"Now, I want you all to close your eyes," the middle-aged counselor told the group with a comfortable smile. Our chairs were assembled in a small circle in the middle of her office. Six inmates in lavender coveralls with handcuffs and chains attaching their wrists and ankles to prevent them from doing anything but shuffling their feet across the floor. With a guard posted just outside of her office, she studied us from behind her thin-rimmed glasses, allowing her eyes to fall on each of us individually for a few moments.
To remind us that we were people. We were inmates, and we were all guilty, but we were people all the same and deserved respect.
I tug at the chain that connects my wrists to my ankles as I hear the guard outside of her office lurch out a wet cough into his shoulder.
"I want you all to close your eyes," she repeats. The other inmates eye each other and then one by one they let themselves slip into her grasp. I'm the only one still watching the counselor and she looks at me and cocks her head a bit to the side. "It's okay. You can do it."
Early on in my adult life I had come to the conclusion that all shrinks were also crooks, gypsies, liars. People who made a living making up phobias and cures that required years of intense mental therapy that only they could provide. Kind of the same way a car mechanic will rattle off a thousand different problems that the engine has. Problems that need to be fixed immediately. Parts that need to replace without hesitation.
And you should always trust your mechanic.
"Please." She smiles and nods.
I give up and close my eyes, an act which receives a soft, aggravated sigh.
"Now, I want you to take a deep breath. Envision the air coming in through your nostrils, slowly traveling down your throat and into your lungs. And then as you exhale through your mouth, the air travels out of your system along with all of your tension." The others in the group emit an awkward hiss like an oxygen tank somewhere has sprung a leak. "Again."
I want to ask her how much she gets paid to teach us how to breathe, but I'm too busy trying to follow her instructions.
"Now, allow your whole body to relax. Concentrate on the muscles in your forehead first. Relax them. Then move to the other muscles in your face. Focus on each one individually and allow it to relax, making your way down to your neck, your shoulders, your chest and your back, your stomach, all the way down to the tips of your toes. Feel all of the tension in your body escape through your pores, through your breath, through the tips of your fingers and the tips of your toes and the end of your tail."
The scam doesn't lie in the fact that the process doesn't work. It does. If you try to relax you will relax. I would bet money that each of these guys has done this very process on his own at least once in his lifetime. But since she has a PhD she must know something about it that the rest of us don't. Right?
"Now, imagine that you are on a long, endless stretch of shoreline. The sun is bright and hot against your body and heats the sand between your toes. The ocean is a pure, clear blue and the waves crash in perfect symmetry along the shore."
I twirl my thumbs around each other and wait for the session to be over.
"It's midnight, and you're standing on the street in a large metropolis. The neon signs glow in the night, and all around you are thousands of people going about their business. You don't move, you don't speak to anyone. You take it all in. The sights. The smells. The sounds."
None of them can remember what it's like to simply exist. They can't remember what it feels like to just blend into a crowd and not have someone watching you. Not having to watch yourself. To just drift along in space and let the world take care of itself.
"And now you turn and start to walk."
Even I'm starting to have trouble.
"And you disappear into the crowd."
It's mid-afternoon, and when they release us up onto the roof for recreation he's sitting on the top of the warped wooden bleachers in his jacket and shirt and dirty jeans, a lit cigarette dangling from the corner of his beak, and when he sees me coming in with the rest of the crowd he smiles and waves me over. Some of the inmates around me begin to talk amongst themselves as I limp towards him, my June 21st abrasion on my right thigh starting to give me some trouble. He notices the awkward steps by the time I'm around three fifths of the way there and jumps down onto the asphalt.
"You look like you got hit by a fucking truck," he tells me under his breath, eyeing the small crowd of inmates who've gathered around the basketball court.
"That would have been nice."
He sets me down on the top bleacher and sits to my left, straddling the one just below it. Neither of us speaks for a few minutes while he just studies me from behind his well-polished sunglasses. The smile has all but faded from his expression.
"I didn't find anything under my pillow last night," I tell him, rubbing at a sharp pain that's starting to surface at the base of my neck.
August 8th.
Falco pulls a piece of paper from the inside of his jacket and lifts his sunglasses up onto his skull, squinting against the sunlight as he reads.
I know a woman
who keeps buying puzzles
chinese
puzzles
blocks
wires
pieces that finally fit
into some order.
she works it out
mathematically
she solves all her
puzzles
and believes
ultimately
in a better world.
