The Agoraphobic’s Holiday

Your practice man will be here in an hour and you have nothing to wear. Well, this is technically inaccurate, but not one article of clothing has volunteered to come out of the closet, and when you reached for your velvet jacket, you swear, it tried to bite you. You hear footsteps behind you, and you’re bubbling.

Your gray beast knocks you down. Straddles chest. Can’t breathe. Ahhhh-haaaah. Get off. Ahhhh-haaaah. You poke it in the eye. Stupid thing. It gets him every time. But he’s back and madder and yokes your throat. Resistance is pointless. You know where you’re going, so you go.

There is shaking and spinning, heat and flashes of ice-pick light. Ahhhh-haaaah. Bongo blood. Barbed carpet. Cactus wall. Slow death. World hurts. Too much. Time to lift. You aren’t your body. That’s just the bottle where you store yourself. You float up and out, to the ceiling, where you see you, lying on the floor in your underwear, wrestling air. You look ridiculous so you stop.

You are smart. You know the difference between your practice man and the mugger, but you know it in the wrong part of your brain. The rational part. The panic is coming from somewhere else, the part that’s programmed to run from mastodons. Until you train your brain to know the difference, every man is the man who jumped out of a eugenia hedge, chased you down the middle of Sycamore while the neighbors stood and watched you like a TV show. Watched while he knocked you to the asphalt right under a streetlight, because you knew better than to walk in the shadows. Fought you for the car keys that poked between your fingers, like you’d been trained to do in self-defense class. Yanked off the leather bag that was slung over your shoulder. Stole the rings from your fingers, the watch from your wrist, and everything you believed about being safe.

You want to stay here, on the ceiling, until you feel normal. But that might take forever, and you don’t have any food in the refrigerator. You can call and cancel but you won’t. This is a test. It took a village to get you to accept a Friday night blind date, your first since the mugging. You’re polite. Such a good girl. So afraid to disappoint.

Thank God for cordless phones. You call your best friend. She whispers, “I’m at Nozawa, one table away from Alec Baldwin. His head is disproportionately large. Way too big for his body. I know how much you love that.”

Her voice baby blankets you.

“It’s only dinner,” she says. “Get dressed.”

Ahhhhhh-Haaaaaah.

You blame yourself for freezing. When you replay the scene in your head, you see a different you. One who fought back. In your head, you screamed. You stabbed the mugger with your fingered keys. You swung your backpack into his testicles. You palmed him full-force right under his nose. You are haunted by the different you.

You’ve kept up appearances. You went back to work, though sometimes, when no one was looking, you closed the door to your office and crawled under your desk. You do what you must, then rush home. Lock yourself in your tower--the little bedroom turret in your Hancock Park Moorish. You’re Rapunzel in self-storage.

A month after it happened, you went to a doctor. You told him, “I’m ripping.” You described your gray beast--how it grabs you when you’re driving, when you talk to strangers, in your dreams. He wrote you a prescription.

You tried the pills, but you felt slow and thick, trapped beneath your own surface.

“We can play with the dosage,” the doctor said at your next appointment. “Or we can fool around with something less sedating.”

“What are the side effects?”

“Oh. Suicidal thinking. Hypomania. Agitation. Insomnia. Anxiety. Panic.”

So you found another doctor.

“Does your beast have a name?” he said.

“Huh?” you said.

“Because it’s going to live in you for the rest of your life. You made it. Your chemicals. Your brain. Your blood.”

He said we don’t want to kill it. Just turn it into a house pet, one that curls up and sleeps in the crook of your knees. He gave you homework. Sent you out to rouse the beast. You practice-drive the freeways. Practice-talk to strangers. Practice-walk alone in the dark. He said, “That’s how you tame it. Repeated shocks.”

So you’ve learned how to live with no dull moments. Every moment is sharp.

Ahhhhhhhhhh. Haaaaaaah. You do the trick the new doctor taught you. Take time and reduce it to manageable units. Birth to last breath. Adolescence to middle age. Last year to next year. Yesterday to tomorrow. Now until midnight. There’s no detail of this evening you haven’t controlled. You picked the restaurant, The Ivy, your favorite. You know the menu backward and forward. You know the smells of the sourdough rolls, the starch of the waiters’ oxford shirts. You reserved the right table, in the back, low-lit, near the ladies’ room. You’ve dry-runned the scenarios. With the drive to and from the restaurant, crab cakes, Chinese chicken salad, key lime pie, the inquisition and perhaps a short walk, you’ll be home in four hours. Plan B, if you’re struggling, turn on your helium, float weightless answers, torpedo dessert, you’re home in three. You feel better already. Now until midnight. This you can handle. You come down from the ceiling. Slip back in the bottle.

You let the practice man pick you up at your house. Silly girl. You know better than that. He seems pleased to meet you. A little nervous. Why shouldn’t he be? You’re cute. He natters on the way to the restaurant. Drifts over Botts dots. Giggles.

You get your first good look at him once you are seated. He has high hair. Reminds you of something. Oh God. You’d forgotten about the famous dessert. The waiter stands at the table, recites the specials in Midwestern.

“Do you think you’ll want the chocolate souffle? I’d need to know now because it takes light-years.”

At least you think that’s what he said.

“Yum,” says the practice man.

Your Plan B ka-booms. He leans across the table, into your space, says, “Tell me everything about yourself.”

“Um,” you say.

Your helium’s not flowing. He tries something else. “What about a cocktail?”

You’re way ahead of him. Your bartender brain is making martinis. Double adrenaline. Shaken not stirred. There you lift again. You are sitting on the waiter’s shoulder. The poor practice man. He’s talking to the bottle. He’s working so hard. After an hour, all the soufflE has gone out of his hair.

You excuse yourself to go to the ladies’ room. There’s a girl at the sink. You stand, side by side, dabbing cold water on your wrists, your temples. Her hands are shaking. You already know her, this ceiling sister. She’s you, 5,000 deaths ago. Imagine that. Done in by your own cocktail lounge. It’s not Point A or Point B that’s the problem. The mastodon is the space between. Coffined by elevators, snuffed by stoplights that change from yellow to the end of the world, trapped without helium, between words, in silence.

You hand her a towel. You say, “If I were you, I’d skip the souffle”

When he pulls up to your curb, you jump out before he shifts to park. You know he wants to kiss you. You’ll risk the scab. You wave goodnight. You thank him. You pretend not to hear him say, “Let’s do it again.” You look up at your Rapunzel tower. You climb your own braid. Ahhhhhhhhhh-Haaaaaaaaaah. You’re done. Not over it. That’s something for another day. Today was just about getting through.

You’ve done everything required, everything you promised. You are free, until Monday, when you’ll have to start again. For two days you’ll be going nowhere. For two days you’ll breathe.

You’d prepared the room for your return. Laid a fresh terry robe at the foot of the bed, turned down the sheets. Fluffed the down puff. Left a truffle on your pillow, like they do at the Four Seasons. You haven’t lost your sense of humor.

You have a message on your voicemail. “Seriously, Alec Baldwin’s head. If I was his neck, I’d sue for divorce,” says your best friend. “Call me. When you land.”

You hang up your velvet jacket, take the phone from its cradle, and lie on the floor in your underwear.