To Be Honest Page 9

  Again, the tent freaked out, but this time was worse than the last. “What’s wrong with you?” one of her friends shouted.

  “You’re such a pervert!”

  “Ask something else!” another one of her friends said.

  “Okay,” I said bitterly, “but how am I supposed to know which questions are off-limits?”

  “Common sense!” she said. “Like, you wouldn’t dare someone to stab himself in the eye.”

  “Apparently, in our society, sexuality is so taboo that confessing your fantasies is the equivalent of stabbing yourself in the eye!” The room was silent. “Are your fantasies even that bad? Are you fantasizing about something particularly dirty or immoral or something?” After more bickering, I backed down, “Okay, okay, I won’t ask any more sexual questions. How about this: ‘What are the three things you’re most insecure about?’”

  The tent hated that question too. “You’re so mean!” someone shouted at me.

  The girl who had been asked the question barked, “I’m not insecure!”

  I laughed at that. “Oh, come on. Everybody’s insecure! Do you expect anyone to believe you’re not insecure about anything?”

  “You’re so pretentious,” someone shouted.

  “Stop asking questions,” someone else said.

  Though I found this all very funny, it also aggravated me enough that I didn’t want to play anymore, so I got up to leave. I had to climb over a bunch of people so it made a scene and gave them time to accuse me of taking the game too seriously and childishly storming out. When I finally reached the flap and unzipped it, I delivered my parting line. “You guys should rename the game ‘Hide Your Feelings and Dare.’”

  Michael Leviton Is Lying

  My second year at family camp, I saw Amanda do work. I’d only had one interaction with her in the lunch line, but I’d noticed how much she irritated everyone with her conniptions in temperature reading over minor slights that only she cared about. If she couldn’t keep it together at camp, I couldn’t imagine what she was like in the rest of the world.

  When Amanda volunteered to work, she plodded to the front as if wearing rusty armor, stood in front of the chalkboard, and gazed into the audience, her face hard. “This is terrifying,” she said. The campers in lawn chairs kept their heads down to avoid eye contact.

  “This audience is here to support you, not to judge,” Max said. The audience clearly disliked her and would definitely judge. “So,” Max said to Amanda. “What’s bubbling today?”

  “I’m lonely. I’m just very lonely. I date a lot, and it never works out. Men are so fucked up. I don’t want to shut my mouth and act like I don’t have feelings.”

  “I’m hearing,” Max said, “that you think men don’t like when you show your feelings.”

  “For instance, I have herpes,” Amanda said. Audience members recoiled and quickly recomposed themselves to act as if they hadn’t. “I was on my third date with this guy I really liked and it was getting sexual so I told him and he pulled back, totally disgusted. He left me for doing the right thing.”

  Max replied, “Why don’t you call up someone to represent your support?”

  Amanda peered into the audience with wet eyes and stopped at Dawn. Dawn had been a cheerleader in high school forty years before and was often typecast as support. She joined Amanda in front of the blackboard.

  Max asked, “Where do you want her?”

  Amanda said, “Behind me. With her arms around my waist.”

  Dawn embraced Amanda from behind.

  “Now,” Max said. “Call someone up to play the role of a man you’d like to be with.”

  “Wow, really?” Amanda laughed. “This’ll be fun! I can have anyone I want?” Amanda searched the audience, giggling, looking the men up and down, licking her lips in mock-lechery. “Aww, man, Jack isn’t here!” she said, referencing the camp teenage Adonis who didn’t attend sessions, opting instead to work out shirtless within view of the picnic tables. Then she looked at me. “Michael Leviton?”

  Whenever they cast a role that wasn’t a proxy baby, I irrationally hoped to be picked. I knew this was stupid, but I felt it anyway. I was moved that Amanda would choose me, especially in the role of an attractive man, a part I’d never played, in life or in therapy.*

  Max asked me, “Michael, are you comfortable in that role?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Once onstage, only a few feet from Amanda, I watched her zigzagging teardrops navigating her wrinkles, landing on her thin lips. From where I stood, one of her eyes reflected more light than the other, one dark brown and the other amber.

  “What’s happening inside right now?” Max asked her.

  Amanda could barely speak. “I looked into his eyes and thought, ‘I want some of that! I want some of that for myself! And why can’t I have it? I know my worth. I deserve some of that!’”

  Dawn began to chant, “You deserve some of that! You know your worth!”

  “Yeah!” Amanda said. “I do! I know I do.”

  “You deserve a man like that,” Dawn said. The audience joined in on this chant.

  I noticed Mom in her lawn chair up front, drawing Amanda. Mom often sketched the sessions. This time, she drew a caricature of Amanda waving her arms, spouting a word bubble that said: “I know my worth!”

  The audience chanted in unison about Amanda deserving love and then Dawn went off on her own improv: “You’re fine how you are! You’re strong! You’re right!”

  Amanda’s legs folded and Dawn caught her, now supporting her physically too. “Let’s get more support,” Max said. Audience members rose to lift her.

  Amanda howled, “I want to be loved! I want to be loved!” Her keening echoed through the woods. “I’m so loooooonely!”

