Hot Pink

  “Sure,” she said.

  It wasn’t all bad. In the evenings, before bed, I’d come out of the shower and she’d sit behind me on the couch, wrap her legs around my waist, rub cold hand lotion into the skin of my knuckles. On Thursdays we had the day off together. Tell would paint small pictures in the living room on the canvas snippets she took home for free from the art store, and I’d smoke at my desk, examining the spines and covers of the books I’d bought. Sometimes I’d re-read bits of Skinner. When the sunlight faded, we’d go for a walk to the tracks or the park. If there was rain forecast for Friday morning, my boss would cancel work, and Tell and I would walk to Denny’s after midnight.

  At the start of the instructional portion of meeting number thirty, the therapist maniacally flipped through the tear-away pad and said, “This evening, I’m going to let you in on the secret to everything.” He stepped aside and pointed to the pad, on which was written:

  JAKE: Actually, I do feel a little bit insulted. In fact, very insulted.

  BEN: That’s pretty effing ridiculous!

  Sally raised her hand and held it in the air to get the therapist’s attention. The therapist didn’t call on her. Sally’s hand stayed elevated until the first time he used the word constancy.

  According to Skinner, the way to extinguish an undesirable behavior is to stop reinforcing it.

  The therapist said, “People act in order to make the world predictable. To maintain constancy. To keep to the simplest and most readable patterns. People don’t move toward what we often call pleasure. They often do not move in the direction of what is best for them. It’s constancy.” Here, the therapist paused to take a sip from a styrofoam cup of water.

  Sally’s hand shot up into the air again, and she waved it back and forth until the therapist said the word whom. Skinner found that before a behavior became extinct, it would increase in either frequency or intensity or both. Take a pigeon conditioned with food pellets to lift its left wing and peck the bolt on the door of its cage. If you stop reinforcing it with food pellets, you eventually extinguish the wing-lifting, bolt-pecking behavior. Before the behavior becomes extinct, though, the pigeon will frantically wing-lift and/or bolt-peck.

  The therapist said, “Evidence? How about something extreme? How about take a look at the children of abusive parents. Is being sexually molested what’s best for them? Is being beaten something they enjoy? Come on. Of course not. Nonetheless, when we try to get them away from their abusive parents, they cling. They don’t want to go, guys. They want to stay with their abusers. Why? I’ll tell you why: constancy. Predictability. A world in which they know when and by whom they’ll get beaten and sexually molested is less scary to them than a world in which they have no idea about what could happen next.” His face smiled. He took a breath.

  Sally raised her hand again and waved it furiously, along with her head. Some of her hair came out of its barrette. She started tapping her foot and the thing was this: it doesn’t matter what kind of pigeon it is. It doesn’t matter if the pigeon has a soul or not. It doesn’t matter if I love the pigeon or if the pigeon loves me. If I give it food for pecking the bolt with its wing up, it will peck the bolt with its wing up. If I quit giving it food, it will eventually quit pecking the bolt with its wing up. It doesn’t matter if it knows why it has stopped pecking the bolt with its wing up or if it knows why it ever started pecking the bolt with its wing up. And once it stops, I can get it to start again by conditioning it with food pellets.

  “They act to stay with their abusers, these kids. Because why? Because constancy. Constancy constancy constancy. Constancy is based on experience. Without constancy, we fear that the foundations of our individual worlds could crumble. Without constancy we face the unknown. So we repeat. We pattern. To maintain constancy.

  “How can we apply this knowledge? Well, judging by the interaction between Jake and Ben that we see here on the tear-away pad, I would guess that Ben comes from a background in which honest statements of feelings, e.g.”—the therapist pointed to the tear-away pad—“‘I do feel insulted,’ have been regularly met with abject cruelty. What does this mean to Ben? This means that if Ben had not acted in an abjectly cruel manner when he responded to Jake’s honest statement of feelings, Ben’s world could have crumbled! Or so Ben would think. Of course it’s not true. That’s the good news. That’s the miracle. It wouldn’t have crumbled! Can you see that, Ben? Of course you can’t. Not yet. But that’s why we’re all here.”

