My good friend Jill Remington is an MD and a pharmacologist. After graduating from the prestigious UCLA, she works in a large hospital complex in Southern California. There she pretends to be an important person. But today she doesn’t have to pretend, because no one can see her here. To me, she’s just Jill.
We’re sitting on the deck of my yacht with our legs over the side. I’ve let go of the sail, it’s lazy in the afternoon breeze. The waves roll in gently, tickling our heels. In the distance, along the Santa Monica coastline, a winding road leads to Malibu, with cars scurrying along quietly, looking from here like little cockroaches.
Jill and I are friends. I know her husband Steve and she was a friend of my last wife. The four of us used to go sailing together. Now Steve is in New York on business and my ex-wife is long gone. So we went out to sea, just the two of us.
“Wally, you’re a tough guy, good for you. Steve is ten years younger than you and already a wreck, with lots of illnesses,” Jill smokes her cigarette, stretched out on the warm deck.
“Probably because his wife is a doctor,” I laugh.
“Not that,” she reaches for her beer, “he’s got bad genes, all his diseases are hereditary, from his ancestors. There’s no cure.
“That’s because in America you mixed a crocodile with a rhinoceros; you have no concept of racial discipline,” I say, hiding a wry smile behind the green glass of my beer bottle.
“In Hitler’s Germany, for example, young people were subjected to biological compatibility tests before marriage, so they wouldn’t produce freaks. And what about you? You’re an expert, you should know that each race has its genetic traits and diseases. And in mixed marriages, children are born with a bouquet of hereditary diseases that begin to appear at puberty. And aren’t you, doctors, surprised by the fact that a healthy-looking couple with a different skin color or eye shape often has a child who is born ugly or with a congenital heart defect? And another one becomes an obese hippopotamus in his twenties? How many millions of such invalids are there, sitting on pills and injections?
Speaking of idiots, thirty years ago they were ten percent of the population. Fifteen years later, idiots were twenty percent of the population. That’s a statistic from the American Psychiatric Association, it’s in the public domain. And today every third person is an idiot. That’s progress! Or regression, call it what you like… Idiots need to be isolated from society, but there aren’t enough hospital beds. So you have idiots running around the streets, and if one of them kills a normal citizen, he doesn’t get anything for it. He has a certificate that he is an idiot, and the law does not punish such people. In another twenty years, we will be living in a madhouse!
Jill pretended to admire the seabirds in the sky above us. But I could see by the look on her face that she was confused: “Calm down, Wally,” she tossed the cigarette butt into the water, “do you want to lecture me on political psychiatry? Or are you trying to start another revolution in America?” Of course, she took offense.
“Jill, I apologize, I brought up the subject inappropriately,” I said and went to the cabin to get a cold beer. That’s how you get into trouble and then have to hide your eyes.
“You’re right in your emotions,” Jill softened when I returned. We clinked our bottles together in a sign of reconciliation.
“But you can’t change anything, you know,” she lit a new cigarette. “Look around you, Wally. Eighty percent of Americans are fat. It’s a national tragedy. One that I’ve had a hand in, too,” she took a nervous drag on the cigarette smoke, “There are three times as many people on the planet as there were 200 years ago, but there’s no more fertile land! So farmers poison their plantations with pesticides, and food corporations stuff poultry and animal meat with hormones. We’ve gone chemical, and that’s where all our diseases come from. The body refuses to eat this crap, it rebels and it dies.
“After making a profit, the corporations give us the sick people they’ve raised. And we treat these poor people with pills and put them on needles. And they can’t get off the needle. Our industry is the same corporations, and we want more money too! The last partner we have in this business is a funeral director… So we have to look after ourselves. And, Wally, if you want to stay healthy, don’t buy my pills!” Jill laughed, “If you get sick, use folk medicine. Take cats and dogs for example: they eat grass when they have health problems. Chew garlic, drink herbal tinctures, and walk more in the mornings. Living alone is unhealthy and dangerous. Maybe you should get married?” The woman inside her had awoken.
“Jill, you know I’ve had it three times already,” I sighed.
“So what? You’re still an enviable groom,” she laughed.
I grimaced a poorly executed smile:
“Well, while we’re on the subject, I’ll tell you my problem. I hope you won’t tell anyone…?”
She nodded in agreement. I hesitated for a moment, searching for the right words:
“The thing is, I’ve developed Gibson’s Syndrome and I can’t get married anymore,” I finally said.
