He had given away every last penny of an enormous inheritance. He was homeless now, but it didn’t matter, only he missed being able to help others. I found this out when a stranger called me and told me Kenny had given him fifteen-hundred dollars to see me for as many therapy sessions as that amount would cover. Inheriting a fortune is everyone’s ultimate fantasy, but Kenny just handed his out like cupcakes at a birthday party.
So, Kenny must have gotten a windfall from his Aunt Molly who, as I remember, had no other family. I met her when we stayed at her place on Martha’s Vineyard. And what a place it was. I guess he gave that away too.
“Wait, now let me get this straight,” I said to the caller. “Kenny is broke and homeless, and you are using his last fifteen hundred dollars to get help from me?”
“Oh, well, yeah … I guess … I mean, he said you’d be able ta help me. I wasn’t sleepin' nights since my dad died and all, and a lota other things happened too—lost my job, that kinda thing. Kenny said you’d help me, and I believe ‘im. He gave me the money before he was homeless though.”
“Well, that makes all the difference,” I said, trying not to laugh, or cry. I felt bad, being sarcastic like that, but I don’t think he noticed. “Let’s see what I’ve got here," looking at my calendar. “Next Tuesday at 2:00 p.m., is that good for you?”
“Sure thing, Doc, see ya then.”
I jotted down his contact info. “Okay, see you next week then.”
Kenny, homeless? That was hard to take. I was sorry I hadn’t asked some of the questions I was formulating in those few minutes on the phone—some I had since I’d last seen Kenny. I knew it would be wrong, asking my questions of a new client in a first session. He was the one looking for answers, but I figured I would get at least some answers over time—that is, if he even showed up.
Not that I didn’t want to help the caller; Sam was his name. It’s what I do. I‘m a therapist, and a pretty good one at that, but I already resented him in a way for taking Kenny’s last dime. I was looking forward to finding out what had happened to my lost lover—lost in every way it seemed. We hadn’t seen each other in a few years, and didn’t part on good terms. It all got too bizarre—too complicated—even for me.
I told him he needed therapy, but I wasn’t going to be the one to help him sort out his life. That’s when he said, in a tone of voice I’d never heard before, “There’s nothing to sort out, so fuck off!”
I never saw Kenny again. I left in a huff never wanting to see him again. When things had simmered down though, I tried to get in touch with him over the next few months—texting, calling, emailing, and even writing a good old-fashioned letter. No response. I finally got up the nerve to go see him; I really wanted to see him, but I found he had moved and couldn’t be found. The city is a big place, but it is incredible that a person can’t be found—even if he doesn’t want to be found. He obviously did not want to be found.
So, Sam did show up; we shook hands, and I invited him into my inner sanctum—a quiet room with big cozy chairs, muted colors, diffused light from the windows in the day, and warm, soft lighting at night. I had created a place where my clients would feel comfortable and safe (I despise those words, “comfortable” and “safe.”), so they would tell me their life stories, or at least the part of the story before the turning point, or after it—as the case might be.
“Hey, Sam, before you tell me about yourself, I’d like to ask something about Kenny. Do you mind?”
“No, Doc, no, I don’t mind at all. Whadaya wanna know?”
“Well, you said Kenny gave you money before he was homeless, but how do you know he is homeless?”
“Well, I saw ‘im a few days after that night I was at his place … the night he gave me the money. Boy, was I surprised when he did that, but I wasn’t surprised ta see ‘im on the streets.”
“Oh, why was that?”
“Well, 'cause I didn’t even know he had any money.”
“No, I wanted to know why you weren’t surprised to see Kenny homeless. I mean … you were friends, right?”
“No, we weren’t what I’d call good friends or anythin’ like that. He hung out with us at the shelter downtown, so we all knew ‘im; he was always so nice ta us. But when I saw his place that night, it was a mess, and I kinda felt I was in better shape than him, and he didn’t look too good either."
“So, you are homeless too, Sam?”
“Oh, no, no, but … kinda down on my luck these days. I have a place, but went ta the shelter for meals sometimes… after I lost my job, ya know. That’s where I met Kenny. He talked ta us … never seemed like he belonged there. I didn’t mean ta, but I kinda whined about my sob story one night, and that’s when he brought me back ta ‘is place … probably on the worst night a my life, and gave me the money, and your number … said you’d help me. I went back ta thank ‘im again a couple a days later. I knocked. No answer, so I was ready ta leave, when this guy across the hall comes out and tells me Kenny don’t live there no more. I saw ‘im on the street later, and that’s when he told me he was homeless.”
“Oh, I see … but … ”
“I lied to ya, Doc,” Sam interrupted,“ ‘cause Kenny… he really gave me two thousand cash, but I used five hundred for my rent. When I saw ‘im on the street, I told ‘im, I says ta ‘im, I says, ‘You take the resta the money back, cause looks like ya need it more than me,’ but he wouldn’t. That’s when he told me he inherited some money and was givin it all away. He said he only wished he had more ta give … said he didn’t need it. Jeez, can ya believe that?”
“Why didn’t you just keep the money and not come here?” I asked, sort of wondering out loud.
