up on me, but then he sighed, and I knew he was still there.
“Have you been using any controlled substances, Neil?” he asked skeptically.
I was horrified at the very thought of taking that shit. I’d never be that stupid. I squeezed my eyes shut and then opened them, trying to keep my temper under control.
“No, I don’t do fucking drugs. You should know that!” My voice was getting louder. I was feeling anxious, and my therapist’s insinuations were only making things worse.
“Neil,” he sighed. “This is your abandonment issues combining with your need for attention.” The doctor got to work, analyzing me and presenting his point of view. As I listened to him, I moved into the living room to find my Winstons. “You had these problems even as a child. You would destroy your possessions and claim that someone else had done it,” he explained. I unearthed my pack of cigarettes and lit one, sucking smoke deep into the bottom of my lungs in a useless attempt to calm down.
“What are you talking about?” I scrubbed a hand over my face, clenching the cigarette filter between my fingers, and began to pace nervously. I left wet footprints everywhere.
“Neil, we both know about the conflicted relationship you’ve always had with your father and mother, the need you had to feel loved, and how they were unable to understand you during the time you were being abused. Self-destructive actions are a way of expressing that need to draw the attention ofothers, which was caused by the extreme lack of affection that characterized your childhood. Your parents were always working, you spent all your time with Kimberly, and…” He kept talking, but I had stopped listening. I let the towel drop to the floor and stood there naked. Naked both physically and psychologically with a shattered heart still pounding in my chest. Blood rushed through my veins at top speed while my brain categorically rejected everything he was telling me.
I went back into the bedroom as Dr. Lively’s voice called out, trying to get my attention, but I was already gone. I avoided the bed and sat down in a corner of the room. My muscles twitched slightly on contact with the cold floor, and I stared into the emptiness in front of me.
The emptiness inside me, actually.
“Neil, are you still there?” Dr. Lively asked, but I slowly let my arm fall and ended the call.
I brought a cigarette to my lips, continuing to smoke as I stretched my legs out in front of me. Did Dr. Lively think I’d lost my mind? He was wrong. Sure, I had a whole heap of problems and obstacles to get over, and my mind wasn’t like other people’s, but none of that made me some kind of psycho.
Suddenly, I could hear light footsteps approaching me. I didn’t look up and just continued to clench the filter of the cigarette between my lips, blowing smoke out the side of my mouth.
“He doesn’t understand you,” the Boy affirmed. I was still wondering then how I might get rid of him, but I was also realizing that his presence was exactly what I needed.
I watched thoughtfully as the Boy approached me slowly, gauging my mood. I continued smoking casually as I watched him, and he observed my naked body. I was sitting on the floor, my back against the wall and my hair dripping wet. I couldn’t have looked great.
The Boy decided to sit down next to me, and I didn’t object.
“Remember when…” He pushed a hank of lighter brown hair off his forehead, and I stared at his filthy knees. It looked like he’d fallen; the skin was red and peeling. “Remember when we used to watch the Peter Pan movie while she was…” He stopped because it was difficult for a little boy to remember such awful things. “While she was doing that stuff to us?”
I remembered…
It was a particularly boring Saturday night.
My parents had gone out to dinner with people from work, and Logan was already in bed sleeping. Kimberly asked me to sit with her on the couch in the living room. She said she had my favorite cartoon, and we were going to watch it together. So I sat down next to her in my favorite pajamas and locked my eyes on the TV. Her hand was wrapped around a can of beer she’d just opened. She took a gulp and looked at me. She was always looking at me in that unrelenting way.
Smiling, she bit her lip and rested her hand on my knee. I started to tremble because I already knew what she was going to do. I couldn’t push her away, though, because she would hurt my brother instead.
Her hand slipped into my shorts just as Peter Pan was trying to convince Wendy to run away with him. He was telling her about Neverland, where all the Lost Boys went, and I focused hard on him, trying to ignore the woman’s hand now stroking me.
I shut my eyes when I felt her fingers push under the elastic band of my underpants and tried to think about something else.
I imagined a Neverland.
I imagined I was inside my favorite movie and focusing on Peter Pan through those agonizing, inescapable minutes of violence.
Peter was insisting then and telling Wendy he could take her with him, but the little girl must not have wanted to leave her parents behind, because she told him she couldn’t fly.
Peter’s tenacious voice, assuring Wendy that he would teach her to fly, sank into my brain just like Kimberly’s hand sank into my soul and shattered it into a million pieces.
“Open your eyes; watch your favorite movie,” she whispered to me, and I focused on the sounds, the voices, and the words Peter said even as I felt Kim everywhere.
Inside me, outside.
