"Previously on Masters of Sex..." "It's safe to say that we are not in the best shape financially." "The money will sort itself out." "I've been telling your husband for the last year he should rent this space." "It'd be better for our end-of-year report." "Oh, you're a Virginia referral." "You've been a very naughty orthopaedist, Dr Langham." "In spite of what you may have heard, my relationship with my patients is strictly professional." "Let's give a big Cal-O-Metric welcome to the new face of women's nutrition..." "Dr Austin Langham!" "Hi." "I'm Frank, and I'm an alcoholic." "Hi, Frank." "Disappearing acts have always been my speciality." "My dad taught both of his boys how to vanish." "Didn't he, Bill?" "I already knew the whole story." "I knew it because it's my story, Francis." "You're one of the bravest people that I know." "You just see what you want and you..." "You go and get it." "May I help you, Mrs Masters?" "I was wondering if you could use my help." "We need someone to make a sandwich run." "What can I get for you?" "Does drinking help to relieve your conscience about what it is we are doing to Libby?" "We have a greater purpose, Virginia." "It hasn't been about the study in years." "We're not gonna find the cure for dysfunction in an exam room." "We're not." "Tell me, Bill, which sexual dysfunction are you proposing we treat?" "Mine." "Ripped By mstoll" "You're comfortable?" "I'm not good at staying in one place for so long." "There was a five-hour wait at City Hall the day Francis and I decided to get married." "I wanted to come again another day because usually I'm a whirling dervish, but Francis sat right next to me, held my hand, sang me all the Gilbert  Sullivan songs he could think of, just to make the time pass easier." "Husbands generally don't come for their wives' cappings, although Frank would have been perfectly welcome." "Not so sure he believed that." "I know you and he had..." "Words, recently." "If you'd like him here, Pauline," "I could have my receptionist call him." "I'd do it if there were a chance of you two mending fences." "Well, there's really no mending to be done." "Meaning it's not necessary?" "Or it's impossible?" "He didn't come here to take you to task for anything, Bill." "He's made peace with his past." "The programme has been so helpful for him in that regard." "I think he just wanted to share with you all that he's come to understand..." "And here I thought you two came to me for fertility treatments." "We are desperate to have a family." "But I know for Frank that means..." "More than a child." "Well, babies are my stock-in-trade, so let's focus on that, shall we?" "Now, what can I have Betty bring you?" "Frank, or perhaps a magaz..." "Uh..." "Um, yeah, it won't happen again." "Thank you very much." "What on God's earth?" "I just got off the phone with the electric company." "I told them to check today's mail, where they would find our late payment, which they did, so the lights should go back on shortly." "And why was our payment so late?" "'Cause I had to wait for cheques to clear from eight patients." "We owed the specimen lab, which was threatening to hold up our results." "Then I had to put off the electric company until Cal-O-Metric's rent came in on the 15th." "Should I go on?" "I understand things are a little tight." "Our only prayer here is to sublet the rest of this floor." "I'm not gonna have my patients sharing lobby space with second-rate businesses." "Either it's tenants who aren't so fancy-schmancy but pay the rent, or you're gonna be doing pelvic exams with a miner's lamp stuck to your forehead." "I doubt those are my only options." "All right." "Here's another option..." "If we can't pay the heat this winter, then we're gonna be hosing down these marble floors, turning this place into a skating rink and charging admission." "What's your suggestion for viable tenants?" "I'm already looking." "You don't seem all that surprised." "Was it helpful, pretending to be somebody else?" "I mean, did the advice I gave you..." "Did it help your friend?" "To be honest, no." "No." "It was a disaster." "I clearly did not understand how therapy works." "Otherwise, I would have realised how ridiculous it was to think that I could stand in for her." "Maybe she provided you with a reason to seek treatment for yourself." "No, I came for her." "And I'm only here now because I thought I owed you an explanation as to why I wouldn't be returning, as a patient, at least." "I would love to be able to call you in the future..." "I