"A Little Therapy"
by
Timothy Stillman
"Zo, what brings you crawling back?"
"I'm slipping, doc."
"And I, ze psychiatrist, am your last chance at sanity, ya?"
"Kinda pathetic, isn't it? Anyway, the thing of it is, I called Ricky Ilsa last night."
"Ricky?"
"Boyfriend. I called him Ilsa at the supreme moment of passion. I said---"
"Ah zo? You zaid----?"
"You take pleasure out of this, dontcha, doc?"
"You ah makin it on the side with ah Ilsa?"
"I don't know an Ilsa. To make it worse, I said---This humiliation thing turns you on, doesn't it?"
Smug laugh. Some goatee pulling. Crossed arms. Not me. Him. I'm the one in the electric chair, crumpled into it like wadded up Kleenex.
He nods for me to continue.
"I don't know an Ilsa except for Ilsa She Wolf of the S.S."
"Yes. I remember Ilsa fondly. Tingly in her black leather tights and stud jack boots the soles of which she made me lick when I was naughty, little rubber thingies over her massive tits---" Looks off in complete reverie.
"So tell me all about it, doc. Don't leave out one single hairy detail."
"What? Oh. You were saying about--ah-- Ilsa?"
"No, you go on ahead. Tell me about the days and nights of mustachioed Ilsa."
"You were calling out this name, mien heir...."
"Yeah. Anyway, I said 'Oh Ilsa---" ah 'well....mommy. Ilsa Mommy I'm coming.' There."
"Your mother? Ilsa was NOT your mother!! She told me she would never have another man's baby--you PRETENDER TO THE THRONE! WE HAVE METHODS TO DISCIPLINE PEOPLE LIKE---" Sticks pipe in mouth to shut himself up. Looks flustered. That makes me feel better.
"Relax, doc. I'm not your love child or your hate child or anything. Mom was not named Ilsa. I don't know an Ilsa. I knew my mom. I wish I hadn't known my mom. She could have been Ilsa. With a name change. Come to think of it, she married a man from German descent. Could he have been...."
Puffing mightily. Hail of smoke in the air. Blue fog in front of the psychiatrist's face. "Go on. Your clock is ticking. Do not be smug."
"Well, doc, I know I'm running out of my fifty minute hour, so--I said what I said---:"
"Il--her name--and you called her mommy?"
"Yeah. That's about the size of it."
"What is the size of it?"
"The regulation six--hey bub, don't get so cocky with me."
"You ho-mo-zex-uals."
"Now remember, you guys like us this year."
"Zince when?"
"P.R."
"I am not a Puerto Rican you dumkoff."
"Anyway, rushing right along, Ricky did not take too kindly to my calling him Ilsa mommy."
"Could you not say--her--name again, please? You are destroying sacred memories of the Fatherland."
"Sure, doc. Anyway, I called him that and he didn't take too kindly to it. Really let me have it. I tried to convince him that his prick in my mouth had muffled what I had said. But he split the scene, doc. He scramvilled."
"You had known him long, this boyfriend of yours?"
"Sure."
"Long time companion?"
"Yeah, at least two hours. Longest time boyfriend I've had. Though not the longest boyfriend I ever had--hehe. He was--special. He would have maybe stayed with me another thirty minutes if I hadn't said what I did. That would be three lifetimes, going by the people I have known."
"So the point is, my zon?"
"Don't say 'my zon.' That reminds me of the news and I don't want to be reminded of priests."
"Been diddled in confession?"
"No, I'm just sick of the topic. Can't get away from it. Enough already!! Everybody's so damned moral about it, I could puke! Anyway I'm trying to tell you about the peony man."
"The peony man?"
"You could make a career out of repeating a person's questions."
"I do, my--anyhoo....go on with yourself."
"Well, after Ricky left in a huff.... People leave me in a huff all the time. I hate huffs. I go out of my way to avoid them and you know what winds up staring me in the face?"
"A penis?"
"I should be so lucky. If you could suck yourself off, you wouldn't need anybody else. Little cruelty of nature there."
"A peony?"
"Okay, look, doc, after Ricky left in a huff, I went downstairs, after I dressed of course, though exposing myself has begun to look not as dumb to me as it used to, anyway, I went downstairs, and outside the apartment building was some guy selling flowers and I asked if he had any peonies. And he said--:"
"Zaid what, little man?"
"You haven't see it, it's not little. You want to see it?--god forgive me, I didn't mean to say that. It's just sex seeps through all of me now. Like poison frothing out of every one of my pores."
"Your pores, my zon?"
"Yes, fa--no, I mean the guy with the flowers looks at me and says, 'hey, Mac, go ride someone else's skin peony." And then he laughs. I screamed, I'm allowed, I'm one of THEM, and ran back to the lobby and heart fibrillating to the elevator, up and into my apartment. It's like with Jews. We can make jokes about us and it's legal. Made Mel Brooks a fucking fortune. Anyway. He made a sex joke. The flower man I mean. He looked like Mother Teresa. Even so, I almost invited him up. I mean, even when I don't think I think about sex, I do, and people humiliate me for it. Even when I don't know why I asked for a peony--I guess cause it is close to you know what and I get slammed for it. But I didn't mean it. I set myself up all the time. Who can blame them for taking the bait?"
"Why did you ask for a peony, lad?"
"I'm hardly a lad. You keep changing dialects, doc."
"Can I help it? I'm poorly written. I am a mistake of God. But you are more of a mistake. What should I call you?"
"God?"
"No, That would be me. So, what did you do when you got back to your apartment? As if I didn't know."
"I jacked off. I jacked off on the bed and smelt Ricky still being there and tried to remember his face and I kept thinking of her, kept thinking of--"
"For my sake man, don't say it again."
