Elizabeth looked like a Romulan. She was (hopefully) a lesbian, short and deeply, deeply, deeply no nonsense but also deeply, deeply perceptive, empathic and had amazing foresight. I found her, went to her because of Marianne Williamson. Williamson had said in one of her lectures that I would listen to on cassette: “If you find yourself in an insane argument with a friend, lover, family member—-the entrance of God/the Holy Spirit is to recognize it in that moment. See that YOU are in this situation. And within 24 hours get into therapy.”
I had a friend from middle school all the way through post-undergrad, who started out as Kevin. Now anyone with reasonably good vision could tell that Kevin was not going to be heterosexual. He was light skinned, sleight, delicate in mannerisms——and often wanted to be Storm from the X-Men when we boys would play X-Men. At 18 I came out—-family therapist, high school therapist-counselor, another best friend who I was briefly in a relationship with—-went through it all but I didn’t really talk to Kevin about it as he had left NYC.
My mother got laid off right as high school ended, she got a big payout eventually but for a while with careful budgeting and my working full-time, we maintained splitting the mortgage on our co-op apartment. Kevin went off to college and I stayed in NYC, working for a couple of years. Business and money worked out a couple of years later, and I visited Kevin. In Buffalo I had a spiritual epiphany that it was the next move. I paid for it myself and went off to college. Which would've been Kevin’s 2nd year. But after the first year, Kevin started dressing in women’s clothing and changed his name to Kaye. And insisted that he, now a she, lived in the male dorms because of a technical snafu.
Yeah, right.
We had discussed our sexualities a year before when I was relating a story on the phone about going on my first internet date with a nerdy guy. Kevin/Kaye stopped me, shocked it was a guy. I said yes, a guy, and continue on with the story——-Kevin/Kaye stops me again and announces being a transsexual (technically with no surgery or doctor involved transgender)—-and I was like ok……and continued on with my hilarious tale about a weird date. Kaye stops me again and asks do I know what that is?—-and I’m like yes, I do—-and continue with my story….
When I look back, that was the first clearing of the mountain range of Kaye’s issues—-not the transgenderism, but that other people make it their priority. Narcissism or malignant narcissism, is something you can experience from others, but I think especially when you’re a child/teenager with them, not understand-notice.
narcissism
- excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one's physical appearance. Similar :vanity self-love self-admiration self-adulation self-absorption self-obsession conceit self-conceit self-centeredness self-regard egotism ego is egocentricity egomania Opposite:modesty diffidence
- PSYCHOLOGY: selfishness, involving a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration, as characterizing a personality type.
- PSYCHOANALYSIS: self-centeredness arising from failure to distinguish the self from external objects, either in very young babies or as a feature of mental disorder.
malignant narcissism
What are the signs of a malignant narcissist?
Kernberg described malignant narcissism as a syndrome characterized by a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), antisocial features, paranoid traits, and egosyntonic aggression. Other symptoms may include an absence of conscience, a psychological need for power, and a sense of importance (grandiosity).
I didn’t know the above definitions then at 18 to 21 but what I will offer to understand both of us is that one thing Kaye and I shared in common was having been sexually abused as young children. However we diverged in how we related to it. I related to it as an issue that I eventually told therapists about in family therapy, and attended for 2 years, Incest Anonymous meetings, before 21. My concern with it was distinguishment between abuse and my own identity/sexuality.
Kaye thought, being raped by a neighbor starting at 6 years old and forward, was the best sex of his/her life. Kevin’s parents were also extremely emotionally and physically abusive, breaking up in his teens, and eventually he went to live with his father’s new family—-wife and daughter—-which is how they were able to get him to college.
My parents were dysfunctional, having substance abuse issues until my early teens. We got into family therapy and they into AA and NA, and they stayed sober for over 25+ years. My mother was also a psychology major at Baruch, my father studying political science at Pace. But the importance of this was they were both college educated and my mother didn't see anything “wrong” or judgmental about therapy—-which is unusual for Black people/families. It explained why Kevin/Kaye and her family never did family therapy, personal therapy—-they just sort of mowed along, sweeping drama away or under the carpet, normalizing abuse.
