In Session
The Secret Journals of a lay psychiatrist
As I open this chapter of my life to pubic view … that was a Freudian slip but I don’t care it all goes in … it feels like a scene from a movie, the curtain pulled aside, me, in noir and blanc, peeing down at the street. When the woman getting out of the cab looked up the moment was eternal. An instant can be part of the linear flow or it can separate off into its own file, as that one did.
She was an estrogen woman, like a pillow you lay your head on and you just fall on through it and keep falling, unless you stop yourself, because if you just keep falling you end up with a Chinese woman.
I pressed the release for the gate downstairs. After a curiously long delay she came into the office, which has one yellow upholstered chair, and a set of mid century Danish chairs in red leather. The arms curve up to join the back, which has a headrest extending on up. The stuffed leather is over a rosewood frame, so that the leather part of the chair, itself, appears to be seated in a wooden chair. There is a sense of sitting in someone’s lap. She wiggled with unbridled enthusiasm as she settled into it.
I tapped my watch and saw that my free testosterone level was approaching the red zone. I hate getting oily skin. I made a mental note to up my soy consumption. Her entrance didn’t add up. Yellow was a much better color for her and however you dress it, leather is a cow that has been hollowed out. She put her purse on one of the leather chairs and sat in the other.
“You’re The Layman,” she said. “I’ve seen you in the ring.” She was being openly appreciative of me. Compared to most men I am massive, with shoulders like a horse’s.
“Multiple personality,” I thought.
The advantage of lay psychiatry is you don’t have to wait long for the diagnosis. But, before telling the client what’s wrong with her, I let her talk, and I listened, just like a professional. She crossed her legs and her skirt rode up along the curvature of her right thigh. “You’re The Layman,” she said. “I’ve seen you in the ring.” She was being openly appreciative of me.
Compared to most men I am massive, with shoulders like a horse’s.
It’s why I have to monitor my free testosterone levels. I’m dangerous when I get cranked up. “What made you become a psychiatrist?” She never took her eyes off mine.
“Lay Psychiatrist,” I corrected. “I used to read self help books when I was waiting to go in the ring. It relaxed me before the match. One day I thought, ‘What the fuck? I can be a psychiatrist.’ But do you know how long it takes to get a license? Fucking insane when you can just walk in some shrink’s office and take his off the wall.”
“Wing Fing,” she said.
The woman said her name was Roxie. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t her real name. She had no doubt traveled under aliases so long names were now accessories, like passports and jewelry.
I nodded with open admiration of her knowledge of the genre, and we had our first laugh together. I was feeling like letting myself fall a little deeper into the pillow.
The woman said her name was Roxie. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t her real name. She had no doubt traveled under aliases so long names were now accessories, like passports and jewelry. She had melon breasts with perfect posture, seemingly always alert and dreaming of a thumb, a forefinger, and a poetic disposition. She was offering them up like product placement, because that’s what they were.
Somebody else might stay in their head but not me. I live just above my public bone, in the unabridged version of the moment. I knew what she was feeling because I was feeling it too. “You read between the lines?” I said. “I see it clearly now, but I wasn’t conscious of what I was doing. It was repressed. You’re a lay psychiatrist, too.”
She smiled and the nipples hardened against the fabric of her soft cotton shirt. “Suppressed,” she gently corrected. “I don’t need special skills when, ‘You need a fucking psychiatrist,’ is on your business card.” She smiled and recrossed her legs.
I said, “You’re naked under your clothes.”
She said, “Just don’t talk, okay?”