HERE COMES KRIS

I owe my receptionist an apology for what I said to her when she told me my next patient was Santa Claus. She has been trained not to support or allude to patients’ attachments, triggered behaviors and anxieties. To her credit, she didn’t get defensive. She just opened her eyes wide and said, “You should really feel honored.” Then her voice took on a breathy Marilyn Monroe tone. “Imagine,” she said, “Out of all the therapists in the world, he chose you.”

I took the new patient work-up from her and stomped to my office.

I expected a potential delusional disorder client in red and white regalia exhibiting copious mirth, but he was slouched on my couch in chinos and a golf shirt. He did have red cheeks and a white beard which, combined with the everyday clothes, made him resemble one of those gift store figurines where Santa is posed in event-specific outfits playing tennis or fly fishing like an average guy. The little renditions juxtapose the magical with reality, representing humanity’s desire to connect with beloved characters while maintaining their mysticism. They are a form of faith. People don’t believe Santa has any business hooking a rainbow trout, or doing anything that isn’t Christmas-related, and the iconography solidifies a conviction that Santa will always be Santa. Which, as it turns out, is exactly why he was in my office.

I assumed my listening attitude and summoned an air of cool, professional detachment, but as soon as I looked him in the eye some tic in my nature canceled professionalism and accessed my inner child. I had a moment’s cognition of the clinical relevance of my own reaction to a beloved symbol of all things happy before the radio dial of my psyche was involuntarily spun to a different perception. The air sparkled, and suddenly I felt nothing but hope and a purity of spirit. The man himself was actually before me.

“Santa?” The word sounded like a wish and a prayer mouthed by a boy borrowing my voice.

“Crap.” Santa’s shoulders drooped. “It’s The Mesmer,” he said, not very nicely. “It’s kind of an automatic hypnosis. I wish I could turn it off, but it’s part of the whole Christmas mystique.”

I couldn’t stop smiling at him. Santa waited me out by examining his pearly nails and brushing some lint off his Izod. Finally, he rolled his eyes and said, “Try to think about something you hate—celery, animals dressed as people, an ex-wife maybe.”

With some difficulty, I ordered my mind to think of bats. Nasty little rodent bodies. Clusters of them under an eave. The creepy circling they do at dusk. Ah! The spell was broken.

I shuddered and Santa deadpanned, “There it is. That’s the reaction that means you’re seeing the real me.”

I pulled over a chair and sat across from him. The sparkle was gone now and he was just a man.

“So does that Mesmer thing work on everyone Mister—” I drew out the er in Mister, unsure how to refer to him.

“I’d appreciate it if you would call me Kris.” He took a deep breath as if preparing to give a long-rehearsed speech. “The Mesmer affects without fail or discrimination every person except those who have hate in their mind and heart, as you just experienced.”

I was fascinated with this idea of spontaneous hypnosis and wanted to question him in depth about it, perhaps initiate a study, but this was about his wishlist, not mine.

“I see. And what is it that you would like to talk about, Kris? Can you sum it up in one sentence so we have a clear goal to work towards?”

Santa gave me a once-over that made me feel like I had just shouted God Dammit! at the Vatican.

“I want to be seen as a normal guy.”

“I’m going to play devil’s advocate here and posit that you are NOT a normal guy in the sense that I think you want to be. Further, there’s an ambiguity in your sentence. You didn’t say you want to be a normal guy. You said you wanted to be seen as one. There’s a lot of distance between those two states, so let’s try to refine your want a little. Tell me what normal is to you.”

I made a note that Santa squirmed when I asked him that.

“Okay,” he closed his eyes. “Normal is having someone listen to you because they’re interested in what you’re saying.”

“Mmm hmm. Go on. What else is normal to you?”

“Normal is having friends and going to public places without transforming everyone around you into a fuzzy, warm zombie. I don’t want to have to think about what would happen if I got groceries at Walmart or rode a city bus. I just want to do those things.”

As Kris talked, I realized what a dilemma he was in. With any other patient suffering an identity crisis I would know just what to do. A regular person can choose traits and behaviors to show the world. The world reacts to them, and the person chooses which traits to keep and which to let go, and Poof! an identity is created. If people don’t like this image, they can create another. Santa appeared to have none of these choices, and it was up to me to give him some. I needed time to map out a viable therapy for him, but I was conflicted. If I successfully helped him develop the normalcy he craved then the world might lose its representation of joy. On the other hand, if I fail as a therapist, then Santa lives on at the expense of his own happiness and I have to live with that failure. So in a sense, I had to choose a persona right along with him.

