How It Ended - Laurence & Ma Duck Ch. 02

"The first few times I was forced to pull a train at the firehouse I felt resentment. And pain. But these feelings hostility subsided over time. After all, I kept coming back of my own free will. And I stopped feeling pain.

"Did they mistreat you?" I continued.

"Frequently. I'd get slapped, or my hair would be pulled, or my arm wrenched for no reason that was obvious to me. It wasn't just physical. Often I would be abused and demeaned verbally. And psychologically. They'd tell me how ugly I was, and how stupid, and how shitty I was at giving blowjobs.

They would pass me one to another, and I willingly complied. Several times two men took me simultaneously, front and back door. Sometimes I would have absolutely no conversation with a partner. He would just grab me and begin groping -- though none of them were big on foreplay, that's for sure.

"On several occasions, when a guy who'd been drinking heavily couldn't get it up he would twist my arm or throw a drink on me or shake me by the shoulders. Or swear. Or punch me. Or some combination. Sometimes I would be fucked very hard, including anally, not just rough sex but more like angry assault. Does that count as mistreatment?"

I just nodded. Inside I was convulsing with anger and hurt and empathy.

"So," I continued, "you never felt anything physically except occasional pain from the sexual activity?"

"Well," she began to answer, "I'm not sure what you -- oh, I get it, you want to know if I came."

"Yes," I said. "How often did you achieve release."

"The answer is a nice round number: zero. I've never had an orgasm in my life."

Well, I thought to myself, it won't take long for me to remedy that. I guess she doesn't realize: women come when they want to. And I would make sure she wanted to. Maybe I should have said this out loud to her. But I didn't.

Ma Duck:

Quack just paused and said nothing. I could see hurt in his eyes. Maybe something else was there, I wasn't certain. I was surprised that I related these details without hesitation and without pain. Not even with much in the way of shame. Although I certainly did not have a proud tone in my voice or body language.

"What about birth control?" Quack asked.

"I'm on the pill," I responded. "Since college. Where I never had sex with anyone. Four years of 'all dressed up with nowhere to go.'"

"No condoms?" Quack asked. "I mean with so many partners."

"I haven't used a rubber since Prom Night," I answered.

A long pause. Finally Quack asked, "What were your feelings when these goings on occurred?"

"Oh," I replied, "there was any number of feelings. At first, shame. But that feeling didn't last long. Sometimes there's be physical pain, when the sex had been particularly hard. Or when I had been handled by a large number. That would be the reaction especially during the first few months, before my body had become accustomed to the regimen.

Sometimes I felt menaced, or I believed I was in serious danger of physical harm with some of the less stable men. Always I felt degraded, but it's like, I wanted to be degraded, humbled and humiliated. It's hard to explain. And always I felt excitement. A feeling of exhilaration was always there. Even when I knew I was harming myself."

Ma Duck:

"You wanted to punish yourself?" Quack asked.

"Well, lookie here who's studied up on psychiatry," I cracked. And I was suddenly mortified as I saw pain in Quack's eyes.

"I'm sorry, Quack," I blurted out. "Please forgive me. There's no place in this for me to be a wiseass. I apologize."

Laurence:

I accepted her apology. But then I asked the same question with a little different emphasis: "Obviously it's pretty clear now that you had so little self-regard that you wanted to hurt yourself. What I'm trying to get at is, did you realize you wanted to punish yourself at the time?"

"Not at first," Ma Duck answered. "Initially I hadn't developed a pattern yet, and I told myself I was just traversing through a number of men until I could find one with whom I could become close. Later I think I would just blame outside factors, such as telling myself I was just too drunk and allowed things to get out of control. But, sure, before not too long I knew there was some massive self-destruction thing going on."

"So, the $64 question," I continued. "Have you come to understand what factors caused you to want to engage in this behavior?"

Ma Duck:

"I think so," I said. "Three things, really. One, I didn't feel good about myself. I was in pain; I was grieving. And that caused me to feel worthless. And that caused me to want to punish myself for being inferior."

"Yes," Quack said. "Good. And what was it you were grieving over?"

Laurence:

"You know very well, Quack," she told me.

"I think I do," I said. "But you tell me."

"O.K.," Ma Duck responded. "But please understand this: As I sit here now I am not feeling sorry for myself. To provide you with the obvious answer to your question I will provide you with another quote, from Willie the Great:

'Yet I do believe the origin of his grief sprung from neglected love.'"

Ma Duck:

"Yes," Quack said, "Yes. That quote came from Polonius, in Hamlet, right?"

"Yes," I confirmed. "Polonius speaking to Claudius, third act."

"So tell me," Quack asked. "Whose neglect of love was it that so aggrieved you?"

Laurence:

"You know fully well, Quack," Ma Duck blurted out, her voice rising in volume, her cheeks reddening. "It was you."

"I understand," I told her.