find this work fascinating..." "If I have any questions regarding my own patients?" "Still, I'm wondering if anything we discussed seems to resonate with you on a personal level?" "My relationship with a married man..." "All the questions you asked surrounding that, why it ended." "So, that was your affair, not your friend's?" "Yes, it was." "It is." "It continues." "But it's not an affair." "What does the word "affair" con note for you that "relationship" doesn't?" "Something that's primarily sexual." "And yours is not." "No." "No." "It's..." "It's far more complicated than that" "It has been sexual in the past, but it's not now." "You and he..." "Don't engage in sex?" "No." "And why is that, may I ask?" "Uh, because he is impotent." "As you recall, there were two years when..." "We were apart." "But since then..." "Just in the past month, we've been together." "And I've taken care of you each of those times." "You yourself remarked on the trend." "But..." "When Libby had Jenny, she was capped, using..." "I have secondary impotence." "I can function..." "When I'm by myself." "It's when I'm with a..." "A partner." "So you and Libby have discussed this, and this is how you've explained this to her?" "Well, there are things that Libby and I..." "Don't discuss, and I..." "I'm not interested in the explanation," "I'm interested in the cure." "Well..." "With any patient, we would..." "What?" "We would explore a cause, a triggering incident." "Lester, for example." "He said that his..." "His problem started when Jane rejected him." "Well, that's Lester." "There's Shelley." "That's when we stopped coming here, stopped having sex when you learnt that I was seeing Shelley." "Bill, you know that Shelley wasn't any kind of rejection of you." "Are you with him now?" "No, you know that I'm not." "I know." "You're not with anyone at the moment." "You're here..." "With me, so if jealousy or, or..." "Insecurity were the issue, uh, there's no reason for me to feel either." "And yet my difficulties persist, so..." "So how can that be the cause?" "The psychology behind these physical problems is very complicated, and to understand the "why" of it..." "Oh, we can spend forever on the "why"" "and not get any closer to finding any kind of cure." "You know, the point, Virginia, is, we..." "We have an opportunity here, you know, to find a cure..." "Not, not just for me, but for millions of men." "We've drifted away from the work." "I..." "I admit that." "But, but this is the way back." "I'm broken, and you're the one..." "You..." "You're the only one who can fix me." "So, you consider the relationship to have a higher purpose now?" "I do." "Yes." "He and I, we are uniquely qualified to develop a treatment, to prevent countless marriages from dissolving." "Including his?" "Your partner's?" "No, his marriage is not at risk." "You don't think his wife feels the loss of his sexual companionship?" "I..." "Maybe I..." "I can cure him and send him back home to his marital bed." "That's very selfless of you." "I..." "I was joking." "And I don't think that sarcasm really has a place in therapy, do you?" "Did I misrepresent your intentions?" "I think that you are making some kind of judgement about me." "Doctor, I can assure you, lam at peace with this situation now." "I think if that were true, you would have telephoned me to cancel the session instead of showing up here." "All right." "Well..." "Uh, why don't you tell me?" "Why am I here?" "I think you want me to be all right with you." "In the very short time you've been coming here, you admitted to deceiving two people..." "Me, in pretending to be someone else and your lover's wife, in carrying on a relationship behind her back." "Is there anyone else you may have deceived?" "You want me to say "Myself," right, that I've deceived myself?" "♪ Mama's gonna buy you a mocking bird" "♪ And if that... ♪" "Libby promised helping out with this, uh..." "Civil rights office wouldn't interfere with dinner." "I'm happy to start dinner." "This little one is out like a light already." "Lullabies never worked with you." "You'd stare at me with that expression that said," ""I will not sleep, ever."" "Whereas Francis would just hum along happily, even before he could speak." "Always the entertainer, Francis." "He's more serious now, don't you think?" "When Francis was a child, you couldn't see a little darkness in him, under all that light?" "He tells me now I should have, that his good cheer was an act of..." "What did he say?" "Self-preservation." "You believe