  The therapist’s eyebrows climbed to his hairline and he panned his expectant gaze across the six of us. Sally dropped her hand in her lap and left it there.

  The troubling thing, for me, about Skinner was this: while the behaviorist is shaping the behavior of his pigeon, the pigeon is shaping the behavior of its behaviorist. Place two video cameras in the lab: one over the shoulder of the behaviorist outside the cage, and one inside the cage over the shoulder of the pigeon. On the first screen you’ll see a pigeon doing tricks for food, and on the second a man doling food out for tricks. For the pigeon to receive food, it has to do a trick, that’s true, but for the man to receive a trick, he has to dole out food—that’s equally true. Granted, there’s a cage, and the cage is the man’s—he controls the condition called “cage”—so you can accurately see that the behavior of the pigeon is under the man’s influence to a much greater degree than the man’s behavior is under the pigeon’s. That’s all in a lab between a man and a bird, though. In the larger world, between human beings, it isn’t so easy to know whose cage you’re in, or who’s in yours. It’s hard enough to determine which side of the bars you’re on. Maybe you don’t even see the bars.

  Jake raised his hand.

  “Jake?” said the therapist.

  “I have something to say to Ben,” Jake said to the therapist. “I’m not very patient,” he said to me. “When we first met, I should have been more compassionate. I wasn’t trying to foul up your constancy, Ben. I was trying to maintain my own. I guess I just get insulted when people walk out of meetings like that girl did.”

  “Well-said,” said the therapist. “Ben?”

  I said, “That’s ridiculous.”

  The therapist pointed at the tear-away pad and made some noise. He made the noise “But constancy.” He made the noise “And the good news.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said.

  And the therapist pointed at the tear-away pad and made some more noise. He made the noise “But constancy. Constancy.” Then he made the noise “And the good news and the good news,” and I made the noise “Ridiculous.”

  We kept going like that for a while, until I felt cruel or exhausted or beaten or trapped or guilty and I made the noise “Constancy.”

  “Well said,” said the therapist.

  I didn’t know whether Tell would quit getting Ricked if I quit having sex with her after she’d been Ricked, but I knew that she would continue getting Ricked if I continued having sex with her after she’d been Ricked. And I continued having sex with her after she’d been Ricked, and as the summer began to come to an end, I started to wonder if I had it all reversed, if it wasn’t so much that she continued getting Ricked because I continued having sex with her as that I continued having sex with her because she continued getting Ricked. And I started to wonder about every guy I saw. The guys I washed windows with. The fools in the group. The therapist himself. Guys on television. Koppel. Jerry Seinfeld. Ricks? All of them? It was possible. And then it was women I wondered about. Not just which ones were Tells—if there were any other ones—but if they thought I was a Steve. I was pretty sure they didn’t think I was a Rick. I didn’t know what Tell thought. and I was scared to find out and certain that I wouldn’t trust her answer if I asked her; she’d say whatever she thought would hurt me least. And what would hurt me least? I didn’t know that either. I didn’t completely understand the terms. I’d assumed for awhile that there was a continuum: Ricks at one extreme, Steves at the other, me somewhere in the middl
e. But maybe there were just Ricks and Steves and then an entirely different scale for everyone else. Then again, maybe Ricks and Steves weren’t mutually exclusive: maybe certain Steves were also Ricks in certain contexts, and certain Ricks Steves. Were Steves just Ricks who were too afraid to Rick? Was that the only difference? Was I just too afraid? I kept on fucking her after she’d been Ricked, and kept on thinking I shouldn’t keep fucking her. Was that the way of a Steve or a Rick? I didn’t know what I was made of.

  One day in mid-August, it was raining, and my sister dropped by my place. Tell was at work. Leah pointed at my bald head and asked me, “When’d you do that?”

  “A couple months ago,” I said. I watched a spider crawl out of a crack in the baseboard between us.

  Leah said, “It looks good. I have a boyfriend now, and—” and she saw the spider.