  After a while of Amanda whimpering in a net of arms, she quieted and stood on her feet again and the attention fell on me, the metaphorical representation of the type of man she’d want to be with. Max instructed her to ask me anything she wanted.

  Amanda had wearied in the last half hour. She asked me, timidly, “Do you think the right person will understand my personal truth?”

  I wanted to tell her that her personal truth was off-putting, like mine, and that she should learn to be happy alone. I racked my brain for different phrasings. I decided to say that I found the terms “right person” and “personal truth” hard to define, which was technically true. But before I went in that direction, it occurred to me that I was playing a role in someone else’s session, that I was being asked to recite a specific line, like an actor. As much as it felt wrong to say something untrue, I’d agreed to a job that required it. I felt nauseated and wondered if I could get out of this by vomiting. I’d never heard of someone vomiting mid-session. Amanda’s eyebrows twitched; she’d noticed my hesitation. I hadn’t lied since letting the kindergartners believe in Santa. I slowly slurred my second lie: “The right person will want to hear your truth—”

  Amanda turned to Max and interrupted, “I don’t believe him.” A nervous grin took over my face. “Look at him!” she said. “He’s laughing! He’s obviously lying.”

  Max replied, “I’m hearing that you find it hard to believe that a man you’d want to be with would—”

  “No,” Amanda interrupted. “I’m talking specifically about him.” She pointed at me. “This particular man, Michael Leviton, is lying.”

  The audience groaned. Max tried to diffuse the awkwardness. “Hold on, let’s not make assumptions,” he said. “Why don’t we ask Michael directly.” He turned to me. “Michael, you can discard your role and speak as yourself. And remember, you don’t have to answer; everyone has the right to ask as well as the right to not answer.” He was giving me an out. I couldn’t believe even a therapist would encourage me to lie.

  Amanda shot me a death stare. “All right. Michael Leviton. Do you believe that I’ll be appreciated if I stay the way I am and continue to speak my truth?”

  I said, “It’s funny to be
in this role because I relate to you. Except I try to live without needing other people. If you’re being yourself, it’s statistically unlikely that you’ll find someone who appreciates you. It’d be like finding a hundred-dollar bill on the ground.”

  Amanda appeared confused and said, “You deserve someone that appreciates you.”

  At this, I really lost it. “You keep saying that. What does it mean to deserve appreciation?” This came out sounding much angrier than I intended. I tried to soften my tone. “Most people who are liked are just good at putting up a front. If you care about that, do your best impression of what other people want. If you choose to be yourself, don’t go around expecting people to like you.”

  I had been focused on Amanda, who had backed away a bit in befuddlement. I turned to the audience and saw that they were sniffling and crying, not for Amanda, but for me.

  Max said, “Michael, it sounds as if you don’t think you deserve love.” I was about to explode when Max switched gears, realizing that the attention had been shifted from Amanda, who was waiting, arms crossed. Max said, “Thank you, Michael, for sharing.”

  Afterward, I talked to my parents about what had happened. Dad hugged me, dying of laughter. “Oh my god, that was so funny. Your response was so perfect!”

  “Poor Amanda,” Mom said. “She doesn’t understand how annoying she is.”

  “I should have told her,” I said. “I can’t believe I lied.” But I knew that even those who hated Amanda would have said telling the truth in that session was wrong. When it came down to it, even family therapy camp wasn’t honest.

  For my college application essay, I wrote about family camp. I ranted about learning how much people kept hidden, about my longing to see behind everyone’s facades.* Despite the essay, I got into college. I’ve heard that they don’t always read the essays.

  Singing My Complaints

  I spent my first year of college annoying everybody in all the same old ways, treating every conversation like a game of Truth or Dare that only I knew about, that only I’d agreed to. My non sequitur personal questions read as forced, but even if I’d segued into them naturally, I offered no reason to answer.

  Inspired by memories of the Michael Talking Tape, I started carrying a tape recorder and asking for “interviews.” I anticipated questions about how the interviews might be used.† I decided I’d just tell the truth: that I suspected the tape recorder might convince people to answer questions they wouldn’t normally, making conversation more interesting and entertaining for everyone involved. Luckily, my desired interview subjects didn’t ask why; to my amazement, they were just excited to speak to the tape recorder. I’d ask them to tell the story of their favorite kiss they’d ever had, and they’d get emotional and reply with that improvised, flawed speech I’d loved at family camp. I took this as evidence of my theory that everyone could be interesting if they’d let themselves.

  Because I could only stomach most people available for short increments, I had a ton of free time to fill with writing and music. I’d continued writing short stories all through high school, showing Dad my favorites, getting his notes and hearing that he still didn’t enjoy anything about them.

  In my first year of college, Dad responded to one of my stories saying he’d liked it, but he didn’t give me any notes telling me why. It appeared that his vocabulary to discuss what he liked was much more limited. I saw no clear reason Dad would appreciate this story more than my previous; it wasn’t better in any substantial way. I wondered if his opinions could be as arbitrary as anyone’s, if maybe he’d just read it in a good mood.

  We had a phone conversation about it. I reminded him that he’d urged me as a child not to define myself according to his opinion, “I liked lots of my stories that you didn’t. It would be hypocritical to call this one my best story purely because you liked it.”

