The White Noise Machine - Pt.1

The roar of waves came mutilated, tortured, through the white noise machine placed at the foot of the door. When the therapist’s door was open, the machine doubled as a doorstop. An added punctuation to the significance of the threshold. Like being at the beach. You could be “at the beach” without being at the beach. Parallel, on the sidewalk with the ice cream stands and surf shops, hearing, perhaps even seeing the ocean, but not truly on the beach until you’ve taken your first step on the sand. True, too, you weren’t actually in therapy until you stepped through the door and it closed behind you. Just you, the therapist, and, of course, the ocean phoning in via the white noise machine. 

Except it isn’t you, is it? It’s Milton and Dr. Finney and the white noise machine. You’re just observing. This is all bad practice, of course, but you’re here and the door’s closed.

____________________________________________________________________________

Milton couldn’t take his eyes off the damned thing. Dr. Finney, in a strictly professional manner, couldn’t take his eyes off Milton, who hadn’t answered the last question levied against him. Dr. Finney wasn’t sure Milton had heard the question in the first place but was giving him a cordial pause to answer.

The white noise machine rasped on, the commanding force in the room. Antiseptic white casing. Obvious, fat buttons made so that even a child could operate it. A certain tech gadget aesthetic popular maybe ten, no, fifteen years ago. It had the shape of a discus which accented its dated look with some Hellenistic flare. How Milton would have loved to hurl it out the window. He thought about what a terrible color white is for something relegated to the floor. It was scuffed something fierce. He now pictured the faceless, damned souls tripping or stubbing their toes on the sputtering thing as they transitioned back and forth between their roles as members-of-society and hollowed out patients, guts dredged with an ice cream scoop and dumped on the floor for Dr. Finney to poke at with his ballpoint. Faceless wicker men scuttling dust as they tripped on the white noise machine for the umpteenth time. No wonder it’s so dirty. Fed up, a group of them descends on the machine, slamming, kicking, picking it up and throwing it back on the floor. Milton pictures himself, a champion among the wicker men, throwing it out the window again, this time a true hero. All the while, the ceaseless bottled ocean, reduced to zeros and ones, wheezes in protest. All the while, Dr. Finney leans back in his chair, face resting on his fist, with a practiced detachment.

“Milton…Milton?”

The fantasy is gone, snuffed like a candle. Milton arrives back in the room. 

“I asked you a question.”

He stammers an apology, gestures at the white noise machine. Dr. Finney can only make out the word “distracting” with any certainty.

“It has different sounds, if you prefer.” Dr. Finney offers. Without waiting for a response, the doctor is up and kneeling towards the poor creature. Being prodded and poked by professional hands suddenly turns the thing sympathetic in Milton’s mind. Less a warden for the room, more a fellow captive. 

With the press of a button, the ocean dries inside the machine. It is replaced with what could have been, perhaps was convincingly at some point, a thunderstorm. A malnourished Zeus, a skinny Thor, an enfeebled and forgotten Baal, did battle within the machine. Hitting each other with walkers and paper fans. They too vanished with a click, replaced with the light patter of rain against elephantine leaves and a suffocating canopy. Trapped within the machine, screaming against the tumult…a monkey? Hooting and hollering, poached, far from its family.

Another click. Then, static. The true noise.

“No.”, Milton blurted.

“Okay.”, Dr. Finney conceded.

One more click of the button and the ocean was back on the line. My God, Milton thought. He doesn’t get it. Turn it off! Then, a new thought as Dr. Finney nestled himself back in his chair with a slight sigh. The machine isn’t for the patient. It’s for him. He likes it. Milton couldn’t possibly ask for it to be shut off now, even if he’d had the gumption in the first place.

The doctor crossed his right leg over the left. His notepad, barely touched, rested on his knee. Back to business.

“Where were we?”

Milton could feel a glaze developing over his eyes. He thought he must have had the expression of a cow right as a bolt pistol is rested against its forehead. This was how he felt at most questions, of course.

“I asked you if you did the homework we talked about in our first session.”

