Bites

My kid has to see the shrink at school now. They say he's been biting people -- not hard, but biting them. "Who do you bite?" I ask, "the kids?" "I don't just bite the kids," he says. "I bite my fingers and my desk and other things." "The teacher?" "Sometimes. Once." "So why do you bite? Is it anger? Pain? Loneliness? Your teeth?" "Oh, Dad," he says.

I don't like it when he takes that tone with me. I took his bike outside and threw it into the pond. He dragged it out himself that afternoon; I watched him from the window. He slipped in mud and bit himself on the arm.

I went in to talk to the shrink this week, figured it was my obligation. She said she's a firm believer that the therapeutic process should be "patient directed," and says she lets him use that time however will make him the most comfortable in the process of self-discovery. I ask the boy what he does and he says he lies down on the couch in her office and turns his back to her and goes to sleep until the shrink wakes him up because their appointment is over. Does he dream? Sometimes, he said. About nothing, really.

---

"Your teacher says you won't use glue anymore, even for your arts and crafts projects."
"Yup."
"Why don't you want to use glue? Are you afraid of it?"
"Yes."
"Well that's nothing to be ashamed of. We're all afraid of some things. Why are you afraid of glue?"
"It reminds me of cum."
"Jesus Christ. Where did you learn that word?"
"I don't know."
"Do you even know what cum is?"
"Sure."
"Well stop using that word."
"How should I tell you why I don't want to use glue?"
"And another thing. Use glue for things when you have to."

---

The boy's been seen by three separate neighbors now peeing on trees in their yards. Two of them took it in relative good humor. The other wants me to pay to have his tree removed and replaced -- he says it was his favorite tree, he'd often take a lawn chair and a book out there and sit under it, or he'd just stare at it from inside the house for hours, and now he says every time he looks at it he just smells piss. I made the kid apologize but he's not sincere, you can tell.

He says he wanted to mark his territory, like how animals do it. "Do you understand the distinction between humans and animals?" I asked him. "No," he said. Well, he had me stumped there. I told him not to piss on anything that wasn't a toilet anymore. "What about urinals?" "Urinals are toilets," I said. "Anything with a drain that flushes is a toilet." "Bathtubs have drains," he said. "Sewers are drains." "Did you not hear the other part?" I asked him, "about the flushing?" "I can do what you say," he said, "but if I don't understand it, then I don't think I've learned anything."

We reached a compromise -- I dug him a small hole in the backyard, a few inches around and a few inches deep, and I let him piss in there. He goes out there and sits near it for hours, chewing on bark and weird pieces of metal he digs up, and he never looks very happy.

---

"He will often begin crying for no reason in the middle of a lesson."
"Uh huh."
"It's very disruptive."
"Oh, sure."
"And he doesn't even seem sad. Just, tears, and sobbing noises, but he doesn't frown, or put his head down. I ask him what's bothering him and he refuses to give a comprehensible answer."
"Oh, I did that all the time as a boy, and I turned out ok."
"Yes?"
"Well, I'm here."
"Yes, you are here."

---

We took the kid out to the shore -- spent a weekend out there. He didn't open his mouth once the whole time -- didn't speak a word, didn't eat anything. Went swimming, played board games with us, but always with his mouth closed.

I decided to trick him -- he was coming around the house and I sprayed him right in the face with the hose. He nearly drowned. The neighbors were out in their yard, saw the whole thing, and I didn't have much to say to them. All I could do was stand over the kid, saying, "are you ok? I'm sorry, it was an accident," which was so obviously a lie I felt bad saying it, but anything less and they would have called the cops on me. The kid just sat there in the grass, coughing with his mouth closed, water and snot running from his nostrils. I asked him if he wanted to play wiffleball, and he nodded, but we couldn't find a bat.

We got home and I asked him if I should have never had children. Knowing what I'd known going in. He thought about it for a while, and said, "no, it's better to be alive than to have never had the chance." But he's young.

---

"They say you're not supposed to lie to your therapist, but I'm not sure what else she's there for. If you can't lie to your therapist, who can you lie to? that's what I say. Who deserves it more than the schmucks who are trying to figure you out?
"Never, ever trust those people. The ones who try to get inside your head. They're not doing it for anything but evil. No one ever tries to understand you because they're trying to throw you the best goddamn birthday party, do you understand? They do it to steal from you. Keep your true self in a locked room and throw the key down the sewer. And you never let it out, no matter how hard it's pounding on the door, yelling for someone to help it.
"They took God away from us a while ago; and with God, the soul; and with the soul, free will; but they can't touch your brain. Keep 'em out of your brain, kid, no matter what. Let 'em do what they want with your body, let 'em use you and spit you out, let 'em steal your money and beat the living shit out of you, but don't let the fuckers inside your skull. And you keep me out too. Stop crying; I know what that means. I know how you feel now and if you think I won't use it against you, I, me, your own father, then you're a lost goddamn cause."