keith

by Paul Lewellan

I was four years old when I learned my demon’s name. I’d been struggling with a cold, and the cough syrup Mother gave me didn’t help. My demon showed me where her secret syrup was kept. Together we finished the bottle. In our drug-induced euphoria, I asked his name. Keith. The being I’d shared my life with, since birth, was no longer anonymous. He was Keith.

My parents assumed I had an imaginary friend. Nothing imaginary about demonic possession. It’s biblical. Commonly treated in the Middle Ages with exorcism. Dismissed by modern mental health providers who pass it off as psychotic episodes, personality disorders, or epilepsy. As if these people don’t have their own demons….

Our first day at Montessori school, we learned the three basic rules: respect yourself, respect others, respect your environment. Keith sneered, What a pile of horse hocky. Of course he didn’t say “horse hocky.” He used one of Father’s angry words. Playing nice makes their job easier. It’s got nothing to do with respect.

“They’re worried we might hurt ourselves.”

They’re worried about lawsuits.

 I asked Father about Keith’s comments. “Your friend is a smart little boy. You should listen to him.”

That had some disadvantages.

“Why did you cut down Mrs. Condon’s tulips?” Mother asked.

“Keith thought they’d look pretty on your kitchen counter.”

“Why did you let Rex off his leash?” Father asked.

“Keith told me Rex needed to run free.”

Embarrassed by my behavior, they’d joke with their friends. “He told us Keith made him do it.” Everyone laughed. It. Was. Not. Funny.

Keith told me where Mrs. Botts, my sixth-grade teacher, kept the test keys, so I aced every test. He showed me the vodka bottle Mother hid in the linen closet and Dad’s porn stash in the garage. Encouraged by Keith, I’d rubbed myself raw by the time my parents found me puking in the bathroom with an empty bottle and a half dozen back issues of Barely Legal.

I’d still be a virgin if not for him. At the Homecoming dance my sophomore year, Keith nudged me when Carolyn Struve walked into the room. My date Sissy Butler was busy serving cake. Let me take this. He walked Carolyn to the punch bowl, made a big show of adding Everclear, and offered her the first glass. Later, he suggested strip poker.

“I don’t know any card games,” she giggled.

“Doesn’t matter,” he told her as others gathered. “Everyone is a winner.”

Keith was there, of course, when I met my first wife. Funny story….

We were at the Mad Hatter for happy hour, two-for-one gin and tonics. Gretchen saw me at the bar and assumed I was drinking alone. Actually, Keith and I spent most afternoons there. I was always stuck with the tab.

Keith watched the bartender chat her up. Gretchen crossed her legs, giving him a view well up her thighs. I’d tap that.

“That’s crude.”

Oh, and like you wouldn’t?

“No, I’d tap that, too.” I objected to his language not the suggestion.

I was clueless about approaching a woman like Gretchen: confident, sensual, sophisticated, controlled. I’m a fraud examiner. I’m fearless battling white collar criminals, but I deal with tax laws, formulas, and rules. Women like her make their own rules.

Eight Service League ladies burst into the bar, and the bartender hurried over to them. Gretchen turned to us, though, of course, she saw only me.

Let’s bet who beds her.... It was a classic faceoff, my demon Keith with his bad boy ways or me with…. With what? I was neat, orderly, polite, and respectful. Frankly, I was bland as instant mashed potatoes. I took the bet, knowing I’d lose. I’ll go first.

I woke up the next morning alone. Written in lipstick on my bedside tabletop was a cellphone number. In the bathroom mirror I saw the raw wounds from her fingernails and the hickeys ringing my neck. Dangling from the shower rod was a pair of handcuffs. Obviously, I’d lost the bet.

Keith and I have two consciousnesses but only one body. Even when I’m in control, Keith is never far away. He naps when I’m with clients…. Unless they’re hot. That’s another problem. It’s difficult remaining objective while viewing women through Keith’s supercharged libido. His sexual appetite is insatiable. Until I met Gretchen, I’d been content to turn my life over to him a couple nights a week. But when he gained control, he usually shut me out. My fatigue the next morning told me it had been a strenuous night, but I knew none of the details unless I watched the videos.

 I decided to take control. After work, I called the number written in lipstick. “The sex was epic, but we never got a chance to get to know each other.”  

“Dinner?” she purred.

Over a 7-ounce sirloin and lobster tail at Red Lobster, we traded life stories. Gretchen was a day trader and an adrenalin junky: sky diving, rock-climbing, white-water rafting, fast cars, and anonymous sex. “Something was different about you. That’s why I left my number. I never leave my number.”

She found my job interesting. I told her about my biggest fraud case. “Fraudsters always get caught.”

“Only because people like you pursue them,” she cooed. We had vanilla sex at her place and agreed to meet again the next night.

On the way home, Keith informed me, Tomorrow is my turn.

Keith took her out for fireball shooters and karaoke. They came back with an ER nurse and played doctor. He shared the video. I invited her to a concert by a John Denver tribute band. Keith scored tickets to Hades Town.

“I never know who I’m going out with,” she gushed after we rode the roller coasters at Six Flags Chicago and ended the evening with Lou Malnati's deep dish pizza. “I love it.”

In my heart I knew on my wedding day that Gretchen was marrying Keith. It was also Keith she wanted to divorce. I never cheated on her. Keith was the culprit. Oh, come on, admit it…. You have your own personal demon, a part of you who leaps in to do the selfish and irrational deeds that make your world less drab. Own your demon.

1 Peter 5:8 describes the devil as a roaring lion. But demons can also be soothing, interior voices telling you everyone cuts corners. A demon can be the charismatic financial advisor who wants to maximize your investments. Or the coworker in the short pleather skirt who insists it’s only one drink.

