Counting on therapy

When I am nervous or anxious or bored, I sometimes count words. I count out how many letters the word has in it. So, if the word is 'therapy' that would mean I start counting on my left hand pinkie finger and run out of fingers on my right hand by 'a' so I have to move over to my right hand thumb finger and then I use up two fingers for 'p' and 'y'. But, then the problem is that means there are three fingers left and I can't quit counting with three fingers left. I need to find a three letter word or if the word is longer than that I have to keep going until I have managed to use up all fingers on both hands. If I used the word 'car' I would be done; the three remaining fingers would be used up and I would be free to stop counting. However, if the next word I thought was 'traffic' then I would have six remaining fingers before I could finish counting.

When I started seeing Igor I couldn't stand to think about driving all the way from Valencia to Beverly Hills. It felt too much, too long and too far. I needed to break up my drive into segments. For example, segment one was from the door to the hallway. Segment two was from the hallway to the car. During one and two I would almost always brim with energy and hope and optimism which I often lose by section five.

Driving from my parking space to the exit of my building is section three. It is in this section that I often realize I forgot to take my medicine, or bring my phone or do something else of great consequence that I should have done before I left the house. It is also in three that I curse neighbors for driving too fast or too slow in the parking structure. It is in this segment of the trip in which I am most likely to call someone a f*ck*ing a** hole from the protected safety of my rolled up windows that mute my expletive.

Section four is the road from my building to the freeway. This is the last section I can safely check my cell phone for messages or fiddle with my Ipod. Here I am both in a hurry to get to the freeway and yet if there is a new email I want the light to turn red so I can read it. I feel a mix of stop and go that registers in my body as energy, a feeling that is far too infrequent.

Section five is from the freeway on ramp unto Highway 14. This section and #10 are the places where accidents are most likely to happen. If it happened here it would be better as I wouldn't be so far from home. Usually by here my optimism and hope and fun in the sun feeling starts to fade. There are trucks, carrying produce and products from Sacramento and Fresno, that I fear can't see me and there are merging cars that want to be where I am and by this time I usually hate what is playing on my Ipod and wish for traffic so I could stop it for a minute and change the song.

Section six is from Highway 14 until the on-ramp of the 405 freeway. It is here that will determine if the ride is going to be easy or the kind of drive that makes me hate this place. If there is no traffic this portion seems completely without consequence, like the easy part on a difficult exam.

Sections seven, eight, and nine are all on the 405 freeway. Seven and eight I am fine in unless there is traffic. It is nine where if I am feeling particularly horrible about being in L.A. that the grief, shock and tears will hit me. It happens less and less lately. But when I first started going to Igor's it used to happen almost every week. From nine on I have stories for each and every off ramp. I have memories for that exit and the next one and that is the one going to Andrea's house. That is the exit I took to the museum for the Freud exhibition. That is the road I took to see that doctor after I had the car accident in 83. It is even worse when there is traffic because then I have to sit and stew in my memories. That is when I feel like I am trapped in a MRI machine and I can't get out and I can't breath and I wonder what would happen if I jut got out of my car and left it and let the anxiety swallow me.

Section ten is where I get off of the 405 freeway. When I am off the off-ramp and on the street this is when I feel that I have arrived even though I haven't. I am now in the west side and that means I made it and I can relax as I am here and it also means that I am someplace other than I was. I am no longer going through someplace but I am now in someplace different. The cars are different, the drivers are different... it all feels a mix of leased luxury, practiced ease, and auras of "I could be famous" mingling with the cardboard requests of homeless men, "I could work for food" and fruit vendors selling cherries from their concrete islands.

I pass the federal building and my mind takes a tour of the many times I have waited in lines for passports. Once I have traveled past that memory I see everyone getting over to the left like a migration of geese or salmon or some other creature with a driving biological imperative that has to make a left at the next stop light or it will die and fail to live its genetic destiny.

Section eleven is all through the high rise area of west L.A. Something about the height of the high rises makes the memories feel contained and that they will go no further. 30 story buildings with their circular driveways, valet parking and marbled lobbies stand like fierce fortresses against far reaching memories that are only blocks away.

I pass the temple that the family of a man I once loved attended. They would go to that temple on Fridays and pray that their son would come to their senses and marry a nice Jewish girl. To the right is the high rise Farrah Fawcett lives in. I wonder if she is okay. When one day she dies will she sit on the top of the building like an angel in a Wim Winder film? On the left is the church we almost got married in. A little further down is the Beverly Hills sign where tourists stand in front of to pose and prove their time in 90210 and then there's where Robinson's department store used to be. That is where I bought the Chanel Tempting Taffeta blush. Each memory sticks to the ground like tulle fog and prevents any further memories from flooding in.

It is here in the eleven that I invariably say to myself, "You have waited all week for this and in an hour it will be over and you will be going home." The truth of this reminder always makes the drive and all of it seem a bit futile. Then another part of myself says things about how there are all kinds of things in life you have to repeat over and over and that doesn't mean you don't do them. I start to count them.

Section twelve is on Santa Monica Blvd. This part of the ride always feels light, bright, quick and animated. It almost feels like sections one only the optimism is more external and less internal. If there was music for this section it would be something by Sheryl Crow.

Section thirteen is on Rodeo drive which I am on for only a few blocks. While in section thirteen I look for people who could be characters in my book. I watch for clichés, tourists, celebrities and bad plastic surgery while I maintain an aura of calculated indifference which no one notices as no one is looking at me.

Section fourteen is the nameless street I turn onto to get to the parking structure ( it has a name only I don't know it. I never remember to look. I am not there long enough). This section is often marked by subtle anxiety, acausal frustration and the slightest fear that I won't find a space this time( it has never happened and yet the fear remains). I could, I think, remember each parking space I have ever parked in, in this structure, and I could, if pressed, tell you something about that session in which my car was in the third spot from the elevator.

Section fifteen is the walk I take from my car to the parking lot elevator. It is often here that the outfit I am wearing, that I liked when I left, has turned into something ugly and unattractive. It can be made worse if a gorgeous stick woman in the elevator has shoes and a handbag on that costs more than I earned in 2003.

Section sixteen is the walk from the elevator to the security guard who works at at shoe store who every week tells me to have a nice day. Each week I wonder if he remembers me from week to week or if I forever seem like someone he has never seen before. I put my sunglasses on after I walk by him and I go into a zone of my own. I check my email and do a walk not unlike a walk one would do in NYC.

Section seventeen goes from the greeting of the security guard into a quiet and peopleless place into Igor's building and through the lobby. It is the most quiet section of the trip. I can hear my own breath and the clomping of my heels on the lobby floor. If one were to count: my steps taken are 25. The number of floors I climb are four and the amount of doors I pass before Igor's are three.

Section eighteen begins in the elevator and continues after I arrive on the fourth floor and walk to his door. I look in the mirror in his elevator to see if I was right in section one or section fifteen. Most often I stick with my self assessment that I gave in the elevator in the parking structure in section fifteen. I wonder each week if I will see someone in the hallway of this old office building and if I do the other person and I will politely pretend not to see each other.

Section nineteen is the waiting room where I sit and wait for Igor. Depending on how sections six through nine were determines how long I sit in nineteen.

Igor's office is section number twenty. I count the minutes, waiting for him to open the door and then I count: 'Twenty' has 1-2-3-4-5-6 letters and 'Igor', Igor has 1-2-3-4. Ten letters, that means I can quit counting.