I see that now with all of my years of clinical training, personal therapy, professional work counseling and teaching, but then Kevin, then, that time, Kaye, was my closest friend from middle school and it was a bonus that Buffalo could hold so much for me, after my spiritual epiphany, because I had a friend there. My family (and maybe Kaye) thought I went there because Kaye was there when it was in fact the reverse—-I went there to go there and Kaye was also there. But if I distill it through narcissism, I can see Kaye thinking it was about her. However there were two times in college that I had to distance myself from Kaye—-individuation—-one because Kaye’s totality of identity was being trans and two because even then Kaye did stalking behaviors of guys that became legendary and were uncomfortable.
I can say/see now that Kaye was codependent and I was building my own individuation, from first my family, and then from Kaye’s codependency, which was offensive to both. My sexuality was not my primary identity, nor was talking about it, using it as a social/emotional weapon-shield against others my interest. Kaye and I had helped out Resident Advisors doing sex and sexuality workshops, a dozen or so, around campus, to thousands of student, but for me it was like a clarification of myself and an underline to the point that I am a man first and if you don't like some aspect of my identity—-fuck off, don’t bring me your shit. However if you bring me some shit—-I will fuck you up just like any other man that you try to cross/attack. It was a lone wolf growl and stand to the masses.
A decade later when I started teaching sex, sexuality, relationships—-my tact changed. lol I’m much more gentle now and it is directly about teaching. But I still hold personal boundaries. Kaye on the other hand wanted you immersed in Trans Kaye World and sought out broken people—-extremely obese White women—-she went through a handful—-until they transferred their codependency to a fiancée, husband or others. She would also stalk young men, her MO to sit for hours, trapping them in their rooms into faux emotional entanglements. They all at some point outgrew the faux attention she lavished on their wounds—-they got lives, relationships—-leaving Kaye, again, alone in the mind-empty-prison that is narcissism. Now I understand that the oddness I sensed about Kaye was the emptiness of the abused child hurt to malignant narcissism. But when it was evident others were growing, tired of Trans World, Kaye would drop them, move away from them. I told Kaye then that one day, realizing that I was no longer fascinated by her trans aspect, she would seek to remove me too.
Again, I can see all of this much clearer in hindsight.
I was also in an incest therapy student group for a year in college, wrote stories/interviews about it for the magazine, and then got my own apartment and did therapy after a huge illness/exhaustion from essentially taking on too much in my own independence.
I also had friends beyond my/their sexuality, dated, had relationships, sex, was the first undergrad TA to two professors in SUNY, wrote for magazines, newspapers, ran clubs, was referred to publishers and worked sometimes as much as 5 part time jobs/hustles at a time to earn my way/pay for school. I had a full social, educational and professional life beyond race-sexuality; I become popular for being out and those integrations and interests.
Kaye languished in school academically, working but never progressing, especially in a place, the university, of such ambition. Kaye was there for 7 years with a 1.0 GPA, transsexuality, only once seeing a psychiatrist briefly to get hormones, but no therapist, became Kaye’s sole focus besides physical existence. Again today, I would immediately spot such mental narrowness but Kaye had, in me, the infusion of 10+ years of friendship prior to her transitioning, my mother even having taken her in when her father/family kicked her out for presenting as Kaye. I saw Kaye in many ways as a sibling.
But I had my own life and eventually when I finished in Buffalo, went to Pennsylvania briefly to work—my mother had found me a job—-but quickly realized her and my stepfather’s dysfunction was no longer healthy and went to Philadelphia. I called Kaye and family to let them know I was safe but I needed a break from them all. I had two friends from Buffalo who had gone to Swarthmore college as student and employee so I stayed with them and then moved back to NYC. I worked diligently for Manpower from upper PA to Philly and then NYC so that in 6 months I’d gone from $7.25 an hour to $46k a year, at a permanent position. Kaye, at my prodding of her languishing, moved back to NYC ahead of me (leaving my stuff in her Buffalo basement to be picked over) back to her father’s, making $10 an hour. Eventually on the strength of my salary, we got a 2 bedroom in Flushing, Queens.
