Chapter One
Wendy, Wendy what went wrong?
What went wrong?
We went together for so long….
The Beach Boys, Wendy
John’s neighbors seemed to have finally gone to sleep; at least the pounding on the ceiling had stopped. He was finally able to listen to Wendy (now playing for the fourteenth consecutive time, the source of the neighbors’ consternation) at full volume again. John recognized that he didn’t have the best voice, especially trying to fake a Beach Boys falsetto, and his singing grew worse the drunker he got and the more cigarette smoke he drew through his unaccustomed vocal cords. As the pathetic song entered an instrumental, he took the opportunity to try another Heartbreak Hotel Challenge: A deep drag of his American Spirit Menthol, an unhealthy swig from a fifth of Jack, and a Bud Light chug. About halfway through the beer slam, he thought he might puke, so he blew out the smoke and steadied himself. “Almost,” he said to himself, the room spinning unpleasantly.
“I need to get some more food in me,” John reasoned. He reached across an empty Marina Pizza box to a partially empty Marina Pizza box and grabbed a piece of cold Supreme. He flicked a cigarette ash off it and took a bite of the stale, coagulated slice. Terrible. Just like he felt. His vision blurred and he briefly saw two ashtrays in front of him, choked with American Spirit Menthol butts. He shook his head to clear his eyes, but the drying tears still blurred his vision, and it turned out there were, in fact, two crammed ashtrays in front of him. Not bad for his first day smoking. He cast his gaze around the rest of the room, pausing momentarily to focus on empty beer bottles, candy wrappers, another pizza box, discarded cigarette boxes, a beer can pyramid, and open CD jewel cases. Old CD inserts were strewn around, discs scattered everywhere, the remnants of his search for sad, dated music he had never managed to upload to his iTunes.
“How could you do it, Wendy?” John lamented. He cast his mind back to the last time he had held such a pity party for himself. Three years ago, minimum. Carolyn Strauss. College girlfriend. He’d been playing over his head, as usual. He should never have tried that one; it had ended just like this, but Wendy was supposed to be different.
Wendy had entered John’s life when he was going through a rough patch at work. He had graduated college with a pile of student debt, like everyone else, and he needed to make money. Fortunately, John had studied a subject that, although he didn’t enjoy it that much, had continued to show growth potential, and he was able to get a decent job. He went to work for a marketing agency that placed ads on the Internet, and John’s expertise was in the burgeoning social media sphere. He had been responsible for a number of very successful campaigns linked to Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.
He had grown up on social media, and he felt he understood the needs and desires of its users. It was a platform for self-expression, but it was also the way many people of his generation actually got their news. Some users actually read and digested certain blogs and news aggregators and posted or tweeted those articles that aligned with the views they, as connectors, wished to promulgate. Their friends or followers then reposted or re-tweeted them, and so on. Hence, Millennials received their news from like-minded people of like-minded people’s friends and passed it on to their friends and thence to like-minded people. John developed ads tested to be effective with certain identifiable influencers or, as he got better at it, that actually sponsored those influencers, such that the marketing wound up very narrowly and inexpensively being directed to the like-minded chain of consumers. It was very effective, and John was successful, but he felt he was using his essentially positive character trait of empathetically understanding people’s motivations for a crassly commercial purpose, and that had been soul draining.
It was also physically and mentally draining. He worked long, stress-filled hours, and he had used work as a defense mechanism to protect him from the hurt he felt when Carolyn Strauss had left him for some dude she’d met at a Renaissance Faire, and he hadn’t dated more than an occasional Tinder hook-up in a long time. He was drinking heavily, eating poorly, and spending most of his time sitting in front of a computer, coming up with clever ways to sell student-debt ridden underemployed consumers products they didn’t need and couldn’t afford on credit. He was part of the problem, and he hated himself for it, even though it had put a nice apartment ceiling over his head, decent clothes in his closet, and sufficient food, booze, and cocaine to continue the cycle over and over.
He had suffered a drunken bicycling crash and wound up in the ER, where he had randomly met Wendy in the waiting room. They struck up a conversation, and she was incredibly hot and extremely sweet and understanding, and she was able to convince him to trust in himself and do what he loved. She had been the one to suggest going back to school to become a psychologist when she recognized his talent for empathy and penchant for helping people determine what they wanted and how to get it despite obstacles or problems. And she liked him and had the best sex with him he’d ever had. Wendy had been special. Wendy had…
John’s cell rang. “Wendy!” he shouted drunkenly. He leapt up to grab the phone from where it sat charging on the floor across the room. He swayed woozily, light-headed, and stepped into a greasy pizza box, black olives and pizza sauce squooshing between the toes of his right foot. He hopped away on his left foot but banged his knee sharply on the coffee table. “Fuck!” he shouted, grabbing his knee and stepping on the pizza slice still stuck to his right foot. He slipped, lost his balance, and fell face forward into the beer can pyramid, hitting the deck hard amidst a crash of aluminum.
