Into the Darklands (7 page)

MOST OF MY WORKING days are strange, but some are far stranger than others.

It’s just after two and I wander out into the waiting room, looking for some idle chatter from the person who runs the reception desk at my consulting rooms. There’s a clean-cut young man sitting there and he looks up as I walk in.

‘Nigel?’ he asks.

I frown slightly, because as far as I knew I had a free space. ‘Yes.’

‘I’m Gerard,’ he says, standing.

‘Hi Gerard.’

Now, not being the most organised soul, it’s not unheard of for me to occasionally double-book appointments, or have people turn up when I’m not there. I’ve learned over the years to think quickly and cover the gaps. Clearly Gerard knew who I was and was expecting to see me. I had a free space, so no worries.

‘Come through,’ I say, faking seamless competence.

We go through and sit down. I notice he’s looking about at some
of the weird toys and masks I have lying around, but that’s nothing new. Most people do.

I have quite a weird little collection of bits and pieces I’ve acquired over the years. It’s amazing the weird stuff you’ll find lying around if you take the time to look. One of my most prized possessions is a spiky rubber ball made of pointing fingers. It looks and feels awful. It’s also just the thing for bad guys who try and tell me it was
just touching
when referring to their sexual offending.

‘Really?’ I say, reaching for my little rubber ball of pointing fingers. ‘Hold out your hand.’

They often look at me nervously at this point. ‘Pardon?’

‘Hold out your hand,’ I repeat.

Invariably they do, looking a little uncomfortable, which is good. Uncomfortable is exactly where we want to be. If the guy is feeling comfortable, he isn’t working hard enough.

At this point I hold up my little rubber ball of fingers. ‘It’s good you
just
touched her,’ I say. ‘It could have been so much worse. You could, for instance,’ I continue as I slowly lean forward holding out my spiky ball of fingers, ‘have done something much worse. Touching isn’t so bad, is it?’ I ask, suspending it over his open palm, just letting it dangle there. ‘It’s not as if touching is as bad as the other things you could have done. Is it? And it’s not like it hurts them? Right? I mean, there’s no bruises, no blood. Just a little skin on skin, right?’

At this point he usually swallows, or shakes his head, or smiles self-consciously.

‘In just a minute,’ I continue, ‘I’m going to do something, and when I do, I want you to try to keep believing that you
just
touched her. Try to keep believing that it wasn’t so bad. That it didn’t really hurt her.’

I pause, letting the moment drag out. Then I let the ball drop
gently onto his outstretched sweaty palm.
Kapow.

I suppose I could tell him that when he says just, he’s minimising what he did to make it easier on himself; that
just
touching hurts kids as much as anything else, but I figure my way he gets the message in a whole different way. I don’t want him to ‘just’ understand the content, I want him
to feel
it.

Another goody that no self-respecting psychologist should be without is rubber vomit. This is particularly useful when dealing with angry adolescents who don’t want to talk. The best thing is to sit there in silence for about five minutes, then casually pick up the rubber vomit hidden under your chair and throw it at the wall where—because of its particular adhesive qualities—it sticks like a limpet.

You then look back at your slightly stunned teenager: ‘Cool, huh?’ you say. More times than not it at least gets a conversation going.

Or plastic dog poo. You just gotta have plastic dog poo. I use mine with guys who are playing the ‘I know it was wrong but I really cared about her/him’ excuse for sexually abusing kids. These guys will talk at length about how nice they really are and all the nice things they did for the kid. In that situation you just put the dog poo in the middle of the floor and ask him what it is.

‘Well…it’s dog shit.’

‘Uh huh,’ I usually nod. ‘And if I stuck some flowers in it?’

He pauses, as if it’s a trick question. ‘I don’t know.’

‘It’d be dog shit with flowers in it.’

‘OK.’

‘And if I sprinkled glitter and perfume on top? What would it be then?’

The bad guy frowns. ‘Dog shit with glitter and perfume on it.’

‘Correct,’ I say. ‘Dog shit is dog shit no matter how nicely you dress it up. So what does all this have to do with you?’