My Shit
My family, friends, lovers, ex lovers, even one of my professors-mentors-friend, Carlene Hatcher Polite, who called Kaye ‘fragile” upon meeting her in Buffalo—-told me all kinds of warnings about Kaye. But again, I’m an only child, Kaye was like a sibling, and my dysfunctional parents had taught me to take care of broken people. I helped Kaye get better temp assignments at Manpower—-I would be on the phone with her talking her through basic computer stuff when she was at a job; my mother sold her furniture for her bedroom—-she had none and reneged on the $50 owed; I made sure Kaye ate healthily—-she normally didn’t sometimes having a bagel for the day—-so as to stay thin—-which defeated the point of the illegal hormones Kaye was buying from other trans folk in NYC because you need body fat to convert to female curvature; I encouraged Kaye’s ignored, nascent artistic ability; I helped buy better more feminine clothing for Kaye—-Kaye always dressed in two extremes—-very gender plain/neutral so was immediately “clocked” as trans or extremely slutty—-once wearing a mini-skirt so short they sent her home from work at Citibank.
Then Kaye would invite men—-like total strangers back home, not just fun 20s hook ups, but vagrants outside of bodegas—-homeless immigrants—-to do naked drawings of them, the #7 train conductor, any male, that would pay Kaye attention.
Finally coming home one night, the building was surrounded by police cars and I tentatively asked them what happened. They said there had been a push in robbery——amazingly NOT to our apartment—-but I realized the insanity of what I was living in—-working 80 to 100 weeks and trying to contain, appease Kaye. My job then had loaned me a lot of computer equipment that I had in the dining room and I came home one night, the door wide open, because Kaye had rushed into her back bedroom with the #7 train (married) conductor…..and forgot to lock or even close the door.
I realized then that Kaye’s life, possessions, were essentially a bag of clothes, comic books and CDs and lots and lots of makeup. By then Kaye was doing illegal silicone injections under her chest to simulate breasts—both me and her stepmother, a nurse, freaking out about the health implications of the actions, silicone eventually building, hardening in her body cause damage and toxic poisoning..
I was meanwhile building a career, had gone on a tear of learning how to date by going out with 100+ (non-sexually) to learn the socialization, get over the anxiety of dating men, had made lots of friends and was basically doing well but I had this trans gremlin in the house. I included Kaye in everything form business dinners (where my boss then quizzed Kaye about had he seen her in a magazine or on 10th or 12th avenue—-where trans folk did solicitation work…..which in retrospect said something about him. lol) Kaye was constantly up and down emotionally and worried that I wanted my then boyfriend, Danny to move in. He made one comment about how he would love to paint the living room and Kaye knew I must be planning something. I wasn’t. I wasn’t even in love with Danny. He was just part of my Dating Process Workshop—-and one of the 100+ that was suitable to exclusively date more.
Finally Kaye and I are in this huge argument about her having all these really strange men over, leaving the door open, the police outside, the fact that I was always hesitant to trust Kaye with money—-so we paid halvies on everything—-which threw off the timing of everything being paid on time—-I hadn’t connected that I was abysmal with money as a reaction to not trusting Kaye.
Kaye screams at me, hysterical and crying, enraged, unhinged: “You didn’t tell me where you were!!!!!”
She meant the 3 month break after school, where I called everyone but hadn’t gone into specific of being in Philly, even to Kaye because of my family’s stuff and my knowing my mother could easily walk into Kaye’s fragile head and get my location out of her.
That was two years prior to that. And in the complete breakdown, I saw how mentally unhinged Kaye was……and I heard Marianne Williamson’s advice.
I realized that for being in this mess, I too, was crazy.
I took the next day off and found Elizabeth, the therapist through an LGBT center.
Elizabeth, the Therapist
You spend about 2 sessions catching the therapist up on your life, with them asking pointed questions as to why you made the move to get yourself there. Generally what they’re looking for is your cognitive dissonance—-where the idea of being emotionally healthy/a good life is in combat-contrast to whatever is happening—-addiction, relationships, internalized issues. Then they give you feedback-correction towards what is working and not working in your behavior. They enforce personal accountability.
I was friends with Kaye. I took on, encouraged Kaye to move in with me when I didn’t need Kaye’s money to afford the apartment.
Why did you do those things, Kyle? What were you thinking?
The first thing we tackled was my commitment to the therapy itself. It was across town and a few blocks down—-so I would go during lunch on Tuesdays. I was routinely 15 minutes late or so. She confronted me about it and we saw that I was letting my boss push through my boundaries. I was working an 80 to 100 hour week, including weekends, so why couldn't I, once a week, have more than a 60 minute minute lunch break?—-as the therapy was 60 minutes.