With child-like innocence, Sam said, “Well, Kenny told me ta come see ya; that’s why he gave me the money, ya know, in the first place. He said you’d help me.”
“I will certainly do my best," and we began our first session.
It felt strange taking Kenny’s money for my services. I offered to charge only half the amount for the sessions, so Sam could go beyond the fifteen weeks it would cover at my regular rate, but he wouldn't hear of it. As the weeks went by, I didn’t learn much more about Kenny, but I learned a whole lot about Sam. He was a simple soul and honorable. I would keep him on when his money ran out. I hoped he would agree if he felt he needed more time. He was making progress though. He had found a job to keep him afloat, so he didn’t have to go to the shelter for meals, but he said he stops by once in a while to see the old gang. No sign of Kenny; apparently, no one else had seen him either.
“He just disappeared,” Sam said.
“And how do you feel about that?” I asked, but was thinking, Yeah, I get it. That’s what he did with me too—just disappeared.
Kenny and I met when we were at Columbia, finishing up our degrees—his in philosophy and mine in clinical psychology. It was love at first sight you could say. I was amazed to realize there really was such a thing—that unexplainable kind of attraction. He was intriguing, quirky, quiet mostly—not the small-talk type, but I liked that. I thought later, if I had wanted “normal,” I would have looked for normal. No such thing anyway, I know that for a fact.
His hair was dark and wild, and his eyes were kind--a soft, misty brown. His skin was clear and smooth, like a boy's, and his hands were perfection. I had the impression they were the kind a monk might have had—made for writing on parchment with a feather pen dipped into a pale blue glass inkwell. Later, I saw that his handwriting did have a grace and elegance about it, reminiscent of those Medieval illuminated manuscripts, and he did most of his writing by hand.
He wrote on various, obscure, abstract subjects—scholarly critiques on philosophy, theology and the lives of saints. He was intrigued with hagiography. He would tell me about the insights and revelations he had through his research and study. I loved how he looked when he spoke of his work, and how he expressed ideas in such beautiful images, precise analogies, lofty metaphors and clear logic.
Who cared if our attraction was hormones or pheromones, and not destiny? I don’t know how he would have described me, or what part of my body he may have thought was perfection, if any, but the feeling was mutual, passionate, intense—and ultimately doomed. There must have been a genetic code for disaster in the nature of our relationship. We were too different, and he gradually ascended, or descended, depending on how you look at it, into an unreachable place, intent it seemed, on becoming a saint himself.
It wasn’t going to work. His mind was like a black hole—sucking everything into it. Nothing escaped—ideas. facts, implications, probabilities and possibilities. Mine was more like a sieve, holding only what I needed to get through each day—the rest sifted through. Anyway, it’s how I came to think of “us” as opposites.
Despite the chemistry, or maybe because of it, it had to come crashing down.
“You know what your trouble is, Kenny?” I said during one of our increasingly heated “conversations.” “Despite your knowledge of philosophy and religion and all, you don’t really believe in anything, do you?”
We were sitting on his bed in the little room he was renting in the city, piled high with books, strewn with empty wine bottles, half-written papers on his desk, and ashtrays crammed with cigarette butts. He got up, bare-legged in his white boxer shorts. I was already sorry I said anything, and wished we were still in the bed together, so I could put my fingers through his matted hair and wrap my legs around his. He put his hands on his hips, made a half turn away, then back again, glaring at me with those eyes, always shining with an unearthly—maybe even heavenly gaze.
Almost in a whisper, as if to himself, and with a look on his face like he was having another revelation he said, “It’s not that I don’t believe in anything. I believe in everything!”
It was hard to have a saint for a lover, and it must have been even harder for him with me, a materialist and born therapist, analyzing him in a way no therapist would if she wanted to keep her client. But I wasn’t his therapist; I was his lover and his anchor—I believed that. I had this weird thought. I was him trying to get in, and he was me trying to get out. I needed his ability to soar above it all—to what he might have called the “world of ideas,” which transcended creation—the only reality to speak of, according to Saint Kenny.
If he needed me at all, maybe it was for my ability to focus on one thing at a time, to plan and to follow through. Kenny said we complimented each other. He said I thought inductively—from the specific to the general, and he thought deductively—from the general to the specific. Boy, was he deep, which I figured made me shallow—in my ambition to own my own practice; to make a good living; shallow in my wish to own a piece of real estate in some remarkable location, and in my need to take long weekends and vacations when I could get away. My desire for and my pleasure in material things, and all the rest of it, was in direct opposition to what Kenny stood for.
Like I said, we were doomed.
That started to become clear after a few days we spent at his Aunt Molly’s. To me it was paradise: the island in the sea, the blue sky above, brilliant sun pouring through a dream house. I made a big fuss about it, and told Kenny I could see us living our lives there. I was like a mystic in ecstasy, but not the kind Kenny read about in his Medieval texts. I knew he could have been just as happy in one of those remote, monastic beehive huts on Skellig Michael, off the coast of Ireland—happiest most likely.
I snuggled up to him on our first night there. The ocean breeze was cool, the full moon over the ocean—visible from our bed. The fragrance of beach roses and hedge, our bodies warm together, I put my head on his chest—which was also pretty perfect.
