The Trombone Man: Tales of a Misogynist

By Ron J. Hutter

Dr. Peter Kraus is a forty-something behavioral scientist who is known for his quirky innovative ideas, charming bookish manner and love for music, especially the sound of the trombone. Sadly, though courteous and engaging, as well as being a good and considerate lover, he has never been successful with women. While women adore him, his dates usually end in disaster. Nonetheless, Dr. Kraus makes it no secret that he loves the company of women-in carefully measured doses.

Following a particularly bad date with his on-and-off girlfriend, Bev, Peter consults his psychoanalyst, Dr. Maxine Feinschmecker, who is the only one who knows about his James Bond fantasies and unresolved oedipal issues. His sessions with Dr. Feinschmecker reveal that he is a misogynist.

The Trombone Man shares the story of one man’s zany adventure through an outlandish world where political correctness and populism take on new meanings, but that may end up being more normal than he ever imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: May 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483450094

Book preview

THE

TROMBONE

MAN

TALES OF A MISOGYNIST

A Paravel

(Parable-Novel)

RON J. HUTTER

Copyright © 2016 Ron J. Hutter.

This is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to organizations, persons living or dead contained within is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means---whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic---without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5008-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5009-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016905747

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 04/18/2016

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

INTRODUCTION

W elcome to the zany world of Dr. Peter Kraus!

Based on actual events, his bizarre story is a racy and bumpy ride of anything-goes black humor, hypocrisy, and satire in a wacky world that seems upside down and inside out---until his venture results in unintended consequences.

Is The Trombone Man a metaphor for the oldest known hatred? Can Peter's outlandish world actually end up being the norm? You decide!

Fair is foul, and foul is fair:

Hover through the fog and filthy air.

---Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 1

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

But if I am only for myself, who am I?

If not now, when?

---Hillel, Ethics of the Fathers

CHAPTER 1

D r. Peter Kraus stepped out of the door of his clinic into the strong Melbourne sunlight of the late afternoon. He had been confined to his consulting room the entire day. He blinked and sighed as he walked to his car, switched on his mobile, and opened the door. The moment he sat down, the mobile tone went off, registering eleven missed calls. Eleven tones, one after the other.

Dr. Kraus winced. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. For a moment, he hesitated, and then he decided to drive home and deal with the calls later. It had been a long day, and he still had much to do, especially paperwork and returning other professional calls.

He switched on the radio by pressing the classical music program button that usually played jazz at that time of day. Dr. Kraus enjoyed that; it helped him unwind and detach from his role as a psychologist. They were playing Nat King Cole's It's Only a Paper Moon, a song he particularly liked. Now he could start relaxing (well, sort of) as he negotiated the heavy traffic. But at least I'm going home, he thought.

Dr. Kraus was a mild-mannered man, somewhat bookish, who wore glasses and favored an academic style of dress. He was forty-seven years old and generally reserved, but he could also be passionate. He was good looking, and his sensuous mouth featured a tongue that was versatile in both love and war. Dr. Kraus could be charming and poetic with women. He could also be caustic, displaying a biting wit when the need arose. It was precisely because of his charming, bookish manner that he held a James Bond wish-fulfillment fantasy, a point he had only mentioned to his psychoanalyst, Dr. Maxine Feinschmecker. He never missed any James Bond movies. He felt exhilarated when the show was over and the credits appeared, wishing with a sigh of resignation that his name was among them. It spurred him on. He was looking forward to the next Bond movie, which was only eleven months away.

Between James Bond movies, Dr. Kraus led a very productive life. He enjoyed art, music, and reading. He was very knowledgeable, with an impressive general knowledge---except for sports. Though he did play social tennis and corporate golf, he also made a point of playing miniature golf with small-business owners, such as Mr. Papadopoulos, who owned the Athens Milk Bar up the street from where he lived. Dr. Kraus often bought newspapers and chocolates there. Dr. Kraus was community minded and liked to be seen as such.

Being both nerdish and bookish had made him attractive to certain women---indeed, many women. Dr. Kraus did not really have affairs as such, but some of his friendships were certainly sexualized. In fact, he was often targeted by very clingy types of women who wanted to mother him, which he resented as being anathema to all things Bond.

