(no subject)
So our second story for our creative writing class was due, this one was bit longer...
You wouldn’t believe half the shit these people tell me. Not that I wasn’t warned. Professor McDowell had leaned in close and said quietly, “Angie, with a sweet, unassuming face like yours, people will tell you their deepest, and their darkest, secrets. If you do, in fact, make this your living, be prepared to hear a person’s hidden thoughts that they tuck away so tightly from everyone else.” My professor whispered this to me, as I turned in my final. It was the last day of my last class. That day marked me officially completing my degree in psychology. There was no turning back at that point.
He was right, too. I guess when these people come in, they expect to tell someone that Aunt Joanie did some inappropriate things to them as a child. Instead, when they notice my unthreatening demeanor, out pours from their raunchy mouths how they remember every second. And how they enjoyed it. Grown men weeping to me about how they screw their wives, their mistresses, thinking about Aunt Joanie.
It pays the bills, so I listen. It was never what I had expected through college. Nothing can prepare you for this. Maybe it’s only me, but just two years into owning my own therapy clinic, I am unsure how I, myself, stay sane. The things I learned in college are hardly applicable. Never once have I needed a whole chapter on when hugging is appropriate. How an emotion is a reaction to an emotion which is a reaction to an emotion, so on and so forth. Half of my professors taught us as if people’s feelings were like math equations. And sure, some of my clients are out of the textbook cases, but there are no equations to some of these people’s minds.
I space out the people who affect me the most. Usually one or two a day mixed in with my normal clients. I start off my week with Gerri Anthony on Mondays. Gerri Anthony is a middle-aged, stay at home wife, whose husband got a vasectomy behind her back after promising her a family. Mrs. Gerri Anthony is having an affair with a college student. Mrs. Gerri Anthony is having an affair with one of my Tuesday patients, Travis Silver. I’m unsure of how Gerri Anthony and Travis Silver met, but it didn’t take too long for me to realize they were each other’s secret lovers. Travis Silver accidentally killed his mother at the age of six. Guilt like that can twist one’s mind.
Right in the middle of the week, I see Elliott Moore. Elliott Moore is the creepiest man I have ever come across. I don’t have it in me to see any other patients on Wednesdays because of this. Luckily, Thursday is the day that Mark Leche comes in. Mark is a decent man, if not a bit uncommon; a raised-Catholic business owner, who is also gay. He pays for a double session, though he hardly needs to be seeing a psychologist. I think sometimes he just needs someone to talk to.
On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, I see Carrie Campbell. Sixteen year old Carrie Campbell is full of surprises. She will do anything just get on her mother’s nerves, which suits me, because her mother is the one with the check book.
Monday November 3rd 1:15pm Gerri Anthony
“We did it in my husband’s den. We made love right there on that filthy man’s desk.” Gerri Anthony squeals of her and Travis Silver. Gerri Anthony always comes in my office wearing a different cocktail dress and cheap fresh water pearls, the whole ensemble from Dilliards or JC Penney. She’s never heard of Cynthia Rowley or Diane von Furstenburg, yet she struts down every sidewalk, every hallway, as if it were her own catwalk. Runway models don’t thrust their hips, they place one foot squarely in front of the other to create the look of thinner legs and wider hips. Gerri Anthony doesn’t know this. “You know, I just don’t know how to say no to Travis and his big brown eyes every time he shows up on my doorstep. That boy is better than any man I’ve ever had.”
Tuesday November 4th 7:45pm Travis Silver
“I can’t resist her when she calls begging me to come over. The woman does things to me no girl my age does.” Travis Silver says with a gleam in his eye. Not love. Just the ecstasy of casual sex with an older woman.
I used to think that Freud was a perve for linking almost everything human’s do to sexual impulses, but after starting my career, I learned how right that old man really was.
Wednesday November 5th 1:52pm Elliott Moore
“I’m a people person,” Elliott Moore rambles, “Those people who come into my work, I love them. I know I don’t do anything important, but just being there makes me feel like I’m finally a part of something. Without that job, I’d be nothing because I love those people with all the life that feels me up.” Elliott Moore stares me dead in the eyes every session, all session, always touching his greasy black hair with his long, pale fingers, his nails encrusted with dirt and fungus. I’ve never known how Elliott Moore affords his payments, but even after I doubled his bill, he keeps coming in every week.
Thursday November 6th 1:30pm Mark Leche
“It’s the start of our Christmas sale next week, sweetie. Every year people pour in to buy gifts for their wives, boyfriends, mothers.” Mark Leche and I often just sit and chat. “Isn’t it funny how these few weeks before Christmas, my business’ profits are quadruple from what I earn the rest of the year? Isn’t it just great that the hundreds of pink dildos, rubber blow-up dolls, and strings of anal beads I’m selling this Christmas will be buying my dinner until Easter?”
