At the end of the novel, Unproductive Ted is dizzy and disoriented, yes, but maybe it’s because he can’t tell the difference between the little boys who terrorize him and Wrigley, who terrorizes the little boys.
Maybe after so many bad experiences with humans, a hand is simply a hand.
“Are you trying to say that Alex is no better than the boys who use violence to get what they want?” I say to June. “I already know that, okay? I’m not a fucking idiot.”
I’ve become quite fond of cursing.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
“But how do you feel? You as Unproductive Ted. Unproductive Nanette, if you will. Your intelligence is not in question today. But your feelings—those are a bit more nebulous, to me at least.”
Nebulous.
I think of myself as some hazy, distant galaxy stretched across the night sky and then say, “Like I’ve been spun around on the back of my shell for too many years. I feel positively dizzy. As if life is a blur and the merry-go-round keeps spinning faster and faster. Sometimes it’s hard for me to hang on to the horse or pole. And I want to bite just about every fucking hand that extends toward me because I can no longer tell which are good and which are bad. Maybe like there isn’t good and bad anymore. Do you even know what I mean?”
This leads to a discussion about all the many people in my life—most of whom have not taken my feelings into consideration or “have failed to realize that underneath her ‘shell,’ Nanette is very vulnerable.” Which may be confusing to many because my “shell” has historically proved to be very strong. It protected me for eighteen years before it failed. June says, “Eighteen years is a long time. It’s your whole life. And maybe everyone just started to take that shell for granted. How could they have known that it wouldn’t hold forever? I’m not sure you even knew. Did you?”
I didn’t know. I laugh at that little epiphany. It feels good to laugh. I like the way June has turned my failure into an accomplishment using nothing more than words. At least she gives me credit for surviving the first eighteen years of my life. Credit lessens my desire to say fuck so much.
June suggests “something that may seem a little weird at first.” I’m asked to kill the I in my mind. At first, I think she’s suggesting that there is an eye or eyeball in my brain, but it turns out that June means the first-person I.
“We live in our heads, Nanette, which can be very scary places. We forget that we are not just an I, but a she and a you, too. We forget to see ourselves as others see us. For some people, the problem is narcissism—meaning they are selfish, too self-absorbed. But I think that your problem is that you are too selfless. You care about the needs of others more than you care about your own needs. You are strong for them even when it’s a detriment to your own well-being.”
“Then why would I have quit the soccer team when I was the leading scorer and everyone else wanted me to play?” I say, perhaps a bit too proudly. “I absolutely did that for myself.”
“Maybe you only quit when you were too exhausted to continue? Maybe you did what everyone else wanted you to do for so long by playing and scoring goals—you were so strong for others—that you finally just reached a breaking point and, well, you broke. And it was then—and only then—that you were able to quit. It wasn’t really a choice in the end, but like refusing to pay for your friends’ lunches only when you have run out of money. The cursing. The middle fingers in the air. Hardly evidence of a rational, measured decision. Much like Alex, who just started punching people. Do you find it odd that he gets himself sent to reform school just as soon as your relationship is blossoming? Just when you are about to end the mystery of The Bubblegum Reaper? A little self-sabotaging, maybe?”
It makes sense.
“And Booker, who published a masterpiece—got good reviews even in major papers—and then pulled his book from the shelves just a year later,” I say. “Same thing. So why am I pulled toward men who do this?”
“Maybe because you do it, too? Quitting soccer just before you are about to set a record. Deciding not to go to college just when you are about to receive a scholarship. See a pattern?”
I don’t like the pattern.
And I sort of hate June for seeing it first.
I feel like a big, dumb asshole.
“I want you to do an experiment,” June says, and then suggests that I should begin to think of myself in the third person—not as an I but as a she. “Nanette is very good at making decisions for other people. She clearly sees that Alex shouldn’t have done what he did. But when she is deciding for the first-person I, Nanette, she is much less sure. So why not live in the third person for a bit and see how that goes? See yourself as someone else. Refer to yourself as Nanette in your inner monologue—the words that run through your brain all day. Kill the I. Maybe begin to keep a diary in the third person, too. You are no longer me or I. You are she or Nanette.”
“I’ll give it a try, I guess. Or should I say, she’ll give it a try?”
“Nanette will give it a try,” June says. “Say it.”
Why the fuck not? I think, and then say, “Nanette will give it a try. Nanette will now exist in third person. Nanette O’Hare will only speak in third person. Nanette O’Hare will annoy the hell out of everyone by speaking in third person, which, come to think of it, just may give her great pleasure.”
June smiles. “Let’s see where it takes us.”