Ah, of course, that was it!…but that was just it. Milton had left the first session two weeks prior with only enough space in his head to remember that he had to come back for a second. Thinking about what was discussed in the first session, well, it was just static. He stammers another apology to progress the conversation.

“That’s alright, Milton. Your homework was to think about a happy place. So, just to be clear, you didn’t think about this since last we spoke? Not at all?”

He hadn’t. Of course he hadn’t. He’d spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time lying on the floor of his apartment in the interim. When his thoughts became maelstroms, hitting the deck was his first go-to since childhood. His mother had deemed this method “histrionic”. Yet not a single thought in the wind of firing synapses was of a happy place. He managed a “no” in response. 

“That’s alright, Milton.”, Dr. Finney nodded. 

If it’s alright, why do you keep telling me it’s alright?

“Let’s work on that now, then. For the future, though, I need you to take the homework seriously. Don’t think about it as an assignment or busy work. It’s really for your own betterment. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget about ourselves when we’re under stress, isn’t it?”

He failed to answer again. A sickly heat crept up his neck. His scalp itched.

“Milton, it’s alright. Like I said, let’s just work on it now. I’ll ask you again, what is your happy place?”

Things were getting desperate. In retreat, Milton made himself microscopic and absconded into the folds of his brain. Somewhere in there, in the archives, he could confirm if he had been asked this question before and if, at the time he was asked, he gave a sufficient answer. Dr. Finney had asked him “to think of a happy place” last session, not “what is your happy place?” Those are two totally different things! 

The white noise machine filled the silence with its hiccuping, inconsistent drone. It seemed to do that, hiccup or sputter, when it was no longer the focus, to remind everyone that it was still there. Milton felt himself being vacuumed out of his own head by the machine, careening towards the spaces in the grate over the speaker. The ocean was louder in there, he was sure. Cold, black water.

He needed to resist. Forget the damn machine. Think of a happy place…such a simple task. Such a simple question. Even if it was a lie, he had to say something that could pass as a happy place. Simple! Then, why, oh why, could he only think of unhappy places? A snow crusted gulag flashed across his mind. Black and white stills of the trenches of the Somme. A crowded grocery store, people crashing into each other with full carts (what?). 

He had never been asked this question, he was sure of it now. In fact, he mused, if you had asked him what he thought his reaction would be to being asked what his happy place was, a much more convoluted question, he would have claimed he’d burst into flames. He managed to croak the start of a thought.

“I…”

“Now, before you say you don’t”, Dr. Finney chimed, “everyone has a happy place.”

“Can you…?”

“No, I can’t tell you what your happy place is. It’s personal to you. If I come up with one for you, it won’t be yours. And if it’s not yours, you won’t be able to enter the correct headspace for the next phase of the therapy. For your own sake, I really need you to think about it.”

The white noise machine seemed to agree. It sputtered at that moment.

Think about it. It. Milton was never one to think about it, rather, everything adjacent to it. It always seemed like some black hole in his perception. A frustrating censor-bar permanently affixed to the middle of his field of view. It was something that everyone else was able to bask in the glory of, drink from the teat of. Runt that he was, he’d never be able to shoulder his way into the warm embrace of it. 

Focus, Milton…

The white noise machine, that robotic asthmatic, was patient as ever. Dr. Finney uncrossed and recrossed his legs, favoring the left this time. His impatience was a palpable smog in the room.

Put the happy place aside for a second, Milton, and think. Why is this bored doctor asking me these questions anyway? Shouldn’t he be helping someone else? Just because you had a couple extra hundred dollars to throw around, you get to be here over someone else? Aren’t there schizophrenics and bridge-jumpers and would-be school shooters that would be better served by such poking and prodding? A happy place is wasted on me.

“I don’t think I have one, Dr. Finney.”

“I need you to do better than that, Milton. Cooperate with me. You need you to do better.”

Cooperate. Capitulate. Surrender. Torture. Torture. A car battery hooked up to his nipples. A gag in his mouth. This comforting plush couch smells like gasoline. 

Jesus-ever-lovin’-Christ! Is this my happy place?

Stop thinking about it. Eyes down. You’ll get through this. Just say something. Start small.

“Okay. It can be anything?”

