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We finished our meal uninterrupted, teaming up to bus our table and clean up any sign we had even been present. All the work was done quickly and silently and we walked down to the ground floor together, her empty handed, me carrying my equipment.

Finally, she broke the silence to ask, “Ok, let me try to recap here: you can fix pretty much anything. You know about makeup and fashion, you can drive about anything with wheels, you speak bits of pieces of several languages and now you are learning Chinese and a little bird has informed me that you are registered to take Spanish next semester; I know you can sing; and I also know you write poetry and some of it is pretty amazing, however dark. So, let me ask this: what can you **not** do?”

I had known she was working to speak on the way down, and had surmised it would probably be a question but this one flabergasted me. “Umm, you make me sound like some kind of... like... I dunno, something special. I am am barely human, much less special. I really cannot see why all the fuss.”

I noticed about then that she had stopped walking with me almost as soon as I had started talking. I turned back to face her and drifted slowly back towards her.

Her face was blotchy, like she could not decide whether to be pale or flushed. Her mouth was also hanging open and her eyes were squinted a bit, and she was blinking rapidly. I was trying to decide on how to address all this when she said, “Are you for fucking **real**? I checked your IQ. It averages in the 140s with a high mark of 157. I already knew you had a really good GPA. I also found out that you passed Honors Calculus II your first semester back in school after 21 years, 22 years after you took Calc I, but you weren't happy with the grade so you retook it. Your poetry is moving and well written. Some of the recipes you posted are fantastic. I love your singing voice, though I think you sound best when you think no one can hear you and you are singing for yourself. I have heard stories of all the things you have fixed, all the questions you have answered, all the people you have helped, and that only accounts for the stories that people are telling. I am forced to think there are quite a few that are not being told or have not made it back to me. You are kind and considerate and tolerant. I also heard about the student that was silly enough to mess with you over wanting to borrow a lighter that you didn't have. I know you can take care of yourself. I am just amazed that you let him back away instead of putting him in the hospital.”

She broke for a moment to catch her breath and to consider. Now it was me that had stopped walking and was standing and gazing in surprise. (In my defense, my mouth was closed!)

She looked up and gave me a laser beam stare. “It bothers me that you think so little of yourself. It bothers me a lot. You have so much to give and so much to share and so much to teach and so so so much to appreciate. I am beginning to think you are completely clueless about all that. Oh, and I talked to Marge. She routinely videotapes her entire office suite. She and several of her associates. Reviewed you from the time you entered her reception area until you left her office. Why did you go in there so determined to not be counseled? You were obviously prepared to torpedo anything that was going to happen in that office that day, but you never told me that you did not want to participate.”

“Umm..., “ I began, “you did not present any kind of appearance of being amenable to me not going into counseling. In fact, as much as I do not want to say this to the first real peer and friend I have made on campus, you railroaded me into Marge's office. About the only step you did not take was driving me there yourself. I must say, torpedoed is a good word. I will not lie to you and say that I went in there with any intention other than causing as much mayhem as possible until that entire debacle was deemed not worth the time and cost and trouble. I just did not realize how easily and quickly I would achieve my goal.”

“Well, “ as she hung her head, “I guess I was a party to that disaster. But my comment about you having an inferiority complex was as right as it was wrong. You obviously believe in yourself to some degree. A lesser mind of lesser fortitude would not have been able to mount such a stern front from such a reasoned position nor been able to manipulate Marge was quickly and as well as you did. She and her associates said you are a natural people reader and said that if there was ever any evidence of anyone being empathic it would be the tapes of you. They are all marveling over how quickly you found the weakness in Marge's strategy and psyche and how well you exploited it on the fly.” The longer she talked, the more she stopped hanging her head and focusing on me, examining me minutely. I could almost see the energy she was trying to push to my body from hers. “You rock. I do not know any other way to say it. I know that this conversation is an variation of hundreds of others you have had with many people because I talked to a lot of them. Why does this never sink in with you.”

“Because I feel like I am living a lie and I feel so disgusting and wrong. Because to me, regardless of what anyone, what **everyone** else in the world sees, men are ugly. What that boils down to is, if people see me as a man, I am ugly. I hate the feeling. I hate that feeling so intently, I often consider using explosives to vaporize myself in one final ultimate conclusion. I am pretty sure, too, I could construct a containment vessel and shape and focus the charges to the point that I could do just that, too, or come so darned close it would not matter. I just know that I would have to run some tests first and I would get caught before I could get the setup and focus tight enough to depend on it, and that would get me caught. Then I would either end up in jail or the looney bin or the looney bin for people who should be in jail. None of those possibilities appeal to me.” I held up a finger so I could catch my breath before I continued. “Because I may have an ugly body, no no no, no arguing until I finish my little speech, I may have an ugly body, but in my head is an average woman screaming to get out, to interact, to express herself, to just live. She is very, very frustrated. That much frustration over that kind of time period is shattering. And that is why I cannot accept what people see and feel and think, because they have no idea of the madness inside of me and the pain and all the blackness and loss of hope I feel everyday, knowing I will... “

And she tripped me.

Author's Note:Please pardon the short episodes. School, work, and life are all ganging up to keep me on a short leash.

Thanks,
DD

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To Be Continued...