"Previously on In Treatment." "I'm trying to make this work." "I wanna make this work." "You don't know anything." "You don't know me at all." " I've done terrible things." " It was an accident." "Really terrible things." "I had sex with Ben." "My worst nightmare." "It's happened and I feel like this huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders." "You said after your father died, your mother never forgave you." "Maybe you've never forgiven yourself, Amy." "Maybe you feel that if you degrade yourself enough, someday somebody will forgive you." "What do you see in me?" "How could you possibly be with me?" "I loved you." "Loved." "(Paul) Hey." "Hey, Max, don't dump that stuff on the staircase." "Call Devinn and get that reading assignment, OK?" "(Exhales)" " Hey, how'd he do?" " Good." "They're a pretty good team." "I'm glad you went." " It was fun." " Paul, could you do me a favour?" "Close the door." "I want to talk to you about something." "Uh, I left Gina a message today and..." "I told her that..." "I won't be going back to therapy any more." "You and I, we can go back and forth forever about where our problems started and... who did what to whom, who's more to blame." "I can't do that any more." "I need to figure... this out, and I think I need to do that on my own." "OK." "I'm really happy that you're seeing Gina." "And I really hope it can help you." "(Door closes)" " (Paul) Is Amy joining us today?" " No, I don't think so." "OK." "So, what's been up with you, Jake?" "Well, it's been a pretty weird week since we saw you last, Paul." "Very quiet around the house." "Awkward." "We barely speak to each other except when Lenny's around, who somehow seems really relaxed and at ease." "(Laughs) He's such a funny kid." "Man, I wish you could meet him." "He..." "He was telling us this joke the other day about these, uh... these two cannibals that eat a clown." "And one cannibal turns to the other and says..." ""Does this taste funny to you?"" "(Both laugh)" "Anyway, Amy and I are laughing despite ourselves." "It was very surreal." "(Paul) Mm." "Kids do that when they sense tension." "They try to get the parents to come together." "You're probably right, but he shouldn't have to do it." "It's not fair." "You're right." "It's not fair." "(Sighs)" "Amy's been trying to reach out to me this week and... you know, make it all OK, the whole Ben thing, but how can you make up for something like that?" "To tell you the truth, it's pretty sad watching her try." "When Lenny fell asleep the other night, she ran around the house, pretending to be busy with house shit, which she never does, just trying to run into me." "At one point we were really close together in the kitchen and she tried to kiss me." "And I just..." "What?" "Just couldn't do it." "I wasn't into it." "My heart wasn't there." "Mm." "Yeah... it can be hard to relate to somebody..." " after something like an affair." " Yeah, you're telling me." "Bizarre." "Late that night, she had... fallen asleep watching TV and I just..." "I just stood there looking at her." "How did you feel?" "Well, she sleeps with her both hands tucked under her cheek like in those kid books." "You know, the way they draw the angels sleeping." "She didn't look like a woman who had just fucked some other guy." "She looked really beautiful." "And I was thinking how easy it would be to just... lay down next to her and put my arms around her and..." "But you didn't?" "No, I couldn't." "I just remembered how easily she could chip away at me and lure me back in." "So I jumped in my car and I got the fuck out of there." " In the middle of the night?" " Yeah, that's right." "Where'd you go?" "I thought of going to Elliot's, but he had a date." "I didn't want to walk in on anything, it's been about six years since the guy got laid, so I just kept driving." "And I ended up at my parents' house." "(Laughs)" "The kicker is they live about four hours away in Virginia." "It was too early when I got there to ring the doorbell, so I just sat out front in my car and fell asleep." "How often do you see them, your parents?" "Mom comes to see Lenny pretty frequently, every couple of months." "Maybe we go out there for the holidays a couple of times a year, not much more." "Is your father close to Lenny?" "Is my father close to Lenny?" "That's a good question." "I..." "I mean, I think so." "They spend time together, Lenny likes him." "But it always feels finite, I can't help but get the feeling that he leaves him hanging, like he's spent a few minutes with the neighbour's grandchild and it's time to go." "My dad, being the narcissist that he is, is oblivious to it." "Has Lenny said anything to you about it?" "No." "He seems fine with it, so who knows?" "Maybe I'm just seeing things." "Mm." "I was asleep in the car outside their house and all of a sudden there's this knock on the window and it wakes me up." "And it's a cop." "And who's the cop?" "Mike Garnett." "Went to school with me, wanted to be a cop since the first grade and now that's what he is." "It's really funny." "He fulfilled his childhood dream." "I don't think I know anyone who became what they wanted to be as a kid." "When I was growing up, in the wintertime there was