The Lay Psychiatrist: Back Story (20)

If he he needed a degree he’d steal it off a doctor’s wall

“Okay, boss, it’s time to rock and roll.”

The Layman looked down at the other man from the mountain on which he’d built his head. His eyes were sad today. Tender could see that. Not good when you go into the cage with faraway eyes.

He was called Tender not just because he attended the wrestlers, but also because he was quick to take offense. These men big as tanks were his heroes and he lamented being a skinny little man, with good muscles hidden underneath his tender feelings. Short men can be like that, the Layman thought. He dogeared a copy of, “Fuck Yes,” by Wing F. Fing. He was nearing … not the end of his journey through contemporary Self Help literature … rather, the horizon where he will wither and die like corn rotting in the field. He’d been inside the even rows, once, but he’d begun to identify with the weeds.

He even went to market, but it was never going to be that way because it never is that way.

“It’s this way” he said. “I keep having to go through this life over and over again and can’t remember it because I think, surely, there must be some mistake. But I knew what I was doing when I started hanging out with the weeds. If somebody had just come by with a fucking hoe I’d be a free man today.” His thoughts would go on that way. He called it, entertaining himself. When he realized he had been entertaining his mother, and just kept it up with other women, he was at first shocked. He’d never liked the woman that much but that was after he got to know her, when he’d separated from her. Now he could see how the puzzle master tries to put broken perfection back together again.

The match was over.

He told the tender. “I think there’s something wrong with me. I don’t remember anything after I berserk. It’s like it’s not me that’s in the ring, but it’s me that cashes the checks.” Tender said, “Then you could get another job and double your income.” He could have been a jockey, he had an intensity that led with the chest, while his face, in the background, acknowledged that he knew what he was talking about even if nobody else did. “Fuck’em,” he said, and he laughed but not all the way. A part of it got grabbed back to protect the sensitive place. “You read all those self help books, you should help other people. They’ll pay you, man, and you can put a framed fight poster in your office, of The Layman and The Undertaker in the epic battle of the war gods.” He got more enthusiastic but the Layman’s attention had gone to imagining himself as a psychiatrist. He could steal a degree off a professional psychiatrist’s wall, just like Wing F. Fing said to do it. Fuck yes.

He would follow the Way of the Weed.

He would be the personification of the self help book in flesh and wine, uninhibited by any professional standards, he would be the go to guy for Weeds who have left the field and ventured into the wild, where the law is bottom up instead of top down. This was the birth of his superpower. He became, The Lay Psychiatrist. He didn’t even bother pretending to be legitimate, He had made a lot of money in the ring, and he’d invested it in a fund that was paying him an income without touching the principle. He had the cash on hand to get his business opened, but how to get clients? “I’ll write a column,” he told Tender, “about my clients.”

“I’m without any professional standards, that’s right up front,” he said.

Tender said, “It’s in the word, man! You’re a Layman. ‘Don’t sue me, I told you I was a layman.’”

“‘I tried to warn you I have no standards,’” the Layman said. They were in a routine now, laughing at a variation of the same image, that of an indignant con man.

“What part of Layman did you fail to understand?” Tender asked an imaginary client, and they went on like that for some time. Then Tender went sober. He said, “I’ll be your first client.” “My first client. You know how people frame the first dollar they earn? If you die I’ll put you in a glass coffin, like Snow White, and hang you on the wall.”

“If I die? Not dying would be to miss the ending, and travel through space like an amputee. Seriously, man, I want an hour session, to help you launch your practice.” Tender had cancer.

“Fifty minutes,” the Layman countered. “I have to take a shower.” And they were laughing again. Still, the idea took root, and it was just a year later when the Lay Psychiatrist was getting referrals, and the business began to blossom. Tender’s cancer was in remission. It was one day at a time.

The Layman said, “By the way, did I win or lose that last match?”

Tender said, “In the words of the immortal Hank Williams, you win again.”

“Make sure it’s the immortal Hank Williams and not the other one.”

“Sanitized in heaven for the liberal elite, chief.”