Elizabeth made it clear that was paying $50 to $75 an hour I think, for 1pm to 2pm. She was there, ready, willing and able at 1pm. But she’d be stopping our session at 2pm, even if I arrived at 1:50 PM. And I would still be charged for a full sessions. When I thought I was important enough for an hour, I’d make the necessary changes to my life/schedule and speak up.
Bitch cleaned my clock.
And, I told Arthur, my yes, slightly idiot boss, that on Tuesdays I’d be gone from 12:30 PM to 2:30 PM.
Then Elizabeth explained to me that my relationships were going to change because of the work with her. First, primarily my relationship with Kaye. Kaye would then react to the new way in which Elizabeth would be teaching me to act and Kaye’s reaction would be one/both of two ways—-one, Kaye would try and incite me, seduce me, cajole me, into buddy-buddy friendship with her again. If that did not work, Kaye would then find ways to overtly or passively, attack me, as I was different and not playing into the dynamic. That would leave the alternative of ending the friendship or changing it. It would be up to me what I chose of those two routes and then afterwards what I established to Kaye, would be my new ways of acting.
Elizabeth explained that with specific instructions and feedback, she would ultimately be teaching me to get a life. That my dysfunctional upbringing had taught me to seek out broken people, because they were “normal” to me based upon my family. She could see that I had spent years aiding/trying to fix Kaye—-from school to the apartment to work to even getting her furniture to sleep on to clothing to food to emotional/identity support.
Kaye’s stepmother had given us blow up mattresses when we moved in and Kaye had sleeping on that and milk crates as furniture—-I had found a furniture store that sold me a king sized bed, a month into moving in, and then bought furniture and my mother gave me a living room set and other furnishings when she moved from Pennsylvania. But I had INCLUDED Kaye into that and that’s how their whole furniture-$50 imbroglio had started.
Elizabeth pointed out, the stuff between my mother and I was between us—-and yes, a gift. But I shouldn’t have included Kaye at all and left Kaye sleeping on the floor/air mattress and crates. It was not my job in life or friendship to intercede to fix what a grown adult could see needed fixing for themselves.
Oh. Wow. Yeah, Elizabeth was on a tear! lol
Six months into therapy my birthday was coming up so I decided a restaurant I’d been going to on dates and with coworkers, would be great for a birthday party. Kaye and I had started having dinner parties at the apartment every few months—-and it was Elizabeth who pointed it—-90% of the people there were my friends and coworkers and family. Again I was providing socialization for Kaye beyond going out to nightclubs. Elizabeth’s point was that I was attempting in my own way to live a normal adult social life but was trying to drag Kaye along into it out of misspent loyalty.
First I started hosting dinner parties at home for small groups 4 to 12 people, on my schedule, my dime, my friends and family. Nothing extreme or rowdy and letting Kaye know ahead of time. By this time though she wasn’t speaking to me. She would come in during the dinner party, walking through the living room and then slam into her bedroom, not to be seen again.
Pennyfeather’s was a restaurant I went to at least once a week so I pulled together invites, a reservation, and people from as far away as Philadelphia came—-like 40 people in all rolled through that night to have dinner and brought me gifts. It was spectacular. I took a cab back home from Manhattan to Queens, loaded down with gift boxes and bags, and left them in the living room—-tipsy and happy.
The next day Kaye offered me a comic book (the entrée Elizabeth had predicted) and I told her, honestly, that I already had it. When I told Elizabeth she said my reaction was perfect and that it would signal one to Kaye that the old dynamic was no longer available, and that I would have to prepare myself for the next action, which would be some sort of attack.
Elizabeth was also hipping me to the fact that my normalized living life was an affront to Kaye. I had boyfriends, dated regularly, had normal and loving friends and coworkers. I was more okay than Kaye probably felt inside. But all of those normal things I was seeking to build and maintain, were a threat to Kaye because they supplanted my attention to Kaye, Kaye’s life, Kaye’s needs, etc..