Jill stared at me:
“Gibson? Is he a psychiatrist? I’ve never heard of him,” she said sympathetically.
“He’s not a psychiatrist. And he’s normal. He’s a Hollywood actor and producer, very talented,” I lit a cigar.
A silent scene.
“Walter, you’re kidding!” Her round eyes widened even more, “That’s the stuff, haha! Worth a drink,” she reached into a drawer behind our backs and pulled out a bottle of whiskey, uncorked it, took a sip from the neck, and held it out to me. I backed her up, taking a big gulp.
“Ha ha ha, Gibson syndrome, bravo!” – she squirmed with laughter rolling around on the deck.
The recent trial of Hollywood actor Mel Gibson was the highest-profile scandal in the film industry and cost Mel millions of dollars. All the newspapers in Los Angeles and New York were talking about his relationship with a Russian money hunter.
“You’re laughing, Jill,” I inhaled the smoke from my cigar. It’s a global problem about which psychiatry is silent. This problem is bigger than eighty percent of fat people in America!
The sun was fading into the evening mist, I lowered the sail and started the engine. I moved Jill closer to the mast and secured her with the line, just in case. Whisky makes a woman unpredictable in her actions. Even if she is a doctor of science.
After mooring the yacht in the marina, we settled down on the veranda of a local restaurant. Jill was delighted with our adventure and purred a happy little tune. She immediately retired to the ladies’ room and when she returned her hair was wet.
The evening breeze was blowing on our heads, the music was playing softly on the speakers and we didn’t care about anything. We ordered oysters and champagne. Jill’s eyes were curious, waiting for me to continue. We drank in silence, clinking our empty glasses. They clinked like a ship’s horn.
“You know I’ve been married several times,” I sighed. “My first squaw was three years younger than me, the second was seven. The third was twelve years younger, and they were all with me for their own gain. They would play me, cheat on me, I would catch them, and it would be over. My friends wondered why I kept making the same mistakes. For them, I made up stories to get them to back off. As for myself, I realized a long time ago that the problem was in me, my job, and my attraction to bitches. If you chose the sea and married a beautiful woman, then forget about family life, it’s not going to happen. I wanted too much…”
I filled our glasses to the brim.
“I can’t help it,” I continued, “I like slim and sexy bitches. I feel like a man around them and I want to be a gallant gentleman. I know the beautiful ones know their price, they’re always playing and you can’t trust them. But only with a woman like that do I feel like a man and possessive. I’m flattered when I catch the envious glances of other ladies. They envy my trophy and I revel in it, it feeds my ego! When I see a beautiful woman, my imagination is drugged with bed fantasies. It’s a powerful drug, it drives me mad! I’ve often fought bloody, attacking whoever attacked my woman, my property. My second wife was a devil, provoked me by flirting with other men. Her laughter was exciting, her bottomless green eyes and sensual mouth drove me into a frenzy. And all our trips to the restaurant with her ended in a street fight. The sight of blood made her cheeks burn and her breathing quicken. When she gave herself to me just around the corner, she would lick drops of blood from my face. In those moments she was probably also satisfying her ego by having me as a tame animal.
I seem to have created my dramatic destiny.
It must be a special kind of madness. I once read a story about a high clergyman. He lived in Tsarist Russia and was a terrible womanizer, dragging around noble ladies. In moments of intimacy with his mistress, he would tear off all her clothes. Then he would take her to the most expensive salons and buy her new clothes. So that he could tear them to shreds again on their next date.”
“In short, this bitch, and the most beautiful of all my women, wore me out with her antics, so I decided to leave. I had no energy left, I was on the verge of insanity and I had to flee.”
I sipped my champagne and watched Jill out of the corner of my eye. She was silent, so I continued:
“I didn’t grieve much when it was time to break up. No, it hurt, but it was a survival instinct. I realized I was leaving a cheat and a liar, she had to get out of my life, or one day it could end badly for me. A beautiful woman only loves herself to love anyone else.
When I left my wives, I left them flats, cars, and money. Two of them asked me to come back and apologized for their sin. But I don’t give a second chance to anyone who has betrayed me. I can understand and forgive a mistake, but I don’t forgive lying and cheating.”