  She froze in mid-gesture for a second, then jumped over it and got behind me. “Fuck!” she said. “Fuck fuck fuck.”

  I put it out with my hand.

  “Jesus,” she said. “Not even a paper towel?”

  I made like I was confused and then I wiped my hand on my head. It was the first joke I’d cracked in weeks.

  “You’re so gross,” she said. “Wash your head. I can’t talk to you like that.”

  I went into the kitchen and washed my head in the sink.

  “So I have a new boyfriend,” she said.

  “Is he a Rick or a Steve?” I said.

  “His name’s Aaron, weirdo.”

  I said, “How’s Dad? You guys are cool, right? You’ve always been tight.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” she said. I came back into the living room. She was jacking around with the equipment in my window-washing bucket. She peeled the foam handle off my chrome-plated squeegee.

  “Stop messing with my stuff.”

  “Jeez,” she said. “Who made these pictures? That girl Dad talked to on the phone?”

  “No one,” I said. I was being a dick to my little sister like some Steve in a sitcom.

  “They gave me money and I’m supposed to take you out for pancakes and tell you about my new boyfriend.”

  “Okay, but let’s walk,” I said.

  She said, “It’s ninety-five degrees outside. And pouring.”

  “I’m not letting you drive me anywhere,” I said.

  “Then you drive.”

  I said, “I don’t want to drive. Do you know how much I have to drive for work? I hate driving.”

  “I thought you only said you were an addict to get pity from the judge.”

  “I did.”

  “Then quit acting like a dry drunk. They send their love and say they miss you. Dad especially. He keeps telling us you’re becoming a man. ‘He’s growing up. He just wants space.’ It’s sad. They think you don’t like us anymore. And you should really start calling them back.” Then she left and I was glad and didn’t want to be.

  We sat on the tracks that night, smoking cigarettes. Jane Tell had a swelling eye. Blood at the corners of her mouth. I was staring hard, wanting to touch her. When I turned away, the string of dormant freight cars across the ditch looked small as a train-set. I had to throw a rock and fall short to get my eyes straight. We finished our cigarettes and I lit two more, handed one over.

  “You’re a gentleman,” she said. She wiped blood from her mouth with her sleeve, her thumb pushed through a tear in the seam of her cuff. “I think I bit my tongue,” she said.

  I didn’t respond, continued to smoke.

  She pulled her knees to her chest and worried the drawstrings of her hood. “I’m sick of the tracks,” she said. “Let’s walk to the park behind the high school.”

  Tell stood first and pulled me up. We headed toward the school. The moon was orange and the stars were blue and the sky was black. There were slugs in the grass of the outfield. They shined up at us like new dimes, their antennae eyes bent sideways, placidly, stupidly, daring us to put them out beneath our feet. They reminded me of a vacation I’d been on with my father. We’d flown to L.A. and were taking a week to get to Portland in a rented Mustang—a convertible—that he let me drive on Highway 1, even though, at fourteen, I was still months away from getting my permit. “Don’t speed,” he told me. “If you get in trouble, I get in trouble. We’re both breaking laws. Don’t get us in trouble.” I didn’t. We ate good fresh food and saw a couple movies and stayed at motels with cement patios outside their sliding-glass doors that I would go out onto to smoke.

  One time I woke up in the middle of the night and wanted a cigarette, but I didn’t want to wake my dad, so I kept the light off on the patio. I’d gone out without a shirt, just boxers and Chucks, and I grew cold and I paced. The ocean was washing against the beach across the motel lawn. From under my shoes came other sounds, crackling and squeaking. Something like the screams of pot-dropped lobsters, but in short bursts and pleasant to listen to. I watched the water move and I thought loosely that I was stepping on wet seashells or unripe berries. To make more of the sounds, I ground my feet against the cement with each step. When I finished smoking, I dropped my cigarette on the patio, and there was another sound, a sizzle. I knew something was wrong.