He usually shrugs.

‘Well, you’re trying to sell me dog shit. You’ve stuck a few flowers in it, sprinkled some glitter on top, but it’s still dog shit. That’s why you’re stinking up the place. So how about we open a few mental windows, let some fresh air and bit of sunlight in, and start again.’

I could just tell the guy he’s distorting the facts to make it easier on himself, but I think dog shit has more leverage.

So poor Gerard’s sitting there staring at my pile of grotesque wonders looking somewhat confused. In the pile are a bunch of Halloween masks, some twisted little dolls, weird figurines, a mannequin’s fist, some plastic knives, some handcuffs and the odd container of slime.

At this point I have no idea who Gerard is or why he’s come to see me. I make the decision not to do one of my introductory raves because I have no idea which one fits the occasion. At this point he thinks I know what’s going on, so why blow the image? Never look stupid unless you have to.

‘Where’s the best place to start?’ I ask. Nice safe beginning. Cheery and functional.

‘It’s my neck,’ he says, keeping one eye on my toys.

I’m still blank, but I’m rolling with it. ‘OK.’

‘I hurt it at work.’

‘Right.’

‘My GP recommended I come and see you.’

I frown. ‘About your neck injury?’
Stress related?
I wonder. ‘And what specifically were you wanting from me?’ I ask, trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

Now
he
frowns. ‘I guess some exercises or stretches or stuff. Whatever it is you guys do.’

I pause, because there’s a degree of confusion to this
conversation that is outside even my normal level. ‘You were wanting a psychologist, right?’

‘A psychologist?’

‘Yup.’

‘You’re not a physio?’

I shake my head. ‘Nope.’

‘I thought you were a physio.’

‘Nope.’

‘Oh.’

‘If you were crazy I could maybe do something to help, but necks aren’t really my thing.’

‘That’s weird,’ he says. ‘I spoke to a Nigel on the phone who was a physio and booked this time.’

‘Was he real or did you hallucinate him?’

Gerard laughs. ‘Real.’

‘Ah well, can’t help you then I’m afraid.’

‘OK then,’ says Gerard, standing and looking at my weird toys. ‘I guess that explains all this stuff.’

As he leaves I give him my card. ‘Give me a call if you ever go crazy.’

Gerard never did call, so I can only assume all his chickens are still safely tucked up in the hen house.

I hope his neck feels better.

IT’S TAKEN ME YEARS to get to the point where I am now. There have been many times when I’ve felt confusion, anger, despair, sadness and
utterly
lost. There are still times when I feel all of those things; it’s just now I’ve learned to accept that these feelings come with the territory. If you work down here and you don’t feel those things with some frequency then you’re simply not paying attention.

At the beginning though, you feel as if you should know what you’re doing. You feel as if you should have all the answers. It takes a little while to figure out there are no perfect answers or magic beans. After a while you figure out that at best all you have is a compass and feet. Stay on the road and keep moving, that’s the thing you learn with time.

Looking back now, I would say that it took me something like five years to really get a handle on doing this kind of work. I went through a series of stages, progressions from one level of understanding to the next. Almost all of that has been an increasing understanding of myself. To stay in this work over the long haul you have to deal with a vast array of personal feelings. You have to
look under your own stones first before you can start rolling other people’s over.

We’re
all
a bit crazy; that’s about the only truth there is when it comes to the human condition. Most of us can fake normal pretty well, but the world would probably be a much easier place for us all to live in if we dropped the facade and just let the craziness out. At least there wouldn’t be so many lonely people feeling like they’re the only crazy ones.

The thing about doing this work is that you have to have at least some understanding of your own stuff. You have to be able to dance without tripping over your own feet all the time.

No one learns to swim the first time out. Everyone swallows a few mouthfuls. I suppose you have to sink a few times before you can really understand the concept of floating.

So in that vein, let me tell you about one of my less than shining moments.