this guy, um, and he would come over with his chainsaw and would swing from tree to tree cutting branches before they froze and fell off, like a fucking monkey, it was unbelievable." "And he was the only guy I knew who my father didn't tell how to do his job." "That's who I wanted to be." "Mm." "The old man, he's such a know-it-all." "The funny part is, though, he does know it all." "He can tell you the exchange rate for a Guyanese dollar, how to cook a freshwater salmon in a clay oven or the history of the silk worm." " What, does he write encyclopaedias?" " You'd think, right?" "No, he's a college professor." "My mom too." "Intellectuals." "Big readers, unlike me." "I don't read." "I don't think I've read a book since I left high school." "Does that mean you don't or you won't?" " I haven't." " Really?" "I remember once I misquoted Roland Barthes and you corrected me, where did that come from?" "I grew up in a household where everyone was reading." "That shit was everywhere." "Any parrot could pick it up and spit it back verbatim." "That's what happens when your dad is an emeritus professor of Renaissance studies and your mother teaches classics, Greek and Hebrew." "But I don't read." "I mean not literally." "Obviously I read." "I mean, read music or manuals or headlines, but I just..." "I don't know." "I'm not like them." "I do kick ass at crossword puzzles, though." " You do those?" " I'm not very good." "Sunday New York Times crossword does me in every week." "Yeah, it's a tough one." "You know, to do crossword puzzles, you need to have an extensive vocabulary." "It's hard to reconcile the idea of somebody who doesn't read with somebody who is good at crosswords." "There's nothing to reconcile." "I'm good at it and reading makes me restless and bored." "So did you acquire your love of crosswords from your parents?" "Not really." "My mom's all right at them." "My dad sucks." "So what did you do as a kid when everybody else was doing all this reading?" "I don't know." "Play guitar, collect baseball cards, smoke pot." " Did that get you into trouble?" " Not really." "Nobody noticed." " Nobody noticed that you got high?" " No." " So who were you getting high with?" " Myself, mostly." "Mm." "So would you say that you had a lonely childhood?" "Nah." "Why?" "It was OK." "I talked to myself a lot." "You know what one of my favourite things in the world is?" "Talking to Lenny." "And we talk about anything, but mainly we talk about sports." "And he can just go off." "Aluminium bats versus wood..." "Fuck, anything." "The kid has a brain like a computer." "He's not even ten and he can list off all of Boog Powell's stats from the 1970 World Series." "(Chuckles)" "That's just amazing to me." "I never get tired of hearing that little fucker talk." "You get like that with your kids?" "Not so much any more because they're older, but with my, uh, youngest, yeah, still do." " And how old is he?" " He's, uh, nine." "Just like Lenny." "Did you have that relationship with your father?" "No, I avoided talking to my father when I was a kid." "It just wasn't worth it." "He was the kind of guy who would wince if you said "sure" instead of "surely"." " Did you find it easier to talk to your mom?" " She wasn't as bad, but what was frustrating was... she would always defer to him on everything." "It was like she saw him as this hotshot at another level from everyone." "He got tenure at 33 and it just wouldn't occur to her to have an opinion different from his - than his." "If you were him, you would have corrected me on my grammar." "If you were he." "Hey, they didn't beat me, right?" "It could've been a hell of a lot worse." "That's true." "It doesn't..." "It doesn't mean it wasn't difficult." " So when did you start to write?" " I don't." "My brother Nathan is the writer." "He's a novelist." "He was just short-listed for some prize last year, some big national award." "I can't remember the name." "I'm sure my parents remember." "But you're a writer too." "Or don't you consider songwriting to be writing?" "No, sure, I do." "Some of my favourite writers are actually songwriters." "People like Dylan, Cohen, John Lennon." "I agree with you." "I would put Dylan on par with Walt Whitman," "Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes." "Just try telling that to my family." "You know, for somebody who..." "who's not a great reader, you seem to be pretty familiar with great poets." "Nobody's really familiar with Pound." "They just fake it." "(Chuckles)" "(Both chuckle)" "But I get the feeling that you like to play down your knowledge, your intelligence." "I..." "I don't know." "It's just my folks' world." "I guess some of it's rubbed off on me." "But it's just not me." "Did your parents ever express an interest in what you might do for a living?" "My dad probably wanted me to be some kind of academic." "It's the family business, after all." "But what did he expect?" "I don't know." "I think he gave up the dream on me pretty early after I flunked out of high school." "Which came first, your father's low expectations or your low grades?" " What do you mean?" " Often with expectations, there's a self-fulfilling prophecy." "Maybe you decided that you couldn't match up