******

The next time he came for a session I immediately thought of something hateful and vile to show him I could treat him as his own person. And yes, I was aware of the irony. I shook his hand (Which healed my mallet finger!) and asked him how he felt we were progressing.

“A man in your waiting room sat in my lap and your secretary told me ten ways she’s been good this year.”

“Kris, I didn’t ask how the world was progressing. I asked how you were. We are here to focus on you.” I emphasized that for my benefit as much as for his.

He shrugged. “Nothing has changed. Isn’t there something more active I could do? Some psychiatric exercises maybe?”

“Well, you could write your bad feelings on paper airplanes then throw them out the window thereby symbollically divesting yourself of negativity.”

“Will that work?”

“No. I just made that up. My profession, unlike yours, isn’t a series of magic tricks. You’ll have to get used to the idea of functioning on a very basic level if you want to achieve this normalcy. One step at a time. That’s how normal people do it.”

He narrowed one eye at me and I had to think of mucus and warts to dodge his charm.

“Okay,” he said. “What’s the next step?”

I had spent a lot of time reviewing our initial session and had prepared a plan of immersion therapy. I reasoned that by taking Santa into extreme everyday situations—and I know how oxymoronic that sounds—he could practice showing his real personality. If he committed enough to the practice, he could shine through The Mesmer, and eventually people would see him divested of the persona, as a regular guy. I don’t know why I thought that. It doesn’t work for fly-fishing, tennis-playing Santa figurines so why would it work in real life? I think maybe I just wanted to be seen in public with Santa Claus, not Kris.

“I want you to sing in a karaoke bar.”

Kris threw his head back and ho ho ho’d. Yes, the belly is jelly, in case you’re wondering. Then he noticed I wasn’t laughing with him.

“That’ll never work,” he said.

“Kris, that’s a defeatist attitude.”

“It’s a realistic attitude. I can tell you exactly what will happen. I’m a freaking magical machine.”

“No, you can’t. Nobody can predict exactly what will occur in the future. Not even Santa, whom I notice you rely on to answer me when the choices get too hard for Kris.” I tapped him on the knee with my pen (Which wrote in gold ink forevermore after that moment!). “People will always surprise you if you let them. Why not just be in the moment and see how things go?”

“Why did you decide to be a psychiatrist? You don’t listen well.” He leaned towards me and peered into my face. “You have this veneer of listening, this act, with your raised eyebrows and strategically placed mmm hmms, but I think that after all these years in the business you learned how to look like you’re listening without really doing it. Hearing every child on the planet wishing for good things and remembering all of it—that’s listening. But you,” he waggled a finger in my direction, “You maybe got so good at faux listening that it’s become a character you can slip into and out of.”

He leaned back and stretched his arms out across the couch and, cueing off this open body language, I stayed silent and let him rip.

“I get it, you know,” he continued. “I get every last bit of it. Once people know you’re a psychiatrist they expect you to be one all the time. They expect you’ll listen to them at dinner parties and in the checkout line and that you’ll make them feel better about themselves. That just by telling you what they need, you’ll provide it. But there are times when you don’t want to be that guy. You just want to be Alan Feinbein. You want to be Alan who hates bats and Alan who loves slasher movies. But if you tell people you believe the 3D effect in My Bloody Valentine intensified the tension they’ll be shocked and think less of you, because they expect you to be a psychiatrist all the time.”

Maybe I should have stopped him before he got that far, but he was finally opening up, even though he was projecting. And, to be honest, it kind of fed my ego because here was Santa Claus, talking about me and he knew I hated bats. I mean, it was just a huge kick in the pants. And I am a regular guy; and I do want to be seen that way sometimes.

Kris had one hand up to his open mouth. “Gasp! Dr. Feinbein likes blood and gore? But he’s a shrink! I wonder if he knows he has latent violent tendencies. Maybe even suppressed phobias.”

I raised an eyebrow before I could stop myself. Hell, it is an affectation.

“I’m going to stop you there, Kris, because you’re deflecting.”

“Have you seen Black Christmas? I like that one. The 1974 version, not so much the 2006. It’s heavenly to me to see the holiday vilified.”

