BY REASON OF INSANITY by Edward L. Woodyard

By Reason of Insanity Chapter Thirty-Seven

Camelia Dempsey was more provocative than usual that day, misreading any signs of my interest in her as beyond professional. She thought that since I had wanted to see her for two days in a row, that my interest was now what she had desired all along, that we would enter into a sexual liaison. 

I had no carnal interest in Camelia Dempsey whatsoever; I had wanted to see her that day so that I could detect any abrupt changes in character such as what had happened with Duke. She persisted in telling me that I desired her. I felt like telling her that I would rather put my mentula maximus erectus in a garbage disposal and gleefully flick on the switch – but I didn't. But I was thinking it.

She draped herself on the couch; she was looking relatively angelic in a full-length white crepe chiffon and white satin slippers. "Smile and relax, Adam," she suggested seductively, "And enjoy the lies I tell you."

"I have to believe what you tell me. It's my job."

She extended her arm along the back of the couch and crossed her feet on a seat cushion. "I want to be glamorous. I want to have as many men in the world as I want. Just for twenty-four hours. To be able to go up to those men and know that they want to have me. Twenty-four hours. That's all I want. That's my fantasy."

"And what issue should we discuss today, Camelia?"

Camelia quickly sat up on the couch and stared at me in my wingback chair. With her left eyebrow cocked, she seemed surprised by my question, but then sat back to answer it, "Placing blame and being victimized."

"Two issues," I said. I urged her to go on.

"It's all society's fault. These great strides and the progress of human beings. If I didn't have everything done for me, then I'd have to do everything. And if I had to keep a roof over my head, grow my own food, kill my own meat, make my own cloth in order to make my own clothes. . ."

I entered my miasma again, hearing the opening riff of "Dazed and Confused." I was so tired of listening to Camelia Dempsey and her worthless, narcissistic, self-centered, egotistical problems which weren't problems at all. Reinterpreting the song's lyrics, I thought, "The soul of this woman was created below."

Of course, she had no idea what I was thinking as she babbled on.

Babylon?

I quickly imagined Camelia fulfilling her fantasy, of her being suspended above the famous hanging gardens in her full-length white crepe chiffon dress with hundreds of men worshiping her, she writhing in all the attention.

However, her diatribe of the day had moved beyond her initial fantasy. "Then I wouldn't have time to think about how miserable and unhappy I am. I'd be miserable and unhappy and know why. Because I'd be cooking and sewing and cleaning and complaining about not having any time to myself. I have all this time to myself and I'm not doing, I'm thinking."

I couldn't get Led Zeppelin out of my head. I was imaging Camelia as a woman created below, as if she were a female phoenix rising from the ashes of hell but posed like the Roman goddess of love and fertility in Botticelli's The Birth of Venus.

There was too much going on inside my head. I was trying not to think about Duke. It wasn't working.

I exclaimed to Camelia, "My son should become a psychiatrist!"

"Hey, Adam, where the hell are you?"

Camelia was getting angry, but all I was hearing was the wail of Jimmy Page's 1959 Gibson Cherry Sunburst Les Paul, after he attached a violin bow on the guitar's neck.

She went on, "What's with you today?! Your conscience working overtime?!"

I ignored her and turned toward my office window facing the side street. The music quieted inside my head and I confessed to whatever apparition was at the window, "I want the denial. I want the guilt. I want the need for mercy."

Camelia stood up from the couch and exited my office, slamming the door. I continued to stare at whatever the apparition was, angry at first then curious, "Dammit, Duke. Why?"

A shadow skirted across my office window and the apparition disappeared when light from the setting sun swept along the wall of thick glass. I walked to the window to try to see where the apparition had gone, but I instead tried to catch the sun rays shining through the leaves of a maple tree outside my office, dappling the sidewalk and my office carpet.

I shut the curtains and locked the doors to my office. I slid off my jacket and loosened my tie as I opened the closet door behind my desk and retrieved a 1959 Gibson Cherry Sunburst Les Paul guitar off a stand. I hit a power switch of an in-office music system.

I waited, guitar at the ready. The opening chords of "Dazed and Confused" boomed across the office.

But I just stood there. I didn't move. The guitar escaped my grip.

I knew something had just happened to Duke.

Kōan as intuition and instinct.