Mark owns a sex toy shop. He always brightens up my Thursdays. We have fun, casual conversation for most of the three hours that we spend together each week. Mark isn’t an overtly gay guy. He’s a dashing man in his early thirties, always dressed in khaki slacks and a pressed shirt. Most girls dream of men like Mark. Figures.
Friday November 7th 6:07pm Carrie Campbell
“So there I was totally dozed off on the couch, and I woke up to a snip snip snip sound near my ear. My mom was cutting my fucking hair off! Even after I had told the bitch the blue would wash out in two weeks! But it’s cool, because as you can see I just went and shaved it all off! You should have seen that woman’s face!”
Carrie Campbell, a real rebel without a cause. Except that she has a cause; pissing her mother off for no apparent reason. In my professional opinion, I don’t think Carrie Campbell has any problems like depression or bipolar disorder, just an annoying and overbearing mother. An overbearing mother who calls me every week asking desperately, “Have you found her malfunction yet? ADD? ADHD? Skitzo? Something is wrong with that girl’s brain.”
Monday November 10th 2:04pm Gerri Anthony
“You know, I just can’t stand my husband’s face anymore. All I can think of when I see him is how I so badly just wanted a family with him. The perfect life. I never wanted to be his stupid maid.” Gerri Anthony practically cries, but anger keeps her tears from falling over that last little bit of her eyelid. “I just thought everyone wanted a child. Someone to carry on your heritage, you know?” Gerri Anthony hates her husband with every inch of her heart.
Tuesday November 11th 5:35pm Carrie Campbell
Carrie Campbell strides in with a smirk. Carrie Campbell strides in with long, curly blond tresses gracing the hem of her too short tank top. “I am totally stoked on wigs! My mom and I went and bought like six of them! I actually had a good time trying them on with her, too.”
Tuesday November 11th 7:06pm Travis Silver
“Who was that blond that just left?” Travis Silver asks me. “It’s weird, but she looked just like the photos of my mom when she was my age.”
Travis Silver’s mind becomes caught up in the memory of the day he killed his mother. He’s told me every little detail. There he was, just six years old, rummaging through his father’s closet. Dirty magazines scattered across the bed, golf clubs strewn around the beige carpet, he knew what he was looking for. Every week Travis Silver’s dad would get out his hand gun and shotgun and head down to the shooting range. Every week Travis Silver’s dad told him that he could come along when he was older. He told little Travis that once he was old enough, he could learn how to use the adult toy, but until then he’d have to stay home and pretend with his plastic guns. Travis Silver’s father meant well. He was a farm man who believed in hard work and building a good name for your family.
Young Travis pulled the metal case out from behind the rack of penny loafers and steel-toed boots. Inside was the grown up toy. Young Travis wanted to show his father he was a big boy. So when Travis Silver’s mom came in from the garden to check up on her well-behaved son, they were both in for a surprise. “Wanna play, Ma?” Young Travis asked giddily, pulling back hard on the black trigger. They both screamed. Both fell to the floor. Travis hid in the closet as his mother yelled for him to get help, paralyzed in pain on the now red carpet. That’s the thing about living in the country, you can scream for half an hour while blood gushes out of your upper thigh and no one will hear you. You can scream for half an hour while the blood pumps out of your sliced right saphenous artery and no one will hear you but your son, too frightened to move from where he’s crouching in the closet just ten feet away.
Wednesday November 12th 1:49pm Elliott Moore
“Sometimes I create their lives in my mind. The visitors at my work.” Elliott Moore has never spoken of anything but his work and the people who come in. “It’s like painting. I’m an artist. They have little clues tucked all over them. I piece them together to create a magnificent work of art in my mind. They let me know just enough to let my fantasies go wild.”
Thursday November 13th 1:03pm Mark Leche
“He left me. My boyfriend packed up all of his things and went back to his exes’ place up north.” Mark says as he walks into the office, before even sitting down on the couch adjacent to my chair. I was told in college that getting a black leather couch would help my business, as people have grown to expect them from therapists.
Thursday November 13th 5:58pm Carrie Campbell
“So, I waited around after I left on Tuesday and gave that boy Travis my number. My mom will flip her shit when she sees me with an older boy. It’s perfect.”
“I thought that you and your mother were getting along lately?”
“Eh. I guess. She’s never happy with who I am. It sucks when I’m not even good enough for my own mother.”
Monday November 10th 2:28 Gerri Anthony
“I went to the library the other day. The ladies there helped me research poison.” Gerri Anthony says coolly. Nonchalant. “I just figure poison is the most dignified way to end this marriage.”
It’s funny how badly those librarians want to help someone. No questions asked, they just start whipping out all the right books. Next thing you know, you’re an expert on poison. You could teach a class on how sarin gas was used in a 1995 terrorist attack on the Tokyo underground subway. How sarin gas is an organophosphate that is twenty times more lethal than what Hitler used, potassium cyanide. You know that sarin gas impairs the action of an enzyme that transmits neurological signals. First, one exposed to sarin gas would experience a runny nose, as the pupils of their eyes constrict. Next, nausea and drooling ensue. As he, or she, loses control of their bodily functions, they vomit. They defecate and urinate themselves, while twitching and seizing. Eventually, the poor victim goes comatose and ends up suffocating during these convulsive spasms.
