The Minotauress

"Full-scale multiple-personality disorder."

"That's a crock of shit," Dean sluffed.

"Is it? A couple of hours ago, you were making every excuse in the book for Daphne. Any time I've ever suggested that she's a lousy wife and treats you like shit, you cover for her, you deny it, you blame yourself for what's not right about the marriage. But now it's the absolute polar opposite. You tell me you're sick of fucking her, you tell me she's a ‘bossy prissy bitch' and a ‘snitty hosebag.' You're talking like you hate her."

"I don't hate her," Dean elucidated. "I'm just so goddamn sick of her that I could bend over and throw up all over the carpet I have to vacuum every day."

By now, Ajax almost wished he hadn't dropped out of his psych major. "You're two different people, Dean. You're Good Dean and Bad Dean. Good Dean is the subservient pussy-whipped butt-kissing wimp I've known since we first met. But tonight Bad Dean has finally stuck his head out of the sand, chewing tobacco and bad-mouthing his wife. And what's the catalyst? Me asking you details of your past. You're longing for your past, and your inability to retrieve it is what's causing these manifestations."

Good Dean, Bad Dean... Dean thought about this and felt flustered as a result. "But I hate my past. I was disgusted with it."

"That may be what you consciously believe, but we're talking about the subconscious, and that's a different animal. It's what we were talking about yesterday: strictures. Social strictures, environmental strictures, strictures based on experience, and then all the potential counter-strictures too." Ajax seemed intent, urgently focused, which was unusual for him. Evidently, some of his past was coming back too: the collegiate interests that he'd later dumped to become a slovenly envelope-stuffer. "We're talking about Freudian denial mechanisms, unsystematized causal demand characteristics, and full-blown personality transposition."

Dean looked askance, irritated. "I don't want to hear a bunch of high-brow California psycho-babble." Then he spat a stream of tobacco juice on the plush beige carpet. "I just want to know why I'm so fucked up all of a sudden."

Shocked, Ajax looked at the indelible stain on the carpet. "That's what I'm trying to tell you!"

"Fine. What's the bottom line?"

"Like I said. You need to see a shrink. But in the meantime, you should probably look into some therapy of a more available sort."

"And what would that be?"

"Have another beer," Ajax advised to the best of his clinical expertise.

"Sounds like a good idea." Dean followed Ajax out of the bedroom, but before he fully left, he eyed the framed wedding photo of himself and Daphne.

And spat tobacco juice on it.

CHAPTER FOUR

In this modern age, the fabric of decency was not safe even in down-home rural America, the land of hard work, an honest buck, and apple pie—towns such as DeSmet, South Dakota. In fact, even here, that same fabric had become as sullied as the ass-rag of Babylon's Whore. Dwindling was the notion of the American Work Ethic, replaced by welfare. Scarce were the wise grandmothers in front-porch rocking chairs, replaced by barred windows. And gone was the universal ideal that honesty was the best policy, replaced by meth labs and domestic brutality. Indeed, even the once-quaint DeSmet had spiraled downward into the domain of Jerry Springer.

And worse.

Little Scotty Nash was only ten years old by the time he'd had sexual congress with four girls—not including his Mom—and though this was clearly sexual congress of the forced variety, Scotty was too young to know the actual entails of the crime called rape. All he knew was that if he dragged a girl behind the school and put his wiener in her, it would feel good. He liked it. He'd learned how to do it just by watching his step-daddy and Mom. These were grown-ups, and Scotty wanted to do what grown-ups did. He wanted to be a Man, just like his step-daddy. He wanted to punch girls in the face and stick his diggler in 'em, lots of 'em. That's what girls were for; the music said so.

The girls he'd done this to never ratted because they knew they'd get whupped, and they'd all been broken in anyway, probably by their daddies. Plus, he told the bitches he'd kill 'em if they told, he'd bust a cap in their heads. He'd pull a Boo-Yah on the bitches!

Scotty's Walkman headset blared the latest rap: "I'se got demons in my semen, yo white bitch! You'll be screamin' while I'm reamin', how ya like the itch!" Scotty listened to Schooly D., Tupac, R.U. 2 Kuul 4 U., and Badd Blacque Busta Kapp, even though his face was as white as the Lincoln Memorial. He loved the lingo: duh bitches, duh ‘hos, kill duh poe-leece. "Hey White boy, what can I say? Gonna kill yo' white ass wiff my AK." Scotty got the rap and dressed the scene, in unlaced pump-up Nikes with blinking lights on the heels, a backward Yankees cap, and pants ten sizes too big for him.