BROWSE Columns
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I’m two minutes late to my appointment on Dobbin Street. I try to walk quickly from the subway. My phone buzzes with a text from Dad.
There’s green glass in the seams of the sidewalk. I am sure the sun would twinkle off this glass beautifully if there were sun, but there is no sun. I’m reminded I left a cable-knit scarf here last week when the full brunt of February rushes up my coat.
I walk faster.
Dobbin Street shouldn’t exist as part of a normal daily routine. When you say you need to pop down the street, it’s not to this street. It isn’t a street in town, or around the corner, even if it is. It’s an under-saturated block of old warehouses and industrial lofts that don’t seem to have any doors. Inside, artists pretend to enjoy living in former glue factories with no heat; furniture is reupholstered, cars are impounded. There is just one storefront, a cafe made of windows that sells dry muffins you can only pay for with their proprietary muffin app. When I drink their turbo cold brew the room melts like a Dali painting and I have to hide in the glass bathroom until my
breathing goes back to normal. Today I think I’ll just have tea.
While I’m waiting in line I wonder if my therapist will be offended to see me walking in late with a cup of tea in hand. Being late is one thing, but being late touting evidence you stopped off is like, asking for a dirty look. And maybe I am.
Dobbin Street is for appointments.
I’m certain none of the therapists in this weird converted loft take insurance, even though I’ve never actually seen anyone else in this building. White noise machines sit at the foot of every closed door like little plastic personal secretaries, whirring fake air around. So something must go on in there. It costs $250 to spend 45 minutes on Dobbin Street.
I told him about my dad.
He used to help me pay for these appointments but he was evicted for spending too much money on Kinky Boots on Broadway.
I enjoy telling stories that are funny but also true.
I don’t get it, he said.
He kept bringing new dates to see the same show over and over until he ran out of money. I asked him why, if he was going to repeat the same date, wouldn’t he at least choose a different show each time?
And what did he say? he asked.
That he just really enjoyed that show, so why fix it if it ain’t broke? And they always seemed to enjoy the show, too.
He wrote out some notes.
The girls, I clarified.
I don't find this very funny, he said.
Well. I kind of haven’t gotten to the punch line yet? Anyway, now he sleeps in his buddy's basement and can’t help me pay for therapy. But now I need therapy more than ever because of how stressful it is to have a Dad who can’t stop seeing Kinky Boots!
I let that sit and resolve for a little.
Tough room, I said.
I have this month’s fee in my pocket with the billing statement attached. “For Professional Services (CPT): 90834-95 Psychotherapy, 45 minutes with Patient. Diagnosis Code ICD-10-CM: F42.2 Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Mixed obsessional thoughts and acts; F34.1 Persistent Depressive Disorder.
I’ve been googling my therapist all year. I know his wife’s name and profession, where they went to school, where they live, what papers he wrote in graduate school. A relative’s funeral in Nebraska he attended once. I want to know more. I’m not in love with him. But paying money to get undivided attention and concern from someone each week is doing something to me.
I told him about the first sabotage.
When I was ten on vacation with my family - before my dad left - I tried to find out if you could dial 911 on a pay phone without a quarter.
He frowned.
The hotel manager stormed over to us when the police called back. Afterwards in our room I couldn’t face my parents. I drew a bath and held only my nostrils above the surface. I could feel my brain twitching, my nose shooting air over the water in a looping three-part staccato. NINE! ONE! ONE! NINE! ONE! ONE!
What a poetic description, he said.
Well, I’ve spent a lot of time going over the moment.
I wish he wouldn’t interrupt - the timing here is kind of important.
So I’m in the bath and my mind totally short-circuits, bleating NINE ONE ONE over and over again. And I’m a kid so I have no idea what’s happening. And I can’t stop thinking about that phone call and the hotel manager’s face and my parents’ embarrassment every second for years and years and from then on everything was different, I said.
The first onset, he said.
Beat. (Like in a script.)
Exactly.
He wrote some notes.
My knuckles hurt from knocking. The door is unlocked. I don’t know what to say, so like an idiot I mumble Hi I’m coming in and edge the door from its frame. His narrow room feels golden-brown and secreted away, defying the generic despair of a chilly Tuesday in an otherwise dying empire. The dappled radiator is chugging and I can see just a streak of Dobbin Street from the tiny window, behind the fake plants and the wheel of his bicycle mounted on its standing rack. It’s otherwise silent. In the summer he relies on a tiny A.C. unit for the tiny window and one time halfway through a session he turned it on while I was talking, so I smiled and said Are you getting hot? and he laughed.
Usually he’d be holding open the door with a pretentious smirk I hate. But standing here uninvited in his silent doorway at 17 minutes past the hour is making me miss the smirk and I wonder if perhaps that was just the way he smiled. I smirk a couple times to myself to try and feel like he’s there. And then I see, he is.
He’s sitting in his tan leather chair which usually faces the patient couch but is currently positioned with its back to me, facing the tiny window with its tiny A.C. But, he isn’t sitting, not really. He is bent over the chair at the first hint of a seated position, because his ass doesn’t reach the seat, because he is just slightly hovering, because he is suspended around the neck by a cable-knit scarf looped over the exposed pipe above.
The door clicks and seals out the whirs. I set down my tea.