that?" "Well, if I've learnt anything, it's that everyone has their own version of everything that's ever happened." "Francis doesn't like the fact that I have a drink every night." "He hasn't said anything to my face, but I can see his disapproving looks." "You don't think I drink too much, do you, Billy?" "I think you drink, uh, as much as you want, which is as it should be." "Huh." "It's that programme of his, if we're gonna be perfectly honest" "I mean, good for him, if it helps." "All I want is for my sons to be happy." "But I also think it can turn a person into a policeman." "Or an amateur psychiatrist." "Or a member of a secret club." "Has he used the word "amends" with you?" "I mean, why do you need such a fancy word for saying "I'm sorry"?" "And who will these "amends" help?" "It's not like they're making things right dragging up the past, spinning it so it only serves them." "Has he forgiven you for something you didn't do?" "I just said, "Thank you, Francis." "That's very generous of you."" "But it felt a little like an accusation that's dressed up to be an apology." "I'm being too harsh." "No, you're not." "My wife." "Home from work." "ROBERT;" "We split everyone into four groups." "One group takes the towers here by North Jefferson." "There's 10 towers down by Carr Street, so we'll put two groups on those." "And the rest will start here by North 20th and move West." "So, let's get on the phones and make sure we deliver the best turnout possible, all right?" "Uh, what time is everyone meeting tomorrow?" "I need to make arrangements for my children." "You're not coming." "You just said you need as many people as possible." "The right people." "I can do as much as anyone else." "Look, we will be knocking on the doors of dirt-poor negroes with no jobs, no prospects, and probably already lost any ounce of dignity they ever had, and we're gonna try to convince them to stop paying rent" "on the only decent apartment most of them have ever lived in." "I would hardly call a rat-infested slum a decent place to live." "You'd just be one more white person showing up, trying to tell them how to live their lives." "These folks take one look at you, they'll close the doors." "And besides, there's rats in those towers..." "And lice, too." "And I think we both know how you feel about lice." "Now, if you're looking for something to do, you can start by getting lunch." "And no more tuna salad." "We're all sick to death of tuna salad." "Oh, he does give us credit in the footnotes." ""Masters and Johnson"." ""Were the first to identify specific stages" ""of sexual arousal, four in all, in a 1958 study." ""They have since ceased their clinical research."" "Well, I'll just have lo call Mr Kaufman and let him know we are still..." "Don't call him." "The worst thing we can possibly do is rouse the beast." "The beast?" ""Only found four."" "He's come up with the other two stages purely to distinguish his work from ours." "It's one study in a small journal." "The American Urology Review is a respected journal." "And everything we did in the past three years could be erased by Dr Joseph Kaufman, who has the audacity to list "dormant"" "as a stage of sexual arousal." "Well, Dr Joseph Kaufman is wrong." "Yeah, he's wrong, and he's been published." "Bill, I would not overreact to this." "Every name in the history of science is the name of the man who got there first." "Maybe it is, but it says right here in this footnote that we were the first ones out of the gate." "And it doesn't mention a thing about dysfunction, so we definitely have the edge there." "I'll..." "I'll be right back." "When my kids found it, they thought it was a teepee." "They even used it for playing Cowboys and Indians." "I didn't have the heart to tell them it wasn't a teepee." "It was the only dress mommy could still fit into." "But..." "Not any more!" "Smile, smile." "Clap, clap." "That's right, folks." "When Cindy here came to my office three months ago, she weighed in at nearly 200 pounds." "I was a size 60." "16." "A size 16." "The prognosis was bleak, but the prescription was simple..." "Just three small tablets of Cal-O-Metric per day." "And I went from overweight to feeling great, all thanks to Cal-Metric." "Cal-O-Metric." "Cal-O...with an "O."" "Why don't we take five to collect ourselves?" "Ah." "Can I use the little girls' room?" "Yes." "Thank you." "Boy, she is fantastic." "A regular Barrymore." "Say, I ran into Dick Davis yesterday, a fellow orthopaedist when I was still at Maternity, and told him what I'm