“Of course.”

Dr. Finney uncrossed his legs again, this time sitting up completely straight and readying his pen. This was the first inch of the mile he wanted. 

“I’m thinking of a…dark room.” Don’t write that - why are you writing that down?

“What are you doing in the dark room, Milton?”, the doctor poked. 

“What do you mean?”

“It’s your happy place. What do you do in your happy place?” 

Rug pull!

“I didn’t know I was supposed to be in the happy place.”, Milton admitted. How can a place be happy with me in it? Milton crumpled up this thought and swallowed it. He didn’t want to know what unpaved dirt road the doctor would take them on with that question.

“Of course you’re supposed to be in it.”, Dr. Finney said, perhaps with a shade more aggression than he intended. “The happy place is supposed to be a refuge for you. A sanctuary. A place you can go to when you need to center your thoughts away from your stressors or triggers or traumas. If you’re not in the happy place, then you can’t possibly enter the state of mind we’re working to get you towards.”

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Milton. I’ll give you an example, if that helps. Say my happy place is…my back garden. My fences are fairly high, so no prying neighbors. I have a bird feeder set up and the absolute prettiest little things fly in to eat and visit. I’ve just put in a chrysanthemum bush. Can you picture me, rocking in my favorite chair, soaking up the sunlight with a freshly made ice tea? This is just an example, but it gives you an idea of the sort of thing I’m looking for here.”

At the suggestion, Milton abandoned the flashes of torture that harangued him and diverted all his neural pathways to the prodigal garden. He had seen a garden before, hadn’t he? He had the vague notion the color green was involved. He pictured the room he was in. Grass sprouted in patches from the beige carpet. The image fizzled just as it formed. He tried to break a garden down to its components. Flower. Sky. Grass. Iced Tea. All hovering in the void. Now put them together, Milton!, he strained at himself. Yet, nothing formed in his mind’s eye. These thoughts carbonated and popped just at the surface of reality. The shame-heat rouged his cheeks. Am I sweating?

“Milton, is it too hot in here? I have a fan if you’d like me to -?”

“I’m okay.”

“Were you thinking about what you’re doing in your happy place?”

“I’m in the dark room. I’m -”, he started. Just say what you do at home. “I’m lying on the floor in the dark room.”

If there’s a floor, there’s a ceiling.

“I’m looking at the ceiling. My eyes are open because if they’re closed, I lose my balance and feel like I’m spinning. But I can’t see the ceiling, it’s that dark.”

Every word felt like a degree added on the thermostat. Don’t ask for the fan. Don’t let him win.

“And…and it’s cold. I can’t move because it’s so cold. Like I’m frozen to the floor. Numb.”

Dr. Finney’s face was inscrutable, yet he leaned forward with interest, his notepad pockmarked with quickly scrawled words. “Go on, Milton.”

“I’m not sure what else…is that good? Is that good enough?”, Milton asked. He already felt as if someone tore him inside out, but the good doctor was ravenous now.

“If it’s good enough for you, it’s good enough. But let’s build on it. Really get you there. What do you smell in the room?”

“It’s like a…burning ozone. Like a storm just passed.” Milton didn’t know from what cranial trench that smell had been dredged, but it was the first smell he could summon at a moment’s notice.

“Good, okay. And what do you hear?”

“It’s silent in there.”

“There’s always sound. People talking just outside the door, maybe?”

“No.”

“Perhaps a fan overhead running? Or maybe a sink left on? I always listen for Carolina Chickadees when I’m in my happy place. Have you ever heard one? They’re like -”

Dr. Finney continued. Milton’s thoughts wandered to sound. The doctor was right, of course. Even in his apartment, recreating what he now understood as his happy place, he could always hear something. The shouts of the downstairs neighbors seeping up through the floorboards. The ambient honking of cars on the street. The endless comings and goings of the wicker men on the staircase and up and down the hallway just outside the door. How did he even sleep at night? He became overwhelmed as he flipped through these sounds, letting each one hit him like a wave, trying to find one that he could reasonably pass off as pleasing to Dr. Finney. One suitable for this godforsaken happy place.