Monday, May 19, 1997
|
12 pm. First Session with Lloyd Major. I guess I've finally reached the big time. This morning, I got a call from someone who said that I should make time for Mr. Lloyd Major at noon. Not "do you have time at noon"--just that I should make time. Well, I didn't have anyone scheduled, so it wasn't a problem. At noon, Lloyd Major swirled in with Roberto--his Boswell for a CD-Rom project apparently. Roberto was clearly just a sycophant. Lloyd had no idea that I knew something about his bisexuality--but the issue wasn't touched on. I won't speculate on Roberto's sexual preferences--it's just too catty. Lloyd has a big, blustery style. He continually interrupts. I was expecting that his problems would be something about the labors of a CEO--the stress, the people who depend on you, the life or death decisions that have to be made, the billions of dollars riding on the outcome of your talents. I thought he might talk about his proposed acquisition of Apple Computers, perhaps questioning his motives as not purely financial. Something weighty at any rate. Nothing of the kind. Lloyd's big problem is that he has a stuffy nose. It isn't stuffy now, actually. But Lloyd hates it when it is stuffy. He suffers from allergies and when he can't breathe through his nose, he gets panicky symptoms, almost like claustrophobia. I'm making light of something which is obviously troubling to him, but I really had different expectations. He wants control when he is going through a stuffy period, so he prefers shorter duration nose drops so that he can administer them more frequently. He apparently doses himself with many times the regular amount so he might be exacerbating his symptoms through overuse--a common effect of nose drops is that using more than is recommended actually intensifies the symptoms. He said he knew about that effect, but it didn't really deter him much--he needs the control. He told me to think about his problem and get back to him. Perhaps we can try flooding--I'll hold his nose while telling him that there aren't any nose drops! Just kidding. In seriousness, because his problem is most severe at night and his major complaint is that he can't fall asleep, perhaps sleeping pills which would be used only when he had a sinus problem might afford him some relief. The strangest part of our meeting came near the end. He started to talk about Helen Gregory and I got the distinct impression that he was trying to pump me for information about her. He said that he knew her and missed her--that he used to drink and smoke cigars with her. He said that he missed their chats. I can't imagine that the CEO and the janitor had much in common--I don't see Lloyd as having a populist touch. I wonder why he would be interested in her and I wonder whether the true motivation behind his visit to me had something to do with Helen.
|
Tuesday, May 20, 1997
|
4 pm. Fortieth Session with Sylvia Bows regarding Lloyd Major. Unrelated to Sylvia, she told me a story that Bruce told them before his seizure. Apparently, Bruce knew Lloyd Major from his college days when he was known as Lenny Majedenski, a Hungarian/American student getting his biochemistry degree from Cal Tech. Interesting.
|
Tuesday, June 10, 1997
|
4 pm. Forty-Second Session with Sylvia Bows respecting Lloyd Major. Sylvia told me a horrendous story about her sister-in-law Beverly--who had mental problems stemming from losing her child to a miscarriage after a difficult pregnancy--kidnapping Grant and spiriting him away to Monterey for a couple of days. Lloyd Major surprisingly put up reward money and had his publicity machine spring into action so that Grant and Beverly picture appeared on many news programs across the country. A hotel manager in Monterey recognized Beverly from the news segment and reported her, and Sylvia got Grant back.
|
Wednesday, June 11, 1997
|
4 pm. Seventh Session with Katherine Lippard regarding Lloyd Major. Katherine did well at the board meeting in her presentation of the financial side of the Apple Computer deal. She was presenting a negative view of the deal, so she was attacked by Lloyd Major on several fronts. But she was prepared for him. She seemed to believe that Lloyd Major was on cocaine--she said that he was sniffling a lot and seemed anxious and manic, like he couldn't sit still. I'm reasonably sure that Lloyd doesn't use cocaine. It's absolutely the wrong drug for someone who has the particular nasal phobia that he does. Perhaps he overdosed himself on antihistamines again. Obviously, however, I couldn't discuss that with Katherine. At the board meeting, Katherine apparently came out the winner.
