You

38

I have to buy headphones at a fucking deli because I have to know now what Nicky has said about you and the guy takes forever and why do so many morons go into customer service and I grab the headphones and mutter, thanks, asshole, and I’m out of there and I tear into the package and it’s sealed too tight and I scream and a few people on the street back away from me like I’m the Hulk busting out of his dress shirt and I duck into the alley and take the time to crack the plastic and get the headphones out and throw away the instructions and I can’t get them into my phone fast enough as I run down the stairs and swipe my MetroCard and hit play on the first MP3 as I step onto the train and sit down across from a blind black guy who smiles for no reason.

Okay, day one, Beck. Female. Early to mid twenties. Hypersexualized. Boundary issues. Father issues. Claims to be here to resolve her issues with men but doesn’t seem to realize that I have a ring on my finger. Only mode of communication is seduction. Repeatedly crosses her legs and wears a flimsy shirt without a bra. Attention seeking. Directly asks about transference, severe narcissistic disorder. Insists on calling me Dr. Nicky in spite of my repeated statements that I am not an MD. Repeatedly asks if I’m married and if I have a good sex life with my wife to avoid discussing her own life. Tells me she slept with her therapist in college. Repeatedly. I ask why she doesn’t see a female clinician and she says she has one mother, doesn’t need another. Possible borderline, predatory, masochistic tendencies.

The blind black guy is staring at me but he’s blind and he can’t see me and I can’t get mad at him and I skip ahead to another segment. Maybe the next one will be better. It has to be.

Marcia was a fucking nightmare this morning. Mack overslept again and Amy has the flu and Marcia is just incompetent as a mother. I almost canceled but found myself soothed by knowing that I would see Beck. I’ve grown to look forward to my time with this young woman. I find myself counting down, thinking about what I’ll wear that day. She makes my life bearable, damn it. Now who’s asking about transference? Today, she presents in sweatpants and a formless top, with messy hair and shiny skin. I can’t help but feel that she dressed down for me, which is more intimate than dressing up for me. We establish goals: She wants sexual confidence. Which I find amusing because she is sex.

I hit PAUSE and I want the black man to stop smiling. I want the world to stop smiling. I fast-forward. I hit PLAY.

She claims that I have opened her up and that she’s taking a much-needed break from men, that she’s realized things about her father, things about her love life, and all of this after just a few sessions because I am the most amazing doctor she has ever had. I tell her again I’m not a doctor. Is it terrible that I love it when she calls me Dr. Nicky? Don’t answer that. (Sigh.) Anyway, I tell her that there is no magic cure. She shakes me off. She says I have lit up something inside of her. She says she has never felt so in tune with herself. She says talking to me is the time of her life. She is presenting more sexually, in kneesocks and skirts. I think she knows I’m falling for her. And my God, I think she’s falling for me. I think about her too much. And sometimes I worry that she knows. I should stop therapy but I can’t. I am so tired of Marcia and the broken washing machine and Beck is . . . a reprieve.

I hit PAUSE. I look around. I wish there was someone I could punch in the face. I could never punch a blind man and I press PLAY.

I know I should give her a referral and send her on her way.

I hit PAUSE again because I’m going deaf from anger. He had no problem giving me a referral. It’s fine to kick Danny Fox to the curb but you get to stay. I press PLAY:

Her journaling is productive. She is receptive to my suggestion that she needs to be in a relationship in order to address her issues. She repeatedly tells me that we have a connection. And I don’t encourage her but this connection is all I think about. How come I am so willing to accept failure in my work? Yet I am not willing to accept it when a very intelligent patient calls me a genius. Maybe I did cure her in a matter of weeks. Has my self-esteem tumbled to the extent that I no longer think that’s possible just because I bought the wrong washing machine?

He loves you and he’s after you and the blind man is smiling, now standing, poking around and we’re all hunters, we are, and I skip ahead:

I tell Diane that I’m starting to have dreams about Beck. And of course Diane tells me to stop treatment. That’s what a good therapist would say and Diane is a good therapist. But I can’t. Beck is opening up to me and she trusts me enough to tell me about this green pillow she uses to masturbate. To masturbate! The backstory is revelatory. Her father left. He then asked her mother to mail him his green neck pillow. Her passive mother agreed but Beck had already stolen the pillow. In my fantasy, we are in my office and she comes over to me and asks to sit on my lap. I say no, but she will not be stopped. She straddles me. I fantasize about her all the time now and the bad washing machine is actually good because there’s a lock in the laundry room and I can jerk off in there and think about Beck without getting caught. In my mind, when I’m inside of her, she calls me a rock star and a cock star and I haven’t felt this alive in years. Staying with Marcia feels more like a betrayal. Like I am cheating on Beck even though nothing is happening. Every day, I am more detached from my family. The truth is ugly: I would rather have Beck.