“Goddamnit!” he screamed, rolling into a dying cockroach, clutching his knee, elbows stinging. His phone again chirped its distinctive seven-note ringtone – Dah dah dah dah Duh Dah Dah. Bam, bam, bam! His downstairs neighbor stabbed the ceiling with a broom handle, shouting angrily. John rolled over on all fours and crawled through the detritus scattered on the floor, finally reaching his cell as it once again chirped out the melody of the Association’s 1967 hit: Everyone knows it’s Windy. He grabbed his phone and desperately swiped the screen.
“Wendy?” he gasped. Disappointment came over him in a wave. Not Wendy. He rubbed his knee and listened for a moment before responding, annoyed to have been bothered by a non-Wendy phone call. “Yes, this is John, but I don’t know any Kyle. What do you want again?”
He began picking olives out of his toes, flicking finger-loads of pizza sauce drunkenly against a wall. His face darkened. “Yes, I know Wendy broke up with me, thank you very much. What business is it of yours?” He pulled a remote control from his pocket and restarted The Beach Boys. The pounding began again from downstairs, the angry voice pleading with him to make it stop. “Bite me!” he shouted at the floor. He listened, growing mystified.
“Look dude. Thanks for the sympathy, but I don’t know you, and I don’t need your help,” he slurred. He listened a moment longer. “Yes, I know I’m listening to The Beach Boys… I know I never listen to them anymore… Yes, I know I don’t smoke… Look, you’re creeping me out. Are you watching me?” He lit another American Spirit off the remnants of the one in his mouth, stubbing it out in a bowl of molding sour cream & chive dip on the coffee table. A framed 8x10 photo of a very beautiful woman with kind, teal-colored eyes, glossy, russet hair, olive skin, and Pepsodent teeth sat next to the un-appetizer. John picked it up and began sobbing silently.
Tears splashed gently on the photo as John continued to listen to the voice on the other end of the line. “What does Wendy have to do with this? No, I don’t want to come to a meeting. Look, just to get rid of you, give me the damn address, and I’ll see how I feel.” He hung up, set the picture down on the coffee table, and restarted the song. The pounding from the downstairs neighbor continued. A pounding began in his confused and despairing brain.
# # #
John awoke facedown in a pizza box, a nearly empty bottle of Jack in his right hand, cell phone in his left, and a burnt-to-the-filter cigarette stuck to his lip. He made a face, coughed the butt off his lip, and gagged. He lifted his head out of the muck, feeling sick and groggy, a slice stuck to his face. Self-loathing and disgust coursed through his soul. He glanced at the cell phone in his hand with trepidation. How many blackout texts might there be? He willed himself to press the button. No texts, but there were two voicemails! Wendy? He punched in his code. He didn’t recognize the first number, although it was a 415 area code. He pressed play, then speakerphone, and set the cell down on the coffee table. He peeled the pizza off his face as he listened to the message.
“No, John, it isn’t Wendy. It’s Kyle again. She’s not going to call, John. Trust me.
I know. Look, I really think I can help you if you’ll just let me. Come to the meeting. In case you forgot, Holiday Inn Van Ness. Algonquin Room.”
John rolled his eyes. That guy again. What does he know? But more importantly, how does he know Wendy? John felt a pang of jealousy and curiosity come over him. He punched delete, followed by play for the second message. “Come on, Wendy! Please, please, please, please, please!” he begged.
The voicemail message remained familiar, “Still not Wendy, John. Kyle. One more thing, John. You might try cleaning up a little.” John snorted, then looked around his once very stylish but now disgusting bachelor pad, and finally down at his hands and shirt. He shrugged. A shower couldn’t hurt, he supposed…
Chapter Two
John roamed the basement hallways of the Holiday Inn on Van Ness Street near San Francisco’s City Hall. He had showered and shaved and put on clean clothes – hip Seven for all Mankind jeans, a blue Bugatchi print sports shirt, and low Timberland boots. His dark hair was clean and he’d bothered to use the product Wendy had bought him that made it appear as if he had just rolled out of bed, which would have been better than how he actually had rolled last night. He seriously regretted all the smoking; his lungs were wheezy and he was hawking up phlegm. His knee was sore, his back hurt, and so did his head, inside and out.
