On the Ropes: A Duffy Dombrowski Mystery Read Online Free

Their therapy sessions consisted of them bitching at each other, ignoring anything I said, and then leaving with absolutely no intention of changing anything at all about their lives.
    I would like to say that the session with the Abermans would take my mind off Walanda, but it had just the opposite effect. Michelle was droning on about how Morris swam to the opposite side of the pool during adult swim at the Crawford Jewish Community Center and totally ignored her. I couldn’t blame Morris—hell, if I had to swim with Michelle, I’d try to break the record for holding my breath underwater.
    I know I’m not supposed to allow it to, but the lives of my clients get to me. Not the Abermans’ chlorinated crisis—shit, that was all their own doing. Walanda never had a chance, and all psychobabble bullshit aside, what was there in her life to be hopeful about?
    I stewed while the Abermans bickered. Morris had moved on to the pressing issue of Michelle’s refusal to attend Morris’s college debate team reunion. I decided we didn’t have enough time to tackle such an emotionally challenging issue this week and I politely ushered the lovely couple out.
    Right after the Abermans, I had an appointment with Michael Osborne.
    “Mikey,” as he preferred to be called, was a flaming gay guy who hung around Jefferson Park taking hits of poppers and engaging in anonymous sex with the crowd of gay men who frequented the park. There was also fairly consistent traffic of straight men that seemed to gravitate to the park to play an anonymous game of kielbasa hockey with guys like Mikey. Mikey spent a lot of time in women’s clothing and some of what he talked about in sessions was the idea of getting the series of operations to get transgendered. He wasn’t terribly committed to it, so it was never really pursued. Mikey favored leather skirts and they were usually of a color not found in nature like electric pink or purple, but it worked for Mikey—that is, if you liked a really hairy calf coming up from a stiletto pump.
    Mikey got into treatment because he was forever getting arrested for his park activities and he always had some drugs on him. My concern for Mikey was that he was either undiagnosed with HIV or he was bound to catch it very soon. The goal of treatment was to get him out of the park and out from behind the bushes. His lifestyle excited him and he was addicted to all of it, not just the drugs or the sex—it was all of it together.
    Mikey always made his sessions and he usually was fun to talk with. He played the flamer role to the max and with it came a terrific sarcastic sense of humor. Several times when he talked about how his family disowned him or his lifelong failure to sustain any kind of normal relationship he’d break down and sob. He cried so hard one day I hugged him and he shook and cried until he seemed exhausted. When he was done, he broke our hug by goosing me and then winking at me.
    That was kind of a microcosm of who Mikey was. There were layers of hurt that he would get to and touch, but as soon as he could muster the strength, he would gather it and assume his role. It was the shell he’d retreat into to feel safe.
    Mikey didn’t show for his session, which was very unusual for him. That would’ve given me time to get after some more notes, but I just wasn’t in the mood. That meant that for the day my bookkeeping took a few steps forward and a few more steps back, but I didn’t care. Honestly, it made me feel a bit uneasy, but not uneasy enough to stick around writing.

4

    I got home just after six; I was exhausted and had picked up a cup of coffee on my way home. I live in a 1968, twenty-seven-foot Airstream Overlander trailer on some land out on Route 9R that belongs to Doctor Rudy. There’s nothing on 9R in either direction from my place, it is just a series of stretches of land east of the industrial section of Crawford. The area’s environmentalists insist that the fields on 9R are