LeFavour - Lights On, Rats Out

Im somewhere in the sprawling mess of suburban New Jersey, sitting on damp earth. Shielded from the road by a gravestone, I put a flame to my Camel Light. Whatever irony or black humor my location offers, the graveyard is the only privacy I can find in this ugly matrix of unknowable highways, roundabouts, turn lanes, and exits. No more than one hundred yards away my thirteen-year-old daughter moves pointlessly up and down the soccer field in her cheery yellow-and-blue uniform, long brown hair pulled back in a slick ponytail, trying her best to get to the ball.

Its been twenty years. Would it be as good as ever? Taking a drag to fire up the ember. Choosing my spot. Holding the burning cigarette to my skin. Feeling my brain bleed out in a state of perfect concentration. Id go inside the sensation, will it into pleasure until it became just that. Bliss. Time at rest. The world stopped in a pinprick of pain-pleasure. I might stay, light and use a second cigarette on the spot, then rest on the interior of my mind where that inky calm holds.

I guess I never finished the task of knowing my own mind well enough to see this day coming. What misshapen root bears the strange urge that makes holding a cigarette to my skin seem not just a good idea, but necessary? Theres only one person who knows this particular kind of crazy because hes been through it with me before, my former psychiatrist, Dr. Kohl. Its been more than two decades since I left Burlington, Vermont, for New York City after three years in treatment with him. What had this fetish meant to me then and how did I stop only to feel it quicken now? The answer flaps about somewhere in the past, snapping now and again like a flag in a strong wind.

I wouldnt care so much about solving the riddle of my desire but for the pain of reconciling it with the reality of my beautiful daughter just over there. I cant match the impulse with what I am to her and how I want her to know me: strong, reliable, with ample belief in this wonderful, strange life. Im pulled outside myself by the refs whistle mixing with the claps and yells of doting, vaguely bored parents positioned, as I should be, in a row of folding chairs on the sideline. I long for Dr. Kohl as I crush out my cigarette on the wet grass.

The whistle is my cue to dodge the busy traffic, step onto the field, find my daughter, and envelop her with whatever it is she needs. I can do this and whatevers necessary to maintain normalcy and I will. But I need to reclaim the self I once was, the one I left with Dr. Kohl, if Im going to avoid the 3rd degree burn I suddenly want so badly to imprint on myself.

At home, untouched in the attic all these years, is the fat file Dr. Kohl kept during my treatmenteach of our sessions written out in dialogue along with his notes to himself. He copied the documents and handed them to me when I departed. Ive left the radioactive pages untouched all these years. Now I need them to take me back to my younger self, the one who would make her mark and cover it with transparent Band-Aids, long sleeves, and anything she could find to keep her secrets.

11/11/2012