The most dignified to way to end a marriage according to Gerri Anthony.
Tuesday November 11th 7:12pm Travis Silver
When Travis Silver’s father came home from work three hours later, he found his loving wife dead on the floor, his room torn apart, and his son crying in the closet. Travis Silver’s father cried, “What monster did this, Travis? Did you see the maniac who could have done such a horrible thing?!” Young Travis could never tell his father that he did it. Travis Silver never did tell his daddy that he was the monster.
“A robber man, with a mask.”
Wednesday November 12th 2:11pm Elliott Moore
I always knew something was off about Elliott Moore, but once I found out where he worked, everything changed. When he stared at me from his light gray-green eyes, it was no longer just awkward. Suddenly, it felt as if with every second he focused in on me, the life seemed to just drain away from my body.
“I had sex with another visitor last week. God, I love those people. That girl had long brown hair. Down to her itty bitty waist only bulimics can achieve. She was hurtin’ real bad on the inside and I could see it in her eyes. I could see she needed someone to show her love. Show her the way things could be. She was cold and unresponsive, but to tell you the truth, that’s just how I like it.”
That sick fuck.
Thursday November 13th 1:13pm Mark Leche
“Sit with me, Hon?” Mark asked, lying on the couch. He lifted his head and I slid under him. Me, sitting at one end, with him lying across, head in my lap looking up at me. I wiped a tear from his cheek. “I just need someone to tell me everything will be okay.”
“Mark, it will be. You are an amazing guy; you will find someone who completes you. There are plenty of guys out there who would die to be with a man like you.”
“Sweetie, why do I pay you? You don’t treat me like my other therapists did. You don’t do all the same old things they do and ask the same questions every other psychologist does.”
“You think I’m a bad therapist?”
“No. I think you’re a good friend.”
Friday November 14th 6:01pm Carrie Campbell “Umm… I feel weird telling you, because of, well, the circumstances, but, um.” Carrie Campbell stumbled over her words. Something I thought I’d never see happen.
“You can tell me anything, Carrie, okay?”
“I had sex,” Carrie Campbell looked at me wide-eyed, “with that boy Travis. I mean, it was like totally consensual or whatever, but, I dunno. I guess I’m just worried.”
“What are you worried about?”
“It meant a lot to me. I really like him. But afterwards, I guess I just realized that he’s older and probably has sex all of the time with lots of girls.” Carrie Campbell showed a side of herself I had never seen. Meek. Vulnerable. “I know I just met him, but I think I might love him.”
Monday November 17th 1:00pm Gerri Anthony
“You know, I really appreciate all that you have done for me, but I don’t think that I will be coming any more,” Gerri Anthony comes in looking different somehow. Gerri Anthony comes in looking happier than ever before.
“Do you mind if I ask why?”
“Oh no, it’s just that I solved my problem, and now that I have the insurance money I’m moving abroad.”
Tuesday November 18th 5:50pm Carrie Campbell
“My mom met Travis. He came over for dinner. He was real polite and she adores him. I couldn’t be more ecstatic.”
Tuesday November 18th 7:06pm Travis Silver
“Did you see the newspaper? Mr. Anthony was found dead in his den. Apparently it was a heart attack.” Travis Silver informs me. Yet, those librarians would know that unless toxicology reports were done to look for poisons, the leaves and branches of oleander can make a person’s death look like a heart attack as the toxins in them cause cardiac reactions such as a irregular heart beat with an erratic rhythm.
Tuesday November 18th 7:57pm Travis Silver
“I know I just met her, but I think I might love Carrie.” Travis Silver sighs.
Wednesday November 19th 2:29 Elliott Moore
Elliott Moore drones on about his day at work, his art craft and his love for the “visitors”, and how he made love to yet another pretty, young girl there.
Elliott Moore drones on about his day at work, not knowing that I know he is an after hours janitor at the city morgue.
Thursday November 20th 10:34pm Mark Leche
I sat down on his black leather couch.
My mind was all over the place. I had just spent an amazing day with an amazing guy, who happened to my client, who happened to be gay, who happened to own a sex toy store. Yet, everything felt as if it had fallen into place.
“Is this what I think it is? I mean,” I looked up to Mark’s smiling face, “You’re gay.”
“Angie, before I met Shawn, I was a total lady’s man.” Mark replied with a laugh.
I guess we’re all a little sick. Shaving our heads, poisoning our husbands, making love to dead people, blaming our mother’s death on robbers. Whatever we need to do to get by, maybe even sleeping with kind of, sort of, gay guys.