|
Monday, June 23, 1997
|
6:30 pm. Second Session with Lloyd Major. Lloyd came in with his sycophant sidekick late tonight--his office called and scheduled the appointment this morning. I was expecting that Lloyd might want to talk about sinal claustrophobia, but instead he wanted to grill me on Sylvia. Freely admitting his homosexuality, Lloyd told me about Richard's lawsuit for custody of Sylvia's children. I had never understood why Lloyd would take Richard's side to the extent of allowing him to use the resources of SII and Nils to help Richard research the facts underlying his complaint. But he told me that he vowed to help when he found out that Richard was suffering from testicular cancer. The cancer has been removed and Richard is in remission, but he has no future ability to father children. Now Richard's only hopes for paternity lie in Grant and Roald. Of course I couldn't discuss these issues with Lloyd, and I didn't. But with Lloyd's help, Richard could be a formadible adversary, even though his lawsuit still strikes me as poorly grounded. Lloyd's argument is that Sylvia took Richard's parental contribution by stealth and guile and that now the children produced through the deception are the only ones that he will be able to have.
|
Monday, August 4, 1997
|
4 pm. Third Session with Lloyd Major. Lloyd called me himself and scheduled this appointment. When he arrived, he was quite agitated over recent decisions of Apple Computer. In a nutshell, his feelings were hurt that he had been passed over in Apple's attempt to develop a brain trust among its board of directors. Lloyd took it as a personal affront. There's obviously a lot going on behind the scenes that I'm not privy to. It's my impression that Lloyd's motivations with Apple are more than monetary. It's as if Lloyd sees himself as Apple's messiah. Apple is clearly at a turning point in its history and Lloyd wants to make his mark on computer history. But Lloyd's real complaint during the session has to do with his sinus problems. Lloyd broke his nose in a childhood accident in Hungary, and it was never set properly. As a result, the physiology of his sinuses are such that they don't drain properly and Lloyd is subject to chronic sinus infections. Lloyd's resources have enabled him to educate himself on his condition to a degree that I found remarkable--he sounded like an ear, nose, and throat specialist. Lloyd first researched exactly what his problem was. He even took the step of having a 3-D fly-through view of his sinuses created from CT scans. He then went ahead and educated himself in depth on the surgical options. I'm just another step in his research effort. Lloyd's surgeon believes that Lloyd's condition is correctable by a relatively simple surgical process. However, Lloyd has been avoiding the surgery for the past five years. Lloyd's primary concern is that immediately following the surgery, he will be unable to breathe through his nose. Apparently, being unable to breath through his nose has almost phobic proportions--akin to claustrophobia. He went so far as to interview patients who had undergone a similar procedure to try to determine how well they could breathe through their nose following surgery. But Lloyd is convinced that he needs the surgery, so he wanted to explore the possibility of using tranquilizers to sedate him for a few days following the surgery. I told him that a central nervous system depressant following anesthesia was not a good idea because of its effect on respiration and I recommended against it. I tried to suggest that we treat the underlying phobia through flooding and desensitization techniques, but Lloyd was having none of that. I became convinced that there was no way that I was going to get Lloyd to undergo any form of desensitization. I had a thought that perhaps a narcotic such as oxycodon might be more effective at eliminating his concerns about not being able to breathe than a tranquilizer would be. Although oxycodon is a CNS depressant, it is frequently prescribed following a surgical procedure and I thought it would be sufficiently safe to be a viable option if Lloyd was closely monitored--he plans to have a doctor move in with him for the duration of his recovery. But Lloyd wasn't interested in my following through on any sort of plan, he was only interested in gathering information and further evaluating his options. At the end of the session, I had no clear sense as to whether or not he was going to decide to actually undergo the surgery or not.
|
Thursday, August 14, 1997
|
3 pm. Fifteenth Session with Katherine Lippard relating to Lloyd Major. Katherine began the session by talking about work. On the surface, she's concerned because Lloyd Major has come into her department and is searching through her files, brushing off her inquiries and stirring up her staff. But the subtext is really more enlightening. When Frank Herald was her boss, and he was giving her great autonomy in connection with the Apple Computer transaction, she was very suspicious of his motives--she thought he was setting her up to take the fall for that misguided project. Now that she's going to be a senior executive who is only subordinate to the CEO and the board of directors, Katherine is setting herself up in an adversarial relationship with the person who's going to be her superior at work. If I was a pop psychologist rather than a psychiatrist, I might relate Katherine's abandonment by her father to her habit of positioning herself as an adversary to those who have authority over her. But I think it runs quite a bit deeper than that. And while I don't know how Lloyd feels about Katherine personally, I'm also concerned that if he sees her as an impediment, he will simply brush her aside.
|
Thursday, November 13, 1997
|
4 pm. Sixty-Second Session with Anna Green relating to Lloyd Major. Martin is leaving town for a week--Lloyd Major likes him and has personally selected Martin to talk to some technologists at MIT.
