Name of the Stranger

Name of the Stranger

by Johnny Strike

Published by Bold Venture Press

boldventurepress.com

Cover design: Rich Harvey

Name of the Stranger by Johnny Strike

Copyright 2016 Johnny Strike. All Rights Reserved.

This book is available in print.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express permission of the publisher and copyright holder. All persons, places and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to any actual persons, places or events is purely coincidental.

License Notes

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Name of the Stranger

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Six Weeks Later

About the Author

Connect with Bold Venture Press

Acknowledgements

Thanks to:

Kenneth Lisenbee (aka Krazy Kat), my café pal in Tangier …

The Hotel Continental, where I spent two summers putting together the first draft …

Steve Hauser, a 69 year old surfer, neighbor, and buddy at Hotel Belmar, in old town Mazatlán, where I wintered, fine tuned the book, and wrote the final chapters …

and Rich Harvey, the pulp guru who made the manuscript into a reality.

Dedication

As always, for Jane …

one

The look I saw on the patient’s face was one I hoped never to see again.

Robert Sutherland’s session had been the previous day, and I had been up half the night thinking about it. I realized that it wasn’t him, really, but what I was telling myself about him that had moved me into such an aggravated state. It wasn’t anything that he’d said, but rather the look, that I’d found so unsettling. It had been brief and incongruent with what he’d been saying, but it projected the vacantness of insanity. And he’d quickly reverted back to his usual demeanor, his tiresome monologue about how his girlfriend didn’t understand him, couldn’t satisfy him, why his job was at times too hard to bear, why it was impossible for him to stop going to massage parlors. I had been seeing Robert Sutherland now for two months, and I’d never experienced that look before. I’d stopped and confronted him about it too; he’d feigned innocence and claimed he didn’t know what I was talking about. I let it pass and it didn’t occur again until he was out on the street.

From my window I watched him walk away, and when he turned, he did it again. I’d felt physically stunned. It was quick again, a few seconds and then he’d turned back around and continued walking. I wondered for a moment if I wasn’t imagining it. I know that the mind can see things that it unconsciously tells itself to see, but this, I was certain, had occurred. Something was off and perhaps even dangerous about this patient. I decided to proceed with him cautiously. Only recently I’d read an account about a disturbed patient who’d stalked and then butchered his therapist in an all-night laundromat. When the murderer was apprehended two blocks away enjoying a hot dog, his only reply was that he felt the doctor didn’t like him anymore, and it was the patient who had ended the therapy.

Things had become a little hectic and strange ever since my book, Rational Voodoo, had been published and started climbing the self-help bestseller list. It was a slim thirty-five-thousand-word document that combined basic cognitive therapy techniques with seemingly irrational practices that delved into the unconscious. The latter techniques were to jar the patients and connect them with their more primal instincts. I felt that one must have rational thinking skills, but also not be afraid to explore one’s self in other more creative ways. I felt the combination led one to become emotionally healthy, and balanced. This philosophy put me at odds with therapists from different schools of thought, though, and made for some heated discussions, and was what led to me writing the book in the first place.

But now, I was getting phone calls and emails from magazine editors wanting interviews, wanting me to write articles, and even one interviewer who showed up at my door posing as a prospective patient. When I discovered the ruse of this sneaky journalist I told him he was lucky I didn’t file charges. I’d given him a shove when he blocked the door. I didn’t want to do interviews or go on talk shows. I wanted the book to stand on its own. It’d been fun writing it, but now I felt done with it. I’d written it quickly, and only three months later I was showing a draft to an agent I knew. In another three months he’d landed me a deal, and before I knew it, it was in the stores in stacks and prominently displayed. I did do some signings at the local bookstores, but I found that activity repellent and quickly divorced myself even from that.

