"You will always be chasing a false love": a f**ked-up love story by a New Plymouth writer
The morning sun beams in through the apartment windows.
“Did you tell your therapist about our fight?” I ask.
“I mentioned it,” Kate replies.
“I hope you told her the full story.”
She smiles, leaning forward to depress the coffee plunger. “Don’t you worry about what I told her. It might surprise you, but we don’t actually talk about you as much as you might imagine—I do have other things going on, you know.”
She pours the coffee evenly between two mugs on a footstool between us.
“What do you talk about then?”
She thinks for a moment.
“We sit in silence a lot of the time.”
She seems like she’s going to say something more but she stops. Out the window a distant tower crane is silhouetted by the glare from the sun on the Hauraki Gulf. Halfway up the tower I can see the shape of the driver slowly climbing the ladder to begin the day’s work.
“Does she give you advice?”
Kate bats a fly away from her face.
“She can be quite pragmatic. We talk about my needs. Setting up boundaries, removing blame, that sort of thing.”
I nod, interested.
Kate started seeing the therapist some months prior. Although I feign indifference, I am obsessed with finding out what her therapist thinks about me, or rather, what her therapist thinks about the version of me that Kate has described. I never ask the question directly but try to lead Kate gently into sharing information. She has intuited my curiosity and now wields the information over me as a type of secret power. Whenever I broach the subject she deflects, and has reached the point that she will only speak of her therapist in riddles, which achieves the desired effect of exacerbating my frustration.
The trouble with disputes in romantic relationships, I have come to realise, is that neither party ever has an objective understanding of the other’s behaviour. Both parties are incapable of seeing the relationship dynamic as it would appear to an objective observer by their self-interested subjectivity. Case in point: Kate regularly informs me that I am an arsehole. I am willing to accept that this is true, up to a point. But when her criticisms cross a certain threshold, I find myself becoming defensive. My ego demands that I disregard her critique on the grounds that it is too strongly affected by illegitimate considerations—old resentments, jealousy or whatever.
I’m aware that this threshold is largely arbitrary, and as much affected by the same illegitimate concerns that I impute to her critique of me, but with no external body available to adjudicate our disputes I am bound to trust my own judgement when things get a bit raw.
As a reflexive person, I know that in trying to undermine Kate’s assessment of me by putting my own case back to her I may be engaging in what is colloquially known as ‘gaslighting’, but there is only so much beating my ego can take. I have to retain some belief in my inner goodness or I might jump off a bridge. And to take the contrary position, who is to say that Kate is not gaslighting me, inflating minor transgressions to set me up as the bad guy when really, as I suspect, I am a generally nice person who slips up from time to time?
Kate now has the benefit of a kind of neutral observer, her therapist, though the level of neutrality is questionable, given that she only ever hears Kate’s views. My curiosity about Kate’s therapy, if that is the right word for it, is born of the fear that Kate’s resentful depictions, to which I am given no right of rebuttal, are taken at face value. I imagine her therapist nodding and clicking her tongue in that practised and professional manner, sending Kate back to relitigate our petty disputes with a sense of moral vindication. As an adjunct, I find myself inexplicably obsessed with the thought of a third party (the therapist) thinking badly of me. The thought fills me with anxiety, and I find myself obsessing over the content of these weekly sessions, from which Kate returns with a undeniable serenity.
“What does she look like?” I ask.
Kate narrows her eyes.
“Why does that matter?”
“It doesn’t. It occurred to me I’ve never heard you say anything about her appearance.”
Kate looks out the window.
“I’m not asking in a sexist way. I’m just interested. I’d definitely ask if it was a man, too.”
Kate turns and rests her head on her arm on the back of the sofa. She fixes my gaze.
“What does she look like in your mind?”
I think for a moment, imagining the various exchanges that Kate has described to me.
“I get this sort of ‘open receptacle’ vibe,” I say.
Kate smiles. “Yes. That’s exactly what she looks like: an open receptacle.”
I ponder this for a moment, then, sensing I’m not getting anywhere, I change the subject, pointing at the distant crane.
“I wonder if they have a toilet in the crane or whether they shit in a bucket or something?”
Kate shrugs and sips her coffee. I stretch my hands and let out a hiss of air through my lips.
“Open receptacle isn’t a physical description, though. It’s more of a concept.”
“You said it, not me.”
“Just tell me what she looks like.”
Kate holds her coffee in her lap and smiles, leaning back on the arm of the sofa. “What do you see when you hear the words ‘open receptacle’?” she asks.
She seems to have picked up this form of reflective interrogation from her therapist. I think for a moment, turning the words over in my mind. I’m struck by an image of my teacher from Standard Two, Mrs Murphy: voluptuous and kind. She had a large soft face, doe eyes and frizzy red hair. Mrs Murphy was always very attentive to me. She used to reward my good behaviour with smothering hugs, enveloping my little body in her enormous bosom. She told me I should be a writer.