doing now..." "Touring the state, starring in television commercials, helping women from Kennett..." "Here's this week's schedule." "Presentation at Vandervoort's Department Store tomorrow," "St. Louis Zoo on Wednesday," "Jefferson County Fair this weekend." "Tomorrow night, 435 Harney Avenue?" "What is that, a..." "A Woolworth's?" "My apartment." "Oh, and be sure to knock because the buzzer's broken." "I don't understand." "Cindy and I, we're..." "Presenting at your apartment?" "Just you..." "And me." "I thought we could have some special time." "Oh, you're not allergic to cats, are you?" "Because I'll be honest..." "I keep thinking about that golden hair on your wrists, wondering if that's the same gold colour all over your body or does it get darker as it gets thicker." "I'd like to see for myself." "Tomorrow night." "Same rules as the mall..." "Do not be late, or you will be fired." "I've been doing some reading, and it turns out that every marriage manual has suggestions for impotence, many of which we already know from Betty." "Um, but I've typed up a list." "Well, then you've typed up a list of remedies that don't work." "Even if the treatment is not 100% effective, we can still learn something from each one." "I've already tried all of Betty's quackery on Lester, nearly gave the poor man a nervous breakdown." "That's Lester, as you said." "Although, the session with Lester did teach us that it's best to try to resolve this condition with someone familiar, and we are familiar with each other." "So, let's keep it very simple today." "I'll use my hands..." "My mouth and you just relax, and stop thinking about it." "You know, I read somewhere that before Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, he did 140 failed sketches." "And before Roger Bannister ran the four-minute mile, he ran the 4:20 mile and then the 4:12 mile and so on." "We've only covered about a third of the options on this list, and I have heard that there have been successes with hypnosis." "You okay?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "I, um..." "I'm just..." "I'm..." "I'm a little dizzy." "I..." "I'm okay." "Here, um, come..." "Come this way." "Don't be embarrassed at all." "I almost went down like a ton of bricks on my first look at a retreating cervix." "Are..." "You're one of the doctors?" "Oh, no." "I'm the archivist." "I'm documenting the study on film, to keep a record of it for..." "Posterity." "You make movies?" "I prefer to think of it as telling the truth 24 times a second." "Le Petit Soldat?" "Godard?" "So you must have seen a lot of people come in and out of here." "Hundreds." "Does it work?" "Dr Masters says that he could cure me of my..." "Never mind." "It doesn't matter." "Dr Masters can cure anything." "Well, most things." "I mean, some things no doctor can cure no matter how good he is, right?" "You can't operate on the soul." "Only God can do that." "If you believe in that sort of thing." "I mean, lots of people do believe, obviously." "Before science, you had to come up with some way of explaining things." "A man in the sky with a beard makes as much sense as anything else." "That's oversimplifying things a bit." "Well, I only meant that..." "You know, people need to find meaning in something." "They, they need to believe in something." "Second law of thermodynamics is good and pretty irrefutable that the universe is hurtling inexorably toward entropy." "So life is meaningless, and all the pain and suffering is just blind, random chaos." "Thank you for the..." "The water." "Sorry." "I..." "I didn't come up with that theory." "Blame Lord Kelvin." "Brand new this morning." "Now I know why they were on sale." "You are a lifesaver, Gini." "More an expert since I only buy on sale." "I didn't dare ask for nail polish downstairs, not that they would notice my run, not that they would notice if I mimeographed for them in a Day-Glo bikini." "Yes, well, they do seem like a pretty determined bunch down at the CORE office." "They're determined to make this rent strike a success, which I certainly applaud them for." "A rent strike in this building?" "Oh, no, no." "At..." "At Pruitt-Igoe, the projects." "I'm sure Bill didn't tell you since he hates my working there." "The people in the CORE office think I'm nothing more than some bored housewife." "Well, I'm sure that they appreciate you." "Trust me, they don't, which is why I'm gonna canvass with them tonight, even though they don't want me to." "Bill agreed to you going?" "Which is why I need your help." "I'm