Way of the Peaceful Warrior (9 page)

“Ahem--if I may have your attention,” he said. He reached over, took my nose between two of his fingers, and turned my face toward him.
 

“Wad to you wad?” I asked. Joy was whispering in my ear as Socrates held onto my nose. “I'd rather listed to her thad to you,” I said.
 

“She'll only lead you down the primrose path,” he grinned, releasing my nose. “Even a young fool in the throes of love cannot fail to see how his mind creates both his disappointments and his---joys.”
 

“An excellent choice of words,” I said, losing myself in Joy's eyes.
 

As the bus rounded the bend we all sat quietly, watching San Francisco turn on her lights. The bus stopped at the bottom of the hill. Joy rose quickly and got off the bus, followed by Socrates. I started to follow, but he glanced back and said, “No.” That was
all. Joy looked at me through the open window. “Joy, when will I see you again?” “Perhaps soon. It depends,” she said.
 

“Depends on what?” I said. “Joy, wait, don't go. Driver, let me off!” But the bus was pulling away from them. Joy and Soc had already disappeared into the darkness.
 

Sunday I sank into a deep depression over which I had no control. Monday in class I hardly heard a word my professor said. I was preoccupied during the workout, and my energy was drained. I'd not eaten since the picnic. I prepared myself for my Monday night gas station visit. If I found Joy there I'd make her leave with me--or I'd leave with her.
 

She was there, all right, laughing with Socrates when I entered the office. Feeling like a stranger, I wondered if they were laughing at me. I went in, took off my shoes, and sat.
 

“Well, Dan, are you any smarter than you were on Saturday?” Socrates said. Joy just smiled, but her smile hurt. “I wasn't sure you'd show up tonight, Dan, for fear I might say something you didn't want to hear.” His words were like small hammers. I clenched my teeth.
 

“Try to relax, Dan,” Joy said. I know she was trying to help, but I felt overwhelmed, criticized by both of them.
 

“Dan,” Socrates continued, “If you remain blind to your weaknesses, you can't correct them--nor can you play up your strengths. It's just like gymnastics. Look at yourself!”
 

I could hardly speak. When I did, my voice quavered with tension, anger, and self-pity. “I am l--looking” I didn't want to act like this in front of her!
 

Blithely, Socrates went on. 'I've already told you that your compulsive attention to the mind's moods and impulses is a basic error. If you persist, you'll remain yourself--and I can't imagine a worse fate!” Socrates laughed heartily at this, and Joy nodded approvingly.
 

“He can be stuffy, can't he?” she grinned at Socrates.
 

I sat very still and clenched my fists. Finally I could speak. “I don't think either of you is very funny.” I kept my voice tightly controlled.
 

Socrates leaned back in his chair and, with cold-blooded cruelty, said, “You're angry, but do a mediocre job of hiding it, Jackass.” (“Not in front of Joy!” I thought.) “Your anger,” he continued, “is proof of your stubborn illusions. Why defend a self you don't even believe in? When are you going to grow up?”
 

“Listen, you crazy old bastard!” I screeched. “I'm fine! I've been coming here just for kicks. And I've seen what needed to see. Your world seems full of suffering, not mine. I'm depressed all right, but only when I'm here with you!”
 

Neither Joy nor Socrates said a word. They just nodded their heads, looking sympathetic and compassionate. Damn their compassion! “You both think everything is so clear and simple and so funny. I don’t understand either one of you and I don’t want to.”

Blind with shame and confusion, feeling like a fool, I lurched out the door, swearing to myself that I would forget him, forget her, and forget I had ever walked into that station late one starry night.

My indignation was a sham, and I knew it. What was worse, I knew they knew it. I’d blown it. I felt like a small boy. I could bear looking stupid in front of Socrates, but not in front of Joy. And now I felt sure I’d lost her forever.

Running through the streets, I found myself going in the opposite direction of home. I ended up in a bar on University Avenue, near Grove Street. I got as drunk as I could, and when I finally made it to my apartment, I was grateful for unconsciousness.