Gretchen agreed to couple’s therapy. “I have a demon inside,” I told our therapist Charlotte Horsley.

“Tell me more.” She kept her tone neutral.

“He says that all the time.” Gretchen cruelly imitated me: “‘I’m possessed;’ ‘I couldn’t help myself;’ ‘I can’t remember.’”

Carolyn cut her off. “Let’s acknowledge you’ve heard all this before….This time, open your mind, and actually listen to him. I’ll listen with you.”

So, I told them about Keith’s adventures before I’d married, and his numerous affairs while I was traveling for financial audits: the night with the four Swifties at the after concert party, the time he joined Tommy Castro and the Painkillers on stage to do guest vocals and women showered him with their business cards and bras, gate crashing a traditional Indian wedding and stealing off with the white horse and the bride.

When I finished, they announced in unison, “We want to meet this guy.”

I told Gretchen she already had, dozens, maybe hundreds of times.

“Like when?”

“Our honeymoon. Keith was the sexual athlete with you on Maui, not me. And the Baltic cruise for our tenth wedding anniversary. I wasn’t there for that either. Keith showed me pictures of you naked on the Prominade Deck the night of the wife swap. Should I go on?”

“Yes!” they said.

I only had to mention a time in our marriage that I had no memory of—a time Keith insisted was wicked good fun—and Gretchen filled in details: a chocolate pudding pit in the Amsterdam redlight district, the clothing optional Nigerian meet-and-greet at the Austin fraud conference, the vodka shots with our Russian guides at Catherine’s Palace in St. Petersburg.

The session expired.

“We can’t stop now!” Charlotte canceled her next appointment and uncorked a chardonnay from the mini fridge. Three hours later, exhausted, my wife admitted, “Everything makes sense now.”

“So,” the therapist offered, “who do you want to be married to, Keith or…?”

Gretchen pointed to me. “Him. He loves me,” she admitted. “Keith just uses me.”

“Then I’ll need to bring in the big guns. I’ll call Krummholz.”

Dr. Elaine Krummholz was a board-certified psychiatrist and Carmelite nun in her late forties who taught at Northwestern University. She worked closely with the Catholic Church. West of Chicago she was its go-to specialist on exorcisms and demonic possession.

Charlotte Horsley assured us that Dr. Krummholz had seen it all: flying objects, elevation, outbursts in ancient languages, displays of physical prowess, and uncanny knowledge. Still, I don’t think she had encountered a demon quite like Keith. At the end of our allotted time with her, things took an unexpected turn. She asked me to invite Keith to join us for the next session.

I did.

“Keith says he’ll come, Dr. Krummholz, but he has conditions.”

“Such as….”

“He says you should stop dressing like a nun. Lose the pants suit. Wear something sexy. No panties. And bring a nice merlot.”

“Deal.”

Gretchen and Charlotte laughed nervously. They hadn’t seen that one coming.

The exorcist calmly asked, “Anything else?”

“He’ll want to see your tits.”

“I assumed he would.”

In Keith’s defense, Dr. Krummholz had a nice figure. Rubenesque. It was a reasonable request.

When we arrived at the next session, the exorcist’s transformation took me by surprise. “Dr. Krummholz…!”

“Please call me Elaine.” She wore a short-pleated skirt, patterned hose, stiletto heels, and a satin blouse. She’d laid out three bible translations, a Ball jar of holy water, and a picnic basket. In the basket were six bottles of merlot, glasses, and three dozen cream puffs in a bakery box. She turned to the other two women. “Give me a few minutes alone with Keith.”

She turned to me and touched my arm. “You can stay. Tell Keith I insist.”

Forty-five minutes later, alarmed by the crash of books flying from the shelves, the slamming of doors and windows, and the moans pouring out of the Carmelite as she neared her next orgasm, Gretchen and our therapist burst into the room.

“Elaine’s ready to go again,” Keith crooned while smearing cream puffs on her bare breasts. “Strip if you want to join us.” They didn’t have to be told twice.

Keith told me. Watch and learn. He did not allow me to participate. This session is about me, he explained. You’ll only distract these whores from the business at hand.

Hours later, the three women unable to move from exhaustion–bathed in cum, sweat, urine, wine, and bits of pastry shells–purred contentedly.

Finally, I emerged. “He’s gone.” I don’t know how I knew it, but it was true. “Keith is gone.”

“That was my intent.” The exorcist untangled herself from the other bodies and announced, “Thank you ladies for your help. I couldn’t have done it alone.”

I never saw him again. The marriage, of course, didn’t last. “You’re a nice man, but you’re no Keith,” Gretchen told me when she handed me the divorce papers.

Dr. Krummholz and I co-authored a book called Demonic Possession and You. Keith played an essential part in the narrative. Sales spiked after we appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Stephen, a good Catholic, found our story fascinating, “And strangely erotic,” he confessed in the Green Room. By then, Elaine had donated all her pants suits to Goodwill and specialized in demons with sexuality issues.

I, now more confident, often joined Elaine for sessions, though our relationship remained strictly professional and largely platonic.

Eventually, at a book signing at the Mall of American Barnes & Nobel, I was approached by a strikingly attractive Lutheran pastor dressed in a black blouse, white clerical collar, pencil skirt, and five-inch heels. After I autographed her book To Elizabeth and her demons, she leaned down and whispered, “Keith told me you liked gin and tonics. May I buy you a drink?” How could I resist? “But you have to ditch the Carmelite bitch….” I knew Elaine would understand.

Picture of Paul Lewellan

BIO: Paul Lewellan retired from education after fifty years of teaching. He lives, writes, and gardens on the banks of the Mississippi River along with his wife Pamela and a Chartreux kitten named Caitlin Cat. Paul’s latest story Find archives of his work at www.paullewellan.com