Paradox, by Michael A. Kay: He Stepped Away from the Edge

← Back to the beginning of Paradox

He stepped away from the edge.

* * *

3rd March

Today I received a new patient. Young Mr. Ahmed Cohen (nb: something is odd about that name, research) is a strange and challenging case. He was persuaded from jumping off a building to certain death two days ago, and has now been entrusted into my care so that I can discuss with him, and hopefully solve, his problems. Having looked at his birth certificate and his other various details I am deeply puzzled; he is described as, and I quote, ‘a black Caucasian male of Oriental persuasion’ and was born in the morgue of Blackpool Hospital. As for his physical appearance, I am quite at a loss to describe him myself. He is a tall-short, fat-thin person; one’s eyes seem to prefer not to notice him, although he seems to radiate from him a certain air of self-confidence. He has told me that people are simultaneously drawn to him and repelled from him. I can understand this; he would seem to be an affable yob, if such a thing is possible. Our first proper session is tomorrow; today was just a preliminary.

Alex Suten, psychiatrist, looked up from his desk into the garden. Well, into the garden wall, actually, he thought, but that wasn’t the point. His diary entry for today wasn’t exactly a piece of prize literature, but that had never been his intention. Ahmed Cohen, 25-year-old and escalator of the Arab-Israeli conflict, had now passed into his expert care. He was looking forward to tomorrow.

4th March
First session with Ahmed Cohen today. He is a fascinating person, speaking from a professional point of view. From any other point of view he is simply a bore. But I suppose he is an interesting bore. He told me about his life as an introduction to him and his life, as he sees himself. There are things you can’t learn from reading biographical reports. He was, according to himself, a very mature baby, and his parents, with whom I talked after his session, echoed this view. (nb: both parents very ordinary, sensible and self-respecting atheists by the name of Smith. They lived, and still live, in Blackpool. Still no pointers as to the origin of that name.) He then told me that, as he became older, he had become less and less mature, and that this downward spiral had continued until his teenage years. It was apparently at this point that he was told that teenagers were stereotypically supposed to be moody, obnoxious and immature. For then on he was found to be calm, polite and mature by all who knew him. His parents told me that he wasn’t into sports like the rest of his friends; he preferred reading and maintaining the business enterprise he had established. His neighbours had also noted that he favoured Beethoven over the sound of hide covered tubes being hit very hard with long sticks to the accompaniment of yelling and other loud noises. Or so I’ve been told. His parents said that they never understood Ahmed, and he says pretty much the same thing. After finishing school, he attended university, where, so his friends have told me, he preferred to study than to go to the wild parties they so enjoyed.
The mystery in this case is what caused him to feel the need to take his own life. I’ve started to look into possible reasons. It’s not lost love or anything like that; he views himself as a chaste lecher, for some reason. In our next session, in two days time, he will tell me about what he did after university. I believe this may be the key to the conundrum.

As Suten looked up, an ant climbed across the wall which comprised his field of vision, looking decidedly bored. Tomorrow he had to deal with, amongst others, a cabbie who’d lost his sense of direction in an accident involving an industrial strength trouser press, an anorexic Sumo wrestler and a bureaucrat who had suddenly realised that he was one. He sighed. Just another boring day at the office. He glanced at the mirror on his way into the bathroom. Was he getting fat?

6th March
Second session with Ahmed has proven to be quite fruitful. He talked to me about the jobs he did, or tried to do, after leaving university. The degree he achieved in law allowed him to go on to train to be a lawyer with a firm of solicitors called Smythe, Smythe and Fiecklegreuber. This he referred to as ‘Smythe Squared and The Other One’. Unfortunately, though, he was soon told by his employers that he wasn’t cut out to be a lawyer. In his own words, he wasn’t mean enough. One of the Smythes had told him specifically that he was just Not Quite Right. I think this to be an important development, but don’t consider it to be the main reason for him to wish to take his life.
As it turned out though, it was not a response limited to this one employer. After leaving the law firm, he told me, he decided to make use of his new found ‘lack of meanness’, to use his own expression, by volunteering to join a charity organisation. But it would seem that life had something against him, and wasn’t going to be beaten that easily; no sooner had Ahmed started a job which required the consideration for others he had demonstrated when attempting to become a lawyer, he became scrooge-like and bad-tempered. He told me that he used to hoard his own money and short-change the organisation whenever he could, and he didn’t know why. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. After a short time, his employer noted his unsuitability for the job, and asked him leave, saying that he was just Not Quite Right.
Ahmed then went on to recount to me several more cases similar to those I have already documented above. Each ended in his dismissal with those very same words: ‘Not Quite Right’. Examples included an illiterate librarian – before applying he had been a very experienced and competent reader – and an agoraphobic street cleaner. The agoraphobia subsided as soon as he left the job. He told me that this caused him immense anxiety, and made him feel as if life was always out to get him. Of course, in his own peculiar way, he managed to be a secure paranoid person.
Nonetheless, I feel that this was the reason for his suicide attempt. But now that I have found his problem, I still find myself at a loss to explain the cause of it.

