Art Smukler, MD

Some years ago, a friend had a bachelor party and invited a dozen friends out to dinner. After dinner, someone said, “Hey, let’s go to a strip bar”.

An hour later, we were seated next to an s-shaped stage, as a buxom blond raised her leg 180 degrees onto a silver dancing pole. As we watched, Rod Stewart screamed, “If you want my body, and you think I’m sexy…” so loudly that everyone within earshot was guaranteed a visit to the House clinic, a famous ear hospital in LA, for middle ear surgery. Just as I was wondering whether my insurance covered such a procedure, a woman tapped me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear.

“Are you Doctor Smukler?”

“What?” I said, startled, and pivoted toward the pretty, sweet-smelling whisperer.

“Remember me? I’m Cathy. They call me Candy here.” She had full, pouty lips, 5’6” tall, long dark hair, and a costume that left nothing about her figure to the imagination.

“I do. I remember you,” I said, getting my surprise and embarrassment under control. A year ago, 22-year-old Cathy/Candy was sent for therapy by her parents to help her “find herself”. She attended 3 sessions and never scheduled another appointment.

“You really helped me, ” she said.

“Jesus”, I thought, wondering what sort of help that might have been.

“Thanks!” I said loudly, having to compete with Rod.

“Bye. Nice seeing you,” she said, and undulated away, leaving me staring at the naked, blond woman dancing around the pole.

A few weeks later, I signed up for a class on how to start and run your own strip bar. Really! There were a lot of Tony Soprano types, women with big boobs, and me.
After a few more months of research , the journal kind, I started my own strip club — just kidding. What I did do was start writing Skin Dance, a mystery.

Our experiences, often the most embarrassing ones, can be the nidus that begins our story. It takes a lot of passion to write 300 or so pages. Accepting that it’s okay to have all sorts of feelings, especially the politically incorrect ones, is as necessary as including sugar in a cookie mix.

If you enjoyed reading, Inside the Mind of a Psychiatrist, you might also enjoy Dr. Smukler’s novels, Chasing Backwards, a psychological murder mystery, Skin Dance, a mystery, and The Man with a Microphone in his Ear. All are available as paperbacks and eBooks.

How about never?

Think about Matt McGloin, the quarterback for the Oakland Raiders and New York’s junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, and of course, Nelson Mandela.

McGloin was originally a Penn State walk-on who had to compete with sought after scholarship QBs, and a guy who wasn’t even drafted by the NFL. He was told that he was wasting his time. Gillibrand, likewise, a former Litigator, was warned of certain failure when she decided to run for public office. Both, determined and talented, decided to believe in themselves, rather than what other more “mature” and “wise” elders told them to do.

Very importantly, this belief wasn’t just a “in the end it’ll all work out” fantasy. It was a fantasy based on enormously hard work and a passion that fed a 24/7 devotion to succeed.

Inertia, the principle in physics that states, bodies in motion stay in motion and bodies at rest stay at rest, implies that change is REALLY difficult. It takes a unique person to get someone, anyone, to change. The Nelson Mandela’s of the world are very, very special. Even in prison, Mandela didn’t give up on what he believed or give up trying to get a whole society to change their way of thinking.

A professor friend from USC said, “You don’t need a PHD but a PSD – POOR, DETERMINED, SMART to be successful.”

However you say it, the bottom line is this. Work hard and don’t give up. The naysayers may mean well, but they are not you. They don’t have your determination, courage or work ethic. Their logic is a herd logic, one that encourages you to follow your fellow wildebeests over the cliff into the same old same. Change is frightening. Let them be afraid, while you take your own journey.