John suffered painful memories in this place. The last time he had been here was a year ago when he and Wendy had first been dating. She’d suggested he attend The Landmark Forum, an updated version of EST. Looking back on it, he remembered thinking it was great at the time. It had really seemed to help him – help him get into Wendy’s pants, anyway. He would have done anything to please her. Now it seemed nothing he could do would do.
He wondered if that meant he was “running his old rackets” again. He couldn’t really remember what that meant, just that the Forum trainers had said it a lot, and it was something he wasn’t supposed to do. Maybe that was what had happened. Maybe he hadn’t paid enough attention. He made a mental note to sign up for the advanced course when he got home. Now that he recalled, it seemed like most of the basic course was an advertisement for the advanced course. The old marketing maven in him realized ruefully that he had been subjected to one of his own best ideas, helping people actually advertise to themselves. His belief that it would make Wendy happy had been enough for him the first time around, now he was selling it to himself for himself. Brilliant.
He looked up at the names over the doors as he passed, finally stopping at one with “Algonquin Room” on it. He poked his head into a small presentation room with chairs arranged in a large circle and a table by the wall set up with coffee and donuts. A dozen or so men, all roughly his age, probably late 20s to mid 30s, and most wearing similar-looking, hip clothing, stood around chatting quietly or fixing coffee or tea. The room had a somewhat depressed vibe. John wondered what was going on here. Had he come to the right place?
Just then a taller, thin guy with a goatee and Warby Parker glasses made eye contact, broke into a smile that was equal parts sympathetic and welcoming, and walked over to him. John didn’t recognize him. He felt his innate defensiveness rising. He reminded himself that Wendy had worked hard to teach him how to let his guard down a little in social situations, so he steeled himself and tried to put a smile on his face, but the thought of Wendy just reminded him that he was depressed. He went back to moping and felt in tune with the room’s vibe.
The glasses guy walked up and stuck his hand out. “Hi John. I’m Kyle. I’m the one who called you. Glad you came,” he said.
John nodded, suspicious. “Hi. Uh, what is this?”
Before Kyle could answer, another guy spoke up. He looked like a New York transplant, with hooded eyes, dark hair, and a five o’clock shadow that probably got noticeable by noon. He wore cool jeans, similar to the pair Wendy had made John buy last summer, and a sea foam green cashmere sweater, which is what he bought for Wendy for her last birthday. It was one of her favorite colors. Everything reminded him of Wendy. How long could this go on? “I think it’s time we got started, everyone,” sweater guy said. The rest of the group quieted down and made their way to the chairs.
Kyle pointed and spoke to John, “Come with me. Let’s sit over there.” John nodded and followed Kyle to a couple of open chairs. He sat down next to another guy wearing Warby Parker glasses. This one had a shaved head. He looked at John and gave him a smile similar to the one he’d gotten from Kyle. John felt increasingly uncomfortable.
Sweater guy spoke up again, “Hi everyone, my name is Bob, and I’ll be your chairman for the meeting today.”
“Hi Bob!” intoned the group.
“What the fuck?” John thought. “I’m at an AA meeting? Just because I had a few pops to drown my sorrows over Wendy? I don’t have a drinking problem. And what’s anonymous about calling someone on the phone and telling them to come to a meeting?” He decided not to even bother to get comfortable.
Bob continued, “Does anyone have a topic for today’s meeting?” Bob looked around at the group expectantly. The group looked around at each other awkwardly. John looked at Kyle, questioning. Kyle smiled at John, reassuring. “Anyone?” Bob continued.
One of the guys across the circle from John said, “I’ll go.” He wore a pair of stylish khakis with a blue blazer over a bright pink Oxford shirt. John noted that it was precisely Wendy’s favorite shade of pink – bubblegum. John had been planning to get one for himself to wear on Valentine’s Day. He suppressed a sob as the thought of a future Valentine’s Day without Wendy sank his spirits once again. Last Valentine’s Day was the only one ever that hadn’t sucked. So far this meeting had only succeeded in making him feel terrible. He began to stand up to slip out, but Kyle gently put his hand on John’s forearm, restraining him. John looked at Kyle, who gave him a “give it a second” look. At that moment pink shirt guy continued his share.
“My name is Ted.”
“Welcome, Ted!”
“And I’m an ex-boyfriend of Wendy’s.”
John sat back down. Hard.