He looked up from his diary, and had a sudden thought: is my hair getting thin? Does my age show? He was surprised at himself, for he had never been an insecure person. Indeed, it was not possible to be so if one was to be a psychiatrist; if one was to deal with the problems of others, one must first have control over one’s own.
He got up and walked into the bathroom to look into the mirror. What he saw was an old, fat ugly excuse for a face which he was ashamed to call his own looking back at him.
He suddenly felt an urge to feel needed.
“Mary,” he asked his wife, already in bed and trying to sleep, “do you love me?”

Over the next few days, he continued with his work as normal. He had handed in his report on Ahmed Cohen to his superiors; that case was now closed. The cause of the attempted suicide was now confirmed to be insecurity brought on by anxiety brought on by a sense of paranoia brought on by a lack of ability to fit in on the part of the subject.
Despite the completion of his job, however, Suten still felt the need to know the reason for Ahmed’s lack of ability to fit in. He also felt that something might be wrong with himself, for recently he had begun to feel, well, insecure. About his weight, his appearance, the quality of his professional conduct, everything, really. He even worried about the stability of his marriage, something which had never troubled him before. In fact, he had never been insecure about anything; psychiatrists couldn’t be. In fact, an insecure psychiatrist was almost a contradiction in terms. Like an ethical businessman, or an eco-friendly American. They were oxymorons. He laughed to himself. Actually, he thought, there are a multitude of ‘tree-hugging’ persons who reside in the more ‘Californian’ regions of America who should possibly be considered. On the other hand, as most of these people spent much of their lives unconscious it was debatable as to whether they really counted, he concluded.
Then he stopped. A little bolt of inspiration had just hit him, like a juggernaut hitting a squirrel; he almost didn’t notice it. He reached into the top drawer of his cabinet, where he kept his diary, and opened it to the appropriate page. Yes, there it was, ‘he would seem to be an affable yob, if such a thing is possible’, and ‘he views himself as a chaste lecher’. Were not ‘affable yobs’ and ‘chaste lechers’ contradictions in terms? Oxymorons?
He reached for his phone.