“What do you say, Ken? Let’s live here. I’ll set up a practice. You could work on your studies, maybe finish a book in the quiet of this place—that book you’ve been working on.”
“It isn’t a book; it’s my theories and my musings.”
“You’ve just been musing all this time, really? Didn’t you ever think of sharing what you’ve learned, what you know?” I’d been wondering about where he was going with his writing for a while, along with a lot of other things I never dared mention.
“No, I haven’t thought of it. I’m happy doing what I’m doing, and I don’t want to leave the city. I like the noise and the grit of it and the people—the movement of them coming and going, even the ones who have nowhere to go or nobody to be. I’ve been thinking about doing something else too, instead of living for myself. There is so much need out there.”
“You mean like I do—live for myself?” I thought I knew where this was going—and me ruining the moment—again.
“No, I didn't mean that; you do help people, and that’s a good thing. I want to do that too.”
“I didn’t know you thought of me as helping anyone. I mean … I certainly try.” I was touched by his comment, suggesting out loud that my work was worthy after all. “I don’t think I’m the greatest example of good tough, that’s for sure.” I reminded him, “You’ve read, and know so well, the best of the best for inspiration on that score: Plato, St. Augustine, Aquinas, the saints … I mean … ”
“Well, … I’ve read about their ideas and experience, yes, but I need to do something with them.”
I silently agreed.
When we got back to the city, at first he continued to live in his dark room, thinking and writing. He still did some part time work in a library, barely earning enough to subsist—subsidized by me, which I didn’t mind. I still admired his ideals, and I loved him—meaning I made sure we could both live the life I wanted—dinners, plays, trips, none of which seemed to matter much to Kenny.
Soon after, he began walking the streets at night encountering those who could use something good in their lives. When he started bringing back lost souls, disheveled and sometimes incoherent ones with wild eyes, I began to question his judgement, and wondered if there was room for me in his future. I know how that sounds, but I was shaken by it all, and not only for my own well being. I also questioned Kenny on a finer point.
"You may be giving these souls something to eat or a coat to wear, but are you effecting any real change in their lives?" I had to ask.
“It doesn't matter if their lives change,” he almost shouted. “That’s your goal, not mine. I’m happy to help in small ways … in immediate need. You manipulate people and want them to live as you do.”
“Now … wait a minute,” I shouted back, feeling blindsided. “You said before that I did good, and I thought you meant it. Why are you being so hostile now?“ There were other words spoken … or shouted back and forth, and that’s when I screamed that he needed a therapist.
It was the last thing I ever said to him.
We parted ways, and that, as they say, was that. I came to accept it was for the best. Kenny was right; I had wanted him to live as I did. I didn't want to, and couldn’t live as he did.
On the fifteenth week with Sam, he reminded me that it was our intended last session, “Well, this is it, Doc, the grand finoulie.” It sort of took me by surprise, though I had to agree he was in a good place.
“Well, you let me know, Sam, if you need to come in again, and remember what I said—no charge, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure thing, and thanks, Doc,” he said in his usual matter-of-fact way.
I had looked forward to our sessions. I liked Sam. He has a natural kind of wisdom, and it didn’t take much to get him to think about things in another way, so he was able to make some positive changes because of it. He was in a rut, but was easily budged out of it. I would miss him; having him around made me feel close to Kenny—strange as that sounds.
“Okay, Sam, you take care, now."
Sam hesitated, then he pulled an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to me.
“What’s this?”
“I dunno, but Kenny said ta give it ta ya after we had our last meetin, so here it is, Doc.”
Looking back, I don’t remember Sam’s even leaving the office. I just stared down at the envelope in my trembling hand. I don’t know how long it was before I fell into one of those cozy chairs to open it. So much time had passed, but no love lost on my side. Was it a suicide note? I found myself thinking crazy things the moment before I opened it, desperately hoping it was the impossible—an invitation to meet him somewhere, anywhere. I wanted to look into those eyes once more. Those old feelings, memories and desire had been rushing in over the past weeks—flooding in and swirling around in my head and in my heart.
That was two years ago. I am still grieving. The letter Sam brought from the law firm was a shocker. Kenny willed Aunt Molly’s house to me! When I went to see the attorney, she told me she had met with Kenny only once, and didn’t know that much about him, except that he had been ill, even before the inheritance from his aunt. That explains his giving a fortune away, but why will the house to me, after all this time?
I’m settled into my new practice on Martha’s Vineyard, but I may never know, and I have been hoping to find clues among his things left in this room overlooking the sea, the one we stayed in that night. The desk piled with his writings, shelves of books, overflowing boxes if papers for me to live with—alone.
Today, I found that letter I wrote to Kenny years ago. When I unfolded it, a piece of parchment fell out. On it, in his beautiful script, were these lines:
I cannot live with you—
It would be life—
And life is over there—
Behind the shelf—
So We must meet apart—
You there—I—here—
With just the Door ajar
Oceans are—and Prayer—
And that White Sustenance—
Despair—
Isn’t that the truth? Not exactly a clue, though—more of a confirmation of what I already knew. But now I can’t get them out of my head.