|
Wednesday, December 10, 1997
|
4 pm. Twenty-Ninth Session with Katherine Lippard related to Lloyd Major. Katherine was all business as she told me about the smear campaign that is being waged by Alex's mother Larraine and that toady, Nils Landor. Apparently, Larraine has it in her head that Katherine is romantically involved with Alex--she must know his sexual preference makes that unlikely--and has decided to go after Katherine within the company. She has the ear of Nils Landor who told Lloyd Major all about it. Lloyd, who's never been one of Katherine's big supporters in any case, came to talk to her about it--apparently concerned that scandal will lower the stock price. I suspect that Lloyd was just hoping for something juicy to relieve the tedium--he gets a certain pleasure from stirring the shit. Katherine plans to fight back, and she seems to be a formidable adversary.
|
Tuesday, April 7, 1998
|
3:15 pm. Fourth Session with Lloyd Major. Lloyd came in unexpectedly after suffering a panic attack. Apparently, he's been suffering from allergies this season more than is usual--El Niño is supposed to be terrible for those with his affliction. For all his arrogance, I felt sorry for him. His inability to breathe freely through his nose makes him feel almost claustrophobic. He suffered a panic attack at his office, and decided to come and talk to me to blow off some steam, as he put it. He described his symptoms: chest pain; inability to take a breath; pounding heartbeat; tachycardia, partial vision loss; chills and a feeling of being flushed, simultaneously. His pulse was a normal 84 in my office. He described quite lucidly the feeling of time dilation that occurs during his panic attack and he told me that it helps if he can become completely preoccupied with some task. Entertainment doesn't occupy his mind sufficiently, but work does. It clearly helps him to talk about his problems, even though he sees everything in grandiose terms--not how it affects him, but how it affects mankind. For example, he disparaged 12 hour nasal sprays because they left him without a feeling of control. So with his unique resources, he contacted the head of the pharmaceutical company which manufacturers the spray, and convinced them to offer a four hour variant of their product. This is his gift to mankind, or at least to that subset which suffers from identical concerns to Lloyd Major. In listening to the drugs that he was taking, I would guess that his panic attack was exacerbated by an overdose of decongestant. He is taking Clariton D and the over the counter spray and Nasacort steroid, and it's possible he took something else too. The drug reaction could easily account for the anxiety and associated symptoms. Lloyd waxed poetic about how wonderful it would be for allergy sufferers everywhere if he could denude downtown San Francisco from any form of plant life. He called it an "allergy safe zone" and mused about the possibility of having such a measure passed by the voters. Lloyd also told me that SII was about to release something big and urged me to buy some stock. I thanked him, but of course it would be unethical for me to do so. Roberto, his multimedia biographer, was nowhere to be seen today. I don't know if he was just one of Lloyd's sexual flings that has now passed or perhaps he has finished his work.
|
Wednesday, May 27, 1998
|
5 pm. Forty-Seventh Session with Alex Rozzi. At Alex's parents' wedding reception, Lloyd apparently made a big hit with his present: a giant kinetic sculpture which he had delivered on a flat-bed truck during the party. It's over ten feet tall, with giant metal parts which move in the wind.
|
Thursday, September 24, 1998
|
4 pm. Ninety-Third Session with Anna Green respecting Lloyd Major. Most of what Anna told me about the Futurist Department revolved around a recreation that they share--spreading false rumors on the Internet for fun. Apparently, Lloyd is actively involved and encourages this. So they've made up a plausible yet fictional story which has Hillary Clinton seeking a form of perverse revenge against her husband because of his repeated infidelities and lies to her. Their story is that after Bill told Hillary that he hadn't done anything improper with either Paula Jones or Monica Lewinsky, Hillary forced Bill deeper into the morass by vigorously encouraging him to repeat his denials to the American people and in his deposition testimony, even though she knew he would be commiting perjury. Anna went into great detail about how Hillary controlled Bill's legal team and could decide not to settle with Paula Jones, etc. I couldn't see how any of this had anything to do with Anna herself, but she was captivated by the story and wouldn't be detered from telling it.
|
Thursday, December 3, 1998
|
4 pm. Ninety-Ninth Session with Anna Green respecting Lloyd Major. Anna told me that she's studying physics as part of her continuing education at the futurists group. She told me something about a theory advanced by a friend of Lloyd's which ended up winning the friend the Nobel Prize in Physics. Anna said that it had something to do with fractional charges on electrons and said that it could help further miniaturize electronic gadgetry. I understood none of it. Apparently, Lloyd is going to Sweden for the medal ceremony.
|
Lloyd Major's Patient File
