Travels (54 page)

I made him
.

“When did you make him?”

When I was four years old
.

“Why?”

To protect me
.

“Protect you from what?”

My father
.

“What about your father?”

My father wants to kill me
.

I am standing outdoors, looking at a curved gravel driveway, my tricycle. My vision is low, near the gravel, at the height of the tricycle handlebars. The house behind me is narrow, two stories high. It is spring, and sunny, lots of green trees. Beyond the driveway is the road. Across the road is a high cliff, maybe a hundred feet high, of yellowish rock.

My father is recently back from the navy. He and I are going to climb the cliff. We say goodbye to my mother and cross the road and begin climbing. I am climbing first, and my father is following, so he can catch me if I fall.

We start up and I’m not scared, but pretty soon we are high, and the cliff is steep, and there is no easy path up. I don’t know where to put my hands and feet next. I get scared. I look down at my father, behind me. I realize that he is scared, too, that this is more than he has bargained for. I am not safe with him. If I fall, he can’t catch me.

He has lied to me. I am very frightened. The rock of the cliff is sharp, and cuts my fingers. It is brittle; it comes away in chunks in my hands.

We manage to go on. Somehow we get to the top. We have brought handkerchiefs to wave to my mother, down at the house far below. We wave to her, and then we walk down another way, a gentle way, through pine trees. My father is beside me. My heart is pounding with fear as I walk beside him.

Mount Ivy, New York, 1946.

Gary said, “You made the creature to protect you from your father?” My father had been in the navy. He had come home, but my mother preferred me to him, and he resented me. He wanted me gone. He wanted me to fall off the cliff and die.

He hated me.

“And did the creature protect you?”

Yes
.

Gary said, “Is that why you kept the creature all these years?”

I am thirteen. I have just grown taller than my father, but I am painfully thin. We are playing basketball in the backyard. He is pushing and shoving me as we play. He often knocks me to the ground. Sometimes I want to cry.

Roslyn, New York, 1955.

“And did the creature protect you in other ways?”

Yes
.

I am in high school. I am thirteen years old and six feet seven inches tall and I weigh 125 pounds. I look like a skeleton. I have grown a foot in the last year. I am the tallest person in the school, taller even than the teachers. Everybody laughs at me. The older boys sometimes chase me home from school and knock me down and sit on me and laugh at me.

But whenever that happens, whenever I am humiliated, whenever people laugh at me, I block it off. It is as if an invisible wall comes down, the rest of the world becomes dim, I can hardly hear the laughing voices. I hear a whisper in my ear. The whisper says they are jerks. I am smart and I am going to show them all. They are jerks. Anybody who laughs at me is a jerk.

“Then this creature you invented protected you from pain?”

Yes
.

“The pain of growing up the way you did.”

Yes
.

“And later?”

In college. Yes
. I could cut people dead, I could just stare at people and think, You are really an asshole, and I could reduce them to silence, make them go away.

“And later?”

Medical school. Less. Less and less with time.

“And now? Does the creature do anything for you now?”

No
.

I am surprised to realize this. The images I see now are episodes in
which I feel barriers, obstructions, difficulty getting past my own defenses. My own harshness.

“So are you ready to give up the creature?”

“Yes.”

“Beth, how do you feel about what he is saying?”

“I don’t think Michael is ready to give it up.”

“Neither do I,” Gary says.

I hear them with a strange detachment. I am feeling very passive, floating, just going along with the flow of images and feelings.

Gary again: “You feel the creature doesn’t help you now. Let’s just be sure. Does the creature do anything in your writing?”

No
.

I am clear about that. The creature is defensive and protective and paranoid in a way I am struggling to be free of.

“Beth?”

“I agree.”

“Does the creature do anything in your other work, movies or TV?” I have to consider that. Sometimes collaborative work gets abrasive; people can be harsh. Sometimes my feelings get hurt, and the voice whispers soothingly.

“Yes, but I can do without it.”

“Beth?”

“Yes. He can.”

“Does the creature do anything in your relationship with Anne-Marie?”

I realize it does: “It lets me rest.”

Sometimes when we have disagreements, when I feel falsely accused, when I feel trampled upon, I throw up an angry wall, and withdraw behind it. I can go off and sulk, or I can sit in the living room and be silently furious. But in either case I am safe, I am protected. I can rest from the struggle. Secure in my knowledge: Women, what can you do. They’re all the same. They’re all living out whatever Daddy did to them, and you just happen to be the latest recipient. They don’t care about you, they’ve never even met
you
. They just use you.

And so on. Secure in righteous indignation and nice warm anger.

“Are you willing to give that up?”

“I don’t know.”

It is a place of my own, this angry retreat. If I gave it up, I would be much more
out there
. That might not be so comfortable.

I think of other times. The times I have wanted to give compliments,
but have been afraid of also giving up a psychological advantage; the times I have wanted to say I was hurt, instead of getting mad; the times I have wanted to release anger, instead of hanging on to it for days like a security blanket; the times I have wanted to express a wish instead of a complaint.

I can see how it might be better to give it up. And, anyway, I realize I am tired of it.

“I am tired of living that way. Yes: I’ll give it up.”

“Beth?”

“I still don’t feel he is ready.”

“Neither do I,” Gary says.

I still feel neutral. I am even, I am balanced, I am floating. I will take their word for it.

Gary says, “This creature has been very important in your life for a long time.”

“Yes.”

“I want you to thank the creature for all that it has done for you.”

“Okay.”

I start to do it inwardly.

