Devil-Spawn

Mr. Stark, the subject of “Antisocial” has become one of my regular therapy guys. I have changed my mind from my first fear of him.

It is so hard to extract a history from a person. What if you came home at age eight every day, and if you walked wrong or sneezed or made a seemingly meaningless comment you were snatched up and beaten? What if the only thing your mom did to help was wipe the blood off your face, in the dark, in your room? What if the school called because you had gotten in a fight with a classmate, and your father broke your arm to teach you a lesson? What if you heard at ten that your mother had been unfaithful, and your father thought you were the ill-gotten offspring of this liaison? And so he hated you? And your younger brother was treated completely differently. It’s not like you did something….

You learn that you are intrinsically evil, bad, wrong. And then the thing that marks you as devil-spawn in your father’s eye is your art, and that is the thing that might save you. The other man had the same skills you demonstrated at an early age. How the hell do you work that through as a child?

Well, Mr. Stark worked it through. It involves drugs and violence and rage. You make that man in your house stop hurting you by hurting him worse. Every person that even vaguely threatens you becomes somebody to destroy. But even in this miasma of hate, he understands he should not hurt his girlfriend or her child. He treats me with care as he vibrates with hate. After our last session, I processed the case with my friend, and we looked at his meds. He is on a tremendous selection of meds that help him control his violence.

I wrote, in Antisocial, “He will never understand why I do what I do. He can grasp my feeling for him, but he will never understand in some internal way why I come to work and try to find a thread to lead him and his (hated) brethren out of hell.” I appear to have been quite wrong about this assessment.

Regularly, after our initial sessions, he got in trouble: four tickets in total. The third session, I reflected the thought to him that the therapy was scaring him, and causing him to find a way to destroy it. Enough tickets and he will be ridden out to a higher level, and he will have ruined something else that is beginning to become precious to him. I gave him strict instructions to avoid thoughtless agitation and acting out in the next week.

The day was long, and I was late leaving. There is a holding area in Control for prisoners being processed in some way. It can be as simple as waiting for the parole board or as serious as awaiting the outcome of a ticket. There is a scrunched up pile of prison clothes with a winter watch-cap pulled down past the eyebrows of the person hiding in the collar of his coat. Guess who?

Since he had unsuccessfully hidden from me, he sits up for our conversation and pushes his hat back.

“Mr. Stark, what are you doing here,” fierce glare.

He claims innocence this time, which I actually believe, since he has never done such with me before. He had been hauled down to control to “chat” with the Lieutenant. And of course, he became immediately belligerent. The Lieutenant responded by threatening him with a ticket, a short vacation in the Hole, and taking his beloved job away (his job has to do with his art). Mr. Stark cleverly responded by starting to take off his coat and shirt to change into the jumpsuit required for the Hole. The Lieutenant threw him back in the hallway, pending further discussion. I don’t know why he made this decision, but I am thankful for it. It gives me time to smack him around a bit before his next “chat.”

“I’m not going to fucking apologize for something I didn’t do and I’m not sorry for.”

That’s me, stupid female, once again requiring unreasonable behavior.

“What is your goal, Mr. Stark? Managing your responses or letting them manage you? You may not be sorry for what they’ve accused you of, but it might be nice to apologize for acting like an asshole.”

Twenty minutes later we’d gone over everything twice, and I was ready to go home. I offered to stay and go in with him if the Lieutenant allowed me, but he declined. I also suggested he offer up that I had been reading him the riot act out here for a while if he thought it would help.

The next day he was not in segregation, and I had been so sure I’d find him there. I spoke to the Lieutenant that afternoon as I was leaving. Apparently Mr. Stark had turned his behavior around, been appropriate, and as such had dodged the ticket and returned to his unit. I admit, I was amazed and relieved.

And still, I’ve not addressed the issue of his understanding my work. This story was to illustrate how much rage and reaction he carries. He is bottled up so tightly that any provocation can get out of control well beyond the reasonable expectation. I suggested he needed to let me help him carry some of that pain. He looked at me as though I had suggested he beat me, started spluttering and I was afraid might leave session. Curious. Didn’t understand that reaction.

He could not possibly ever do anything to hurt me, he explained. And frankly, he thought it a little masochistic of me to want him to do so. So I explained the process of letting him share it, taking some of it from him, and channeling it out into the universe so it dissipates and hurts neither of us. Perceptive as he is, he asks why it won’t hurt me as it passes through. And I admit it probably will, but that is okay. It is worth it for the outcome, and it is what I do.

What I do?? He has his music. I have my therapy. And somehow putting them out there as the voice of our souls brought him in. and he did it. the next session he brought in lyrics and material that allowed him to voice his pain.