Saturday, January 23, 2010

The Basset Hound

I felt sure Dr. Mars would make a fine husband because, for one thing, he read The New Yorker. This meant that every week we’d have a new issue to talk about, and when that got dull, he’d give me the dish on his funnier cases. I understood he could not do so now, as professional ethics got in the way. He couldn’t gossip with me as a patient, but what about when I was his wife?  That, I was certain, would come under the heading of pillow talk.

Not that there’d be any pillows involved. We would, as I’d planned it, enjoy separate bedrooms in separate wings of what I imagined to be his already paid off, gigantic house. We’d conduct what the French call le mariage blanc. We’d have to, lest we fall into the cesspool of incest, for I would be playing the unbalanced daughter to his perfectly balanced and good Doctor Dad. As for the unspeakable force known as ess-ee-ex, perhaps Dr. Mars would look the other way if and when I could con the delectable Mack into making a visit.

As I told Dr. Mars, Mack was and still is the born-again Christian Republican cowboy who’s refused to marry me for the past fifteen years. This very admission reminded me that I wasn’t just plagued by writing a memoir, but by my lifelong atrocious choices in men, some of whom would appear on the page. Unlike my two sisters, both older and younger, I was the one who’d never been married. Before I’d gotten medicated for the exhausting affliction known as depression, I had indeed played house with some of my boyfriends, but only because I felt too abandoned by, well, pretty much the whole universe and the process of evolution itself, to endure the existential angst of living alone. I’d just needed to know that someone was there, and could just as happily lived with a dog. Except, and here was another Catch-22, I did not like dogs until I took meds.

Dr. Mars liked dogs and proved it by showing me a picture of his basset hound, Trudy. It took me only a second to realize the picture had been taken inside his office, with Trudy morosely posed on the couch.

“Did you notice,” I asked Dr. Mars, “that Trudy is sitting in the exact same spot I’m sitting in now? That you’ve equated Trudy with your own patients?”

He had, he confessed, never realized this, and wasn’t so very impressed with it now.

“Only a writer would see it like that,” he scoffed, taking back the picture of Trudy.

Could he be right? Did everyone else, from plumbers to astronauts, see only the dog and not its crazed context? Was it because I was cursed with the writerly gene that I'd always seen everything exactly “like that”? I’d never thought of this as a problem because this way of seeing was the only thing that kept me laughing. Even then I knew I’d go home, imagine Trudy looking hung over on Dr. Mars’ puce-colored couch, and laugh at it all over again. For perhaps half an hour. While I was alone. Which, of course, was just one more thing that qualified me as a bona fide mental.

25 comments:

  1. Don't ever stop seeing things "like that" and don't stop writing about them! So glad to see you back Ms Gonick!

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  2. So nice to BE back. Thanks so much for your encouragement!

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  3. I love your humor! Thanks for letting me know you're back in action. Keep up the good work.

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  4. OMG! ( sorry....I got carried away)...you are BAAACK. I've sent your email announcing your return to my discerning friends (as opposed to the clueless ones...)

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  5. Glad you're back!

    A sense of the absurd does go one a long, long way...

    Not a thing to lose :-)

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  6. Ms. Gonick, are you trying to make me feel better or something . . . well, it's working. Haven't even looked at the Chronicle since your column disappeared one day. Now you're back! Yeah!

    And don't give up on that memoir yet: funny is as funny sells . . . or something like that.

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  7. So glad to read you again!!! You're wonderful, and I've missed you and wondered how you were. My heart aches to find you've been suffering, though, whether merely in fiction or in truth. You may get down, but you're never out . . . armies of us out here in readerland love you and need your unique insight.
    -Anonymous Pam

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  8. OMG I have missed you! Believe it or not, I was just thinking about you last week and wondering what you've been up to!

    I really needed a dose of your mentalness today. I've been feeling really down lately, and I laughed like I haven't laughed in weeks!

    Please keep writing!

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  9. Well, well, Ms. Gonick. I am tuned in to the universe! I had a thought from "out of the blue" about a week ago "I wonder what ever happened to Jean Gonick?" And bingo...here you are out here in the ether.

    Glad to hear you are up and doing the type, type, send thing. You are now on my list. I will be checking in.

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  10. Dear Mary Ann,
    I've missed you all too, and did not realize how much till now!
    Thanks for writing.
    As ever,
    Ms.

