I make snap judgments. It’s the worst thing about me. And what’s even worse is that I’m usually right. I can tell if a guy wears cologne by just scanning a picture of his face. I can tell if a girl is going to betray me, stab me in the back and fuck my boyfriend by just glancing at her shoes and her hair.

However, figuring life out with incredible speed does me no good whatsoever. Actually, it makes everything a whole lot worse.

I still befriend the girl. I still introduce her to my boyfriend—who wears way too much cologne—and wait for that day, the day I’ll I discover them in the middle of the act. And by the act, I mean her going down on him. That’s always the act. It’s something I don’t do, won’t do. (I happen to eat using my mouth.) And it’s something she does, eagerly, with her eyes wide, pupils aimed straight up at his torso, trying to find his face like he’s Michelangelo’s David and not Angela’s asshole boyfriend Scott or Dale, a carpenter with a limp or a tree trimmer with a slightly dreadlocked, very off-centered goatee.

And I know it’s something he wants me to see (her, too)—especially if you consider the millions of places some slut could blow a guy besides my living room or his van or a bathroom at a movie theater. It’s a show for me, even though he probably doesn’t even realize it. But deep down it’s more him than anything else he could do. It’s something he was doomed to send out ages ago, and you can’t take something back once it’s out there. And everyone is terrible like that. Even me. Well, evidently especially me since that’s all I see when I look at other people: Their actions like stars for me to make meaning of.

So, to summarize before I begin, I know why bullied boys become policemen. I know why hypochondriacs become doctors. And I know why I’m becoming a psychologist.

I need to be able to make some use out of all this useless wisdom and all this constant pain tethered to it. I need it to be something that helps rather than haunts every stupid choice I make. But if I can’t do that, I want to help other people because I can’t help myself.

That’s my sick confession.

Now, the rest of this is all about Ignacio because he’s the one person who ever completely fooled me. And in the end, he was only able to fool me because he was fooling himself.

*************
Once, his grandfather punched a dog. From a distance it was just a dog, covered with gold and black hair in a familiar pattern, cute by default. But as it closed in, his grandfather could see it was rabid—foam whitening his muzzle, dripping everywhere. It was limping with insatiable hunger, growling constantly—the whole deal. It circled his family as they kept sipping rice drink and eating chicken, anticipating cake. All of them crowded into one picnic table. A perfect Sunday in the park until… until his grandfather stood and turned toward the dog. Now, it takes a special kind of guy to wheel back, tuck his fingers and slam a solid fist into the head of a dog. Not only did he have to avoid all the teeth, but a German Sheppard’s brain ain’t huge. Odds are you’ll do more damage to your hand than to the dog. But his grandfather knew that and swung anyway. And it hit with a thud, bounced the dog away, sent him on a new path, like some wind-up robot hitting a wall. His mother called animal control, but they never caught the animal, not that day at least. It probably wandered into the thick woods that surrounded the park, dying slowly, vomiting blood along with what might’ve been pieces of his skull.

At least that’s what happened in the dream Ignacio had a million nights in a row.

“And that’s why you’re here?” I asked, trying to figure out how many a million really could be.

“Yeah,” he said. “Is that OK?” As he spoke he was constantly fiddling with the zipper of an unnecessary pocket on his pants. His hands were tan and proportional enough that even this nervous habit was slightly endearing while indicating instability I would be hesitant to broadcast myself. If people knew how obvious they are, I don’t think they’d be able to function.

“Of course,” I said, but it really wasn’t. The purpose of the Student Support Program I was interning at wasn’t to do dream interpretation. It was actually completely contrary to the stated goal of the program. We’re not supposed to touch anyone’s unconscious. The objective was to help students manage stress and/or refer them for long-term treatment if their problem was ongoing and detrimental to their daily coping. We were only there to help normal kids worry more effectively.

And he seemed so normal at first, until we got to the dog, which was the interesting part. But he wasn’t here about a dream, I decided. He was here because he was stressed out. The dream was a symptom; the way leaking blood and exposed tyranny are symptoms of something dank and primal seething inside and waiting to drip out of each and every one of us.