Dr. Kraus was a gentleman and very refined, but he also was a flirt in a restrained kind of way, playing into the hands of his female friends with feigned reluctance. On the other hand, he could be outrageous and provocative while keeping a poker face. This was his approach with Carol, a gorgeous, dark-haired woman of thirty-six. She boasted finely boned facial features: full, attractive lips, a slim figure, and beautiful hands. He had met Carol on a blind date some years back and invited her to dinner at an Italian restaurant. They had chatted about movies, travel, work, art, music, and books---all the usual first-date banter. Everything was going fine; Dr. Kraus played his typical role as the attractive but nerdish man gazing seductively---yet with great restraint---into her eyes.

Suddenly and without cause, Carol changed the subject. I thought you should know, she remarked, I never go to bed with a guy before the fifth date.

Without batting an eyelid, Dr. Kraus smiled and responded cheerfully, That's fine. We can go out Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday---and Saturday, you'll be ready!

Take me home! Carol snapped, which Dr. Kraus dutifully did. He was not truly remorseful.

Then there was the incident with Adrienne. She had invited him for an extended Sunday lunch. All went well until after the dessert course. Adrienne gazed into his eyes and murmured, Would you like to come to the bedroom?

Dr. Kraus responded casually, But I'm not tired!

He'd had to beat a hasty retreat.

How dare you humiliate me? she screamed as he quickly got into his car.

He never saw her again. That, too, was life.

Dr. Kraus had a history of complications with women. Unlike James Bond, he found it difficult to have casual flings. The women he had become involved with fell in love with him and became clingy. Enjoying sexualized friendships did not always make for easy living.

When Nat King Cole ended his song, Dr. Kraus retrieved his messages. The first was Bev with her soft, purring voice. I miss you. Dr. Kraus pressed delete and then moved on to listen to messages from what he called the Bevy army: Jo in her sing-song voice: Love you! Delete. Amanda: Can I come over tonight? Delete. Elaine: Can we spend time with each other tonight? Delete. Samantha: What are you doing Saturday night? Delete. Carmen: Can I cook for you tonight?

No, you can't! he yelled to himself as he pressed delete. He accelerated past an old lady who was driving slowly with her eyes fixed straight ahead---while raising the middle finger of her gnarled hand to him.

And so it went on.

Bev had left four other Love you, miss you messages, as if he had short-term memory problems. He was annoyed. The more bookish he tried to be (in order to throw them off), the more they persisted. Like the good doctor (who had once been briefly married), they were all divorcees. Attractive women, enjoyable to be with, but---and that was the issue---the but. He even tried occasionally to hint that he was a closeted gay, but that had always backfired. He thought back to the time he tried to use that excuse on Bev. As she undid his belt and unzipped his pants, she exclaimed with a satisfied laugh, I can prove otherwise. Plan B was to reveal that he was bisexual. That too was brushed aside.

And yet Dr. Kraus loved the company of women---in carefully measured doses. He believed in moderation with food, drink, and female company. He had also been in therapy for almost four years with Dr. Maxine Feinschmecker. His conflict of perceived helplessness with James Bond fantasies of compensation, as well as oedipal issues, had never quite been resolved.

CHAPTER 2

D r. Kraus was a man of many talents who was also known to be very kind and helpful. He consulted at the Psy-Gesund Clinic, which specialized in short-to-medium-term psychological treatments. He was innovative and positive, both qualities that complemented his boyish enthusiasm. For instance, after a spate of clinic break-ins by drug addicts, he changed the sign on the door from No drugs kept on premises to Only placebos kept on premises. The break-ins decreased and finally stopped altogether, apart from one theft of chamomile flowers. Dr. Kraus enjoyed herbal teas, and he kept them in a jar in the clinic kitchen. Presumably, the flowers ended up being smoked.

Since Dr. Kraus was by nature enthusiastic, he often got involved with various worthwhile causes. He had enjoyed an illustrious career and had been honored by the Australian Psychological Association, the American Psychology Association, the Organization of European Psychologists, the EU, and even the WHO for his work on the treatment of obesity, which had been identified as a serious health problem in the Western world.