Ted continued, “I thought today we might talk about how we’re feeling.” The group nodded encouragingly. “Well, like this week I went by the flower shop twice, and I couldn’t bring myself to go in. Wendy was working on a pretty large bouquet both times, same colors and everything. Looked like it might have been for a wedding. That was kind of a bummer.” Ted sat down as the rest of the group nodded, understanding. They all said, “Thanks, Ted,” in unison. John looked at Kyle again, who was smiling at him, nodding, as if to say, “Get it?” John didn’t get it. If anything, his confusion had begun to turn into something darker, but before he could develop the thought, another guy stood up.
“Hello, my name is Gregg.”
“Welcome, Gregg!”
“I’m an ex-boyfriend of Wendy’s.” A shorter African-American, Gregg dressed in a well-tailored, expensive-looking dark blue suit with a crisp white French-cuff shirt and a grey silk tie; he appeared lawyerly in a room dominated by casual or business-casual. “This week I spoke with Belle. It’s her birthday coming up, you know. She seemed fine, and she said Wendy was fine too. We didn’t really have much to talk about other than that, so that was it.” John almost said, “Thanks, Gregg” with the others, but caught himself.
“Hello all, my name is Roger.” John’s head snapped around to the guy with the shaved pate and Warby Parkers who had been sitting next to him. He was now standing, and John noticed they both wore the same brand of jeans. Warby Parker guy was just starting to say… “And I’m an ex-boyfriend of Wendy’s.”
John jumped to his feet and backed away from Roger into the middle of the circle. Everyone looked at him in surprise. “All right, all right, I don’t think this is very funny,” John challenged. The group looked on expectantly. Roger looked rather annoyed at having been interrupted. Bob stood up as well, obviously relishing his role as chairman.
“Hi, you’re new. You must be John,” he said.
“Yes, I’m John.”
“Welcome, John!” John jumped again. He did not want to be welcomed. He wanted to know what the heck was going on with these weirdoes. Were they fucking with him?
“What is this?” he asked. “What’s going on here?”
“I suppose you have some questions, eh?” responded Bob.
“Yeah, like who the hell are you guys?” John demanded.
“We’re just a group of guys…all of whom went out with Wendy. Like you,” Bob answered.
“You all went out with her? All of you!?” John spluttered. The men nodded their heads in unison. Roger sat down, allowing John to take center stage. John didn’t want it. He collapsed back into his chair. “And I trusted her,” he moaned. He didn’t realize he could become more heartbroken than he already was.
Bob hurried to intercede. “Oh, no, John. It’s not like that! We didn’t date her when you did. I went out with her three years ago…”
“And I dated her even before that,” interjected Roger, trying to appear comforting, but failing terribly.
“I took her to Junior Prom!” Gregg announced, proudly. John couldn’t fathom what was going on around him. He looked dazed. Kyle tried to help, putting his hand on John’s shoulder:
“It’s true! Wendy never goes out with a new guy till she’s broken up with the last one. But none of us seems to be able to get over her…” he said.
“You should know that Wendy’s to wonderful ever to cheat, John!” scolded Bob. John looked at him in annoyance. The room went quiet, its members all in their own private worlds, dreaming about the “wonderful Wendy.” All except for John, however.
“This is supposed to make me feel better? Meeting a bunch of other losers that got dumped?” he complained, bitterly.
“Well, we all know how you feel, friend. We’ve been there. And getting together like this helps us deal with it,” encouraged Bob.
“What do you do here?” John asked.
“Mostly talk.” The others nodded in agreement with Bob.
“Talk? Talk about what?” John responded.
“Wendy, of course,” replied Bob. The others nodded as if to say, “naturally, dummy.”
Gregg continued, “Yeah, what she’s doing, what she’s wearing, where she’s going, what new movies she’s seen. That sort of stuff.”
John gave Gregg a severe look. “You’re sicko, psycho stalkers, that’s what you are! You should be locked up!”
“We are not stalkers!” Bob shouted. He visibly calmed himself, then continued, “We all still just really care about Wendy and want to know that she’s doing all right. We have nothing whatsoever in common with stalkers.” Many of the others nodded along in agreement. A few even applauded or threw in a “hear, hear.” Bob looked pleased with himself. He reached into his back pocket and retrieved a folded piece of paper before carrying on, “I’m sure you’ll understand once you spend a little time with us, John.”
John looked unconvinced, but he gave his confused attention to Bob anyway. Bob unfolded the sheet of paper, pulled a pair of glasses off the collar of his sea foam sweater, and began reading, “OK. Now that that’s settled, I think this is a good time to announce a calendar of upcoming events. This Wednesday Gregg is hosting our evening of listening to Wendy’s favorite music. On Friday, I’ll be leading a walking tour of Wendy’s old elementary school. And don’t forget that Belle’s birthday is the first of next month, so I’m sure you’ll want to drop her a card or give her a buzz. You all have her number.”