“Out loud.”

“Okay.”

I hesitate. I feel a little stupid to be talking to a Walt Disney cartoon devil when other people can listen. I imagine that I will get formal, and say thank you to this creature. A stiff, correct statement of thanks is what I have in mind.

Suddenly my mouth opens and I hear a voice saying warmly, “I really want to thank you for everything you have done, you were loyal through a lot of hard times, and I really appreciate it, I couldn’t have done it without you, I never would have made it, I would have died without you, so you have really protected me and done a wonderful thing for me.”

I’m shocked I am saying this, but I am visualizing a houseguest who has been in my house for years, a relative, somebody I’m guilty about, because now I have to throw him out. And I am trying to express my true thanks, but also to be a little manipulative and get him out the door.

“I am really going to miss you,” I say, “but it’s time to move on, time for you to go your way and me to go mine, our paths are diverging, all good things must come to an end, but I want you to know I will never forget you, or what you have done for me.”

By now I am crying. I really love this old creature, this faithful old servant. I hate to hurt his feelings. He looks lost and forlorn, but I can see
he is accepting it. I am surprised at how much I love him, and how sad I feel about his departure.

I am taking leave.

“Beth?”

“I feel he is ready.”

“I agree.” Gary leans closer. “Michael, we are going to remove the entity now.”

“What do I do?”

“Nothing. Beth will do it with me. She will do it on the astral plane.” I feel a little left out of this plan, but I am still in my passive mood. I will do whatever I am told.

Gary moves away. He is whispering to Beth. They are moving Beth to the astral plane. I can’t really hear what they are saying; their voices are low. Besides, I am wrapped up in my emotions. I am crying. I am sad for this departure.

After a while I hear Beth say, “He’s not coming yet.”

I feel immediately that this is true.

The entity is still hanging around me.

I will have to help.

I imagine that I am standing at the door of a farmhouse. The entity is outside the screen door. It is time to say goodbye. I turn my back on it, to make it easier for it to leave. I turn away, knowing I will never see it again. I burst into sobs. But I don’t turn back, to see if it is still there.

“He’s not coming.”

I still don’t turn back. I feel that, if I remain there with my back to him, he will eventually give up and leave.

“No. Not yet.”

I want to be of assistance. There must still be a connection between me and the entity, even though I can’t see it. I imagine a big pair of scissors, and I use them to cut the air all around my body, severing any shadowy connections. I cut vigorously.

“He’s not coming.”

Perhaps I am trying too hard. Maybe I should leave it alone. Let her do it.

I can see her, on the astral plane, in misty yellow light a little above me. It’s as if we are standing on an incline, or a slope, and she is a little farther up the incline, in the yellow mist. I can see her standing there, and then suddenly I can clearly see the entity.

The entity is tiny; he barely comes to her waist. He is looking up at her in a hopeful way.

He is just a little kid
.

I feel an explosive burst of emotion, of sadness for this tiny thing formed in the image of his tiny creator, this frightened, forlorn child that must now leave, and I feel sad for myself, and sad to move on now, and in the instant of that burst of sadness the little kid shoots off, away into the distance.

Beth says in a flat voice, “He’s gone.”

Beth comes out. I come out. We sit around, dazed; Gary brings glasses of water. I look at my watch. It has taken three and a half hours. There isn’t really much to say. We’re all tired. Gary says, “Don’t worry, he’s gone. He won’t be back,” and tells me to be careful driving home.

I get home and tell Anne-Marie. She is very affected. But I don’t tell anybody else. How many people can you tell you’ve had an exorcism?

Anyway, the real question is—what was the outcome? For the next few days, not much. Then I had an argument with Anne-Marie. It started in the usual way, but it quickly became different. I found myself walking around the kitchen in circles, wondering where to go. It was as if a room in our apartment had been taken away. It wasn’t there any more, this particular room. I had to stay where I was and deal with her. Subsequent arguments were different, too, and after a while I began to realize that some stable change had occurred.

The other thing I noticed was that for several weeks I felt the minor and ordinary pains of life, the small momentary rejections, the people that turn away, the tiny insincerities and the trivial abuses, with the most exquisite sensitivity. They were incredibly painful. I had never felt such hurts before. But at the same time I noticed that many people were nicer to me than they had ever been before. And, in any case, in a few weeks I felt I was back to normal in my ability to roll with the punches.

A few months later I was talking with Lu, a psychologist I see sometimes. Rather hesitantly, I mentioned my experience, wondering how she would respond.

She said, “That’s interesting. A lot of people are having experiences like that.”

“Really?” I said.

“Oh yes. Entities are very big now.”

I had to laugh.

Direct Experience
 

In accepting the possibility of an entity, however tentatively and briefly, I had moved pretty far from the rational, academic, intellectual traditions in which I had been raised. I was, in truth, a little nervous to think how far I had moved. So I decided to summarize the conclusions I had drawn from all these experiences, over all these years. I got out a piece of paper and listed them.

I was surprised to find there wasn’t so much, after all.

1. Consciousness has legitimate dimensions not yet guessed at. The varieties of consciousness are considerably more diverse and contradictory than I had previously acknowledged. I am not persuaded that any of these states of consciousness has metaphysical meaning, any more than I am persuaded I had a real entity attached to me. I’m not convinced of entities at all. But I acknowledge that on some level the difference between a real entity and a metaphorical entity may be slight indeed. I’m obliged to remember that consciousness itself is tremendously powerful: people in every culture can become crippled or blind or even die from beliefs alone.