So back to the whole psycho cult thing where, if you become one of them, you’re cured. I refused to become one of them, of course. I’m not a joiner. Ever see more than one moose at a time? Me, neither.
I don’t know how they ever make moose babies. I think if you’re a guy moose, it’s pretty hard to even look at a cow moose so you close your eyes and think of fucking a pretty deer with slender flanks and long eyelashes. The morning after, Moose Girl and Moose Boy are off on their own again, pretending it never happened. Moose Boy doesn’t even look at the cow moose as he passes her in the hallway outside of history class.
Anyway, my psycho psychotherapists would see me once a week for awhile and then one day they’d sigh heavily and refer me on to someone else so I’d have to dump my guts on the nice rug of the next therapist all over again. And the next. And the next.
Sometimes they’d call me “difficult” or “combative.” That’s what they put in your file when you aren’t “cooperative.” One old Freudian called me “truculent and intransigent.” I had to look those words up, but when I threw a desk lamp at him, he got my meaning right away. Deeds, not words.
I’m just looking for answers. I wasn’t abused. I had a pretty boring and uneventful childhood. No uncles with big hairy paws lurk in my deep dark background. My parents didn’t even believe in spanking, though sometimes they couldn’t seem to help themselves.
I remember one therapist said it was hard to help me because she couldn’t bring herself to like me. She complained that I smelled bad and the clients who came into her waiting room were turned off by the stench. She was pretty fed up, I guess. She topped it off by saying she was just trying to help me. Then she told me I was terminated.
“Are you going to have me killed by a robot from the future?”
“It means I’m dismissing you.”
“Like in the military?”
“I’m firing you as a patient,” she said.
“That’s odd,” I said. “My parents pay you, so I thought you worked for me.”
“Goodbye,” she said.
“Can we discuss this? I’m not super fond of you right now, but I don’t want to start this all over again.”
“Get out,” she said.
So, yeah, she was kind of a bitch about it. We got a letter of termination later that week (together with a bill for the services she had failed to render) and a list of three other psychotherapists I could piss off next. I assume she picked three colleagues she hated in psycho school.
However, the next one wasn’t so bad. Her name was Circe, which I messed up when I tried to pronounce it. It turns out you say it, “sear-say” which is pretty cool. I liked this new one at first because we started with her name and ended up talking about mine.
“Georgie” is short for Georgette, which Mom chose because I was the cutest fat baby she’d ever seen. I was named after some character on the
Mary Tyler Moore Show
. I’ve never seen it, but Georgette was really sweet and Mama hoped the name would make me sweet, too. Didn’t take.
I told Dr. Circe that it sounded to me like I was stuck with a fat girl’s name. She suggested I change it, just like that. We batted a few ideas around and I said, “What’s the thinnest girl’s name there is?” and without hesitation she answered, “Gidget.”
That’s what we accomplished in our first session. I came home and announced my new, improved name. Mom was so pissed I was sure I was finally with the right therapist and Moose Rescue was on the way. The important thing in judging someone’s intelligence is how much he or she agrees with you. If they agree with you a lot, they must be very intelligent.
I should have known it wouldn’t last. That first session, Dr. Circe must have deked me out, disarming me with her snake charms. I never liked her so much as when she came up with Gidget. Not only did she give me the idea for my new, non-fat name, she expected me to make over my life so I’d come up with a whole new personality to match the new name on the package. I was willing to try at first. I was supposed to make like my whole life was a movie script I had to write as I went.
“Gidget is a new character,” Dr. Circe said. “What is the new you going to be like? You don’t like Georgette so how are you going to be different from the old you?”
The process sounded good at first, especially since it was tied up in an easy slogan with a red bow: “Fake it till you make it.” There was an awful lot of work wrapped up in that little phrase, but it was catchy and I tried it out for almost a week. Dr. Circe had me drinking lots of water. I took a bottle of water with me everywhere. It felt like I was living on the toilet, but I stuck with it until one of the skinny bitches at school started in on me about how I was killing Mother Earth with all my fucking water bottles. I also didn’t want anybody to think I had a bladder infection or something so I cut out the water at school and but kept pounding it back at home until I was dizzy and drunk from guzzling too much.