This is an emergency situation. Am I dissociating? Can you be aware of the fact that you’re dissociating while it’s happening, or does that kind of negate the whole thing? I’m not entirely sure if time is passing or if it’s one of those classic dissociative moments that stretches for eternity while you watch yourself react. I don’t believe that’s what’s happening. I think I’m just standing here on a normal timeline, not reacting. I don’t have any thoughts about my therapist or the fact that his pants are puddled at his ankles and his swollen dick looks haunted. I can only think of myself watching the situation, not reacting. What am I supposed to do with this? My hand tightens around my cell phone and for one pyretic moment I consider trying to swallow it. All the blood has pooled in my feet, getting them hot and fat and ready for something very heroic. But I don’t move; instead my eyes skip to his sleeping laptop screen on the floor.
I get to look at his stuff!
This thrill jolts me into action. There is nothing else in my mind besides this. I’m a wine- breathed altar boy kneeling at the foot of his laptop. Shame, luscious luscious. Ignominious. No password to start it up? This strikes me as irresponsible for a clinician. Even something dumb and easy to guess is better than nothing at all. My password for everything is PurpleGirl!
The page he was viewing before the screensaver kicked in is porn, of course, and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry because the video is unbelievably dumb, so I just sit and marvel at how useless the fantasy is. The search term was “brunette+big ass,” and the title of the video is:
Laughing wins out but it’s a choking laugh and, to be honest, I was lying when I said I thought I might cry. I’m choking on stale miasma and laughing at this ludicrous video and the fact that his neck is puffy and ringed with purple; this man, this good man is fully dead because someone made a 03:48 second video about a BRUNETTE having a BIG ASS.
I told him about some dreams.
Last night I dreamt I was watching a movie. In the scene the lead actor was being punished - he had to lay in a tub of electrified water. Face down in the tub, convulsing, his eyes bulged almost completely out of his head. When he emerged he had become a Human Bowel.
His eyes were wide. Pretty good today. I kept going.
He was pure knotted sphincter spewing dark liquid excrement from surface fissures, his hair standing on end. He walked by convulsing forward on hysterical feet, a wild grin on his face. Like if a fish were given legs and had to propel itself forward with the incidental movements of choking on air.
He was quiet, then told me he was sorry.
That’s a horrifying dream, he said.
I thought about it for a minute.
Yeah. It is.
Notes notes notes.
But I admired the actor's commitment.
I drop the laptop and circle him like an exhibit, trying to keep my steps off the streaks of cum on the floor. I am sick of learning about him indirectly. I look up into his face and reach for his beard, turn the bristles over in my fingers like crumbling red moss. He doesn’t feel like what I would call proper body temperature, but he isn’t frozen solid. I don’t think he’s been here very long. Does he only do this on certain days? I guess my scarf isn’t usually here. His eyelids feel like rubber when I close them. I unbutton his shirt, touch his chest hair, pull him forward by the waist. Timorous lips on his white stomach. I lay my cheek against him, wrap my arms around. I ask his ribs, Why today?
I stand there hugging him where he hangs until 12:45 PM. He starts to sway when I let go so I steady him. I re-button his shirt, pull his pants and underwear back up, and fasten the belt. I shut the XXX BRUNETTE BIG ASS XXX tab on his laptop and erase the browser history. Wipe the cum from the floor with some tissues and stuff them in my bag.
There’s a photo of him and his wife on a mountain ridge tucked in the spine of a black datebook. It’s strange to me that he traveled to a mountain once. His wife is regular-looking but I can tell her smile makes him happy. I’m both relieved and disappointed to see she is not blonde. I take the photo and replace it with an envelope that contains $250 in cash.
Are you getting hot?
I close the radiator valve and turn on the A.C. It stings my bare neck. The date book says his first appointment today was with me at 12. Then Lily 1, Brace 2, Juliette 4, Megan 5. I wonder where he eats lunch at 3 PM. If I were to have stuck around after my Tuesday appointment some time and forced myself to eat dry muffins next door for two hours, would I have seen him come in? Would we have talked? Maybe he speaks to his wife on the phone while he eats. I do that. If I’m eating alone I like to call my boyfriend and discuss what we should do for dinner. We laugh about planning our next meal over our current one. Does he cook? Or do they alternate? They probably have some go-to recipes. For some reason I can’t picture him ever eating anything at all.
Something buzzes in his desk drawer so I open it. A text flashes across his phone from Mia.
......
......
......
Oh.
......
......
......
Oh no.
I pick up the phone like it’s this little girl’s face and I’m wiping under her wet eyes with my thumbs.
I am in the bathtub, convulsing. I am electrified. I am leaking feces and grinning.
There are no photos of his daughter around and he never mentioned having kids. He kept her private; she was nowhere online. He has a whole private world with a preteen daughter and a trip to the mountains and cum on the floor of his office. And just because it’s a Tuesday afternoon I am the only one who knows that that world has ended. And how.
I can barely see but I know I have to tell my wormy fingers to calm down and take action.
I love you too, I type all shaky.
I had never touched him before today. One time he said he hoped he could be a source of my comfort and I said Well you could hug me and he smiled but said nothing.
I look up and see his hair is blowing in the stream of the tiny A.C.
Why do you think you called 911 on your family vacation? he had asked.
His hair is thinning in the back.
I just wanted to check to see if I could.
To check in case of what?
To check in case of what?
I can hear his next patient outside the door. I should go. I hike up my coat and pull the strings tight at my neck. Drop my tea in the wastebasket.
To Mia I type,
Simone Norman is a writer, comedian, and actor with published works in The New York Times, ELLE, Teen Vogue, and Reductress. She has credits from Paramount+, Hulu, and The NY Comedy Festival. She lives in Brooklyn.
