What Jack Said

 

"I need donkey therapy because I was raped by a dolphin as a child," he said. The therapist looked at him with a stoic solemnity. Others in the therapy group looked on with similar facial expressions. They had been witness to many intimate sentences, some revelatory, some confessional, but none ever quite like this. A certain hush had fallen over the room like a spell and no one knew how to lift it. So they sat in extended silence. There was the idea that maybe they should try giving the sentence the space it needed to expand and slowly dissolve. The room however, was not large enough. The utterance had already stretched itself from wall to wall, ceiling to ceiling, much like it had inside each of their skulls. 

"I said, I need donkey therapy because I was raped by a dolphin when I was a child," he repeated.

No one expected a repetition. It had the same effect on the audience the second time. Stunned silence. Some people shifted uncomfortably in their seats while trying hard to convey empathy. Others held their breath as they waited for something or someone to make a move. One woman's eyes began to dart nervously from left to right as she searched the room for an assurance that there would be a way out of this. When a reply finally came, it didn't give them the relief they'd hoped for.

"Go on, tell us more about that, Jack," Timothy said in a moment of blundering desperation. Everyone looked at him, momentarily trying to hide their contempt before flashing encouraging smiles toward Jack.

"Well," Jack started, "I was nine years old, and my parents decided to take us on vacation, to Seaworld. There was this special event that year: a chance to meet Flipper the dolphin. You know, the one from TV?"

Just when everyone thought the air in the room couldn't get any thicker, Ellen blurted out the words "Flipper, the famous dolphin raped you?"

Jack seemed surprised not only by the candid nature of the question, but how dispassionately Ellen asked it. To him, she seemed more interested in the scandal than his trauma.

"Yes Ellen, Flipper, the famous fucking dolphin raped me," Jack replied.

The therapist's hand rose slowly to his mouth and his eyebrows signaled a brief wrinkle of tension. What was unusual about this situation was that for the seven months of group therapy leading up to this moment, Jack had never spoken a word about himself. Sure, he'd listen attentively, often showing great emotional sensitivity, and he'd even offer terrific insights and supportive words to others, but he never once volunteered any information about himself. This wasn't compulsory of course, Jack was paying for these sessions after all. In private the therapist had gone over this with Jack, urging him to participate more, reminding him that in order to get something he needed to give something - that it simply wasn't enough to just sit and listen to others. If Jack wanted help, he would have take a chance and overcome this fear of vulnerability. This was a safe space, he'd said.

And now Jack had finally spoken. No one could tell if this was a credible statement, or if Jack's real issue was that he was a compulsive liar. Or maybe this was some strange power trip, a way of getting the group to focus all of their attention on him so that he could say it was just a joke. But what if what Jack was saying were true? Could that happy dolphin really be capable of something like this? Yes, it was a known fact that dolphins and humans had fornicated. Yes, it was a known fact that dolphins were very intelligent, very sexual creatures. In fact, they are the only other mammal known to have sex solely for the purpose of pleasure. Most other animals have sex to reproduce; and the sex is brief, sometimes painful. 

"Any more questions, or can I go on?" Jack asked.

Ellen's face flushed and she crossed her arms over her chest and softly sighed. The other ten people dared not say a word.

"Well, when I finally met him, I was so excited. As you could imagine, right? I was a little kid. This was the first real celebrity I'd met. I was starstruck. Seeing a star like that up close and personal, it was a real rush," Jack said.

"I wanted an autograph," he went on, "so he took me back to his trailer where he kept a stack of glossy publicity photos and pens."

"Just a second, Jack," Gregory interrupted, "Flipper had his own trailer?"

"Are you calling me a liar, Gregory?" Jack asked. "Did I call you a liar when you told us about how your wife left you for another man and you assured us she was 'completely' sexually satisfied?"

"Hey, that's an ugly thing to say," Gregory yelped, "it's a reasonable question. I wasn't calling you no liar."

"Gentlemen," the therapist finally said, intervening, "enough."

"No, it's not enough," Jack shouted, "I've been patient for seven whole months, giving everyone my attention, every session, every week, every time, trying to work up enough courage to tell my story, and the first time I open my mouth I have Ellen the klepto over there asking dumb questions and then I get Gregory the stud insinuating I'm full of shit! No, you know what, I have had enough. I gave this a try doc, I really did. Do you know how close I was to blowing my fucking brains out? How many nights I'd lie awake and just think about ending it all? Even to this day, I still can't function in a normal relationship. Do you have any idea what it's like to associate sex with a slimy cackling fish with a hard-on? I can't even jerk off without thinking of his elongated face and all those teeth. The smiling. He abused his celebrity to take advantage of a gullible young boy. I was ten years old, doc!"

The room, once more, was stunned by Jack's speech, until Ellen said, "I thought you were nine."

Jack's face twisted into a messy, teeth-gnashing Picassoesque contortion of rage. 

"You know what," he said, standing up, causing the small plastic chair to crash back loudly against the floor, "fuck this shit! I'm out of here. Good luck you bunch of god-damned loonies!"

"Jack, wait," the therapist called out, but in one large stride Jack had grabbed his coat off the hook and exited through the now slamming door.

The silent room was still silent. Exasperated glances and confused imaginations struggled to make sense of what had just happened. The inviolability of the safe space had been shattered. There was the feeling of something having been deeply fractured.

"Anybody here actually believe that?" Gregory asked.

"I didn't understand. What was the part about the donkey?" Pauline asked.

"He dropped something," Alex said from the back of the room nearest to the door. He bent down while the room waited to see what it was. Alex picked it up and turned white as a ghost.

"I, I think I'm going to be sick," he said in a daze.

"What is it," the therapist asked, getting up and walking toward Alex. Alex placed the item in the therapist's hand. 

It was an old polaroid photograph of a young boy and a dolphin inside a trailer.