dis-po-si-tion (noun). A habitual inclination; a tendency
Having spent the week
executing what turned out to be the fruitless task of interrogating suspects,
Liza felt it was reasonable to take the afternoon off for an appointment with
her psychiatrist. There had been a couple
of anxious occurrences of recognising a couple of men amongst the stills from
the videos of the people of interest.
She remembered them from one-off encounters that she had arranged at a
hotel through the internet. She called
in sick on the day of one of the interrogations and strategically arranged to
be stuck in traffic on the day of the other one. It was unusual for her to shirk her
responsibilities, so nobody questioned her inconveniences to be anything but
genuine. However, she was accustomed to keeping things to herself, despite the
strain she felt.
She had been seeing Dr Simone
Anwar for the last five years after being referred to her by a colleague. As well as heading her own practice, Dr Anwar
occasionally consulted for the police as a forensic psychologist.
Liza found the psychiatrist's
office waiting-room to be a peaceful place; somewhere to contain the calm
before the storm. There was never anyone
else sitting there but her. The patients
were scheduled in a way that ensured they didn't overlap. One patient never saw another unless someone
was unnecessarily very early for an appointment. Liza appreciated the privacy. As she sat alone, she periodically stared at
the two oil paintings hanging on the green walls adjacent to the chair.
The first painting that she
gazed upon was the lone silhouette of a rambler scouring the countryside. Liza was always drawn to the large shadow
that he cast. The painting on the
opposite wall was a landscape portrait of tumultuous waves crashing against the
face of a tall cliff on a sunny day, with a lone cloud hovering in the blue sky
above. Liza had been staring at the
painting for years and was still not decided as to whether she should have been
imagining standing at the top of the cliff looking down at the crashing waves
or staring out at the seemingly endless ocean on the horizon. On that Monday afternoon, she was thinking
that it was more likely that she felt like the lone cloud in the sky when her
mobile rang in her coat pocket. It was
Morgan Stone, so she answered the call with a despairing sigh.
"Can't you just give me
a break?" she said. "Just one
afternoon, for crying out loud."
"I know, but it's
important," Stone reasoned without apology.
"I'll be the judge of
that. What do you want?"
"Where are you?"
"What do you want?"
"I've got a new
lead."
"Great, but, couldn't
that have waited? Stone, give me a
break. Deal with it yourself and don't
bother me until tomorrow at the earliest."
Liza terminated the call and
switched her mobile off, cursing Stone for disrupting her serenity. She focussed on the painting of the cliffs
again and tried to compose herself. A
minute or so later, Dr Anwar opened her office door.
"Liza, sorry I kept you
waiting," she said.
"Don't worry about
it," Liza said. "That's what
the room is for, isn't it?"
"That's certainly a
positive way to look at things. Come
in."
Dr Anwar extended her arm to
point the way. She was in her late
forties and had a warm yet firm manner.
Every time Liza had seen her, she was wearing a black suit and heels over
a white blouse with a wide collar.
The office was four times the
size of the waiting room and almost the same size as Liza's apartment
"It's been a
while," Anwar said as Liza entered the room.
"I was doing well, or at
least I thought I was. I thought I
didn't need the therapy as much, but then I had a relapse."
"You'd better sit
down."
"On the clock
already?"
"Well, I do have other
patients. It's your time, so make the
most of it."
There were no paintings
hanging on the walls in the office, just framed certificates of Anwar's
qualifications. The decor was bland; a
desk, a bookcase containing reference books, two chairs and a couch. Liza always sat in a chair facing the chair
where Anwar sat.
"So, a relapse, you
say," the psychiatrist prompted.
"Would you care to elaborate?"
"You know what I
mean."
"I recall us
establishing the conjecture that your condition was ultimately a very
subjectively measured one. You
eventually insisted that a specific criteria for defining it was absent."
Liza rolled her eyes and
conceded to Anwar's point. "Okay,
that's right. Maybe society has the
problem and I'm just projecting a cultural aversion towards sexual
liberation."
"Is that how you feel
about it? You resent having to feel
shame?"
"I was just responding
sarcastically to what you said."
"Tell me about your
relapse, as you call it."
"I just gave in to
it. Saturday before last," Liza said.
"I hadn't been with anyone for about a month and it was just nagging
away at me, like an itch I couldn't scratch.
I tried satisfying myself to ward off the urge, but it's just too
insatiable. After a while, it starts to
interfere in the everyday stuff. I get
tense at work and, you know, I don't interact well with colleagues. So, I just threw caution to the wind, logged
on, had a few drinks and arranged a date.
As easy as that, I had an intimately dispassionate encounter that very
night."
"So, you acknowledge
that surrendering to your compulsion doesn't result in satisfaction. You're saying it doesn't appease the
need?"
"We're going over old
ground here, but, okay. Yes; exactly.
It's like I give in to it because there is a brief moment where the
tension fades, but it just makes things worse when I reflect upon it in the
cold light of day. Then, there seems
that there'll just be one thing that'll sort me out again."
"And a self-perpetuating
cycle ensues," Anwar added.
"Exactly."
"Have you kept up with
your medication?"
"I may have eased off
during the last month or so."
"May I ask why? I didn't advise you to."
"I wanted to eliminate
the side-effects. It's hard to be
effective at my job when I'm losing interest and I stop caring all the
time. I usually love my job , but
recently I haven't taken much pleasure from it and I don't want to talk to
anyone."