* * *

“Now, Ahmed, you understand why I’ve asked you to come back here?” Dr. Suten asked of his former patient.
Ahmed Cohen nodded. To be completely truthful, he wasn’t exactly sure why he was back here in this over-friendly room with an over-friendly man and sitting in an over-friendly but not overly comfortable chair. He had received a call in the late hours of yesterday evening from this guy saying that he thought he knew the cause of his problem. So, human curiosity being what it is, Ahmed had sauntered over to the establishment to sit once more on the big black couch. Only now he wasn’t sitting on the couch, and it was more like a friendly chat than a psychiatric session. Of course, he thought, that was probably the doc’s intention.
“Ahmed, I need to ask you a question. Is that all right?”
“Yeah, I s’pose,” came the half-hearted enthusiastic reply.
“All right. What do think is the cause of your condition?”
Ahmed sat for a minute, thinking about this and attempting to formulate an appropriate response. Eventually, he looked up and said,
“Actually, I blame those words.”
“Which words?”
“You know, ‘Not Quite Right’.”
“Oh those. Well, I have another theory, and it is this: that you are an oxymoron. You know what one of those is?”
“Yes, ‘a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction’,” Ahmed answered.
“Hmm…someone’s been reading their Oxford dictionary. While I haven’t yet been able to find a cause for what, for the sake of the argument, I shall call your ‘oxymoronity’, I find it interesting that you should blame three words for it,” said Suten.
“Well, it’s got to be their fault, hasn’t it? I mean, what else is there to blame? Fate? Destiny? Karma? Cheesecake, maybe?” If it was possible to shrug sarcastically, he now did so. “I’m in control of my own life, doc,” he concluded.
“Yes, we all like to think that, Mr. Cohen. Sadly it isn’t always the case. However, in your situation, I believe that something could be done. Your comment on how the words ‘Not Quite Right’ are to blame for your predicament gave me an idea. Is it not true that, as a teenager, you were immature until you were told that a teenager should indeed be immature?”
“Yes, that’s right, it was my Great Aunt Bessie from Australia,” remembered Ahmed.
“So, you wanted to be different. Whether it was a conscious decision or not, the decision was made. And, looking at your life, we can see that this has happened throughout, and has in fact been the cause of your misery.”
He paused, for dramatic effect, of course. When his patient began to get nonchalantly impatient, he decided it was time to stop and deliver his bombshell, like a psychiatrist finally deciding to deliver a bombshell, only more so.
“What I believe you suffer from, Mr. Cohen, is-” another pause, “-Chronic Individualism. With perhaps a side order of Acute Arrogance.”
You could almost hear the capital letters. And then a second bombshell.
“Do you like me?”
This last comment was made with all the dignity of a five-year-old attached. Alex Suten was becoming insecure. Very much so, in fact. He realised this, and said,
“Forget I just said that. There’s something else I’m thinking at the moment. Not only is your need to be an individual so strong that your personality seems to change due to sub-conscious decisions affected by the situations in which you find yourself, you also seem to be able to affect others as well. At least, I think so.” He started to bite his nails. “For example, since meeting you I have slowly been on a downward spiral. I have been becoming an insecure psychiatrist. Ideally this should be an oxymoron. When you first came to me, you believed, as many believe, that a psychiatrist should be infallible. As a result, sub-consciously and, might I add, somewhat rebelliously, you decided that I shouldn’t be like that. I should be insecure.” He quickly looked around the room before continuing, “You are, in short, the ultimate in rebellious teenagers, one who not only thinks that everything should be the exact opposite of what it is, but one who can, if unwittingly, actually change himself and other people accordingly. Do you understand?”
The expression he got from Ahmed was as blank as a telephone sanitizer’s CV.
“It’s all rather confusing, really.” Suten shrugged.
The expression brightened up a bit.
“Now all we’ve got to do is find a profession you can do even if you are the opposite of what you should be,” mused Dr. Suten. “Ah, I’ve got it.”

* * *

3rd March
Received a new patient today. He’s a homicidal maniac, but I’ll soon fix that. Ernistavo Smith, my resident megalomaniac, now hates power, and now wants only to live a simple life in harmony with nature. He no longer wants to rule the world, as he found that this often caused him a little inconvenience with several of the more powerful national governments. I have also managed to cure, within the last few weeks, an agoraphobe, a claustrophobe and a vet. The latter is now living a completely sensible life somewhere north of Swansea. This is not bad going, in my opinion, although I have been feeling a little insecure myself recently. I shall have to persuade someone to tell me that psychiatrists are supposed to be silly. This should not be too hard.

Ahmed Cohen, psychiatrist and Oxymoron Extraordinaire, looked up from his writing desk at the long green garden he could see out of the window. He smiled. His entire life was a paradox, but now it was a good one. He had a perfect job, a perfect wife, and children who were no trouble at all.

I am deeply grateful to Dr. Alex Suten. He was right; I can turn people into oxymorons, and it’s brought me great success this past year. It’s a pity he had to go into that Home.
I am very happy with my new job, but I am considering extending my horizons. Perhaps I’ll go into politics. It looks as if America could do with someone like me. Maybe I could be useful there.

* * *

The future will not be easily perturbed from its pre-destined course. Like a juggernaut doing seventy miles per hour down a motorway, it refuses to stop for a hedgehog. Even if it is a very large hedgehog. Fate will happen, and a carefully thought-out future will unfold, no matter what its participants think or do…