I was already preparing the arguments in my head because I knew my supervising therapist would say, “What could we do for him in six sessions? It’s a morbid fixation with real consequences to his personality/ character that are latent if not manifest, yet. I think he may be borderline.” And that’s all he’d need to say.

A borderline personality is theoretically untreatable. It’s the warning to place on any patient to explain why “science” can’t help them. It’s also a label that could be put on almost any human being at some point in their life. Who hasn’t at times been extremely impulsive in multiple areas in their life leading to a constant volatility that leads to or demonstrates an extremely fragile self-image?

As a sensitive person, even the word “borderline” nauseates me. I feel like I’m participating in an anti-immigrant movement, especially because the only difference between a borderline personality and a treatable personality is the treatable personality knows how to behave in front of a therapist. They know how to blend their instability into normality with choice details and a generally glossing of the gross mental conflict we all suffer every day. Basically, to be perceived as healthy, you have to be able to pretend you are healthy.

And my supervisor would see a morbidly repeating dream as an early warning of a borderline personality and want me to send him into town with a referral just to avoid any failure, which is slightly borderline behavior itself.

But I needed a yes because I wanted to help Ignacio that bad. He was broke, no insurance. He couldn’t afford real treatment and school at the same time. His referral would end up crumpled and tossed somewhere in the sludge in the woods surrounding the park in his dream.

“He’s stressed out, and we can help him with that,” I would explain to Evan, my supervising therapist, calmly, indicating a lack of investment.

I hate speaking in the royal we, but it’s a necessity of the art. Otherwise we sound like mad scientists who slavishly dissect a mind with words and try to stitch it back together with our neuroses and whims tucked inside. Like mental Feng Shui. We would never do that. But I might.

“How’s school going?” I asked Ignacio, looking for more symptoms of stability.

It was fine. Everything else was fine. That’s what he said, and he had evidence.

He had all A’s and a B in Calculus, which proved he was human. He was dating a girl. Saw her two-three times a week. He called every member of his immediate family at least once a month. He averaged about two beers a weekend, but sometimes he didn’t drink at all. Exercised daily, only drank coffee during finals, ate a mostly vegetarian diet with an occasional cheeseburger and woke up most mornings nearly weeping about some dog he only saw once for less a one minute a decade ago when he was ten.

“It’s stress,” I explained to Evan, pausing the tape of our session just as Ignacio was going to describe the stabbing pain in his shoulder he got from just recollecting the story. Evan was scribbling notes, seemingly judging my work so furiously that I hoped he was drawing something or making a grocery list.

He put his pen in his squared mouth and let it dangle slightly, holding the tip so it would stay in place. His hair was squared as was chin and jaw bone. As a supervisor figure, he would have been very intimidating if I’d only seen a picture of his face (no cologne, obviously) and had to listen to him stumble through sentences like he was walking through a rock garden barefoot. “Ehh…I see,” said the supervisor. “A million nights in a…ehhh…row?”

“He just meant a lot. He’s self-effacing, to cope.”

“So, he’s not the…ehhhh…dog. He never touched him. Did you ehhhask?”

“I did; it’s next. According to him, he barely saw the grandfather, about once a year. He passed last year, esophageal cancer.”

“Ehhhh….Is that when the dreehhhhhams started?”

“No, they started when he was ten, he says.”

“And you’re the…ehhhh first person he’s (huge pause) told?”

“Probably. He says he’s told a girlfriend a bit but not all.”

“Ehhhh. Do you know what ‘bit’?”

I didn’t ask. Evan stared at my forehead for a while, drawing sweat out of my pores. He didn’t trust me and it was obvious in the way his tongue couldn’t settle down. It pushed at his teeth and the side of his mouth, deforming his face for a second, then breached between his lips right before he spoke again. “See him…ehhh…one more time,” he decided. “Then wehhhhhhhh’ll decide.”

*********
Now the dog didn’t die. It lied down in the woods in a pool of it’s own blood. A pool he was hip deep into by the time he got too close. The dog was shaking and purring at the same time.

I stopped the tape recorder by pressing the “stop” button as softly as possible so the tape wouldn’t record the sound of me stopping it.

“We need to talk about how this all affects your school work. How it affects it negatively.”

“It doesn’t, really.”