  I crouched down and lit my lighter and saw scores of dead snails, their shells in shards that punctured their skin, some of them torn in half, inside out, wet with that substance that trails them. I’d killed spiders before, and silverfish. I had set fire to anthills. I’d won my only fight in grade school by raking the other boy’s face over playground gravel. I had done those things to be cruel. This was different. I got sick. The next morning, my father went out to smoke on the patio. He said, “What the fuck is this? You were sick? Are you better? Are you sick? Were you drinking?”

  “The snails,” I said. “It was an accident. I feel dirty. I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  He said, “You sound like your sister with her spiders, boychic. They’re just slugs.” They weren’t—they were snails. Slugs don’t have shells.

  The ones in the field lacked shells—they were slugs. Tell hooked her arm in mine. “They catch the moon like bullet casings,” she said. “These slugs look like bullets. Don’t I pun so cleverly? Aren’t I delightful?”

  “Stop it,” I said.

  Our arms came unhooked. She said, “Do you want to hurt somebody, Ben? We could find somebody,” she said, “and we could hurt them.” She tackled me and put her mouth on my neck. “We could kill them,” she said. We rolled around for a little while. At home, later, I’d find blood on my shirt collar and wonder whose it was.

  Tell sat up. Her hood was off and some of her hair had come out of its rubberband. Static held it up in front. “I think we’re sitting in wet,” she said.

  “It’s the ground,” I said. “It’s just colder than your body.”

  “You’re so smart,” she said. “But if you’re so smart, why aren’t we plotting the perfect murder?” She had the edge in her voice that meant I wasn’t playing well.

  “Who hit you?” I said.

  “I fell.”

  “You’re a liar, Tell.”

  “Why won’t you fuck me?”

  “Because someone hit you.”

  “Listen to you,” she said. “Listen to that. You and all that power in your voice. You won’t fuck me because someone hit me? You won’t drive your car because you fuck me when someone hits me.”

  This was the point in the fight-routine at which I could either make her cry by shutting down or fix it up by showing some novel form of affection. I didn’t want her to cry. I put a slug on her knee.

  “Hi there, gross cutie,” she said to the slug.

  “I want you to meet my family.”

  “Let’s get the car and go.”

  “We don’t need the car,” I said. The house was across the street.

  I let us in through the side door. I could hear them making noises with dishes. We stopped at the threshold between the hallway and the kitchen. My mom and dad were at the table, eati
ng ice cream. Tell stood behind me.

  My mom saw me first. “Ben!” she said. “Come here!”

  We walked over to the table. “This is Jane Tell,” I said. “We’re getting married.”

  I don’t know if it was because they hadn’t seen me in so long or because I shocked them with the marriage bit or because she’d pulled her hood back on, but neither of my parents really saw Tell until after we’d sat down and I’d been kissed by both of them.

  Then it registered. “Oh my God!” my mom said. “What happened to your face, baby? Ben, what happened to her?”

  “I just fell down some stairs,” Tell said.

  “You fell down some stairs?” my dad said. He looked a wish away from flattening me.

  “We need to clean those wounds,” my mom said. She was frantic. She made for the bathroom down the hall. “I’ll be right back,” she said.

  I said, “I’ll come with you.”

  Tell said, “Don’t go, Ben.”

  I left with my mother. I sat on the second step of the stairway, just outside the entrance to the kitchen, waiting while she made noise with the cabinets in the half-bathroom.

  I watched the kitchen through the spaces between the bars supporting the banister. I could see my father’s back and Tell’s face. She was crying, and through her tears she winked at him. I didn’t know if she knew that she did it or why she did it and I couldn’t see what she saw. My father’s shoulders moved and I couldn’t see what he was doing with his arms, and, for a second, everything seemed possible, and the horror of that, of unlimited potential, made me feel so strong, almost as if I were bodiless, and I knew the feeling had less to do with body than with law, that it was lawlessness, and I would have remained lawless had Tell’s face not right then been obscured by my father’s hairy hand, shaking out the fold of a white cotton handkerchief. She took it, and, rather than putting it to her cheek, she folded it back up and held it in her lap to have something to look at.

  “Listen,” my father said softly, “I know you don’t know us, but we’re good people and we would never hurt you. We need to ask if Ben—”