Wan Lee, my agent, was beginning to become an irritant, constantly calling and emailing me, wanting me to take up the publisher’s offer of a book tour, radio, internet, and TV appearances. I had zero interest in any of this, but he saw me lecturing, giving seminars, and selling more and more books. Not only did I not want to have anything to do with any of that, I was tired of my profession as a psychologist. I had practiced now for five years in San Francisco, and although I’d built up a good practice and reputation, I didn’t find it particularly fulfilling anymore. And there were the low success rates. I didn’t want to hear one more person’s complaints about anything. Was there a way out?

As I was making a fresh pot of coffee, an old boyhood fantasy presented itself: I could disappear, and start life over. And in some exotic new land. Why not? I could sell my condo for a good price, close my practice, and go––find a fresh start, live another life in another country. A feeling of excitement rose up in me as I considered the possibilities. I saw myself wearing a sombrero and serape, attending bullfights and drinking in cantinas, listening to old-style mariachi music in some enchanted Mexican plaza. I saw myself on an elephant in an Asian jungle and later sucking on an opium pipe with the Hmong tribe elders on a misty, mystical evening. Visions continued to move through my overactive imagination as I traversed the planet. While I imagined myself on a scooter in Rome, headed to a café to meet my latest model girlfriend, a knock at the door brought me back to reality.

I padded to the door in bare feet and peered out the spy hole. It was Wan Lee, my over-enthusiastic agent. He was wearing a fedora and raincoat and looked like an Asian Sam Spade, or one of Charlie Chan’s eager sons. I had given him clearance at the security desk and now regretted it. I watched as he wrote something on a pad and put it through the mail slot. From the window I watched him walk to his car, using his umbrella as a cane.

Mason,

I implore you. Please call me. There is big money to be made now! Your book is blowing up!

Your devoted agent,

Wan Lee

I hadn’t returned Wan Lee’s emails or phone calls for a week, and so his visit was to be expected. I would have to face him and everyone else, but then I would be off to exotic adventures, to exotic pleasures. I poured another cup of coffee and went back to my case notes, but after a few minutes I took a new notebook from one of the desk drawers and began to make a list of all the things I’d have to do to make my fantasy a reality.

The next day I found myself looking in the window of a travel agency. There were a series of booths, each with an agent talking to a different client. One agent had no one sitting before her, so I went in. We made eye contact, and I sat down when she nodded at the empty chair in front of her booth. I didn’t know where I wanted to go and was looking for a sign or a suggestion even. As I took the seat I noticed a poster on the wall of Angkor Wat, and another, a vintage poster of Hawaii with tiny figures on a catamaran in the middle of a crystal blue ocean. Sarah, the agent, asked how she could help me. I looked at the other clients working out their vacations and trips with the other agents. There was an elderly gentleman at the end who looked as though he’d stepped out of a King Solomon’s mine adventure. He wore a white spit curl mustache, a khaki jacket with epaulets, and an explorer’s hat. He was joking with an attractive female agent who looked Indian or Pakistani.

I don’t know where to go, but I want to go somewhere exotic and warm indefinitely.

Sarah laughed, Well, I can do that, but you’re going to have to pick a place.

I wonder where that older gent at the end is heading? I whispered. He’d stood now, and took a stuffed envelope from the agent and kissed her hand.

He looks like a character, Sarah laughed, already the confidante in my escape. I’ll be back in a minute, she said, and went to the end of the agent’s booths. I felt a twinge of embarrassment when the other agent took a look in my direction. I examined a poster of South Africa that showed the stops on a map for a camping adventure that looked far too rigorous for my tastes. Sarah was back and resumed her seat. North Africa, that is Morocco, the resort city of Agadir, but it’s probably only a base by the looks of him.

Hm-mmm. How interesting. Morocco. What do you know about Agadir? I had only heard of Casablanca, Marrakech and Tangier. Sarah did some keyboarding, flying around the internet searching for information. 300 days of sunshine. Pooh-poohed by backpacker types as not being authentic Moroccan. Was destroyed in 1960 by an earthquake. A small Casbah remains. A port. Largest beach in the country. Fewer winds than elsewhere. Excellent variety of places to stay and restaurants. It does sound like a good base. She looked at me and shrugged.