Trying on a new identity felt right at first. I was sick of being me and Dr. Circe and I had worked out the differences. For instance, Georgette was surly and called her therapist Dr. Circe because she was still acting like a girl. Gidget called the therapist by her last name, Dr. Papua, because I had to pretend to be “a grown up young woman” until I somehow became one. I played along though I didn’t think it made that much difference. I was still surrounded by the same bunch of assholes as I always had been. However, Dr. Papua insisted that pretending to be more mature would vaccinate me from the Acting Like an Asshole Virus. That was a clue things were about to go badly. It was like she was saying my life was my fault, blaming the victim.
Dr. Papua insisted the change would come when I chose my reaction to stress instead of being a victim. That did sound good at first and she was the first therapist I had who actually gave me stuff to do, like homework for the socially disenfranchised. Everybody else just wanted me to talk about my feelings until, presumably, I’d figure it all out for myself. That sounded to me like an awfully lazy way for somebody to make a living. If I could figure out how to fit in, be a deer instead of a moose, wouldn’t I have sawn off my big moosey ass and antlers already?
There were other requirements (“commitments” Dr. Papua called them.) Gidget was supposed to get to bed early, start the day working out for half an hour and then shower every day. I’m a teenager. Morning doesn’t work with my biorhythm, which I told her at my next session.
She told me to work out after school, but by then I was tired and just wanted to sit on the couch and read or watch TV. She told me she didn’t have any patience for patients who had a problem for every solution.
A few weeks went by and she kept asking me if I really wanted the life Gidget was offering, since Georgie was still on the couch plowing through potato chips. I said it was hard and she called me a whiner, which kind of devolved the therapeutic relationship, I thought, though Dr. Papua called it “confrontation” and “truth-telling.”
When the letter came, I can’t say I was totally taken by surprise. Fired again by an employee. Still, I thought she’d have me come into the office one more time so she could at least charge for one more session to tell me to my face how much I suck.
“Oh, Georgie!” Mama said. “I mean…oh, Gidget!” Mama hadn’t completely made the transition to the new me, but I guess I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t committed to the therapeutic process. Mom read me the letter, which used the phrase “impediments to therapeutic process” twice. I thought that both excessive as a euphemism and poor English composition. With a name like Circe Papua, obviously English isn’t her first language, but still, no scholarships for her.
I translated the gist for my mother. “It means I’m not enough of a robot for her treatment to work,” I explained.
“It means you have to
want
to change,” Mama explained back at me, pointing to the phrase in the letter helpfully.
“I know that, dumb ass,” I said. “But apparently I’ve got so many issues I need a magazine rack.
Fuck!
If I’m so broken these people can’t fix me, what does Dad’s excellent insurance pay for? I mean, shouldn’t part of the therapeutic process be that the therapists
make
me want to change?”
“You
said
you wanted to change,” Mama said.
“Sure. But not enough to
actually
change. Not
yet
. Isn’t that what all this counselling is for? To make me see the light…or
something
?”
I steamed off to my room and didn’t eat until supper. I fretted. I hadn’t fretted before. Raged, yes. I’d raged a lot. I fretted about the magazine article in Dr. Papua’s waiting room I hadn’t had time to finish. Then I asked myself what Gidget would think. Gidget, thin and sweet, said Dr. Papua was the closest thing to somebody useful I’d met, so I needed to get back together with her.
At dinner I found out my sudden falling out with another therapist was a real emergency. Mama threatened to make me work in the back of her sewing shop after school to keep me out of trouble (here, I think “trouble” means “fridge.”) Anyway, psycho girls should not spend more time with their mothers if improved mental health is the goal.
It was Gidget who made me go to Dr. Papua’s office to try to make up. If that didn’t work, Georgette was prepared to settle for a terrible vengeance. You’ve heard hell has no fury like a woman scorned? Or is it wrath? Well, look out if the woman is young and prone to mood swings, poor impulse control and “episodes”. (Did I mention I’m a cutter? Yeah, my forearm looks like a road map of downtown Detroit. Fuck you, don’t judge me. It’s one sure way to feel something besides fat.)