“Sort of maternal, I guess?”
Kate turns to look at me, eyebrows raised.
“Maternal … really?” She shakes her head, clicking her tongue softly. “Oh boy.”
I catch the innuendo and convulse slightly.
“Not in a Freudian way,” I say quickly. “I mean because she’s a good listener, you know.”
Kate looks back out the window.
“You misunderstood me,” I say. “I meant in the sense of caring and kind.”
“Whatever,” she says. “You’ve said it now. I hope you write about this.”
We fall into silence. In the distance the crane begins to turn slowly, lifting a large crate of scaffold tube. A long strop dangles in the morning air like a gymnastic ribbon.
“Did you think that was a sexist question?” I ask.
Kate thinks for a moment.
“Yes,” she says abruptly.
“I don’t want to write stuff that makes me look sexist.”
Kate turns and looks me in the eyes, dead serious.
“You have to tell it like it is,” she says. “You were sexist. You claim to write about truth.”
I rub my chin with my hand.
“I really didn’t mean it in the way you think,” I say.
“Actually, I think you did. You’re just upset that I noticed.”
She leans back, bringing her coffee up to her lips. “You only ever speak truthfully when you don’t intend to.”
“Is that something your therapist said about me?” I ask quickly.
Kate sighs.
“It might come as a surprise to you, Fergus, but I came up with that all on my own.”
*
I find Albert on the internet. I type in ‘Lacanian Psychoanalysts NZ’ and he is top of the list. I call him, hoping he will convince me I need help. He doesn’t sound very interested. He has a very full schedule but says he can fit me in. He gives me a bank account number, payment to be made in advance. I ask him whether he can give me a rundown on psychoanalysis before I commit.
“We will cover that during the first session,” he says.
We meet on Zoom. He has soft brown hair, tired eyes, olive skin—he’s Peruvian. He asks me about my life and sits there making notes and nodding. Whenever I stop speaking, he propels me on with open-ended questions about my feelings. He tells me I’m doing very well, which I like, but in general he doesn’t offer much. He seems most concerned with keeping me talking.
He asks me about my dreams so I have started writing them down. Kate thinks they are hilarious when I let her read them.
“You’re so predictable,” she says, laughing.
In one dream, Kate and I are at a dinner party. I overhear a friend say something about male worker ants. (This friend has a PhD in biochemistry.)
“Incorrect,” I say, walking into the conversation. “Worker ants are all female.”
He laughs in my face.
“Pretty sure they are male,” he says. “Who do you think impregnates the queen?”
“Male ants have wings,” I say. “They fly around looking for females to mate with.”
The Doctor of Philosophy laughs again.
“Male ants have wings?” he says, incredulous.
His laughter spreads among the group; Kate is laughing at me too.
“You’re all wrong,” I say. “It’s the same with bees.”
“The same with bees?” he says. “You’ve lost it.”
The laughter intensifies. The man’s eyes are wide and his mouth hangs open—the group is jeering and laughing. Some of them shake their heads at me.
I plead my case but it’s no use.
We sit down to dinner. While the conversation moves on I borrow Kate’s phone and look up ants on Wikipedia.
“Look,” I say, pointing at the phone. “Colonies consist of various castes of sterile, wingless females, most of which are workers, as well as soldiers and other specialised groups.”
But the group has moved on. They don’t care about ants any more. The man with the PhD plays it down, nodding wisely, as though pleased to learn a new fact.
“Huh, interesting,” he says.
“Yes, it is,” I say, looking around the table. “Very interesting.”
*
I stand alone in the pantry, phone pressed to my ear, staring at the label on a jar of Marmite, imagining the tasty black sludge melting into a slice of toast.
“Have you seen My Octopus Teacher?” Kate asks.
“I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s going wild on Netflix; you’re bound to hear about it.”
“Oh yeah, any good?”
“It’s all right. It’s probably the breakup, but I found it very affecting. I cried all the way through.”
“What’s it about?”
Holding the phone between my ear and my shoulder, I carry the Marmite and the bread from the pantry and drop them on the bench beside the toaster. I unscrew the lid.
“What are you doing? Are you making food? This might be the last conversation you and I are ever going to have—you’d better not be.”
“I’m not making food. I’m listening.”
I put the lid down and step away from the bench.
“Sorry,” she says softly. “I wouldn’t put it past you.”
“Please go on, I want to hear about the octopus.”
“Well, it’s pretty cheesy but it’s a doco about this scuba-diver. His wife left him or something so he starts swimming this reef every day. He’s a total creep, but he finds this octopus on the reef and it’s so beautiful. At first she’s scared of him but he keeps going back there every day for like a year and eventually she starts to trust him. I know you hate octopuses but she’s kind of lovely, really: she can change colour, shape, texture, and everything. And she’s clever, she’s really good at hunting: she hides from predators by sucking up shells and rocks with her tentacles and pulling them around her into a globe, protecting herself like a hedgehog. And there’s this bit where she’s got six tentacles splayed around her like a skirt and then she uses her other two like feet to walk along the sea floor.”