to his expectations" " and so you gave up trying." " Could be." "My mom was always trying to get me interested." "She'd help me study for tests on the sly." " On the sly?" " Yeah, it pissed my dad off." "He thought she was spoon-feeding me things I should've figured out by myself." "And she was terrified he'd find out." "Was she... generally intimidated by him?" ""You're so right, Abe." "I never looked at it that way, Abe."" "Yeah, it made me want to scream." "One thing you can say about me, Paul, is I sure as hell didn't marry my mother." "You mean you didn't marry a woman who was intimidated by you." "So, how do your parents feel about Amy?" "She's a successful businesswoman, she's got an MBA." "They fucking love that she went to grad school." "Their high-school dropout of a son married a hotshot businesswoman." "It's interesting you use the same word to describe your father also - "hotshot."" "Do you think that they're alike in other ways?" "They're not." "They're total opposites." "He's all rumpled corduroy, stains on his shirt, and she's, well..." "Hell, you know what Amy is - meticulous, put together, very materialistic." "She loves her stuff, huh?" "You know, when we met, I was crashing in this crappy apartment over a garage." "I think it turned her on." "And the woman had never fucked on a bed without a box spring, and she liked it." "You know, coming down from her pedestal, hang with the riffraff." "Did you feel like your father was also on a pedestal?" "Come on, Paul." "Let's get off this, all right?" "This is not why I'm here." "I don't have that many people to talk to right now." "And I'm scared shitless of losing Lenny in some custody battle." "Amy's... unstable." "This is the second time she's getting a divorce after having an affair, and I think she's gonna fuck him up." "You said yourself she needs losers around." "I think she's gonna teach him to be a loser." "She's damaged, Paul." "She's fucked up." "I haven't gotten much right in my life except that kid and that kid is..." "What the fuck?" "Did you not pay your electric bill or something?" "Uh, looks like it's out in the entire street." " You want to go on?" " I can see you fine." "You sure?" "For the first time, Paul... it really feels like we're splitting up." "No matter how many times we've talked about it or... brought it up, it's never felt so... real." "Why do you think it feels different this time?" "The last time you were here, you... you implied that you'd fallen out of love with Amy." "Would you still say that's true?" "I don't know." "How would I know?" "What does it feel like?" "I've only been in love with one girl." "Her." "I've never fallen out of love." "Tell me what it feels like and I'll tell you if I'm feeling it." "Have you ever felt it?" "There's a huge sadness there... cos you know what's been lost." "And you begin to lose the desire to... connect." "Maybe you should ask your father." "He's the guy who knows everything, right?" "Did I tell you what he said when I told him my marriage was over?" ""Well, this isn't entirely unexpected, is it?"" "He expects me to fail every time, at everything." "Why did you go home, Jake?" "I don't know." "It was an accident." "I started driving and that's where I ended up." "Mm." "This is therapy." "We don't believe in "accidents" here." "All right, fine." "I mean, I'm about to be a single dad." "Maybe I, uh..." "Maybe I just felt like I wanted to talk to my mom." "Or your dad?" "Have you been listening to a word I say?" "I can't fucking stand my father." "It's interesting that you used the same word to describe Amy and your father, hotshot, but you insist that they're nothing like each other." "They're not." "Where are you going with this?" "Look, you married an intelligent, over-achieving woman, who seems absolutely certain of her authority in the world." "And the criticism and disappointment that you got from your father... don't you feel that that's what you get from Amy?" "Your relationship with Amy is falling apart, so you drive for four hours to Virginia and you find yourself by accident outside your father's house?" "You think I was going back to the source." "Jesus, that's sick." "It's not sick, Jake." "The more we open ourselves to the therapeutic process," " the more we can examine..." " More therapy?" "I need that like I need a hole in my head." "Do you know what?" "Who cares why I went home that night?" "What does it matter how my parents talk at the fucking dinner table?" "I have learned from my father's mistakes." "I'm a much better father than he is." "I don't want to fuck it up, Paul." "I don't want to fuck my kid up." "I need..." "I need their help." "I need your help." "I need help, all the help I can get." "What's the road map, you know?" "I feel scared." "You know, I wish I could say it was that simple, Jake." "That I could just give you a... a road map, a book of instructions but... unfortunately, life isn't like that." "But you know that old saying that a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step?" "Yeah." "Or in my case, two steps up and one step back." "(Exhales)" "You know, if this was a movie... the lights would come on right now." "If this were a movie." "Were a movie." "English SDH"