The beauty of this is that Elizabeth then went deeper and was able to illustrate to me how family history had led me into this behavioral path. How even when I got sick sophomore year and my mother took me to our family counselor’s doctor friend, his analysis had been correct. I chose lesser people to fix/fixate upon out of a guilt for my prodigious and an avoidance of doing the work (my writing, creativity, teaching, etc.) that I was clearly apparently capable of by the fact of so many accomplishments. I was in some ways punishing myself, purposefully limiting myself, with dysfunctional relationships.
Oh. WOW.
Ironically, further in college a gay guy, Nick who was secretly gay and came out to me and about all of his male to male sexual escapades and had said to me that my life would improve/change—-I would grow, when I got rid of both Kaye and my mother. I remember in that moment, knowing all the lies he’d said about me to others around campus to students, friends, professors—-that he was part of that triangle problem people, and that I had to get rid of all three of them. He offered me sex, to his pleasure, and I refused and rejected him, permanently, got rid of him.
I will say that this is where the previous counseling, sexuality counseling in high school, Incest Anonymous 2 year sitting in meetings weekly and even the college incest group and research-writing articles, helped immensely. I had strong sexuality and sex boundaries, always have, which is one of the reasons I see that I am—-after having had a lot of fun before college, during it, afterwards, for decades, HIV-. I could see the unhealthiness in Nick, his predatoriness, his lies, his manipulations, his passive aggressiveness and walk away from it. And I heard Dr. Persaud when he explained how my exhaustion and breakdown were from being surrounded by unhealthy people I was trying to fix, help, save.
What kept me tied to Kaye for a few more years after the Nick dinner/dissolution/rejection?
I would say a near sibling attachment and that extra decade of connection. To that tracking, when my mother died a few years ago, I counted her as the last major person-force I was in obligation to. I learned years and years past getting rid of Kaye, boundaries with my mother, but her death, a relief, also reinforced to me getting rid of malignant narcissists—-my mother, Nick, Kaye, my father, my sexually abusing cousins (who yes, have tried to establish contact with me—-as all rapists think is normal to do), and even eventually newer friends and students whom the dynamics of our relationship made it difficult to immediately see and recognize as an element of my own internalized propensity dynamic.
Kaye’s Empire Strikes Back
Kaye then decided in the middle of a renewed lease for 2 more years, after the initial 1, that she’s going to move out and announces it. I told her that she signed a lease and I would hold or sue her to it. We did not have to be friends, we could just be roommates, pay our half and move on when it ended. Elizabeth pointed out that this was the attack she was talking about because Kaye knew to break the lease, I would be left homeless—-she was to move back to Long Island, into her father's house, as she had been, 2.5 years before, when I helped her out of there. Kaye was mature enough to be aware of the fact that while I still made more money than her—-a year or more of having to compensate for the void of her half—-would “hurt” me. again Kaye was putting me in a vise to return to our old dynamic or she’d hurt me.
Elizabeth was good.
I called Kaye’s bluff and stood by my threat to sue her if she left before the end of the lease she’d co-signed. This was in the summer. By fall, still working my long hours, I get home one night and the cable TV is off. I call, having made my regular $50 payments to each—-and it turns out for the past 3 months, I’ve been the only one making the halvsies payment. I check and it’s the same with the electric and the rent.
I talked to the landlord—-who was fed up with this hopscotch payment game—-worked out how to pay him off, with grace time, and they threw out Kaye, and I stayed and paid off the lease and left. Because she wouldn’t pay him, she lost everything but the literally the outfit she was wearing one day when the locks were changed—years worth of stuff——and went back her fathers’ for several years——to ultimately complete and work her way out of the house at her capability level (enhanced by me from $10 an hour to $18. But to accomplish it on her own .)
Insanely, my mother then made her move—-in retrospect, when I mentioned to Carlene that I was scrubbing the whole apartment on my hands and knees with Pine Sol, she suggested it sounded less like an eviction of a roommate, than cleaning the space from an unclean spirit—-the next layer of dysfunction arose.
Yes, like a bad trilogy.
My mother in her insane designs wanted to leave the husband/stepfather she’d bought with her money (now gone) when I’d left for college. I was busy pulling together a $5000 payment to the landlord to buy out my remaining months—-in one month, she came up and started shopping in my apartment—-books, clothes, etc., even as I was introducing her to my boss to get her a full time job at the company down South, paying for her flights and food, etc.. I eventually threw her out a few hours before her train home with the instruction to sit at Amtrak and think about what got her there. And when I closed the door, I felt good——I had stood up to and changed all my attenuations to dysfunction.