  “That makes sense,” Dad said. “There’s no reason why my opinion should matter. I mean, who cares what I think?”

  I’d started teaching myself guitar, ukulele, and piano and was attempting to write songs, setting my grievances to music. I played concerts around school, strumming a ukulele, singing my complaints to small audiences composed of the very people I was complaining about. I sang things like, “Some enjoy mystery, I’d rather know. Some prefer the curtain to the show.” They found my songs funny, which led me to believe they didn’t realize I was talking about them. Maybe the ukulele accompaniment made the songs feel less hateful. Even when I’d introduce a song with, “This one’s about all of you,” they’d still laugh as if I didn’t mean it.

  Now I could play music, sing, and write songs to cheer myself up. I spent so much time cheering myself up that I became a competent musician.

  Another Side of the Story

  When I was home one summer, Mom received a call inviting me to an informal elementary school reunion. I’d never heard of such a thing. A former classmate I didn’t remember was throwing a reunion in her backyard, using phone numbers from the sixth grade school roster or written in her yearbook. It was surreal to see the familiar child faces now adult, as if drawn on flaccid balloons and then inflated.

  I immediately recognized Robert, whose huge head and jolly round face translated perfectly. He told me he was happy to see me. I was surprised he even remembered me. Robert said when he’d heard about this reunion, I was the one he most hoped would be there. He wanted to tell me his side of the story of what happened when we were kids.

  “I always want to hear other people’s sides of the story!” I told him. “But they’ll never tell me!”

  Nineteen-year-old Robert was excited to tell me how bizarre I was as a child. He said I was always whining about their games and conversations; when they took turns joking about mothers and insulting one another, I’d start crying. “And you weren’t embarrassed!” Robert said, “You acted like we were supposed to keep talking while you were crying! We didn’t know what to do. We’d just run away!”

  “Yeah, that sounds like me,” I said.

  “Then you’d try to bring it up again later and tell us why our joke had hurt your feelings and we’d have to run away again!” Robert was able to laugh about it now. “It was hard to be friends with you,” he said. “But we tried!”

  I told him the story of when he accused me of picking my nose; he didn’t remember that one. When I brought up Mr. Gelman and Mrs. Johnson, it became clear that this was the main subject he’d wanted to talk about.

  Robert explained that he and his friends were bused in from faraway neighborhoods, that they woke up at 5 am while I strolled to school at 7:30 am. The teachers had labeled him and his friends bad kids from the moment they’d arrived, years before I moved there in third grade. He told me about awful things he and Manuel were going through at home at the time and how it brutally affected their lives when they were blamed for things they didn’t do. “You used to try to defend us,” Robert told me. “You were this nerdy crying kid, but you’d fight with the teachers in front of everybody. If they messed with us in class, you’d cry and tell them off. It was so crazy. You weren’t even really our friend, but you had our backs!”

  “Sort of,” I sighed, dismayed at having to correct him. “If I’d known you’d committed a crime, I would have snitched without even thinking.”

  Robert winced. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I wasn’t loyal to you. I was only loyal to the truth.”

  Robert shook his head and turned away, disturbed. It was like we were kids again.

  It’ll Be Okay

  My first night home from college for summer break in 2000, a week before my fourth year at family camp, I was playing piano downstairs when I heard a door slam from upstairs. I’d heard many things in my family, but never a door slam. Miriam screamed through the door at Mom, the only other person home at the time. Mom appeared at the top of the stairs in tears, hurrying down toward me.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Ummmmm. Okay,” Mom said. I’d nev
er seen her hesitate like this. I sensed I was supposed to sit down so we moved to the couch. For a moment, she still didn’t say anything. Then, she spit it out. “I’m leaving your dad,” she said. “We’re getting divorced.”

  “I think that’s good,” I said without pause. “You guys have always been philosophically incompatible.”

  Mom looked at me hazily. “What?”

  “You like people and Dad doesn’t,” I told her. “You have hopes that are always being dashed and Dad expects the worst already. Dad loves going to concerts and you don’t and he talks about art and politics and morality and you talk about people. And you want everyone to like you and Dad wants to be left alone.” Mom lowered her chin and her eyes emptied. I thought I was showing understanding but Mom didn’t look comforted. “Is there something you’d like me to say?” I asked. Mom shook her head. “How would you describe your reasons for getting divorced?”

  Mom sighed and brushed her palm over the couch’s arm. “I fell in love with someone else.”

  Though I was technically against secret-keeping, I was perversely proud of her, impressed that she’d managed a forbidden romance. I’d never known Mom to go out anywhere so I asked the blunt question, “Where did you meet someone to fall in love with?”

  Mom faltered again, sighed, and said, “At family camp.”

  There’s a lot I could have thought about in that moment—the forthcoming scandal, the absurdity of leaving one’s husband for someone from family therapy camp, the feelings I should have been having and why I wasn’t having them—but my brain instead instinctively listed each man at camp to guess which one Mom had fallen for. Mom interrupted my mental guessing with his name: “Joe.” She lingered on the “o,” relishing the syllable. I could tell she was in love.