"That's called
anhedonia," Anwar interjected.
"It's a common side-effect of the antidepressants that I prescribed
you, but it usually passes in time. You
should give them another chance."
"I got by without them
for years. What is it they're supposed
to do exactly?"
"What? The tablets?
You know what they're for. You
wouldn't have taken them to start with otherwise. And another thing; you really think you were
getting by?"
"Just remind me."
"Okay, I'll play along
and indulge whatever game you're playing.
It's your time after all. If you
need me to explain that the antidepressants will suppress your relatively
excessive sexual urges, I can do that."
"Relatively excessive,
you say?"
"It depends whether
you're measuring your behaviour against social norms or not."
"How do they
work?" Liza asked.
"What do you mean?"
"What's the science
behind them?"
Anwar frowned as she paused
for a moment, unclear as to why Liza was uncharacteristically testing her. She seemed more embittered than usual.
"Why are you so
interested in the science?" Anwar enquired.
"I want to know what the
other potential side-effects are. What
harm could they do to me?"
"So, you blindly engage
in a lengthy string of sexual encounters with strangers, risking infection,
disease and who knows what else in the process, and now you claim to be
concerned about what medically prescribed drugs can do to you?"
"Maybe it's because it's
the only risk I've been able to control lately.
To everything else, I yielded.
The drugs have been what I chose to stop."
"Yes, in a sudden
fashion, which by proxy put an end to your sexual abstinence."
"How do they
work?" Liza insisted.
"They're called
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
They're a psychotropic drug that correct chemical imbalances in the
brain. They specifically block serotonin
from being reabsorbed by the nerve cells in the brain, therefore releasing it
and lifting your mood as a result. Liza,
you know this, surely."
"And there I was
thinking it was just Prozac," Liza said with a smirk.
"Prozac is just a brand
name for fluoxetine," Anwar corrected her.
"You're on Paxil, which is a brand of paroxetine."
"Am I pissing you off,
Doctor?"
"No. Let's just say that your hostility is quite
infectious this afternoon. I'm
sorry."
One of the symptoms Anwar had
been treating Liza for was a condition called hypersexuality. When the therapy sessions started, Liza
thought it was going to be a short-term arrangement. Five years had since passed and it seemed that
she was still going to be in need of Anwar's services for quite some time to
come. Hypersexuality was the label that
Anwar applied to Liza's dysfunctional preoccupation with casual and
non-intimate sexual encounters. They
still had not established what the probable cause for Liza's condition was, and
Anwar stressed that maybe they never would.
After apologising for
allowing her professionalism slip, Anwar remained silent and waited for Liza to
resume the conversation. It was around
thirty seconds before Liza broke the silence.
"I've got a new
case," she said. "A
murder. You probably saw it on the
news."
"The woman found in
Sutton Park?"
"That's the one."
"There's a lot about her
we haven't made public."
"You know that whatever
you tell me stays in this room."
"I know. It's just, well, some of the details are a
bit close to home."
Anwar stayed quiet, leaving
the talking to Liza.
Liza continued, "We
found videos and photographs of her with lots of different sexual
partners. You could argue that she makes
me seem normal by comparison. So,
obviously, she's being called a slut and a whore by anyone who comes across the
evidence. It's clear that she was
discreet enough to keep her Messalina complex a secret while she was
breathing. Of course, everyone's in
shock now, especially her husband. I try
to appear indifferent. I can't explain
to them that I understand where she was coming from."
"Why not? You can control how much you reveal."
"They'd probably call me
detective nympho, or something as equally derogatory."
"I see. It's unfortunate you don't feel that you can
provide an informed insight with confidence."
"If a man was just as
promiscuous, he'd be hailed, celebrated even.
A man's ego can't deal with a woman having a greater libido than his, so
then the double standard is applied."
"Moral regard, as quite
often conveyed either frankly or indirectly by society, is most certainly
malapropos and doesn't support your affliction.
It's up to you to improve your situation, Liza. Yes, I'm here for your therapy, but the rest
is your responsibility. Open your mind
to the world's possibilities outside the sex-related experiences. Concentrate on emancipating yourself from
your addiction and seize control of your actions. That will put you on course for achieving
true satisfaction."
"You make it sound so
easy, Doctor."
"I know it's not. Start by taking your medication again. You're in no position to cut it out as
drastically as you have. Maybe in time
we can look at reducing your dosage, but now isn't the time. I'll write you another prescription. On one hand, you're saying that it's
affecting your work. But, on the other
hand, you're restraining the use of your experience when it could benefit your
investigation."
"Okay, sure," Liza
conceded. "Whatever you think will
work."
"I don't make any
promises, Liza. Didn't you mention
something about a holiday a couple of months ago?"
"Well remembered,
yes. Or was that in your notes?"
"You said it was booked
for sometime around now, didn't you?"
"Five nights in
Lanzarote in about three weeks' time, which I'm thinking of cancelling. I'm too busy with work."
"I'm sure they could
cope without you for a week."
"I'm sure they'd be glad
that I wasn't there for a week."
"So, why don't you go as
planned?"
"I could take a holiday
anytime."
"You say that, but then
you also say that you maybe can't take this one because you're too busy."
"I'll think about
it."
"I hope you do."
***