Several of the Wendy Observers (for that’s what they had taken to calling themselves, WO instead of AA, or “Woes,” for short) pulled out their phones or notepads to begin taking down the list of events. John felt sickeningly certain that they had a website somewhere containing all this information. He thought back on the list of items Bob had enumerated to see if he remembered it all or should jot down a few notes too, just in case. After, all… “Wait a minute there, brain!” he thought. “This is not right. No one should be taking notes about this stuff at all!”
As he digested this most recent lurch on the psychological roller coaster ride he called life, an olive-skinned dude stood up. He had a laid back, possibly Hawaiian air, longish brown hair, brown eyes, broad shoulders, and wore a subtle Hawaiian shirt and the exact same cool jeans John wore (why hadn’t they just held this meeting in a Seven For All Mankind store?). He hesitated as if he didn’t really want to talk, but then he said, “Uh, Bob? Excuse me. I hate to say this, but we do sound like a bunch of stalkers.”
Bob looked startled. “Stan! How can you say such a thing?” Two other Woes stood with Stan. They looked at one another in evident agreement. The taller one, wearing the same goddamned jeans, said, “I have to agree with Stan.”
Then the other one, who wore Chuck Taylors, Levis, and a blue polo shirt added, “Me too. I’m with Mark and Stan.” He had an English accent.
“You Graham?” Bob responded. “I can’t believe you guys. We’re not stalkers! You know that. We’re just a group of guys trying to help each other get over Wendy!”
Encouraged, Stan continued, “Well it’s not working. I’m more miserable now than when we started this thing. I’m not getting over Wendy, I’m more obsessed than ever, and it’s kind of scaring me.”
John jumped in, “It’s definitely scaring me! Sicko psycho stalkers!”
Gregg objected, “Hey buddy. Easy there!” The rest of the group glared at John. He got the picture quickly. Better not to piss off an entire group of sicko psycho stalkers when you’re stuck in the basement of the Holiday Inn with them.
“Look, I’m sorry guys,” John back-pedaled. “I mean, you all seem like perfectly nice people. You actually all seem a little like me, actually, which is weird, but whatever. I don’t know why she left me. I guess none of us knows, and it sucks, because she is wonderful…” The Woes all heaved a deep sigh and got starry eyed. John continued, “But that doesn’t mean this is the best way of going about it. In fact, it might be the worst. The idea of having some support is nice. I think maybe we just need better guidance.”
Bob glared at John, insulted. “Well, I never meant to…”
“No, Bob. I’m not picking on you. I’m just saying that maybe a little professional help would be better,” John suggested, and then, with a touch of pride, “I’m a grad student in psyche at Cal.”
To which Bob replied, “We know.”
John shuddered. Creepy. Sicko psycho stalkers. “Yeah, of course you do,” he admitted. “Anyway, my TA is a really cool guy, and I think you’d like him. Maybe he can help us all get over Wendy.” The Woes all looked at each other. They constituted a pretty sorry lot for such a group of otherwise intelligent, good-looking, nice guys. They began to nod. John nodded back at them all encouragingly.
Chapter 3
The award-winning faculty of the Psychology Department at the University of California conducted groundbreaking research in behavioral and systems neuroscience, clinical science, cognition, cognitive neuroscience, and developmental, social, and personality-based areas of psychology. When it opened in 1963, the Psych Department’s home in Tolman Hall was state of the art, a modernist nod to the architect Le Corbusier. With its move to a new building on Shattuck only a couple of years away, a lot of deferred maintenance had simply been abandoned, and surviving an academic experience or career there had begun to create business for many of its practitioner graduates. Many undergraduates were driven crazy by the labyrinthine design and inscrutable room-numbering system apparently inspired by the rat-maze experiments of its namesake, behavioral psychologist Edward Chase Tolman.
One of the rats in the maze smelled cheese. Dr. James Van Hauk stood in front of his Psych 101 Class. He insisted on a seating chart, a psychological test he indicated would become relevant later in the semester, that arranged students from shortest to tallest, front to back. The practical result, however, simply placed young coeds at the edge of the stage. Van Hauk cut a striking figure, with longish, wavy dark hair, pronounced eyebrows, snapping black eyes, a neatly carved Van Dyke featuring a longish moustache waxed at the tips, and bright even teeth gleaming out of a cruel mouth. He fairly reeked of ego, as he strolled the stage wearing a headset microphone, looking at the front few rows of his undergraduate offering, licking his lips.
