PRIMAL SCREAM

While I was still a stewardess I dated a cute guy, Jim, who was in dental school and sang in a barbershop quartet. If this style of singing sounds old-fashioned, his group was anything but, their harmonies electrifying. But the truth was I was more attracted to his blond older brother, Randy, who had the apartment next door to mine—and who only had eyes for my roommate, Marina. I remember feeling irked when Randy told her at the apartment pool that she had a beautiful voice, and she thanked him smugly, knowing I was the one he’d heard singing. I also remember the four of us going to the beach one evening and seeing my first blue tide, the waves shimmering with phosphorescence.

Marina, however, decided she wasn’t interested in Randy, and on a later outing, Ella completed the foursome. In the evening we drove up a mountain to a campground, arriving after dark. When Jim had matter-of-factly said on the way that he didn’t believe my family situation was as bad as I claimed, I was stung. Here was someone else—besides my mother, I mean—who was denying the reality of my experience. As the other three got stoned around the fire, I sat apart—I didn’t do drugs—and felt myself spinning in a whirlpool of pain. Years later I would know these feelings were archaic and stemmed from my childhood. But at the time all I knew was that I was going to have to break up with another boyfriend.

As I sat there in the dark, looking up at the starry sky, I was seized by an impulse to scream—but couldn’t. The imperative never to make public my true feelings was too strong. Throughout my adolescence I’d had to hide my pain because that was what my mother required of me. An irony I haven’t mentioned is that while she was judgmental and critical of me much of the time, she occasionally liked to say that I was more mature than my girlfriends, seeming to bask in this idea, which I sensed was really about her need to see herself as a better parent than theirs.

To air my real feelings would be to cast doubt not only on my mother’s superiority as a parent but on her legitimacy as a family therapist, which was our bread and butter. Her very reputation could be at stake. So I’d always understood, on some level, that I must never let my suffering show. To scream would be to broadcast to the world how damaged I was—how broken, defective, crazy.

I don’t remember how long my internal battle went on—just that it was fierce. I kept saying to myself that in the grand scheme of things, what did it matter if I screamed? The stars couldn’t hear me. Still it felt absolutely impossible…right up to the moment I did—a shattering shriek. (At the time I wasn’t aware of the concept of a “primal scream.”)

Afterwards I heard laughter, other campers imagining it was a prank, I suppose. To my surprise, there was no consequence whatever to my scream—no external one, at least. Not even Ella or Jim came over to see if I was OK. But there was an internal one—for a moment later, all my pain was gone. Though it might be difficult for some to understand, this was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. Jim and I drove back to his fraternity house the next morning, and, while he was in the shower, with no forewarning—well, except for the scream—I left him.