So I go in late Friday afternoon, hoping to catch Dr. Papua, and there’s this dude sitting in her outer office looking squirrely. I’d never seen anyone else in the waiting room before. Dr. Papua’s office set up is such that you go in the waiting room, you wait, and then you go into the inner office to get tips on magically changing your DNA by changing your name. About the time somebody’s coming in, you’re headed out the back stairs so you never have that awkward moment of looking into another patient’s eyes and thinking,
In what perverted way are you all fucked up? And in what perverted way are you assuming I’m all fucked up?
The dude sat there in a suit that was obviously way too big for him. I wanted to ask him what his diet secret was but I figured starvation was probably involved so fuck that. Moose Girl must eat.
There’s a desk in the outer office. It’s always empty except for a little hot plate and a tea pot. I sat at the desk and pulled my journal out of my backpack and looked through it, looking urgent. “I’m sorry. I don’t seem to have you scheduled for this afternoon.”
He looked up like he was surprised I could talk, as if the fern in the corner had suddenly sprouted lips. “Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry, there must be some mix-up. I don’t have you scheduled for this afternoon.”
“I’m here to see Dr. Papua.”
“Well, obviously.”
“And?”
“Dr. Papua cancelled your appointment. One of her patients is on the South Street bridge and she had to talk the girl down…I mean, so she’d take the
slow
way down.” I almost giggled but his look stopped me.
His eyes went wide and for a minute I worried that he was some kind of anger management freak. Instead he started to tear up. “Th-that’s
t-terrible!”
“Yeah.” Beat. “Well, I’m sorry you didn’t get the call. There’s probably a message on your voicemail or something.”
He nodded and spent a full minute fishing some stiff, grungy tissues out of his jacket pocket. Great. He’d bought it, but he wasn’t getting up to leave, either.
“Um, what should we do?”
“About what?”
“Well, can I reschedule with you or —?”
The longer he stayed there, the riskier things got, so it occurred to me that pretending to be a secretary would get iffy quickly. “Hey, I usually just clean the office and water the plants. Dr. Papua will call you as soon as she’s done convincing some wing nut that life is worth living.”
He went white. “That’s not very—”
“Sorry. Look. What do you
want
?” Inspiration struck. “I’m just here to water the plants and uh…lock up the office. Circe must have been in a big hurry. You know, it’s like, an emergency. Maybe that’s why you didn’t get her message to cancel.”
“What should I do?”
Jesus! No wonder this guy needed shrinking. “Go,” I said, “home, I mean. She’ll call you.”
I looked at the clock. Five minutes to four. A therapeutic hour is only fifty-five minutes long. That’s just one more way they cheat you. Whoever was in there with her right now would be finishing up and clacking down the back stairs. Dr. Papua would come out of the inner office and find the crier and me sitting there. The crier would throw a tantrum, which wasn’t part of my plan.
He finally got up and went for the door. “You shouldn’t call people wing nuts,” he said, another tear sliding down his cheek. “We come here because we’re troubled. Life is very difficult for some of us.”
“Yeah. Sure is,” I said.
You have no idea.
As soon as the door whispered shut behind him I dumped the Mama’s laxative into the teapot and gave it a swirl. The laxative was powerful, alien technology stuff, doctor-prescribed for when Mama took too many happy pills and got bound up. Mama said that if she didn’t stay regular, she could die on the toilet like Elvis Presley, with intestines packed full of gray, chalky, chunked up poop and a brain full of lost potential.
I was still swirling the tea around, hoping the stuff would dissolve fast, when Dr. Papua came out, all dressed up.
“Got a date?” I said.
She paused in mid stride and I could tell she was taking me in and gulping a cleansing breath like she’d taught me to do. I watched her eyes as she took a moment to rearrange reality now that I was back in her life again.
“I don’t believe we’re scheduled for today,” she said. Had to hand it to her, she slapped her mask on tight after the initial surprise.