“And thus, the tendency in these May-December relationships is for the younger partner, the woman, to transfer her dependence on and feeling for her father figure onto a man, but in this case a man with whom she can and should have normal sexual relations,” he opined. “This, then, is a healthy thing in the process of the maturation of a modern, independent woman, and is to be encouraged.”
A pretty young coed in the front row raised her hand. Van Hauk was surprised to be asked a question in the middle of a survey course of over 200 students, but he was willing to hear this one out. He cocked an eyebrow in her direction. She stood up, somewhat nervously. “Excuse me, Professor?” she interjected.
“Mmmm?” responded Van Hauk.
“What about in the case in which the May-December relationship is between a younger man and an older woman?” she asked.
“Who would want to do that?” Van Hauk responded. The class chuckled. Each year the class chuckled less than the year before, but he was essentially tone deaf to it. He just wanted eyes on him. “No, seriously,” he continued, “That’s a subject we will cover later, but if you’re interested now, read my chapter on the Madonna complex. I think you probably have more than enough on your plates as it is, however.” The pretty coed smiled and sat back down.
The Campanile bells chimed the noon hour, and class was over. The students began gathering their materials as Van Hauk pointed to the corner of the stage where his TA was sitting, taking notes. A PhD candidate in his late 20s, wearing Armani Exchange spectacles and dressed in khakis and a blue button down (he owned multiple versions of the same outfit, pants ranging from brown to bone and six otherwise identical pastel shirts, plus several shades of white). He appeared bookish, kind, and sensitive, and in these qualities appearances did not lie. He stood as Van Hauk pointed him out and announced, “All right then, don’t forget to give your papers to Michael for grading, and make sure we have your phone numbers in case we need to get in touch with you for discussions on how you’re progressing. I don’t mind saying that some of you will have trouble passing this course without some face-to-face work.”
Coeds filed out of the auditorium, stopping briefly to drop papers on Michael’s desk, paying him no attention. Van Hauk spoke quietly with a few students near the podium until the auditorium emptied, then he murmured to Michael confidentially, “That last one who talked. The pretty one. Who is she?”
“Jenny Walters. She’s an excellent student.” Michael was one of those conscientious TAs who didn’t think of his work as a necessary evil to be carried out with the minimum of effort, directing the remainder toward completion of a dissertation or some semblance of a life. Michael knew all the students in his section, their strengths and weaknesses, what they needed, and how he might help them. Van Hauk seemed only to be half listening as he watched Jenny’s pretty posterior exiting the auditorium.
“Nope. She’s not getting it. Have her schedule a meeting with me to discuss her paper,” Van Hauk ordered.
Michael frowned slightly, but did his job as always, “Yes, Professor.” Van Hauk noticed a couple of women students standing shyly near the door, evidently waiting for an opportunity to have a few moments of the famous professor’s time.
“Did you get my dry cleaning?” Van Hauk asked, otherwise paying Michael no attention.
“This afternoon, Professor. It’s in your office.”
“Good form. See you later,” approved Van Hauk, who then strolled over to the coeds, smiled a wicked smile at them through his pointed moustache, and led them out the crash doors and into the maze that would eventually arrive at his office. Michael shook his head and scooped up the papers he would assiduously grade that night. He knew Van Hauk’s middle-aged penchant for impressing his coed students was harmless, but it still seemed a little pathetic, and it made Michael less than totally enthusiastic about everything he did for Van Hauk in service of getting a strong recommendation and champion among the board when it came time for him to present his dissertation.
# # #
John waited for Michael in the afternoon shade of the Campanile, reading the headline article of The Daily Californian on his telephone: “SECOND STUDENT ASSAULTED: Date Rape Drug Use Suspected.” He reflected that he had seen the first article not long ago. Campus rape remained a major issue throughout the UC system, and indeed seemed to be endemic in college life across America as a whole. John’s heart went out to the victim. He was profoundly impressed that she had exhibited the courage to report the attack. A rape victim was the least empowered person in the criminal justice system, particularly on a college campus, he thought. Rape was so difficult to prove, especially when inflicted on a helpless target in a blackout. Who was to say there was no consent? The victim often found herself on trial to prove that she hadn’t somehow brought on the attack, which was utterly ridiculous.
Michael walked up, a Redweld stuffed with papers under his arm and his phone in hand. Way too busy, as usual, he cut to the chase without regard to niceties. “Look John, I’m sorry to hear about your breakup and all, but I’m not sure what I can do. I’m not a psychologist yet, you know. I still have to finish my dissertation.”
John replied, “I know Michael, but I really need your help. These guys are totally weirding me out. Besides, your dissertation is on obsessive compulsion, right? Well, I’m delivering you a whole pack of obsessive stalkers to study and maybe even help!”