assuming you two will be working late tonight again." "What if you told Bill that your sitter cancelled at the last minute and I'm filling in for her?" "That would explain why I'm not home." "Uh, you want me to lie to Bill?" "I could drop my kids off at your house with Henry and Tessa." "I would pay for the sitter, of course." "No." "That..." "That would not be necessary." "It's a good cause." "And we'd just keep it between us." "Unless the idea of lying to Bill is loo uncomfortable." "Uh..." "It's not, in fact." "What time should I tell the sitter to expect you and the kids?" "This way." "Ah, Virginia, good." "Uh, I want you to meet Shep Tally." "Mr Tally is a partner at Williams KulickPublicRelations." "Well, you are as pretty as the first day in June." "Thank you." "Forgive me." "I tend to think in terms of commodities." "Mr Tally was instrumental in helping my colleague, John Rock." "The John Rock..." "Who developed the birth-control pill?" "That one was a race, I'll tell you neck-and-neck the whole way." "Well, Mr Tally made sure that Dr Rock came in first, and he's going to do the same for us with, uh, Dr Kaufman." "This is quite the space." "Do you ever get the urge to, uh, strap on a pair of roller skates, do a few loops around the lobby?" "Uh, never." "Once." "I thought we could start with the, uh, archives." "This is Lester, our archivist." "Lester, Mr Tally would like to see some footage from the study." "Mrs Johnson and I will join in a moment." "Please." "We cannot afford an ad man..." "A public relations..." "A PR man, who's going to charge us to turn June into a commodity." "Look, either Joseph Kaufman is a footnote in our study, or we're footnotes in his." "All..." "All I'm asking, for now, is for you to join me in putting our best foot forward." "Show Mr Tally the value of our work." "Turns out ejaculate can travel up to three feet from where the sperm, uh, started its original journey." "Oh, thank God." "Mr Tally, I think the best way to understand our work is to start with the four stages of sexual response." "Orgasms tend to be shorter in duration and intensity, but aside from that, we've seen very few changes at all." "Our study has already invalidated a whole host of myths, uh, regarding the effects of ageing on sexual response." "Dr Masters, I'd like you to meet..." "Not right now, Betty." "Herb Spleeb." ""When life kicks you to the kerb, call Herb."" "Herb's a divorce lawyer, very interested in renting office space." "Mr Tally, why don't we continue to the exam room?" "Should the need arise." "So, as we observe clitoral stimulation, testicular swelling, skin flush..." "We measure heart rate during sexual activity as well as prostatic contractions, vaginal elongation, and so on." "So, the two of you catalogue what happens to the human body during sex." "What else do you do?" "Uh, well, we've recently begun a new phase of the study, treating patients with sexual dysfunctions." "Okay." "That's interesting." "It's also, uh, premature." "It's in the early stages." "We've barely begun." "But we've already made some major discoveries." "Discoveries we're not yet ready to discuss." "But will be very soon." "If by very soon, you mean years from now." "Hey, you know what's great about you two?" "This." "The two of you arguing, the back and forth." "You are like every married couple in America." "No, we're not married." "Doesn't matter." "Look, some scientist comes on TV, starts talking about sex, people are gonna tune out." "Maybe they think he's a pervert, or..." "Or maybe they just think he's dull." "But the two of you come on, both scientists and yet looking like the nice couple next door, and suddenly I trust you." "I'm..." "I'm sorry." "Us on TV?" "CBS is looking for documentary subjects." "Your archivist has hours of footage." "We would focus on the two of you." "We'd make it a human-interest story, something along the lines of, uh," ""Man and woman researchers plumb the mysteries of desire."" "The two of you could finally teach America how to have sex." "On television?" "Mmm-hmm." "Uh, you're right." "I overreacted." "Joseph Kaufman is..." "ls one article." "It's a minor setback." "We'll..." "We'll catch up." "Or we'll come in second place." "Which in this case, would be last place." "You said hiring Mr Tally is not the best use of our resources right now." "I did, yes, and then I listened to him." "Bill, if only one person gets the credit in these things..." "I thought Mr Tally was gonna land us inthe American Journal of Medicine, not TV Guide." "It is a