“I have seen men who are stuck in family life. Their lives are about compromise. They forgive lies and betrayal. Such a life makes them submissive, they fade quickly, their bellies grow and they go bald. I don’t feel sorry for them. They have chosen it. Society makes an example of them by calling them morally stable. And for people like me, society throws stones of contempt at us. All these moralists are secret sinners. They hate us because they’re jealous of us, and they’re willing to indulge in debauchery but secretly, without anyone knowing. This is real cynicism, the double morality of society, which breeds hypocrites and liars. And my cynicism is just a stage of maturation from which new horizons open up”.
I fell silent. Her face reflected confusion and embarrassment:
“I agree with you on a lot of things, but not everything,” Jill smiled, holding out her empty glass.
We drank some more.
“OK, Jill, I’ll tell you a special story, maybe you’ll understand me better after hearing it,” I put the glass down on the table:
“Next my lover was a beautiful girl more than twenty years younger than me. And I was amused when strangers complimented me on my daughter’s beauty… I had the misfortune to fall in love again. New love is like morphine for old scars on the heart, they no longer hurt. But with this girl, I was biologically incompatible, she was an owl and I was a lark. Late at night, she wanted to dance, drink, and go out. I wanted to sleep. Early in the morning, I wanted to have sex, but she slept until noon.
I took her to restaurants, bought her clothes, and indulged her whims at the expense of my health and my wallet. She just milked me. But I’m a bull, not a cow.
One day I found out that she had other lovers. She didn’t deny it, saying it was normal. Her cynicism shocked me. Where did she get it from? Did she get it from her mother? When I finally woke up, the affair was yet another trauma for me. I was sure I’d learned to understand women. But we live and learn to live.
After this maiden, I had an adventure with one attractive and very sexy. She was sixteen years younger than me. Petite, graceful, and shallow, she was wonderfully fresh, and sex and companionship were a pleasure to both of us. But she was rushing me, letting me know she wanted to get married. And I needed more time to make sure she was a normal woman who could be trusted. I had feelings for her and I wanted to believe they were mutual. But it was an illusion again. When she saw that I was in no hurry to marry her, she started secretly flirting with other men. I caught her once and we broke up. What could I expect if I stayed with her? To watch the menopause slowly drive her mad, to live with her tantrums for any reason?”
Jill smiled and remained silent.
“You’re probably will ask me what this has to do with Gibson?” I added: “Mel Gibson threw himself into love affairs, perhaps because he was tired of married life. But there’s something else here, because many families live in harmony into old age.”
Jill continued to smile in silence and, I decided to finish this subject: “Perhaps children are the jointly acquired asset that keeps a couple together who have long since grown tired of each other. But one day the children are grown up and gone. And the love of this lonely couple is long gone, and the loneliness is scary. And they cling to each other.
Perhaps the reason for Mel Gibson’s sin was not only that he lost the sexual drive to his wife. Romantic and naïve, he fell into the arranged networks of a Russian girl, the money hunter. After Gibson’s daughter was born, that money hunter immediately demanded compensation from him. And she got his millions. Gibson himself suffered a nervous breakdown and psychological trauma. He wanted a young pussy? He paid too high price for it.” I finished my glass.
“Men like him, like millions of others around the world, are physically incapable of having sex with women whom nature has already turned into grandmothers. And I think that sex with an old woman is a perversion, the first stage of necrophilia,” my emotions were overwhelming me, “in the East, men have invented harems for themselves, and religion allows them to have several wives. And thanks to it they live a full life up to a hundred years and produce offspring. But in the West, when a woman reaches menopause, she secretly wishes her husband impotence so that he does not run away to a younger woman. And she fattens him up to make him fat and lazy. Psychologists have not yet described this method of murder. But it is practiced widely!
It is a slow murder because impotence triggers prostate problems. Prostate inflammation is a precursor to cancer. All the efforts of scientists to prolong the life of a healthy man with prostatitis have been unsuccessful. To find the right solution, we may have to look to the East. I treat the problem by going to an illegal brothel, to young Asian women. And I meet a lot of men my age who go there too. They go there for a cure for aging and premature death…”
I puffed on my cigar. Jill was silent and I felt bad that I had burdened her with my problems.
“I think you should write your dissertation on this syndrome,” she sighed, “there will be a new scientist in psychiatry who will surprise a society that has long ceased to be surprised by anything. Please order some more champagne, my mouth is dry,” she asked.
© Copyright: Walter Maria, Certificate of Publication No. 214062000141
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