Michael thought about the opportunity carefully. His progress had been limited by only learning through books and from people who had pretty ordinary problems. Somebody fucked up in the head could generally be a boon to a doctoral dissertation. It allowed for original research, which could really help in developing a new idea the board hadn’t already heard a thousand times. “It does sound kind of interesting, but I’m really not prepared to start leading my own therapy group," he ventured.
“Look, just meet with them once and see what you think,” John argued. “I’m going to go get the classroom I’ve reserved set up, assuming I can find it in this stupid building. Go ahead and grab a bite to eat and meet us there when you have the time. Honestly, we won’t take up more of your time than you want.” Michael nodded, giving in like he always did.
He considered his options as he strolled back toward Tolman carrying his modest falafel lunch in a sack. Michael thought about his own work. He needed something to pique Van Hauk’s curiosity; it was a nightmare to get him to focus on anything that didn’t involve showing off for young, female students. It really couldn’t be that big of a deal to meet with John’s little group this one time. Probably nothing would come of it, and he’d have done his undergraduate a solid, but if for some reason there was something there, he should take advantage of it. There was nothing to say he couldn’t even succeed.
# # #
Michael cracked open the door of a small classroom and peaked inside. About a dozen chairs were occupied and circled tightly in the small space; a couple of Woes were forced to sit outside the main circle. John was seated in the middle of the circle, determined to show off his extracurricular work for his TA, so he made himself chairman of the meeting, much to Bob’s chagrin. Michael watched quietly as John called them to order with a clap of his hands. “OK everyone, let’s settle,” he said. “Thanks for coming. Michael will be here in a minute. In the meantime, how is everyone doing?”
“Hi, my name is Bob.”
“HI BOB!”
“Kyle and I got that tree planted in Golden Gate Park in Wendy’s name for Arbor Day.”
The Woes voiced their appreciation to Kyle and Bob. Everyone had agreed that a tree in Wendy’s name seemed like a good idea. The hard part had been deciding what kind of tree. Finally they picked a small redwood, as they knew it would grow large enough eventually to represent all of them and the massive love they had for Wendy.
John was a little concerned for his sanity, as he had actually developed an opinion on the validity of this decision. He reluctantly acknowledged the importance of the holiday. Wendy loved making love under a beautiful tree. It was one of the reasons she always insisted on hanging out on the Stanford Campus. “Those Stanford assholes may be pricks, but they’ve got a nice campus,” John thought. Some of the Woes had sent Wendy Arbor Day cards, but most of them just left her a message, referencing the tree Kyle and Bob had planted. John had sent a card and called, but he thought that was okay since he was the most recent ex-boyfriend of Wendy. John’s mental meandering suddenly returned to the group when he noticed Ted pretty much melting down.
Michael entered the room to see what was going on. Ted was losing it. “Arbor Day?” he stuttered. “Oh God. I forgot Arbor Day. I didn’t do anything for Wendy. I didn’t call or write or anything!”
John tried to be helpful, but he had no real idea how to help Ted out of this debacle. “Calm down, Ted,” he said.
“Calm down? Calm down?! I forgot Arbor Day! She’ll never speak to me again!”
Bob stepped in, “No really, Ted. Calm the fuck down, she doesn’t speak to you as it is!”
This did Ted no good. He totally began bugging out, hyperventilating. Other Woes helped him back to his chair, and someone produced a paper bag for him to breathe into. “Uh, John. What’s going on?” Michael calmly asked.
Bob, John, and the rest of the group, except Ted, suddenly tuned in that Michael had arrived. “Hey Michael!” called John, snatching the paper bag from Ted’s hands.
“Welcome, Michael!” the Woes pitched in.
Michael looked around, utterly nonplussed. He pointed at Ted, still suffering a conniption. “Is he OK?”
“Yes. He forgot Arbor Day,” Bob responded, reasonably.
“Oh, I see,” said Michael.
# # #
It took about a half hour for Michael to begin to understand even the broad parameters of the Woes, but he empathetically tuned in, even though the whole thing kind of freaked him out. “All right. Now let me make sure I have this right. All of you dated the same girl, right? This Wendy?” The Woes all nodded in agreement.
“But not at the same time. OK. Have any of you dated any other women since?” Michael’s patience served him well. He also asked key questions. The Woes looked around the circle until, as a group, they naturally just shrugged.
“Oh-Kay. And now you keep tabs on her and get together to commiserate about losing her. That about the size of it?”
