THE FROG HANDLED MUG: Chapter One

It's been a while since my last post, as I've been busy creating my new book, The Frog Handled Mug. I'm in the maddening midst of trying to get an agent to take a look at it, but since I write to share what I write I'm going to post the entire book here. Each post will be a new chapter and I would appreciate any and all feedback, including referrals to any agent or publisher you may know. So, here we Go.

The Frog Handled Mug

Chapter One

He is me, but not me. Tall and blonde he sits at the kitchen table sipping coffee from a frog handled mug. The coffee is bitter without sugar. I can taste it. How I know I can’t tell you. He is thirty-six and married to a dark haired woman with brown eyes and killer legs. I’m a leg man myself, preferring a well turned calf over all those other features that usually turn a man’s head. Most of my male patients do not share my preference for the female leg. Sure, they like good legs, but their preferences lay further north.

A few pieces of snail mail are on the table, and unlike my mail there are no bills and no junk. Maybe they came yesterday or are coming tomorrow. His name and address are on the top letter, David Cawley, 121 Briarwood Rd, Norwich, CT 06360. There are no stamps or postal cancellation marks on any of his mail. That’s odd. It is summer there, as the large maple outside his kitchen window is ripe with dark green leaves. I can hear the birds greeting the morning sun. The ground was covered with snow when I went to bed at 11pm, 2009, ten stories up in a Manhattan high rise. David turns in his chair to check the date on the calendar. It is August 24th, 2075. He has one of those rip-off-the-page calendars where the only date showing is the current date. David is religious about ripping off the pages. Why, I don’t know. I just know that he is.

If David Cawley is thirty-six and the year is 2075, then he was born in 2039, a good 94 years after I was born. How can he be me? Hell, he won’t even be born for another thirty years, and by then I’ll be long gone… maybe. Ninety-four isn’t out of the realm of possibilities. Why do I feel so certain that David Cawley is me, and not just symbolically me? How could I possibly have a dream of me in a time that is sixty-six years in the future? Hell, the future doesn’t exist yet.

David gets up from the kitchen table, his cotton bathrobe untied at the waist, and shuffles his six foot frame into the bathroom. He peers into the mirror and rubs his morning stubble. Being him I know he is not going to shave. David never shaves on the weekends and the stubble is only a day old, practically nothing for someone with Scandinavian genes. My beard, on the other hand, is dark and thick and requires daily removal lest I look like a bum. I am a professional after all, and have an image to maintain. I never liked Freud’s stubbled face. There are too many Freud look-a-likes in my profession.

Julia, David’s wife, clad in men’s boxers and a T-shirt that had SHIFTED 2069 printed on each short sleeve, walks into the bathroom. She rubs the sleep from her eyes and says, “Did you make contact?”

“Yes,” he said, “he’s watching us as we speak. He thinks it’s a dream.”
Julia wraps her tanned arms around David’s waist. “Does he know you’re him and he’s you?”

“He gets it at a gut level, but he can’t wrap his mind around it yet. Augusto’s too much a product of his time, and he’s too stuck in his profession’s dogma. He’ll come around though.”

“He has no idea about the part he’s to play in all this, does he?”
David smiles into the mirror. “It’s a tough time for all of them. The three years starting in 2008 was not a pleasant time. Emotions were being tweaked like they had never been tweaked before. Every emotion was intensified. Augusto’s office phone is ringing off the hook and he’s feeling overwhelmed. His theories, that worked for so long, no longer work.”

“Brave man,” Julia said.

“I wasn’t feeling brave in 2009. I was confused, freaked out.” David turns and bends down to give Julia a kiss on her forehead. “I think Augusto, has had enough for one night’s dream.”

On the wall behind him is a picture of a deer, a five point buck that is reflected in the mirror along with David’s head. He turns back to the mirror and as though looking directly into my eyes said, “What do you believe, Augusto?” David Cawley takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and disappears from my dream.

Over the 30 years I have practiced psychotherapy my patients have regaled me with their dreams. I humored them when they told me that the person in their dream was them, but not them. After all, they were a bit off center, if you know what I mean, and I never experienced a dream like theirs. Sure, symbolically all aspects of a dream in one way or another represent the dreamer. But, David Cawley IS me, Dr. Augusto DeRosa, psychotherapist extrodinaire. I am as sure of it as a schizophrenic is of talking to little green men. My patients had described lucid dreaming - being consciously awake within the dream - and I had read much about it in the literature, but this was my first experience with it. I must say, the experience far surpasses the description, but then that always seems to be the case. My body awoke directly after the dream. It is 6am. I say my body awoke because my mind is fully engaged. This damn dream challenges everything I believe about consciousness. It unsettles me. I am not easily unsettled.

It is just a dream, though, isn’t it? Sure, as a psychotherapist I believe dreams hold meaning, but the meaning is symbolic. What do I believe? David Cawley wouldn’t have asked me that question if the question itself had no significance. I feel the significance. I sit up and turn on the light. The sun should be up in about twenty minutes. I smell the coffee wafting in from the kitchen. I love those auto-timers. There is a chill in the room, but I like it cool when I sleep. I don’t like it when I wake up. I put on my robe and walk into the kitchen where it is warmer. Maybe I’ll skip my run this morning and exercise my mind on line. Tynedale’s appointment isn’t until 10am. That leaves plenty of time to check out a few things and make it to my office for my first appointment.

Chuck Tynedale is a classic obsessive compulsive. Nice guy, but a pain in the ass. Always shows up twenty minutes early and insists on the first appointment of the day, which means I have to open up earlier than I would like. Why do I do that? What do I believe? I believe it is the right thing to do for this particular patient.

I pour a cup of coffee, lighten it up, and dump in a teaspoon of sugar. How could David Cawley take it black? Too bitter. I like his cup, though. Maybe I’ll get one like it. Frogs are symbolic of many things. I walk to my front door and get the Times… Damn, Obama’s sending more troops. What a quagmire this is going to be. Another Nam. Felt like the hottest place on earth when I was there. More rain than a fish could tolerate. It was bad timing for me, being there for the Tet offensive.

I take care of some early morning business and spend the next two hours online trying to figure out what happened last night. First on the list was a symbol search…frogs, cups, summer, legs, mirrors…and…that picture of a five point buck that hung on the wall in David’s bathroom. I barely noticed it. Not much connects except for the frog. Every culture seems to have its own symbolism. Metamorphosis seems to be a hit, though. I mean, I’m not feeling any great change in my life, but I get a little tweak when I read it. I pay attention to emotional tweaks. Change would be welcome at this point in my rut of a life. No wife, no kids, one sister a hundred miles away in Connecticut, a drug addicted nephew and a girldfriend I’m not in love with. All I really have is my practice and my professorship at Columbia. I look at my clock, a horrible art deco thing. It’s time to meet my OCD.