it you mean when you say the word physical. But please go ahead.”
Magdalena clasped her hands together ever so tightly and drew in her breath. Norman had maintained his hospitable smile but altered it, ever so slightly, by parting his lips and moving his lower jaw ever so slightly to one side and… and ever so slightly winking the eye on that side—winking!—not blinking—as if to say, “I’m not sure you have the faintest idea of what you’re talking about, but I’m willing to overlook that. So please plod on, my boy.”
Walsh paused a couple of beats longer than Magdalena would have expected. Was he trying to decide whether or not to toss alcohol, heroin, and cocaine into the pot?
With his head still cocked to one side, he said, “But four of the most eminent psychiatrists and neuroscientists in the country—I’m tempted to say the world—couldn’t disagree with you more completely.” He glanced down at some notes on his lap. “Samuel Gubner of Harvard… Gibson Channing of Stanford… Murray Tiltenbaum of Johns Hopkins… and Ericson Labro of Washington University—who, as you must know, just won the Nobel Prize—all four have come to the same conclusion. Pornography addiction, looking at pornographic videos on the internet for hours every day, causes a chemical reaction that hooks the pornography user in precisely the same way hard drugs hook the drug user. It alters the brain in precisely the same way. All four of these eminent authorities agree one hundred percent on that.” Now the Grand Inquisitor brought his head up straight, jutted his square jaw forward almost prognathously, narrowed his cold steely eyes even more… and struck. “And so you’re telling me that Dr. Norman Lewis knows better, and those four men—including a Nobel laureate—are wrong. They’re all wrong! Is that what you’re telling me? Isn’t that what it boils down to?”
Magdalena’s heart skipped a few beats and seemed to slide inside her rib cage. ::::::Oh, poor Norman.::::::
“AahhhuhwaaaAHHHHHock hock hock hock!” Norman cut loose with as loud a burst of laughter as she had ever heard him bellow. He was beaming, as if he couldn’t be more delighted. “I know all four gentlemen, and three of them are close personal friends of mine!” He began chuckling, as if this whole train of thought were too rich for words. “As a matter of fact, I had dinner with Rick and Beth Labro a few days ago.” He chuckled again and leaned back in his chair and beamed the biggest, happiest grin in the world, as if all the planets were aligned just right.
Magdalena couldn’t believe what had come out of Norman’s mouth! “A few days ago” was a mob-scene dinner the American Psychiatric Association put on in the Javits Center in New York in honor of “Rick” Labro for his Nobel. Magdalena was with Norman the whole time. His “dinner with Rick and Beth” consisted of him standing about 214th in a receiving line of maybe 400 people waiting to shake hands with “Rick.” When Norman finally reached “Rick,” he said, “Dr. Labro? Norman Lewis, from Miami. Congratulations.” To which “Rick” replied, “Thank you very much.” And that was it—“dinner with Rick and Beth”! ::::::Our table was the length of a football field away from “Rick and Beth’s.”::::::
The Grand Inquisitor shifted into his patented mode of arch irony: “I’m glad you had such a good time, Dr. Lewis, but that wasn’t—”
Cruuusssh! “AhhhHAHHHAHAHHH Hock hock hock hock ‘Good time’ doesn’t begin to describe it, Ike!”—Norman’s laughter, his booming voice, his 250-watt good humor rolled right over Ike Walsh. “It was a fabulous time! No one could possibly have a higher opinion of Rick than I do—and for that matter, Sam, Gibbsy, and Murray!” ::::::Gibbsy? I don’t think he’s ever laid eyes on Gibson Channing.:::::: “They’re pioneers in our fielddahhhHHHHHock hock hock You’re a funny guy, Ike! AhhhhHHHock hock hock!”
By the looks of him, Ike found none of this funny. His expression had gone blank. The lights had gone out in his steely eyes. He seemed to be searching for a response. Finally, he said, “All right, so now, I take it, you’re admitting that compared to these four authorities, your—”
Craaaaashhhh! Norman’s incorrigible exuberance rolled right over Ike Walsh again. “No, you are funny, Ike! You’re priceless, in my book! What I must tell you is that I’ve been treating pornography addicts, so-called, for the past ten years, and it is a disease, a mental disorder, and a very serious one in this country, even if