I didn’t like Jimmy from the moment I read the file. This was only a year or so after I first started working with bad guys, and I was still a baby. Back then I was struggling to find my feet. The thing with feet though, is that if you don’t tell them what to do, they almost always seek the easy road. And the easy road will almost always be the wrong one.

The referral said Jimmy had been sexually abusing his partner’s two sons. The boys were aged seven and nine, and he’d been at them for something like two years. Three months ago one of the boys told a teacher at school and finally Jimmy had been stopped. According to the referral Jimmy was still denying he had done anything.

Outside it was raining, late in the afternoon. Jimmy was last up for the day, sent to me by a colleague who worked in the same agency, because I was the sex-offender guy.

The biggest problem you have to deal with is that it’s so
easy
to
be angry. Here’s a guy who sexually abused two little kids for years. Who wouldn’t be angry talking to such a man? Who wouldn’t want to pound on him just a little?

There are some who work in my field who would be horrified by that statement, who would say they don’t ‘judge’ people, they think all people are worthy of respect and it is their behaviour which is unacceptable.

It sounds very nice, but it’s really just a sophisticated lie told by people unwilling to face uncomfortable truths. If you can spend all the years I have talking with bad guys and not occasionally feel like pounding on someone, then you probably weren’t paying attention to the stuff they were telling you.

I’m not a dispassionate practitioner. On the contrary, I work hard at getting involved, at engaging toe to toe and head to head with the people I work with. I
feel
just as anyone does, I just don’t have the luxury of being able to revel in it, something it’s taken me a long time to understand. Our minds are tricky places and can disguise all kinds of unpleasantness as having purer motives.

Like that long ago winter afternoon with Jimmy.

I didn’t like him any more when I saw him. He looked self-assured and arrogant, with the look of someone who expects the shit to never stick. A Teflon man, who thought he was far cleverer than the rest of the world.

We shook hands and went through into my room. I gave him my usual routine about confidentiality and all the guff. ‘So,’ I said, after the housekeeping was done. ‘Where do we start?’

‘I suppose you know about the accusations that have been made against me.’

I nodded.

‘It’s been the most stressful time of my life,’ he continued. ‘It’s almost destroyed me.’

‘How so?’ I asked, feeling the anger bubbling around inside me. Two little kids’ lives destroyed and all he can tell me about is how terrible it’s been for him.

‘I don’t know why the boys would have said those terrible things about me. It doesn’t make any sense, because I was like a father to them.’

Still I don’t speak. I’m letting him trot out his line before I pull him up short.

‘That’s why I’ve been smoking so much cannabis lately, just as a way to handle the stress.’

‘And does it help?’ I ask.

‘Some. If it wasn’t for that, I probably would have killed myself by now.’

Whiny, self-pitying sod,
I think to myself.

‘I just wish it would all go away,’ he moaned.

‘I bet they do too.’

‘Who?’

‘The boys.’

‘I’m sure they do,’ he replied, misinterpreting what I said to suit his needs. ‘I’m sure they miss me as much as I miss them.’

‘What do you think they miss most? The hand jobs or the blow jobs?’

And here’s where it goes pear-shaped, because the only thing motivating that question was the fact that I felt angry.

He looks up, and the self-pity has been replaced with something much colder. ‘Excuse me?’

‘I asked which do you think they miss the most, the hand jobs or the blow jobs?’

There’s a long pause as Jimmy stares at me with a look that was all about baseball bats and dark alleys. ‘I didn’t touch them,’ he finally says.

I laughed. ‘Give me a break, of course you did.’

‘No, I did not.’

‘Why would they lie? What do they have to gain?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well you better have a theory if you’re putting up the “I didn’t do it” defence. Because if they did lie then there has to be a reason.’

He just looks at me, furious. And all of that is my fault.

‘How much money are they getting for lying?’ I ask. He doesn’t reply. ‘Twenty grand? Fifty?’ No response, just the staring. But I keep rolling on, ignoring the fact that I’ve almost completely lost him in the space of a few minutes. I’m all caught up in a stupid ‘I’m right, you’re wrong’ dynamic. What I didn’t have enough experience to remember in that moment, is that pushing people just makes them dig their heels in harder.