I could never go back. I decided to try and take up the normal life I’d tossed aside months ago. The first thing was to catch up in my studies if I was going to graduate. Susie loaned me her history notes, and I got psychology notes from one of my teammates. I stayed up late writing papers; I drowned myself in books. I had a lot to remember--and a lot to forget.
 

At the gym, I trained to exhaustion. At first my coach and teammates were delighted to see this new energy. Rick and Sid, my two closest workout buddies, were amazed at my daring and joked about “Dan’s death wish”; I attempted any move, ready or not. They thought I was bursting with courage, but I just didn’t care--injury would at least give me a reason to ache inside.

After a while, Rick and Sid’s jokes stopped. “Dan, you’re getting circles under your eyes. “When’s the last time you shaved?” Rick asked.
 

“You look--I don’t know--too lean,” said Sid.

“That’s my business,” I snapped. “No, I mean, thanks, but I’m fine, really.”

“Well, get some sleep now and then, anyway, or there’ll be nothing left of you by summer.”
 

“Yeah, sure thing.” I didn’t tell them that I wouldn’t mind disappearing.
 

I turned what few ounces of fat I had left into gristle and muscle. I looked hard, like one of Michelangelo’s statues. My skin shone pale, translucent, like marble.

I went to the movies almost every night but couldn’t get the image of Socrates sitting in the station, maybe with Joy, out of my mind. Sometimes I had a dark vision of them both sitting there, laughing at me; maybe I was their warrior’s quarry.

I didn’t spend time with Susie or any of the other women I knew. What sexual urges I had were spent in training, washed away by sweat. Besides, how could I look into other eyes now that I had gazed into Joy’s? One night, awakened by a knock, I heard Susie’s timid voice outside. “Danny, are you in? Dan?” She slid a note under the door. I didn’t even get up to look at the note.
 

My life became an ordeal. Other people’s laughter hurt my ears. I imagined Socrates and Joy, cackling like warlock and witch, plotting against me. The movies I sat through had lost their colors; the food I ate tasted like paste. And one day in class, as Watson was analyzing social influences of something or other, I stood up and heard myself yell, “Bullshit!” at the top of my lungs. Watkins tried to ignore me, but all eyes, about 500 pairs, were on me. An audience. I’d show them! “Bullshit!” I yelled. A few anonymous hands clapped, and there was a smattering of laughter and whispering.
 

Watkins, never one to lose his tweed-suited cool, suggested, “Would you care to explain that?”

I pushed my way out of my seat to the aisle and walked up to the stage, suddenly wishing I’d shaved and worn a clean shirt. I stood facing him. “What has any of this got to do with happiness, with life?” More applause from the audience. I could tell he was sizing me up to see if I was dangerous--and decided I might be. Damn straight! I was getting more confident.

“Perhaps you have a point,” he said acquiesced softly. I was being patronized in front of 500 people. I wanted to explain to them how it was--I would teach them, make them all see. I turned to the class and started to tell them about my meeting a man in a gas station who had shown me that life was not what it seemed. I started on a tale of the kind on the mountain, lonely amid a town gone mad. At first, there was dead silence; then, a few people began laughing. What was wrong? I hadn't said anything funny. I went on with the story, but soon a wave of laughter spread through the auditorium. Were they all crazy, or was I?
 

Watkins whispered something to me, but I didn't hear. I went on pointlessly. He whispered again. “Son, I think they're laughing because your fly is open.” Mortified, I glanced down and then out at the crowd. No! No, not again, not the fool again! Not the jackass again! I began to cry, and the laughter died.
 

I ran out of the hall and through the campus until I could run no more. Two women walked by me--plastic robots, social drones. As they passed, they stared at me with distaste, then turned away.
 

I looked down at my dirty clothes which probably smelled. My hair was matted and uncombed; I hadn't shaved in days. I found myself in the student union without remembering how I got there, and slumped into a sticky, plastic-covered chair and fell asleep. I dreamt I was impaled on a wooden horse by a gleaming sword. The horse, affixed to a tilting carousel, whirled round and round while I desperately reached out for the ring. Melancholy music played off key, and behind the music I heard a terrible laugh. I awoke, dizzy, and stumbled home.
 