At some point during that recording the blind man exited the train. I missed my stop and the headphones jam my ears, pieces of dime-store junk, and I yank them out of my phone and hurl them at the window across from me. People are looking at me and people can fuck off. The train lurches to a stop and I’m the first one out the door. I can’t get angrier than I am right now. I feel like a sucker and I want to tear my own head off because I can’t believe that I fell for his bullshit. I can’t believe I told him things I never tell anyone. I round the corner and see Karen fucking Minty sitting on my fucking stoop with a picnic basket and cats are supposed to be smarter than this, colder than this.

“Surprise,” she says. “I made a picnic!”

And can you believe that Karen still exists? I want to go inside and throw typewriters at the walls until they cave in and the mice are collateral damage, falling to death, screaming and Karen Minty—my girlfriend—has to be here with an actual picnic basket. I’ve never seen one in real life, only in cartoons, in books, and I don’t want to go on a picnic. I smell garlic and rosemary and the Noxzema that Karen has rubbed all over her tight, pointy face since she was a kid. It’s over. If she knew what a sucker I am, if she knew that I paid a married dickwad to try and fuck the love of my life, she wouldn’t want to take me on a picnic. I need her to go away. This has nothing to do with her. This is Nicky’s fault and I tell her I’m not hungry.

She is hungry and she reaches and I pull away. “Joe, what the fuck?”

I’m not Joe, I’m Dan Fox and I am loud. “Jesus Christ, Karen! Can you take a fucking hint?”

And that’s it. She is on her feet, shivering. “Fuck you.”

“That’s intelligent.”

“Fuck you and your intelligence,” she snarls. “You think I’m some doormat piece-of-shit chick that you can bang and fuck as you please? You think I’m some fucking rag doll?”

“Yes,” I say, not missing a beat. “That’s exactly what you are.”

And it’s true. I am wrong about everyone. You are a whore and Nicky is a prick and sweet Karen, the cum Dumpster, is boiling over with repressed rage. Or is that sadness? She is quivering and the basket is making her forearm tremble and I’m a fucking asshole and she’s a phlebotomist who loves me, me, and if Nicky wasn’t in love with you then none of this would be happening. But he does want you and that chicken smells delicious and I’m a fool.

“Sit down,” says Karen Minty and I let her help me onto the stoop. How could Nicky do this to Karen? She is a hard worker; the basket is full. She has heart; last month, she lugged a vacuum cleaner all the way here to my place. She vacuumed beneath the sofa. She wore tiny little whore shorts and a half shirt and she found dirty places I didn’t know existed.

“You don’t want to get mice,” she had said. “Otherwise I won’t wanna come here anymore.”

Nobody ever made a vacuum cleaner into a dozen roses, a beating heart. And like everything bad, this too is Nicky’s fault. He’s the one who told me to get a cat. Karen would stay with me forever and pump out kids when I want kids and work doubles so we can go to Florida once a year and I have all of this here in a picnic basket and that rosemary smells like heaven. But the thing is, she’s never heard of Paula Fox or Magnolia or tried to bang her married shrink. She’s not different, hot like us. She follows the rules; she doesn’t dare touch the hole in my wall because that’s for the super to fix. She respects boundaries and fuck Nicky for wasting her time and breaking her heart.

“Why are you mad at me?” She is quivering. “I thought you’d think it was cool, a picnic. It’s gorgeous out.”

“Karen.”

“Oh fuck,” she says and she knows I’m dumping her. She leaps off the stoop and she’s running, crying, gone. I will never see her again and I take the picnic basket upstairs and spread it all out in my Minty-fresh apartment. I gorge on chicken breasts and roasted potatoes and cauliflower in cream sauce and wine right out of the bottle. I eat like it’s the last supper, because it is. I buried Dan Fox today and now I have to take care of Nicky. There’s no way around it, Beck. I listen to his recordings all night long. He’s taken advantage of you in the safest place in the world. He’s in your head, a mouse in your house and he’s clearly tricked you into thinking that you love him. We can’t get together with him controlling your thoughts. Dr. Nicky is . . . Dr. Nicky: a greedy, married pig. And he was wrong about me. I don’t have a mouse in my house. I have a fucking pig.