Like much of his private life, not everything that Dr. Kraus did came about by design. Indeed, his work on obesity was born of coincidence. While cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) had been the prime therapeutic modality he and his colleagues had utilized for stress and depressive disorders, Dr. Kraus noticed that many patients had reported weight loss simply due to stress. He therefore developed a new therapy called CBT-R, the R meaning reverse. While CBT focused on rational cognitions and thoughts, eliminating irrational cognitions and hence misplaced anxiety, CBT-R focused on actually inducing stress by encouraging irrational thoughts. Over time, the patient would be sufficiently stressed to the point of losing weight. Simply put, the psychologist made the patient into a nervous wreck who then lost weight from anxiety and stress. Of course, some patients reacted by eating more, but the media paid scant attention to them. Magazines tried to outdo each other with photos of film stars, politicians, and even housewives showing the latest CBT-R craze in losing weight. Dr. Kraus, meanwhile, was a regular guest on Good Morning Australia and became the darling of the Now People, those who were hip, cool, and trendy.

While it was true that for this novel treatment, Dr. Kraus had initially been criticized, he pointed out that while psychiatrists were inducing seizures with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), neurologists were prescribing drugs to stop seizures. He maintained that there was a place for both CBT and CBT-R, but they had to be administered at the discretion of the psychologist. Models, as well as patients with severe eating disorders, were contraindicated. Eventually, with media support, health officials accepted CBT-R. Dr. Kraus had subsequently been further honored at universities and offered fellowships at prestigious institutes. He was highly sought after as a guest speaker at conferences around the world.

Prior to his groundbreaking work on CBT-R and weight loss, Dr. Kraus had been a founding member of the Save the Parents Fund, which supported parents who were abused and bullied by their children. His innovations never failed to impress both colleagues and the public.

Dr. Kraus had also pioneered the Mini-Mental Clinical Test, which almost rewrote the traditional methods of clinical inquiry. Being an enthusiastic advocate of systems theory, cross-disciplinary assessment, and treatments, Dr. Kraus noted that psychological tests, such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the Rorschach inkblot test, were cumbersome, time-consuming, and costly. On the other hand, other assessment instruments used by many practitioners were limited and unclear.

The ever-observant Dr. Kraus had noticed that when patients came for consultations, they often responded by saying shit or shithouse when asked how they were feeling. While this response was of clinical interest, it was too vague for effective and objective therapeutic follow-up. Dr. Kraus had therefore astonished his colleagues by introducing the already available Bristol Stool Form Scale as a self-report assessment instrument that could be used for just about everything. It was already available and used by gastroenterologists and general practitioners. It was simple, fast and most importantly, to the point. Conveniently, anyone could google the Bristol Stool Form Scale, making it cheap and versatile.

For instance, when a patient pointed at stool type four after saying he/she felt shit, the practitioner would be aware of how he/she was actually feeling by glancing at the number and corresponding stool type illustration. Conversely, the Bristol Stool Form Scale could also be used as a practitioner's rating scale of the patient. Thus, a psychologist could write a forensic report for a court case and not only diagnose the defendant as say, a psychopathic personality disorder, but also rate him/her as a seven on the Bristol Stool Form Scale. This would help the jury understand what kind of psychopath the defendant was. It became quite common for expert witnesses to hold up a Bristol Stool Form chart (easily printed off the Internet) and then show it to the jury. The Bristol Stool Form Scale went beyond a formal diagnosis and indicated how severe the diagnosis was---essential in sentencing.

In addition, thanks also to Dr. Kraus, the Bristol Stool Form Scale was soon applied to children by help-seeking parents who could no longer control their kids. Following media recommendations that the Bristol Stool Form Scale play a central part in raising post-Spock kids, it became common to see the chart on many household fridges. The chart could even be purchased as a fridge magnet and soon became available in every two-dollar shop. The chart was truly cross-cultural and could be used in any country since language was not a factor.

A growing use of the chart was by partners who described each other as per stool type in couples' therapy. When couples eventually rated each other in the same way, they often felt more compatible with each other. Dr. Kraus had observed that couples---and families---could also be functional