I was only six years older than him, but it felt like there were a thousand years between us. Like we weren’t even born on the same planet. We weren’t living in the same year. What he saw as brown is what I saw as red. How do you explain red to someone?

“OK, listen,” I said. “We have to get practical here a bit, at least for a moment. We have to talk about how the lack of sound sleep affects you. Is that OK?”

“Definitely. I’m in a daze for most of the morning…”

“Wait,” I said and pressed the “record” button as softly as I could. “So tell me about times you’ve felt stressed recently… or in a daze.”

*************
You can get so much out of life by waiting people out.

People will say yes to almost anything if you a) absolve them for any blame they might incur if things go wrong and b) ask them often enough.

After we listened to the tape, I looked right into Evan’s eyes and said, “I think he needs to keep a stress journal. I’ll focus on his thought distortions and give him some relaxation techniques. That’ll take up the four sessions, maybe three and I’ll save one for follow-through.”

Evan tapped his pen on his clipboard and stared at the corners of the room. He was thinking about something, probably thinking about thinking since that’s what we all think about the most.

“So, I’ll just put down Stress Management and Slight Insomnia?”

“Eh. That’s fine. That’ll work. Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” The ehh… continued for nearly a minute as he tried to find in itch somewhere on his foot with his pen.
***********
The next session Ignacio would only refer his girlfriend as “the Bitch.” Apparently she was studying to be a nurse and had to work on projects constantly. Somehow she always ended up working with guys. And sometimes she’d let them answer her phone when they were working. The last guy had gotten cute and stayed on the phone, relaying his entire conversation to her.

Her could hear her giggling in the background.

“It’s over,” he said.

“Are you going to tell her?”

“Fuck, no. What if I call to do it and a guy picks up?”

We talked that out and decided on an email.

He finished the session by spending five minutes thanking me. I was changing his life. He’d even gone two nights in a row without having the dream. I wanted to hug him and tell him, “It’s not your fault. Whatever you think is your fault isn’t. All of this started generations ago, we’re just playing out the drama.” I wanted to make a shirt for him a shirt that said, “It’s not my fault.”

I want to give everyone that shirt.

********
The next night I had his dream. It was mine now, of course. My reds, my browns. But I was at the picnic table with my large, extended Mexican family, something my white family would never do (eating outdoors was against the Bible, according to my father. He was a minister who hit us all with a belt once a month whether we deserved it or not. I should probably mention that. He was very against sparing the rod and spoiling the child. Very.) Ignacio was across from me, on his phone, but he was happy and laughing. The world began to spin. I couldn’t see the dog itself, but I was seeing the world from the dog’s perspective. The drool falling. The wavering path. The grandfather squaring up. But knowing what he was going to do, I pounced on him—bit his face without breaking the skin. He fell to the ground, and I jumped up on a bench and joined the family. Everyone acted like nothing had happened.

I couldn’t wait to see Ignacio again. If only I could tell him how I’d fixed it all for him, how his grandfather had been defeated. How easy it all was.

********
Instead of coming in the next week, he left a voicemail. He couldn’t make it. His girlfriend had taken him back and he needed to be with her while her study group was going on, that was their new rule. He then apologized nine times and said he knew he was stupid.

********
The next week he was back. I hadn’t had the dream again like I’d hoped to. I’d obsessed all week about how I’d never told him to start a Stress Journal. He showed up in a tank top.

His brown arms longer and darker than I remembered. He was wearing cologne, something I’d never noticed before. But it was too late. I’d already written out the referral. I explained that we were only equipped to offer short-term help, and I felt he needed more, something sustained.

“I’ve stopped having the dream,” he said. “Not once in two weeks.” His pants had no zippers.

“Nice,” I said and hated how unprofessional I sounded. “I’m recommending you visit Dr. Green. He has student rates and is excellent from what I hear.”

“So, it’s over between us?”

“I’m afraid so,” I said, quickly before I might choke up. I handed him the referral slip, and as I extended it into the air, I saw my phone number on it.

He took it in his hand. He had calluses exactly where they should be. But the rest of his skin was smooth and brown.

“Thank you,” he said.

“No, thank you.”

This story was inspired by Jeff Hurlow’s Myspace Portrait Project.

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