didn't already know.

Ten years have passed, and you never see serviving church
members
together. The protects who see each other now, there's nothing left between us
except
embarrassment and disgust. We've failed in our ultimate sacrament. Our shame is for
ourselves.
Our disgust is for each other. The protects who still wear church costume do it to
brag about
their pain. Sackcloth and ashes. They couldn't save themselves. They were weak. The
rules are
all gone, and it doesn't matter. We're all going overnight express delivery
straight to Hell. And
I was weak. So I took the trip downtown in the back of a police car, and sitting
beside me,
the caseworker said, "You were the innocent victim of a terrible oppressive cult,
but we're here to
help you get back on your feet." The minutes were already taking me farther and
farther away
from what I should've done. The caseworker said," I understand you have a problem
with
masturbation. Would you like to talk about it?" Every minute made it harder to do
what I'd
promised at my baptism. Shoot, cut, choke, bleed or jump. The world was passing by
so fasing
outside the car my eyes went goofy. The caseworker said, "Your life has been a
miserable
nightmare up to now, but you're going to be okay. Are you hearing me? Be patient,
and
you'll be just fine." This was almost ten years ago, and I'm Still waiting. The
easy thing to do
was given her the benefit of the doubt. Jump ahead ten years, and not much has
changed.
Ten years of therapy, and I'm still in about the same place. This probably isn't
something
we sould celebrate. We're still together. Today's our weekly session number five
hundred and something, and today we're in the blue guest bathroom. This is
different
from the green, white,yellow, or lavender guest bathrooms. This is how much money
These people make. The caseworker's sitting on the edge of the bathtub with her
bare
feet soaking in a few inches of warm water. Her shoes are on the closed lid of the
toilet
with her martini glass of grenadine, crushed ice, superfine sugar, and white rum.
After
every couple of questions she leans over with the ballpoint pen still in her hand
and
pinches the stem of the glass, holding the pen and glass crossed chop-stick style.
Her
latest boyfriend is out of the picture, she told me. God forbid she should offer to
help
clean. She takes a drink. She puts the glass back while I answer. She writes on the
yellow
legal pad rested on her knees. asks another question, takes another drink. Her face
looks
paved under a layer of makeup. Larry, Barry, Jerry, Terry, Gary, all her lost
boyfriends run
together. She says her lists of lost clients and lost boyfriends are running neck
and neck.
This week, she says, we've hit a new low, one hundred and thirty-two protects,
nationwide,
but the suicide rate is leveling off. According to my daily planner, I'm scrubbing
the grout
between the six-sided little blue tiles on the floor. This is more than a trillion
miles of grout.
Laid end to end, just the grout in this bathroom would stretch to the moon and
back, ten
times, and all of it's shitty with black mildew. The ammonia I dip a toothbrush in
and scrub
with, the way it smells mixed with her cigarette smoke, makes me tired and my heart
pound.
And maybe I'm a little out of my head. The ammonia. The smoke. Fertility Hollis
keeps calling
me at home. I don't dare answer the phone, but I know for sure it's her. "Have any
strangers
approached you, lately?" The caseworker asks. She asks, "Have you gotten any phone
calls
you'd describe as threatening?" The way the caseworker keeps asking me stuff with
half her
mouth clamped around her cigarette looks the way a dog would sit there drinking a
pink
martini and snarling at you. A cigarette, a sip, a question; breathing, drinking,
and asking,
she demonstrates all the basic applications for the human mouth. She never used to
smoke
but more and more she tells me she can't stand the idea of living to a ripe old
age. "Maybe
if just one little part of my life was working out," she tells a new cigarette in
her hand before
she lights up. Then something invisible somewhere starts to beep and beep and beep
until she
presses on her watch to stop it. She twists to reach her tote bag on the floor
beside the toilet
and gets a plastic bottle. "Imipramine," she says. "Sorry I can't offer you one."
Early on, the
retention program tried to baby-sit all the protects by giving them medication,
Xanax, Prozac,