Elizabeth calmly asked why I had even invited my mother up, a week after throwing Kaye out, us having discussed her history and unhealthy behaviors.
Yes, Elizabeth was right and we spent a few more months now really excavating and unearthing and dissecting then dispersing, the root of my dysfunction to help the broken, fix them, forgive them.
I spent a solid year in therapy with Elizabeth where she cleaned up my perception and relationship with my last two malignant narcissists, besides Nick, perhaps family more difficult to pinpoint than lovers. I can tell you that with them, in my 20s, I was often seething, enraged—-probably from all the shit sandwiches I was voluntarily making from their dysfunction and eating. I routinely used to rock myself to sleep at night with the refrain “I don’t want to die.” as a mantra. I suspect in many ways, even in my own anger and depression, they, were killing me, inside, until I admitted that they were knives and bullets to me that I willingly stood still for, never refuted, or refused.
Were there more people like them?
Yes, but not in the exact same way because once there was smoke, some burning embers, in the people around me, Elizabeth had taught me how to recognize it, confront it, have a boundary about it, walk away.
Kaye spent a handful of years living in her father’s house with her stepmother and younger w/ baby/favored sister. It took her years to get out on her own as she should’ve rightfully done. But she continues, after 20+ years to shoot illegal hormones, pad bras and refute psychiatric or psychological help-work. She went back to school and after 9 years of amassed credits, got an associates degree but her art came across my desk/school, and it’s still juvenile. It didn’t develop because so much of Kaye’s identity was focused onto being Kaye as trans. 30+ years of art is still in its’ nascent stage.
Nick wanted to be a writer and continues to be secretly gay, married and has a child named after (insanely) his ex-girlfriend—-who dumped him soon after I did. He too had aspirations of art—-writing a novel—-I even introduced him to Carlene and Raymond Federman, the superstar writing teachers and acclaimed writers, I worked for. But I didn’t understand then, but do now, he had a mix of envy-attraction-anger at me. I’m an only child, envy and jealousy, from him, Kaye, my mother, was difficult for me to see and recognize until Elizabeth. His manuscript, which went to a friend in publishing, so I read it, was as a professor, Irving Feldman, described his work (as I sat across in class) as (still) pedantic. So he continues living a dual life, lying, having sex with his wife, and secretly, men.
My mother eventually ate herself into heart issues, severe diabetes, leg amputation, strokes. I was healthy enough to help financially and emotionally from afar with boundaries, cutting her and my fool stepfather off when they transgressed, but man enough and strong enough to be present and forgive in the end, and even bring her back to NY as she requested before she died. I forgave her then and so her passing was less grief, less pain than I had ever expected it would be. It was relief. it was sad but expected and peaceful. Forgiveness being the release of the idea that i ever thought she could or should be different than what she was. Forgiveness is accepting reality as it is, not as we would want it to be.
I did another year of therapy with a young lady Allison about 5 years after Elizabeth as sort of a tune up in my 30s. It was good for a year then I switched to a Life Coach for 6 months—-who helped me propel myself into a good non-profit, from the corrupt ones I’d been with, making twice as much and then to Columbia University——narrowing and focusing, on teaching. Through that time at Columbia, Professor Stephen Brookfield advised me through mentorship and his awesome classes, to write books—-of all I’d been teaching over the years.
So I wrote and published 100+. lol
I have come into my prodigiousness. another 200+ books planned through 2025. A TV show, videos, blogs and articles and interviews all over the world.
I dream of them, the three, I had to exorcise while they were alive, that Elizabeth taught me how to. But I think like the other folk I dream about they are simply bigger pieces of flotsam in the sea of my consciousness—-occasionally popping up as a memory or some good times or even when I’ve serendipitously come across their work and seen that I was being generous with my praise and encouragement years ago.
I chose to have them, including my mother in some ways, as lesser people in my life so that I didn’t have to show up for my Life’s Purpose, for my destiny, my work. To do the work. I used those broken people to distract me from doing the work, as a way of being active, but lazy in my truth. I couldn’t see myself clearly because I smeared them and others across my eyes, my lens, my goggles.
I don’t anymore.
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
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