The men looked around sheepishly, with a “when you put it like that” cast to their eyes, tacitly admitting that this was a reasonable description of their actions. “I don’t mind telling you that I find this all very troubling,” said Michael.
Bob interjected, “That’s because you’ve never met Wendy.” They all nodded in unison. Bob was right. How could anyone understand their actions unless he had walked a mile in their shoes?
Frank jumped in, “There’s nobody like her!”
John, the most recent victim of Wendy’s love , lost all pretense of trying to lead the meeting and sobbed uncontrollably, “She was one of a kind, Michael.”
“What was so special?” Michael asked.
“Well, she saved my life. That’s one example,” Bob offered.
“How’s that?” asked Michael.
Bob leaned back in his chair, ready to tell a Wendy story. “Well, I was totally suicidal when I met Wendy. I’d lost my job, my mother had just died, I’d been in a bad car crash, and I was in constant back pain. Wendy was volunteering at the pain clinic I was going to. I had been saving up enough Oxy so as not to arouse suspicion, and I was about ready to knock them back with a quart of scotch, when Wendy began talking to me.”
“That’s so her,” interjected a much improved Ted.
“Yeah. Well, she was so nice that I kept coming back. Talking to her really helped. She made me feel better about myself. And I worked harder at my physical therapy, you know, to please her, and then we started dating, and she just made me feel so much better. I wound up making a complete recovery!”
The room applauded Bob’s story. Except for Michael, who remained hesitant about the whole thing. “Well, I can see how that would make her a very important person in your life…”
Gregg picked up where Bob had left off, “I weighed almost three hundred pounds!” The Woes were impressed, as Gregg looked quite fit. “I was so unhappy, and my doctor said I had to do something or I could have a heart attack. Well, I was pretty half-hearted about it until I met Wendy at the gym. She started talking to me one day, and the next thing I know, I’m going back every day just to see her. She was so considerate. She took an interest in me and helped me. She got me on a good healthy diet, and she helped with my workouts, and look at me now!”
“They should make a TV show about it Gregg,” joked Graham.
“I was bald!” yelled Roger. The guys all looked at Roger.
“Uh, Roger. You are bald,” said Michael.
“Yes, but now I’m OK with it,” continued Roger. “Before Wendy I wasn’t… I had a comb-over.”
Everyone understood.
# # #
Ian had been holding forth for some time. “And with Wendy’s love and support, I was able to achieve my dream of swimming the English Channel.”
Michael started blearily as the Woes burst into applause. This had gone on more than long enough. Time to wrap up. He interjected, “OK. I get it. It’s all a very rich tapestry. I don’t know if it’s a mass hallucination or what, but each of you seems to have fixated on this woman and imposed nearly angelic qualities on her. You share an obsession over this person that’s quite unreal.”
John interrupted, “Really, Michael, you shouldn’t say that without meeting her. You think all of us could be wrong?”
“That’s exactly the point. If it were just you, John, or if you had similar fixations with various women, then it’d be essentially normal obsessive behavior,” Michael began. The guys were awaiting his every word on tenterhooks. “But the fact that you all suffer from the same disorder arising from a single woman makes it more interesting and potentially dangerous. I must say, in that context, the nature of this group and its actions are disturbing to say the least…”
Bob asked the question they all wanted to hear, “What do you suggest?”
Michael shrugged, “Well, frankly, I’m out of my league here. I’d like to bring in Dr. Van Hauk to look into this, but in the meantime, let’s meet again next week at this time, and as homework, I don’t want any of you to see, call, follow, or check up on Wendy. OK?”
The Woes did not like the sound of that suggestion.
“Why not?” asked Bob.
Michael responded strongly, “Because your obsession is stopping you from developing healthy relationships with other people, and whether you like it or not, you’re acting like stalkers. That’s not good.”
“Look, I’m not sure I’m prepared to give up Wendy,” Kyle maintained. “I’m not doing that bad.” He looked to the others for support and received a number of vigorous nods and mumbled agreement in return.
Ian said, “Yeah. We’re not hurting anybody. We live OK lives.”
Michael heard exactly what he wanted to hear. He wound up to hit the softball over the fence. One way or the other, he intended to help these guys. “Listen to yourselves,” he pressed them. “‘Not doing so badly?’ ‘Live OK lives?’ Not one of you is in a relationship outside of this group! We’re going to return you to normal, healthy society, and you’re each going to have something in the future that is as good as Wendy was in your past. But you’ve got to let her go for the time being. At least until Dr. Van Hauk says otherwise. All right?”
Michael inhaled and held his breath. Slowly but surely, the guys all reluctantly nodded their heads or murmured their assent.