"So tell me why you're here."
"My parole requires it."
"Is that the only reason?"
"No. It's probably good for me to talk about things."
"Like your time in prison?"
"To name one."
"What else?"
"Well, there's the woman, Agnes. From the, you know, the whole thing with the guy, and she's bringing the kid around for me to, you know, get to know him. She even came to visit me once and asked me if I thought it was a good idea for her to bring the kid to visit it me next time. Talk about fucking a kid up for life, not to mention giving guys in the place the wrong impression."
"What impression is that?"
"To bring the child of a rapist into the prison where the failed rescuer is serving three to five for throwing said rapist in front of a moving vehicle? How about the impression that I'm playing daddy in this sick little family, that's the impression."
"Do you think Agnes expects that from you?"
"I don't know. I don't know. But...if I were her and I had gone through what she went through, I wouldn't keep the reminder of it around let alone go through the labor. Besides, I don't even know why she's so grateful to me. I didn't stop anything from happening. I didn't get there in time."
"Didn't you save her life?"
"How should I know? The guy had a knife but I don't know if he was planning on using it."
"Well Agnes seems to see you as a very successful rescuer, in fact, that's why she kept the child, right? Isn't that what she said? How do you feel about that?"
"Look, if she's happy, then that's great. But I can't honestly say that I feel comfortable with this child making any sort of bond with me. I don't feel comfortable having any kind of relationship with this woman. I mean, if you're going to crush a guy's legs, you might as well do it for a good reason. But every time I see her, every time I see that kid, I only regret not walking by that alley ten minutes earlier."
"Have you told Agnes your feelings?"
"Oh Jesus, she'd flip. I mean, she seems so grateful and content and like, over it, but I feel like one inch beneath the surface, I mean she was literally there to pick me up when I was released. But I feel like it's just an act. There's no way she's actually okay with it."
"Do you plan to let it continue?"
"Well, no, but I had to come to these sessions with you, and you're a woman, so I was hoping you could give me some advice, you know, some insight."
"What I'd really like to see you do is come to your own healthy response to the situation. And if I gave you advice of any kind, it would be as a therapist and not a woman."
"It's actually pretty funny that you are a woman, because if my problem didn't concern women, I wouldn't be asking for advice in the first place."
"And why is that?"
"I've gotten used to having to take care of things myself. I usually don't require help or advice. Except when it comes to women."
"That's a very common feeling."
"It's not a feeling. It's a certainty. I can't look back on any decision I've made since I was seventeen and say that I regret it. Whatever the circumstances were, a decision had to be made and I made it. And I might feel differently about it later, but that's just hindsight, which is useless, really."
"Do these decisions include throwing Rafael Correia in front of a car?"
"Absolutely. It would have been nice, of course, if the car hadn't been coming by at that exact moment. But it did, and I can't pretend that I had any control over that, because I didn't."
"Do you regret that you had to sacrifice three years of your life?"
"No. Not regret. I didn't choose to go to jail. But yes, I would have liked for that not to happen. Regret is useless. Looking back is useless. It would have been nice for the jury to have seen the truth."
"The truth?"
"That if a hundred other guys had walked by that alley, they might not have had the balls to do what needed to be done. But I did. And for that I should have been rewarded. Not punished."
"You served the minimum sentence. The judge was obviously sympathetic to your cause."
"He should have broken his gavel and refused to take part in such a circus of injustice. He should run around the goddamn courtroom with a banner chanting my name. That whole place should have been applauding me and laying fucking palms on the ground in front of me. But I don't rule them yet, so I can't expect the entire justice system to become enlightened in one day."
"So you believe Rafael deserved to lose his legs?"
"And more."
"So tell me (we'll get to the ruling thing later) why women pose such a conundrum."
"Aren't they supposed to?"
"I suppose so. Can you be more specific?"
"A woman may not be designed for the sole purpose of killing a man but she knows, from birth, a thousand ways to do it. It is sheer whimsy that keeps some of them from doing it. And most of the time they do it and don't even know they're doing it. So yeah, I can admit that I have no chance of ever being certain about anything concerning women."
"Well that's a start."
She asks me to tell her about a formative experience; something that forced me to face a painful or ugly truth about myself. She asks me if I have ever experienced anything so challenging.
At first, my answer is no. And I really do spend a few moments thinking about it. Then I say, oh, okay. And I tell her about my pet bird, Calypso, that I had when I was twelve. She was a cockatu. I loved her, but I didn't clean her cage, and because I was a thoughtless and careless little boy, the bird got sick and died.
I don't mention the broken fingers I received that night from my father after I was done with the task of burying Calypso in the backyard. I tell her because of that experience, I learned not to be so lazy and careless. So the therapist asks me if I have anything from my adult years. Anything that caused a lot of growth.
Oh, plenty of things have caused me to grow. I didn't always used to be so awesome and powerful. And there are definitely things I have wanted to change about myself. Like, for a long time, I couldn't really grow a beard, and then, after this bike accident, it was like, poof, you know?
"What's the most painful thing you've ever had to learn about yourself?"
"Look," I tell her, "I've always known who I am. I've always known who Gabriel Hurt was and is. And every unpleasant thing I've ever had to experience has only reaffirmed that self-knowledge. I am very self-aware. Extremely. I have always been. It's really just a question of, do other people believe, and how can I get them to, you know?"
"Believe what?"
"That I am destined for great things. That I am a prince. But of the universe."
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