I'd begun to drift through the routine of school like a phantom. My world was turning inside out and upside down. I had tried to rejoin the old ways I knew, to motivate myself in my studies and training, but nothing made sense anymore.
 

Meanwhile, professors rattled on and on about the Renaissance, the instincts of the rat, and Milton's middle years. I walked through Sproul Plaza each day amid campus demonstrations and walked through sit-ins as if in a dream; none of it meant anything to me. Student power gave me no comfort; drugs could give me no solace. So I drifted, a stranger in a strange land, caught between two worlds without a handhold on either.
 

Late one afternoon I sat in a redwood grove near the bottom of campus, waiting for the darkness, thinking about the best way to kill myself. I no longer belonged on this earth. Somehow I'd lost my shoes; I had on one sock, and my feet were brown with dried  blood. I felt no pain, nothing.
 

I decided to see Socrates one last time. I shuffled toward the station and stopped across the street. He was finishing with a car as a lady and a little girl, about four years old, walked into the station. I don't think the woman knew Socrates; she could have been asking directions. Suddenly the little girl reached up to him. He lifted her and she threw her arms around his neck. The woman tried to pull the little girl away from Socrates, but
she wouldn't let go. Socrates laughed and talked to her, setting her down gently. He knelt down and they hugged each other.
 

I became unaccountably sad then, and started to cry. My body shook with anguish. I turned, ran a few hundred yards and collapsed on the path. I was too weary to go home, to do anything; maybe that's what saved me.
 

I awoke in the infirmary. There was an I.V. needle in my arm. Someone had shaved me and cleaned me up. I felt rested, at least. I was released the next afternoon and called Cowell Health Center. “Dr. Baker, please.” His secretary answered,
 

“My name is Dan Millman. I'd like to make an appointment with Dr. Baker as soon as possible.”
 

“Yes, Mr. Millman,” she said in the bright, professionally friendly voice of a psychiatrist's secretary. “The doctor has an opening a week from this Tuesday at  1 P.M.; would that be all right?”
 

“Isn't there anything sooner?”
 

“I'm afraid not .... “
 

“I'm going to kill myself before a week from this Tuesday, lady.”
 

“Can you come in this afternoon?” Her voice was soothing.
 

“Will 2 P.M. be all right?”
 

“Yes.”
 

“Fine, see you then, Mr. Millman.”
 

Doctor Baker was a tall, corpulent man with a slight nervous tic around his left eye. Suddenly, I didn't feel like talking to him at all. How would I begin? “Well, Herr Doktor. I have a teacher named Socrates who jumps up on rooftops--no, not off of them, that's what I'm planning to do. And, oh yes--he takes me on journeys to other places and times and I become the wind and I'm a little depressed and, yes school's fine and I'm a gymnastics star and I want to kill myself.”
 

I stood. “Thank you for your time, doctor. I'm suddenly feeling great. I just wanted to see how the better half lived. It's been swell.”
 

He started to speak, searching for the “right” thing to say, but I walked out, went home, and slept. For the time being, sleep seemed the easiest alternative.
 

That night, I dragged myself to the station. Joy was not there. Part of me suffered exquisite disappointment--I wanted so much to look into her eyes again, to hold her and be held--but part of me was relieved. It was one-on-one again--Soc and me.
 

When I sat down he said nothing of my absence, only, “You look tired and depressed.” He said it without a trace of pity. My eyes filled with tears.
 

“Yes, I'm depressed. I came to say good-bye. I owe you that. I'm stuck halfway, and I can't stand it anymore. I don't want to live.”
 

“You're wrong about two things, Dan.” He came over and sat beside me on the couch. “First, you're not halfway yet, not by a long shot. But you are very close to the end of the tunnel. And the second thing,” he said, reaching for my temple, “is that you're not going to kill yourself,”
 

I glared at him. “Says who?” Then I realized we were no longer in the office, we were sitting in a cheap hotel room. There was no mistaking the musty smell, the thin, grey carpets, the two tiny beds, and the small, cracked, second-hand mirror.