“Oh yeah, sounds terrifying.”
“It’s actually so cute—she sits on the guy’s stomach and he pets her like a cat.”
I shudder quietly to myself at the thought of a tentacled alien attaching itself to my torso with its giant squishy brain bobbling away, horizontal pupils staring, and its awful beak hidden away in the zenith of its many legs.
“I’m sure it’s charming but that sounds horrendous.”
“I knew you’d say that. Do you want me to go on?”
“Sure.”
“So the octopus lives in this little den where it hides from the pyjama sharks—"
“Pyjama sharks,” I repeat. I’m staring at the Marmite again.
“Yeah, they’ve got stripes like pyjamas. Anyway, one day the octopus is too far from its den and it gets attacked by these sharks, and one of them manages to bite off one of her tentacles.”
Kate pauses. I can hear her breathing.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Like I said, it’s not even that good a film —it’s just with everything going on, you know.”
She draws in a breath.
“So, she loses a tentacle but manages to escape by spraying ink and gets back to her den. And she’s like so close to dying, it’s so, so sad—she goes completely white and just lies there. The guy brings her mussels because she can’t go out to get food.”
Kate stops talking and blows her nose.
“And then the loveliest thing happens: She starts to grow a new tentacle. At first it’s tiny, but perfectly formed, this miniature little arm …”
She blows her nose again.
“… He keeps nursing her and feeding her, and the tentacle grows, and it takes forever but eventually she fully recovers.”
“Oh yeah, sounds really nice.”
There is a long pause. When Kate speaks again her voice is hard, metallic.
“Yeah, well, like I said, it’s pretty light stuff, really, but it affected me, and I’ve figured out why. Would you like me to tell you?”
“Sure.”
“It’s not particularly deep but, in the story, I’m the octopus, and you’ve taken my tentacle. I’m in agonising pain right now but I’m going to hibernate, and it will take me a really, really, long time but eventually I’ll grow a new one, and it’ll be better than before because I’ll have dealt with it and moved on. I’ll be stronger because of it.”
She lets out a joyless laugh.
“But you—you aren’t suffering any pain because you’re an idiot. You’re just going to patch your old life with new friends who don’t know how much of a selfish person you are, and you’ll go on making the same mistakes over and over until you’re old and bitter and nobody likes you.”
I lean against the bench letting my eyes unfocus on the Marmite. I try to really feel the weight of the words but I have the strange sense that I won’t be able to.
“And chances are, like always, you will continue to be happy, you will always find people who like you and think you are special. But know this: it won’t be a pure happiness like mine. You will always be chasing a false love. You will go on existing as a big black hole, sucking up everyone’s praise and love and giving nothing back.”
The words hang in the air and I contemplate my fate. I search my bowels for some sort of reaction to this revelation but there is just a dull emptiness—not emotion, but a glaucous vision of the lack of it, a kind of apathy.
“Yeah, well I guess that’s a fear of mine,” I say hollowly.
“And the funniest part is that you have a paralysing fear of octopuses. And now I get it.”
“Why’s that?” I ask flatly.
“They’re smart. You can’t understand them or control them—you can’t understand them, so you turn your lack of knowledge into fear and hatred.”
I hold the phone to my ear. “You’re pretty clever.”
“And you hate me for it.”
“But I don’t hate you, though.” I feel my chest tighten up.
“You should be paying me instead of Albert,” she says.
I let out a sudden laugh and to my surprise, a tear drops down my cheek.
“Fuck you’re a cunt,” I say.
Kate laughs. We sit in silence for a few moments.
“I hope you realise that I am quite literally in pain.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Like fuck you are. If you were truly sorry, we would still be together.”
I take a deep breath and blow the air out through my mouth.
“I think you’re intentionally trying to sabotage my future relationships.”
“I might be. Is it working?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I guess I won’t know for a while.”
She exhales heavily.
“I really need to go to bed.”
“Me too.”
There is a long pause.
“I guess this is it.’
"I guess so.”
I hear the sound of traffic through the hiss of the phone line.
“I love you, Kate.”
I cough, blinking.
“Goodbye, Fergus.”
I take the phone away from my ear. The screen shows: ‘Kate (Wife): 02:14:32.’
I tap the little red circle and the timer is replaced by the words ‘Call ending …’, which dissolves into my lock screen.
"My Octopus Teacher" first appeared in the literary journal Landfall 242 (Otago University Press, $30), which also features fiction by Joanna Cho, Olly Clifton, Isabel Haarhaus, and Airana Ngarewa, and an incredible review, published posthumously, by Stephen Stratford of Philip Temple's biography of Maurice Shadbolt.
Next week's short story is also by Fergus Porteous, marking the first occasion in ReadingRoom history that consecutive short stories are by the same author. This can and should be taken as a comment on the high regard for one of New Zealand's most promising new writers.
