The Therapist
VERY rough, from line by line. Mature themes. Critique?
After promising once more to recover, she found herself again, hair of another man wrapped around her fist. She was in the winter. The man's name was Donald. His hair was black and matted. He had big and rough hands. She thought he might have been scottish. The radiator was whispering in spurts and sputters. He was lying on the couch with a knee extended. She dangled above him. Hair in her hand; he must have been only twenty five. They were talking now about an ex lover of his - this was the addicting part - the part that hurt.
"And she hurt me and kicked me and bit me, and god - I think I liked it!" Donald was crying - they were always crying. "I think I liked it! I liked her whipping me! I liked it! My god - what would my mother say?"
"Did your mother ever say anything against it?" asked the girl. "Was she conservative? Was she religious?"
"Yes, of course! Everyone in that town was conservative, everyone was catholic. She caught me with a girl once - a normal girl, a girl who wouldn't dream of things wrong - a girl who loved me and wanted to have children. My mother was so angry, even though by then I was what, eighteen, nineteen, twenty? I was just home over break."
He had curled up into a ball by this point, his mouth was talking, his fingers were interlaced. Some of them, she remembered, had to hold themselves, some had to play with a tissue or a toy - one of them had begun ripping out his own hair. She sat stoic. She sometimes took notes, she patted their heads and kissed them and pulled back into bed and asked them about their childhood. She didn't show any expression - she was a neutral plain for such weather to run over. Wasn't that the point? She was silent and they found the privacy to cry.
She wrapped her hands around his neck, breathed on the base of his skull. "I think I was in love," he said, appologetically. "She made me bleed. Her name was Rachel. She tied me up. I think I loved her."
"Maybe."
"I think I loved her!"
"Maybe you loved the experience."
"Maybe. Maybe I should . . . forget about her?"
"Maybe it's for best."
Donald put his wide face in his pebbled hands. "Do you think it was wrong, what I did?"
"It would never be wrong," she said, pulled herself into his lap. Her hands on his cheeks. She kissed him. "Tell me what your father was like"
The next morning, when she'd drained him dry, she pushed him gently from the door. Donald had once tried to shoot himself in the face because he hadn't gotten into college, he had a kid sister who thought he was gay, he felt like a coward for running from the draft, he secretly didn't know anything about politics, he hated being called an intellectual because he secretly believe it was all sham, he didn't want to settle down but he really wanted kids, he'd never been in love until he met her. She could equate every part of the story to another man - a boxer named Gerald with small eyes, a sixteen year old Luce who had cried even when they were purely physical, a skinny older man whose wife didn't want to get pregnant. Someone with red hair whose name she couldn't remember. Someone who'd tried to rape her before she'd turned the tables. She pushed Donald away without even breakfast. Told him never to contact her again. She now knew every piece of him - he was useless. She just couldn't help herself.