less-specialised audience, yes, but think of all the people we could reach, we could help." "We could alienate entirely." "We already saw what happened to a roomful of doctors exposed to this work." "Imagine what'll happen when grandma turns on the TV and and finds the two of us discussing swollen labia." "Or maybe people are ready to hear what we have to say." "Wilhelm Reich died in a prison cell because of his theories of the human orgasm." "The FBI burnt his research." "Bill, this was your idea." "You hired Shep Tally because you want attention, recognition." "I want to win a Nobel Prize." "I do not want my work reduced to the warm-up hour before Mr Magoo." "I see." "Well, then, would you be able to forgive yourself if you did nothing and Joseph Kaufman walked away with the prize?" "We'll work in groups." "Three to a floor." "Now, the elevators are either broken or will break, so we'll take the stairs." "Be sure to tell the tenants that you're not with the housing authority." "Remember that not everyone will be happy to see you." "Be patient." "Let's go." "Put these up in the common areas." "Good evening, ma'am, I'm..." "Robert Jefferson Franklin." "Delila, tonight is serious business." "Oh, nights are always serious for you, Robert Jefferson." "I can't afford to lose my home." "We understand that, ma'am." "We just want you to understand that you have certain rights." "Rights?" "I don't even have the right to have my husband live with me." "Look, this apartment, this is all I have." "Yes, ma'am." "Nathan, Momma, come inside now." "Uh, Mrs Robinson says shes interested." "She wants to strike." "You may have to convince your daughter' though." "Don't worry about that." "She'll do what I tell her to do." "Come on, baby." "Double the olive brine, so it's extra dirty." "The... on." "Thank you." "Um..." "Uh, we need to talk." "You..." "Are so handsome." "I mean, my God..." "If you had curly hair, you would be David." "The one in Florence." "Um, you know how much I respect you, Flo." "And you are one hell of a good boss." "You know just what to say to a girl." "But I have to warn you, what you're asking me to do tonight, it's, um..." "It's just not possible." "Is that right?" "You see, when you've been married, uh, for 12 years, you develop a, a knack for pretending." "Pretending to..." "To be in-interested in 9/10 of the chatter that comes out of your wife's mouth." "Uh, but no matter how..." "How good you..." "You..." "You get at pretending, there are certain things that you..." "You..." "You just can't fake, you know, when a man doesn't feel about a woman maybe in the same way that she feels..." "She feels about him." "Do you..." "Do you..." "Because, um, he, he, he can..." "He can try." "Oh, he can try as hard as he..." "As hard as he would like." "He, he could lie to her, and he could, he could also lie to himself." "But..." "He..." "He..." "But his equipment is not going to function, do you understand what I mean?" "It's not gonna function because his equipment is is a lot like George Washington and the cherry tree, it cannot tell a lie." "Looks like your equipment's gonna be just fine, Dr Langham." "Shall we start?" "What's the agenda?" "Why don't you let me worry about that?" "Well, I just think we should..." "I just think you need to stop." "Isn't there anything you ever think about doing?" "To me, I mean." "Something unusual?" "Because I think about doing things to you." "I think about making you powerless..." "Completely at my mercy making you beg." "I don't beg." "You know that." "You can't touch my breasts..." "Not with your hands, not with your mouth." "I said no." "You can't touch them." "You can't kiss them or lick them." "No matter how much you want to." "No, I didn't say that you could move." "How much do you want me?" "I do want you." "I'm going to put you inside of me." "No, wait." "Keep talking." "I am talking." "No, don't, don't..." "Don't touch me." "What you said before, say it again." "You're right there." "You feel so good." "No, I don't." "You do, Bill." "That's not true, Virginia." "Okay." "We can begin again." "No, we..." "We can't." "It was working, Bill." "God damn it!" "Just leave it." "Okay." "Bill..." "Have you seen my, um..." "Well, I, uh hope that was good for you." "Well, I know it was good for you." "Both times." "Well, now that we've..." "Gotten that out of the way, I hope that we can resume our professional relationship without any sort of awkwardness between us." "What do you mean, "Out of the way"?" "This, you know, one-time