Agadir it is, I said and felt a thrill hearing myself say it. Sarah came up with a good fare that included one night in London and convinced me to take the round trip because it was cheaper and could be used for up to two years and deterred me from being added to a flight list of questionable persons who’d purchased one-way tickets to Islamic countries. I made the departure date for six weeks from now, thinking that allowed me enough time to take care of all the necessary business. I already knew someone who would jump at the chance to buy my place, and another friend who would let me store some of my things indefinitely at his huge house in the suburbs.

My patients all had to be contacted, and I would try to see the ones who insisted on an exit session. I hoped that some of them would find this a good point to continue their lives by becoming their own therapists, since that’s what I’d tried to teach them. The ones who refused to learn this lesson might never be helped anyway, and this ended my own inner struggle of always wondering if I was of any use to them or only using them for my income. But money had never been much of a problem for me. Even my book had acquired an amount that, by itself, managed properly, should allow me to live adequately abroad, in a Third World country, for a good spell. And I had always saved and invested well, so I could probably stay on indefinitely.

Out of my thirty-six patients, only seven wanted a final session; some almost insisted on it. They wanted closure, an idea I found dubious at best. Robert Sutherland was one of them. I considered telling him that it was impossible, once I had him on the speaker phone, but something desperate in his voice made me consider that maybe the look was a symptom of a disorder, and that I should evaluate him and refer him to someone who could prescribe the proper medications.

I felt that my time must be managed carefully now. I definitely would not give talks, be part of any round-table discussions, or give interviews, no matter what they offered me.

Who do you think you are, J. D. Salinger? Thomas Pynchon? one angry interviewer emailed me. Those men are artists, you’re just a shrink!

I ignored the questions and insults and hoped they’d all give up. Even email interviews took time, but because of their form, one could edit, and so I ended up spending even more time with those. Still, though, I was never happy with the results. How could I be, given that my own malady was a medium streak of what’s referred to as an obsessive-compulsive disorder? So, I even stopped giving email interviews.

The interviewer of one I’d done was now clamoring for a photograph, wanting something fresh. Something other than that gray, washed out shot on the dust jacket and at the publisher’s website. That photo had been taken at a funeral service of a colleague who had checked out with a bottle of sleeping pills; he’d left a peculiar suicide note that bore little resemblance to the man everyone thought they knew. The note spawned a rumor of foul play, but by who? He was loved by everyone who knew him, including and especially his patients. The photo of me in a dark three-piece suit had been snapped by a fashion photographer who was working on an edgy spread about funeral fashions. He’d cut his teeth on a piece in Women’s Wear Daily on global warming fashion so he saw this as an obvious jump.

For the closure sessions, the first patient I saw was Debbie, a thirty-five-year-old grade school teacher who felt she was only an observer of life and longed to do something adventurous, something that made her feel alive. She’d experimented on her own: first, by joining a sex club where she ended up falling into a brutal and frightening relationship with a football player. She even referred to him as O. J., or my O. J., when he would come up during a session. Finally she was freed from the relationship when he was convicted of armed robbery and sent to prison. She’d tried skiing, a girlhood dream that was realized one morning at Lake Tahoe, ending with a broken ankle and a sprained wrist. She complained about her job, having no time for a relationship, or even for going to a gym, where the real action was, she told me with a sly smile.

But today she announced proudly that she’d gone to a gym with a friend since I’d seen her last. That had been my homework assignment for her: to take a two-day guest membership trial. I had seen this offer advertised on the bulletin board in the lobby. So she was in a good mood, having been successful in her assignment, but then she went into what she termed her abandonment issues because of me ending my practice. Many patients picked up this psychobabble from TV culture,