"I don't know what you see in this stuff," he says with a smirk. I grab the paper and he lets it slip from his fingers without any resistance. As I begin to read it silently I feel him shift so he's facing the recreation field, lean back against the top bleacher and reach one wing around my waist. My blood starts to warm as I savor every word, his wing tugging at my waist, pressing against my ass and pulling me close so that his head is resting against my side. He pulls his sunglasses back down over his eyes.
her teeth are snaggled
and she wears loose shapeless
coveralls over a body most
women would wish they had.
"He's so depressing," he tells me as he nuzzles into my side. "No wonder you like him. He's just like you."
for many years she irritated me
with what I considered her
eccentricities–
like soaking eggshells in water
(to feed the plants so that
they'd get calcium).
but finally when I think of her
life
and compare it to other lives
more dazzling, original
and beautiful
I almost say something to him. I almost speak. But then his arm retreats and he sits up. A small group of inmates is making its way towards us. I recognize Ethan in the back and up in front is the wallaby named Roger.
"Friends of yours," Falco asks me, taking his sunglasses off and placing them next to me.
I shake my head.
"Interesting."
The group stops and the bottom of the bleachers but Roger takes a few steps up. Falco is slipping a cigarette between his lips and as he cups his lighter with one hand and lights it Roger asks me, "Who's your friend?"
Falco places the lighter next to his sunglasses and stands. He easily towers over Roger but the wallaby doesn't seem to be bothered.
"Haven't seen you around before, bird."
"Funny. Because I've seen plenty of you."
"I'd be wary of hanging around the likes of Powalksi. He tends to attract unwanted attention."
"You don't say."
"Just step aside. You'll see what I mean." Roger leans to the side and shoots me a sadistic grin. Then all of a sudden Falco puts his hand on Roger's chest and forces him down the bleachers.
"Oh, hah, I see," Roger laughs, stumbling back into the group of inmates that had started to collect around the commotion. "Think you've got a little claim on him, don't you? Sorry to tell you, pal, but I'm afraid he's taken."
I hear Falco suck in a deep breath, sending a large plume of smoke into Roger's muzzle. His face sours up and he starts to cough, which gets a bit of a laugh from the crowd.
"You son of a bitch," he growls as Falco grins and looks back at me as if he felt he was somehow detached from the whole situation unfolding before him.
"He seems like a nice enough guy."
I try to warm him, but as soon as he turns back around Roger has a fist waiting for him. There's a crack and Falco's head pivots to the side, his cigarette dodging under a nearby fence.
"How's that," Roger hisses between breaths, his eyes gleaming with rage. "You fucking faggot!"
Falco brings a wing up under his beak and cracks his neck, a slight sneer creeping up his lip and he turns and thrusts his head forward and lands a hard peck into one of Roger's eyes. The wallaby yelps and leaps back against the crowd, a stream of blood spurting from behind the one hand pressed firmly over the side of his face, the other side frozen in shock.
"Jesus fucking Christ," he shouts, a blood dripping out from between his fingers. "What the...fuckin'...what the fuck did you do!" Falco takes a few steps towards him, moving like a ghost, a man without a conscience. As if the decisions he was making had no effect of anything. Roger pushes back against the crowd only they won't let him leave.
This is their therapy. My therapy.
There's a small bit of blood on the tip of his beak. He reaches up with one wing and rubs it off and locks his pale blue eyes onto Roger's and pulls his hand from his face. The trembling wallaby doesn't even resist him as the avian studies the shriveled mass of organ that's bleeding down his face with a sort of childlike curiosity. Or when he takes one of Roger's stained, crimson fingers and slides it into his mouth, letting out a soft moan as he twists his tongue around it, sucking off the traces of fresh blood in his fur.
"Get...get the fuck away from me!" Roger finally manages to yelp, his voice cracking as he clamors over the inmates behind him to escape. The shrill sound of the siren bursts through the commotion, the gates sliding open, the crowd dispersing as if somehow disappointed at the outcome, Roger retreating back to his group of loyal followers.
"Bye, honey," Falco hollers at Roger before he jumps back up the bleachers and begins to collect his sunglasses, a smug little grin on his soft face.
The poem is crumpled and sweaty in my palms as he slips sunglasses back over his eyes. He pauses and the two of us just stare into each other for a few moments. Something about him is calming and familiar. Something about him reminds me of her.
Gloria.
"Shouldn't you be heading back," he asks me.
I stand up and slip the poem into my coveralls. As I start to make my way down the bleachers I feel him grip my arm and wheel me around, and before I can even ask what he wants he leans forward and I feel him press his lips against mine. A shiver rolls down my spine and I can feel the blood rush through my body like lightning as he presses his tongue against my teeth, his saliva sweet with the faint, bitter tinge of Roger's blood. His hand brushes against my cheek and he breaks the kiss and smiles.
"See you around, babe."