thing." "Oh, Flo, please, okay?" "I love this job." "I'm good at this job." "I..." "I know how to talk to women." "I know how to make them feel like, like, like, like..." "Like happiness is one small dose of Cal-O-Metric away." "I know how to make women feel, feel good about themselves." "So do that for me." "Make me feel good." "I used to be young and beautiful, you know." "Make me feel like that again that young, pretty, desirable girl." "Okay?" "Morning." "Morning." "We're, um, preparing for the second canvass." "It'll be the night after next." "Same time." "How many signatures did we get last night?" "In that first wave of buildings?" "We're about at 30%." "That's better than you hoped." "Yeah." "Yeah." "It's better." "Do you mind if I Sit?" "I'd like to apologise." "Is that the apology?" "No." "Um, this is it." "Urn..." "I feel like I may have offended you yesterday." "Well, I..." "I hate to break it to you, but you're not the first person to call me a nitwit because I believe in God." "I don't think you're a nitwit at all." "I was always jealous of people that could believe." "I went to grade school with a guy, Freddy Russo." "He used to always brag that whenever he did anything bad, all he had to do was go to confession and it was like it never even happened." "Well, it's not as easy as all that." "I know, but..." "There is something comforting in the idea that you just have to tell the truth and you can be..." "Absolved." "Mmm-hmm." "I once heard that the greatest sin is despair." "That's true, I think." "When you decide to just give up." "I think I may have done that given up like that." "I have a a condition." "I can't do anything in the, uh with a girl." "Dr Masters tried to help me with it, but I, uh..." "I decided it wasn't worth it." "It was just too painful and humiliating so I gave up." "I guess that's my confession." "Okay, here's mine." "I also have a condition, and I always thought that it was God punishing me and that there was nothing I could do but learn to accept it." "So I gave up, too." "Greatest sin, right?" "Maybe it doesn't have to be." "I'm Lester, by the way." "Uh, Barbara." "Barb." "It's nice to meet you, Barb." "You, too." "Mmm, did he try the pump?" "I think that he would rather jump out a window." "Can you blame him?" "Sometimes that cure is worse than the disease." "Mmm." "Poor Lester." "You know, it can get under your skin, that, uh, particular problem." "One guy, he used to come in every Thursday night, worked at the, uh, florist's shop on Jefferson." "Always brought me something new..." "Um, daisies one week, lilacs the next, until..." "One time, he came in and he couldn't get anything going." "So, I pulled out all the stops, but it was like trying to raise the dead." "So, uh, he got upset and embarrassed, and I told him, "Come back next week." "You'll be fine."" "And now every week, he's coming in, lying there for 30 minutes while I'm going at it, pretending that maybe this time it'll work." "I start taking Thursday nights off, and he's..." "He's coming around asking for me on other nights." "And I have the girls tell him I'm out 'cause..." "There was something about the way that he looked at me, like..." "Like he was in agony and I was the only one that could fix it and why..." "Why wasn't I fixing it?" "What was wrong with me that I couldn't make it right?" "You dreaded seeing him." "Mmm-hmm." "Masters." "What?" "Francis, you always said never to let a regular doctor stitch you up." ""You'll look like Frankenstein."" "I'm not angry you called me, mother." "I'm angry you were drinking." "Oh, honey, for heaven's sake." "Don't be ridiculous." "I had one Tom Collins, like I have every night." "That car came out of nowhere." "You're going to blame the other driver?" "That's where the blame belongs, and the police officer agreed with me." "I can't listen to this." "Why don't you ease up, Frank?" "Oh, because this is my fault?" "What about what you're doing?" "What?" "Standing here, comforting her?" "You are enabling her, Bill." "She was drinking." "She got behind the wheel." "One Tom Collins." "You could've been killed tonight." "Stop badgering her, Frank." "Our mother has a problem." "Our mother has a laceration." "This is what you do." "You just..." "Put your head in the sand..." "That's it. ...and continue to ignore the fact that she is an alcoholic." "Alcoholic?" "Oh..." "Alcoholic." "All right, give me that needle, and get out of here." "I am still stitching her." "Not any more." "Do not come near me when I've got a needle near a patient's