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  11. Dear Madame DeFarge,
    You ARE tuned in! Thank you so much!
    Best wishes,
    Ms. G

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  12. Dear Jules,
    Thanks so much for letting me know you laughed. Any snortage involved? If not now, then hopefully soon.
    Best wishes,
    Ms. G

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  13. Dear John,
    You're right. I AM trying to make you feel better! Hope it keeps working. Thanks for writing.
    All best,
    Ms. G

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  14. Dear Judiwood,
    Thanks for getting carried away! And for still being there.
    Your friend,
    Ms. G

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  15. Ms G, your message delighted me. Thanks for keeping those old emails to alert us of your return. I enjoy your blog and want you to know that I have alerted some more bona fide mentals to check out your blog. Good work kiddo!
    Your friend,
    Mary

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  16. Welcome back from the Dark Side.
    We've missed you terribly.
    I have since graduated from milk to wine. I'm looking forward to the new colors that will be spurting from my nostrils onto my computer screen instead of the newspaper as I exclaim "Oh yeah! Like that!!".

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  17. Continued:
    A toast to the many future rigorous snorts (I have a fondness now for Frenchy Red Bordeaux - what an color palate to look forward to as the wine spurts from my nose to splatter onto my screen. I will need to drop by Costco to stock up on Clorox Anti-Septic wipes. I love Costco - lots of mentals wandering those aisles...
    Love your writing - it would make a great TV show.

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  18. My Dear Ms. Gonick,
    I don't know why I enjoy reading your columns. We have nothing in common. Well, maybe some, now that I think about it.

    We are the same age, have lived through the same times, me in N.Y. you out here. Both raised Catholic, then left (I returned).

    The difference, I think, might be that I escaped and you didn't. Jane is trying to, but I don't know if she can. I wish I could blow a knowing breath in her ear and clear the fog so she can finally think clearly. It's hard for us shake loose of the sixties especially for someone like yourself who took it so seriously.

    You adore Hollywood, I despise it. You are afraid of God, I find peace, comfort and guidance in Him. I am a liberal turned conservative, you are left of Matt Gonzalez.

    I married a girl like you and had an absolute ball for 10 years (our 30's), transitioned (not traumatically but gradually) for 10 years (our 40's) and in the last 5 years have cemented our souls with the grace of God. Not the born-again type like Mack, but like our parents were. You know, go to mass on Sunday, receive Holy Communion. I even went to confession but couldn't remember the act of contrition and the priest only knew it in Italian so after leafing through my hymnal in the dark booth, he suggested I just read the "I confess to almighty God..." which sufficed in a pinch.

    Anyway, I thoroughly enjoy your writing style and only hope that you will someday find the happiness you deserve. Unless of course it impacts your writing. And I'll even say a little pray for you.
    Regards,
    Just A Smith

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  19. I was, and remain, a fan. I am very happy to have your jaunty depression back in town.

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  20. Lovely to read you again. Isn't it odd that blogs always look better than online newspapers? Blogs can be a pleasure to read while newspapers are almost always something of a chore.

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  21. Dear Shaun,
    Thanks for writing, and especially for the term "jaunty depression."
    You have nailed it exactly!
    Jauntily,
    Ms. G

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  22. Hallelujah she's back, as mental as ever; we first corresponded when you lost your mom, as I had mine several months previously. A year later my dad died, so it's been a tough three or four years but grief can be like that. And I'm glad you seem resilient enough to find some help and so return to help us slog through the insanity together. Love your sense of the absurd...watch out for all those crazy doctors...signed, crazy MD admirer

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  23. Ms. JG, I'm going to cut to the chase & say get a new therapist. For Basset hounds, see the films of Mamoru Oshii. I may need to ask about your meds-- my wannabe primary caregiver, cousin Dr. Carlos, insists like my self-medicating bipolar brother, 'we are all one'-- I'm a mild case, but there are such great drugs these days! Remember me now? I was flying into SF (from Puerto Rico) for wineharvest '06 as you approached critical...glad to read you again. Nobody, but nobody (& there is some famous mental lit out there!) does it like you. Take care, excuse my mirroring.

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  24. Thank you for dropping by, D J R-S! It's splendid to see you again. Mirror away!

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