“I can’t believe you didn’t cry at the end of Rudy!” Dr. Tearjerker says. Fred, a bald, bearded, stumpy forty-year-old recently remarried furniture salesman from Nyack, NY replies, “Was I supposed to cry? It’s just a movie, doc.”
Dr. Tearjerker takes a deep breath to compose himself and says, “I think you’re incapable of experiencing joy for others.”
Matt the furniture salesmen replies, “How you can say that from only talking with me now, after I paid you 300 dollars an hour to watch Rudy for the past two hours?”
Dr. Tearjerker says, “My sports movie crying therapy bought me my house in Nantucket, a spacious 3-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side on York, and a Victorian mansion in Mount Vernon, NY.
That’s Denzel Washington’s childhood stomping ground, by the way, and I’m not a Long Island hack like yourself. That’s how I know, motherfucker.”
Matt says, “Doc, take it easy. You sound like my ex-wife already, and we just met. Look, I’m only here because I just got remarried; yet my kid from my previous marriage is already causing a strain on our marital relationship.
“All the melatonin gummies in the world can’t help my daughter sleep better at night, regardless of whether she thinks my new wife was pretty enough to replace Mommy or not.
“My new wife hates how I can’t cry at the end of schmaltzy, happy movies like Rudy, too, and questions whether I really want to have a do-over baby with her, after all.”
Doc says, “What the did movie Rudy make you think about?”
Matt says, “I don’t know, doc. How Vince Vaughn let his looks go to shit? I was never too into Sean Austin Green’s melodramatic lisp, regardless of whether The Lord of The Rings franchise was huge for his career or not.
“I thought about my Dad spending more time watching the Knicks stink up a joint, as a kid, than helping me develop a halfway decent hook shot or believable pump fake, in the post.
“I thought of how my parents reserve their most emotive cheerleading efforts for my younger brother, instead.
“I thought about the time my mom had me get her phone, which she left in my car, only to glance at a text for my younger brother to realize that she uses a nickname for me, Scoops, and for my younger brother, too.
“If your mom regifted a nickname to younger brother, the mama’s boy, because he’s always been her idealized romantic partner based on her sloppy slow dance display at his wedding, wouldn’t you have issues crying at the end of Rudy, too?” Dr. Tearjerker says, “How did that make you feel, to learn your mom uses the same nickname on your younger brother?
Matt the furniture salesman says, “It made me feel like a used furniture salesman; a nobody; an unwanted futon with bedbug bite marks after college.
“I’m open to more sports movie crying therapy, doc. I just want to start resenting my mother less than my wife.
“Since I became a dad, I started morning prayer; yet I’m worried about God taking my good fortune away, since giving me a daughter, because I don’t respect thy mother’s opinion on how and what I should be doing with my life when she’s barleying around to help with my kid in the first place.”
Dr. Tearjerker says, “Why do you resent your mother, besides her not being around to help with your daughter as much as you’d like?”
Matt says, “Whether I visit her in Florida or she visits me back east, she’s always sulking whenever my daughter gives me another jump hug. This saddens her because our bond will never be as close, I guess.
“Fuck radical empathy, Doc. My mom’s default sourpuss mode around my happiness-spewing daughter will always piss me off, more so than her misspelled texts inquiring about how I’m handling the weather back east after I regrettably text her another video of her granddaughter sledding on her Snow Screamer with hardcore funky smoothness from start to finish.
“Either you’re excited about your firstborn raising a girl who won’t turn into the cum bucket-drenched girl from the Fallen Angel video, or not.
“I get it, Mom. You really wanted your favorite to have given you a grandchild, instead, but he was too busy snorting coke for four decades straight, developing a mysterious stomach irritation out of the blue, and yet somehow blames it on being lactose intolerant.
“When all else fails, don’t look yourself to mirror or change your depraved ways. Just scapegoat fucking Lada Lakes. But I’m glad my mom decided to keep the crib for my daughter Matilda around their house in Florida to symbolize positive thinking and wish fulfillment at it’s finest. “And my wife calls me the unstable one for yelling at my mom the last time she visited, after insisting I get a maid, which I can’t afford, or that I express my displeasure with my younger brother personally for not acknowledging my daughter’s 10-year-old birthday whatsoever.
“Bet he’s got distracting demons to contend with; got it. All I know, Doc, is that my mother would never break into a constellation of canker sores over worrying on my behalf.”
Doc says, “Why do you resent your new wife? Didn’t you just get married?”
Matt says, “I love her, Doc, but it’s not my role to criticize my daughter so soon. Four years down the road, sure, but my daughter will be out of the house by then.
“So, if she chooses to live like a slob then, it’s her business, not mine. And no, I don’t want to get my daughter tested for ADD. I talk this much off Adderall, Doc. I actually stopped taking Adderall during my first marriage to focus less on how annoying my wife could be. It didn’t make a difference, really.”
Doc says, “Looks like our time is up.”
Matt replies, “So, what movie magic do you have planned for me next week, Doc? Remember The Titans, or Hoosiers, perhaps?”
Doc says, “So you feel nothing when Dennis Hopper fills in for Gene Hackman as the basketball coach after being found in his home, waddling in drunken squalor, before his son locks his beamish, proud, piercing eyes into his pa’s soul and says, “I’m proud of you, Dad”?
Matt replies, “I can’t believe you get paid for this shit.”
Doc yells, “Get out of my office. You’re banned permanently, you deplorable piece of shit.”
Dr. Tearjerker ended up in an insane asylum because his revolutionary sports movie crying therapy didn’t work on the furniture salesman from Nyack. This made him feel like a fluke and another vastly depreciated, average nobody, too, despite his own mother never reusing his nickname on his younger brother to project the aura of equally distributed, encouraged love.
Now Dr. Tearjerker sports a permanent straightjacket after trying to kill himself with a basketball pump needle once, during outdoor play. He spends all his days, now, in a white padded room, running suicide sprints with a look of extreme determination on his face and chanting, with increasing force, “Rudy, Rudy, Rudy,” only to add, “I still shed tears of joy for you, Rudy. And if I’m deemed crazy by New York State standards for deriving happiness from other’s people’s success through the silver screen or not, I don’t care. At least I know that I’m not among the walking dead, yet.
“Rudy, Rudy, Rudy.”
Michael Kornbluth