face." "You two." "Don't start." "Look what you're doing to her." " Giving her the best medical care?" " All right." "Enough." "I am the patient, and I say no more fighting." "And I am the plastic surgeon..." "And I'm telling you, your privileges here, in my office, are over." "Now, you can either leave of your own accord, or I will remove you myself." "We're nearly done." "I'll get Libby to come over and pick you up, and she can take you home." "Please, don't fight with your brother." "Please." "I cannot stand it." "This doesn't have lo end badly, Bill." "Please, um, summon your better nature." "I came to you after all these years with nothing but the best intentions." "After years of despair," "I finally had achieved some clarity." "Clarity that you're an alcoholic?" "That our mother is an alcoholic?" "Who's next, Frank?" "Me?" "Of course." "It took spending time with you to see it." "You mask it better than most, but..." "You have all the signs." "Mood swings, aggression, impulsive decision-making, chronic lying." "Really?" "Who am I lying to, Frank?" "Yourself." "We are a family with a shared disease, a corrosive disease, and if you view us through that lens, if each of us is able to address our sickness and treat it..." "I believe we can mend what's broken here." "We can find some peace, forgiveness, understanding." "Faith, hope, charity." "Christ" "You toss around platitudes like it's confetti at New Year's." "I have surrendered." "That's all." "Once I accepted my our affliction all that self-pity, all that resentment I had toward dad..." "I hated dad for so long." "Do you remember how he used to drink?" "One glass of Seagram's, neat, every night." "That was it." "It was much more than that." "No, it wasn't, Frank, and for you to suggest..." "It all fits, Bill!" "His drinking, his rages." "For the first time, I understand Dad, his own feelings of impotence and, and self-pity." "He was being eaten alive, too." "This is our father." "Our father was a monster." "Yes, drunks are monstrous, but our monster was a sick, suffering alcoholic." "He beat us because he drank, but he drank because he had a disease." "He did not beat you." "That, that is not true." "You know he did." "You're lying because, because you're needy, you know, because you think that somehow, if..." "If you take my story..." "Bill..." "Our drunk dad beat you, and then he beat me." "But that doesn't have to be the end of the story." "That's what I'm trying to tell you." "I forgive you for leaving me." "And I forgive our dad." "The man that beat you, that monster who beat you." "What kind of man forgives that?" "I do." "And you I'm sure you did everything you could to avoid those beatings, didn't you?" "First, you turned yourself into a pathetic clown, with the jokes and the magic tricks..." "Ways to deflect him, try and run and hide." "I did what I had to do." "Yeah, but once I left, you had nowhere left to run, you know, once the real object of his fury was gone and he needed a replacement." "This is your story, right?" "Hmm?" "I forgive you, Bill." "That's what matters here." "Yeah?" "I bet once he threw the first punch, you begged for mercy." "What matters is that we understand what happened to us." "You know I never begged for him to stop." "I mean, you heard us." "You were there." "I never begged." "So..." "So why did you, huh?" "Maybe the same reason you're a drunk..." "A sloppy "alcoholic"..." "Sorry..." "With your amends and your steps and your chips, clinging to your little code words and your trinkets because there is something inside you that is weak." "You know, you've always been weak, Frank..." "Francis, you know?" "Well, that's your real affliction, is cowardice." "You are a coward." "You want to forgive me?" "Okay, forgive me for not respecting you." "You know, forgive me for seeing you for what you really are.-." "A weak little boy who became an idiotic clown, who grew up to become a gutless, pathetic man." "What are you?" "A girl?" "Huh?" "Fuck you, Frank, you weak fuck!" "You been drinking, Frank?" "Huh?" "See, this this is what binds us." "Him, living on in us, not a bottle in sight." "Bill, I was thinking, it's already so late." "Why don't we just go downstairs and have some dinner tonight, or maybe even just some drinks." "Oh." "My brother." "Don't." "Don't." "You don't..." "You don't have to stay." "I just, uh, I just couldn't go home face Libby like this." "I abandoned him to that monster." "And then I punished him for it." "What is wrong with me?" "I give up." "Ripped By mstoll"