Ma Duck:

"Do you?" I retorted. "Do you really? I wonder whether you could appreciate what I felt. Two years together, and you never spoke of love. You never even said you liked me. Closest you came: the night we slept together -- chastely, I might add -- you told me you liked me 'well enough.' Oh, Quack, how that hurt.

"And physically," I continued, almost shouting, "you were even worse. You treated me like a little girl," I told Quack. "A precocious little girl, to be sure, but a girl nonetheless. We could joke and banter about sex -- our very first exchange was about my boobs and my stripping down for you and getting on all fours -- but in reality you had no actual interest in my breasts. Two years and you never copped a feel. We never even necked, let alone made out. And, believe me, you don't have to be in love to neck. I looked it up.

"Of course I wanted to punish myself," I concluded. "I deserved to be punished because I was an undesirable woman, undeserving of being loved."

All right, I was angry. I admit it.

Laurence:

"I'm sure you know that if we began making out that night, we would have made love within minutes," I told her.

"Would that have been so bad?" she asked.

"Maybe not, but maybe yes," I retorted. "Look, I could not afford the luxury of a girlfriend. I had been a star, first in my class, in High School, and was in the top 15% of my class as Cornell. But medical school was a bitch. I could take no chances. My father had just died. I could not afford to run any risks.

"Here's a statistic you don't know, because I never told you: Medical school is really tough. At Michigan, in order to graduate with a medical degree a student needs a GPA of 2.50 or higher. That's precisely halfway between a C and a B. Now if a student falls short, say with a 2.4 or a 2.3, he's not expelled. But he can't graduate. He's free to take a course or courses the next year, and pay full tuition, to try to bring his average above 2.50. If he succeeds, he graduates. If he falls short, he can try again, of course. But because of the base number of credits 'already in the books,' it gets harder to succeed with each subsequent effort.

"Now someone in that predicament could certainly take one of the easier electives, and if he took only that course and studied, studied, studied, he could almost certainly get an A or an A- in that course. But suppose one course wasn't enough. Suppose he needed high grades in two courses to get him over the hump. Or three? In that case the chances of acing them both would be greatly reduced. Don't forget, such a student is marginal to begin with.

"I was that type of marginal student. Going into my last semester, there was no guarantee I would reach the required 2.50. There was the real possibility I would have to return the next year. Were that to occur, I almost certainly would have gotten the average sufficiently high to meet the threshold, but at the cost of an additional $18,000 tuition, fees and lab costs, plus room and board. After my initial four years I would not have had a student loan any longer. I would face of shame of near failure and the necessity of taking the money from my father's Estate.

"I don't think I ever disclosed any of this to you, and I certainly never whined, but not qualifying to graduate was definitely a possibility. As it was, my final GPA was 2.53. If I had gotten a half grade lower in any of my courses over the four years I was there, it would have been a 2.49, and I would have been screwed.

"Ms. Duck, you were far too important to me for me to use to get my rocks off a few times a week without giving you the care and attention and love you deserved. I would have felt like a shit -- and you would have resented me."

Ma Duck:

"I had no idea," I told him. "But after you graduated . . ."

"I didn't even know until two days before the ceremony that I had made it," Quack responded.

He continued: "Yes, I know, I know I should have said something then. I was scared because I didn't know how hard the Residency would be, and whether I would have the time then for a girlfriend. It was only after I started that I realized I may have done only mediocre in terms of grades at the Big U., but standards there were so high that I was very well prepared for hospital training. We've got Residents at the hospital who graduated from Podunk Medical School in Podunk, Arkansas, and from foreign medical schools. I am well above average in my group at Mass General -- not a star as if I had come from Johns Hopkins or Stanford -- but almost as well qualified.

"Only after I got underway here did I understand that. Compared with medical school itself, I have far more time for myself. But by the time I realized this, I thought it was too late. You had embarked on a social life, such as it was, in Detroit, and while I had no idea how toxic it was, I couldn't see myself reaching out to you. So I settled for someone who proved unworthy, and with whom I would not have had a future in any event. You can say it -- -- I was stupid. I know that."

Laurence:

"We were both stupid," Ma Duck piped in. "But now I'm damaged goods. You know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So, is it disqualifying?"

I leaned over, our heads six inches apart, and whispered, "Of course not."

Ma Duck:

I shuddered with delight. "Well, if the last year is truly past us," I began, "so now whither us?"

"Thou knowest not?" Quack responded, keeping up with the archaic formulation I had employed.

"That's easy," he continued. "We venture forth together. As the couple we were always fated to be. I don't have all the answers, the various and sundry details will come to us over time as we need them, one by one."

I flushed with delight.

Laurence:

"But in the meanwhile," I concluded, "get your shoes on and put on a short-sleeve blouse. One that's more opaque than glass. We've got somewhere important to go right away."

"Where?" Ma Duck asked.

"To the hospital. We're going to get your blood drawn stat."

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Next week: Test Results; Carnal Ecstasy; Planning a Life Together