Goines On: In therapy

Click image for more vignettes

A colleague and friend of Goines from years ago had recently revealed he’d been in therapy. Goines had been in therapy too, at first in the early ’70s, during the time he and Kramer had worked in the same IBM department, so he was curious about Kramer’s therapy, wanted to share notes, exchange revelations. 

    But over the course of three or four emails, Kramer offered only brief, cryptic responses, concluding with a belligerently explicit refusal to tell Goines anything.

    Goines’ initial impulse, after reading Kramer’s final email, was to reply, “Fuck you too,” but he restrained himself and went to bed in silence, asking for some counseling from Artesia.
    Upon waking in the morning, Goines wondered whether Kramer’s therapy centered around his anger toward Goines some years earlier when Kramer had fallen out with Goines for choosing others’ posts than his to feature on December 31 that year, and maybe other incidents had surfaced in Kramer’s counseling sessions.
    Was Kramer still angry? Was he struggling with anger-management issues?
    For minutes while showering, Goines considered replying, “Thanks for revealing much more about your therapy than you intended to.” 

    But he reflected further that he didn’t know what was going on with Kramer any more than Kramer might. He would leave Kramer alone, leave him to his therapist, with Goines’ blessing. Maybe the two would become friends again. Or not.

Copyright © 2023 by Moristotle