“Kris, I don’t like slasher movies. That’s something you attributed to me as you were changing the subject to feel more in control.”

“Porn then?”

“If you keep doing this I’m not going to help you.”

Kris flopped back on the couch and flapped his Hawaiian shirt a little to cool off.

“Man, that felt good,” he said. “No one ever argues with me. Was that one of your psychiatric exercises? Cause they kind of are magical.”

I should have told him it was not, but I needed to reestablish some professional authority and he seemed to really want some kind of structured task.

“What do you think it was, Kris?”

“Real talk,” he said. “No fooling. When I tell you that my singing karaoke won’t work I’m not being defeatist or deflecting—well, I was deflecting a little—but I’m telling you I know what’s going to happen. I’m being as real as I can be.” He pounded his body as if to convince me it was solid. “Santa is an imaginary icon, but I’m a real person and sometimes I feel like I’m the only one living in reality. The moment I step in front of an audience The Mesmer will make everyone adore me. I could sing I Touch Myself in a falsetto and get a standing O. So I’ll never know whether someone actually likes me.”

“I like you.”

“Oh, geez.” Santa looked at the ceiling and I let him sit with his own thoughts a while.

“Kris,” I said finally. “Did you ever consider that you use The Mesmer as a crutch so you don’t have to feel the vulnerability of putting your real self out there? How about you have a little faith—in me and other people? How about you put yourself—your real self—in front of other people and see what happens? How about you try believing in something you don’t think is likely?”

“How about I’ll do it if you stop saying How about?”

******

At the karaoke bar I directed Kris to put his name on the performers’ list and to choose a song that meant something to him on a personal level. I found a table off to the side and resisted the urge to tell everyone in earshot I was here with that guy up there, the one with the twinkling eyes and snowy beard. I really needed to get a handle on this attachment to his celebrity.

The club was full of twenty-somethings, plus one table with a man in a skinny tie and a fedora. Feeding his pychogenic need for ambition, I thought. Ironically, he’s doing it wearing Sinatra’s persona. I considered slipping him my card.

The emcee took the stage.

“We have a first-timer here,” he said. “Singing Hank Williams Jr.’s I’m Just A Man, please welcome Kris Nicholas!”

Kris lumbered across the stage—he really is quite a large man—wearing a brown suit and a pair of Chuck T’s. Nondescript, but with a touch of personal style. He was coming along nicely. He avoided making eye contact with the audience while he adjusted the microphone. There were a few murmurs of Need a hand, Pops? and I didn’t realize it was oldies night.

When his music started he stood straight up and faced the crowd. I looked away the second the gel spot turned his hair to spun silver. I looked at the audience instead. The Mesmer turned the sea of faces into open-mouthed masks. They looked like the Christmas choirs you see in holiday pictures.

Santa! It’s Santa Claus! The whispers hissed through the room. People clasped each other’s hands and leaned together, rapt in their joy. Sing Jingle Bells! they begged. Sing Here Comes Santa Claus!

Every heart in the room was spellbound except the fedora guy, who put his feet up on the table and shouted, “Sing the Bocephus, already!”

I filled my own heart with hate and looked Kris in the eye. “You can do this,” I mouthed.

He sang. Pretty badly, actually. Badly enough that a few people with perfect pitch or sensitive ears had their Mesmer broken. But then those few awakened listened. A karaoke audience might hate the singing, but they never hate the singer because they have a universal understanding of how hard it is to stand alone in the spotlight.

I'm just a man. I breathe and I bleed. Yes, I got feelings. I can hear and I can see.

Kris moved his gaze from one valid listener to another, noticing they were hearing him. I watched his face change from disbelief to surprise to the same joyful expression those who look at him usually have.

I'm not made of steel, and I'm not made of stone. I'm not a superhero. I'm made of flesh and bone.

He got down on one knee and sang to a woman in the crowd, then kicked up his heels a little and dragged out that last note until he had no more breath. The handful of folks who heard him applauded and whistled, and Kris pointed to me from the stage and shouted, “All you, Doc! That was all you.”

“It was literally all you,” I shouted back, but my voice doesn’t carry like his.

I was overjoyed with Kris’ performance and satisfied that I’d been successful with a tough case, which washed away the hate I was holding onto for protection. The Mesmer overtook me, and I sat back down in my chair, high on Santa mojo, awash in thoughts of watching slasher movies with my new best friend.