‘Well, then they must really hate you. They must want to see you in jail pretty damn bad. Maybe they should be the ones in counselling? Maybe they need help for whatever made them such vengeful, spiteful liars?’

‘I don’t have to listen to this,’ he said.

I shrugged. ‘All I’m saying is that if the boys lied then there must be a reason. There must be something to explain their motivation. Right?’

‘I came here to talk about my cannabis use, not about that other stuff.’

‘You brought it up,’ I said. Again with the stupid argumentative ‘I’m right you’re wrong’ stuff.

‘Well I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Guys like you never do.’

‘Guys like what?’

‘Sexual offenders.’

‘I’m not a sex offender.’

‘Does it make you feel good about yourself, to say these things? To call those poor wee boys liars? Does it make you feel proud?’

‘I’m not lying.’

‘You are lying, Jimmy. You did it and you and I both know it.’

‘Know everything, do you? You can see into people’s minds?’

‘Not everyone’s, just yours.’

‘Well, I’m sorry but you’re wrong.’

‘You should be sorry, Jimmy. You should be lying on the floor sobbing over what you did to those two kids.’

He shook his head. ‘This is pointless, you’re not prepared to listen to anything I say.’

‘I’m prepared to listen to the truth.’

‘So you want me to say I did it, even if that’s not true?’

‘All I want you to do is fess up to what you did. Stop hiding from it. Face it. Deal with it. This stuff is like cancer, you have to get it
all
out or eventually it
will
get you.’

‘So you think I’m a liar?’

I nodded. ‘Yup.’

He sat there for a long time, just looking at me. I think if we were to weigh up who liked who the least in that moment we would have come out pretty equal. There wasn’t a lot of love in the room.

‘So that’s that then?’ he said.

‘Yup,’ I say, letting my self-righteousness override what’s happening right there in front of me. I was still paying more attention to being angry than I was to what was happening between Jimmy and me.

‘I may as well leave in that case.’

‘If you’re not going to be honest then I guess you may as well.’

‘Right then.’ And just like that he got up and left.

I sat there for a while, and gradually as the time lengthened
and I realised he wasn’t coming back, it slowly dawned on me that tactically I’d just played a really stupid hand.

I’d got into a fight with the man because he made me angry. I’d skilfully assisted him to develop the same level of dislike for me that I had for him, and then I’d pushed him out the door. Guys like Jimmy will find any excuse they can to leave. He didn’t need any help from me, but I’d leapt in and helped him just the same.

Sitting in the chair, my self-righteous anger rapidly dissipating, I realised how stupid I had just been. ‘Bugger,’ I muttered to the empty room, by now feeling the full weight of my own arrogance and thickheadedness.

The anger was completely gone by this stage. Now all I felt was stupid.

I should point out here that one of the safety nets people who do my job have is regular clinical supervision. This entails you meeting with a more experienced and wiser colleague to discuss the various issues that arise with your clients. Needless to say I discussed this case with my supervisor the next time we met. Of course, by then I’d already replayed about a dozen slightly more productive lines I could have taken. I learned my lesson in the 10 or so minutes I sat alone in the room after Jimmy left.

You’d expect that, over a decade on, I’d be over the whole anger thing. Not really. I still get angry about stuff; the difference is that now I know how to utilise that anger in a productive way. Emotion is important in my work. Emotion provides the power to get things moving, but emotion should never make the tactical decisions. The wind can move the boat, but it should never pilot the boat. Sometimes I might sail downwind and sometimes I might tack against it, but I don’t let the wind make the decisions about where I go.

That’s the mistake I made with Jimmy. I had a good breeze, and
the boat was flying, so I went with it, not thinking about where I was heading. It’s OK to feel angry, that’s just being human, but it’s
not
OK to
act
from these feelings. Anger is a poor tactician, and if you let anger pilot your boat, then you’ll always hit the rocks.

In the Darklands you must pay close attention to everything, especially yourself.