"I mean, mommy. Mommy was a nut. I almost went bug house because of her."
"No, chowder head, you almost went mentally incompetent because of her. Have a little respect for the insane."
"Am I insane?"
"You've got a long way to go before that merciful thing intervenes. Now. We have not met for--:"
"14 years, 40 minutes and twenty five and three third seconds."
"Ah, how kind, you were counting the days...."
"I swore I would never come back to one of you. And I come back to you of you. So, you may know, I wrote this book and it hit the bestseller list and women read it on subways and busses and my picture is on the back cover and it makes me feel like a fool when it should make me feel like the greatest--I take lots of bus rides just to watch them and--I keep wishing mommy was here to see it..."
"Ah, zee what, my zon?"
"Are you trying for a lounge act in Vegas? My book. Not my--thing."
"You write a little porno novel called--what was it again?-- 'The Jack Off Book' and you still call it a 'thing.'"
"Depending on the order of the hours. No, I mean, women read the book. They read it in the sunlight on park benches and busses and at restaurants and in subways and it drives me nuts. I go around all day and I want to say hey I wrote that. But I don't. The book they love. Me they never heard of. I never knew it was going to be like that. I'm finding myself stalking not a person but copies of my book!"
"Ah, we come to the nutburger of the matter, Zen?"
"I've tried Zen. It doesn't work. Tao too. Or are they the zame, er, same thing? I just keep falling asleep with that stuff. Anyzway, or anyway, I didn't write my jack off book for women or men or children to jack off to..."
"You wrote it for mommy to jack off to?"
"Christ....!"
"No, I'm God, remember?"
"Yes, your almightiness. I didn't write it for men to jack off, to or girls or boys or zebras or llamas with one good eye, I mean I did but I didn't, and saying llama reminds me of Ilsa....because of the similarity in the letters....hey, you can't throw your pipe at me. Damn, that hurt. My good eye too. I should nail you for medical malpractice. But if I could do that and the impossible happened and I won, then the whole lot of you would be in jail."
"Give it back."
"Here, zir."
"Thank you." Sticks it back in. Makes me think of sucking dick. What doesn't? Except I'm the sucking dick. I love my life. With this dunderhead, I can talk about sex. Why not to real people?
"Anyway, I'm in my apartment jacking off to the memory of Ricky and the flower seller who looks like Mother Teresa, he could be her, after all, maybe Mother Teresa got tired of the humble healer thing, my god, after what she has seen and what she has been through, I mean, wouldn't you want to change identi---"
"Go on. Ztop dissembling, big shot writer."
"Anyway, or have I dissembled there before?, I'm jacking off to Ricky, Mother Teresa, and peonies and skin peonies and all those people jacking off to my jack off book who aren't jacking off to it at all--I was even on the Today show promoting it, though Matt the Stud Laurer refused to do the interview because he was far too moral to talk about that subject. Jane Pauley was nicer to me anyway. Flirted a little with me. You know, being gay really attracts the chicks, ha ha. Then, in my apartment, just as I'm about to squirt into my hand like almost always save for when I get lucky and you wouldn't believe how unlucky I am--"
"Exzept for mommikins?"
"You're cruel."
"Cruel?"
"This is worth three hundred an hour? It used to be 25 an hour on a sliding scale at a mental health free clinic which I remind you was not free."
"Well, ze haf both come up in ze world, haven't ze?"
"Yeah, anyhow, I started thinking about things critics wrote about the book--about it being about more than sex, and how it said something or other, profound crap, I don't know what--I wanted it to be about sex. Dammit. I mean the fantasy with the gardener and the maitre d and the maid in the empty house on a sunlight summer afternoon with all the hard wood floors and fixtures smelling of Pine Sol or something richer, when the 16 year delivery old boy walks in on the gang bang of the characters mentioned above and is invited to join in and they don't have to ask him twice--and boy does he deliver--dammit, it's about SEX, not the slow melting the Arctic ice cap--some critic in "Newsweek" wrote it did, you believe this?--who the hell jacks off to the melting of the Arctic Ice Cap for cripes sake---"
"You perhaps?"
"Never. Not one single time. I want that on the record here and now."
"Zo noted."
"Zee--see--the thing is I'm a bum writer..."
"You know in the Magic Kingdom, bum means ass...."
"Zey have lots of them over there. And in America ass means ass, but that's beside the point, I can't just write things straight out, I mean I have to be oblique with words. I can't write I'd really like to suck your dick, until I bury it under tons of verbiage--until I've gone around the world--"
"Ilsa was vot good goin round ze world...ah, Heidelberg...."
"Hey, doc, me, here, I'm talking. Anyhoo, I just can't write sex for anything. I always was like that. I gotta wrap it in lilacs and rose bushes and last night's errant moonbeams---"
"...peonies? Skin peonies? Chortle."
"You're a cute man, doc. Ever suck off your goatee?"
"You are being impertinent, sir."
"Shouldn't that be 'zir'? You're slipping too, Doc. Anyhoo--"
"God, will you stop saying that. I mean, Me, will you stop saying that.You sound like the jerk in those Dell computer commercials. Coyly cute. Won't rest until everyone in the goddam world gets a Dell...I mean, when I'm watching plebeian TV, seeing what the masses waste their time on; I can't watch PBS only."
"He is kinda cute--the Dell guy--you know, doc, I jacked off to him one night--I think it's that constant Elvis Presley snarl he has on his lips that did it--but I did it indirectly, see, I couldn't jack off to him, so I jacked off to the computer. Cause it's a machine, an object, and they don't have a word for fucking your computer yet---do they?"
"Zey will now."
"Name it after me. I insist. Any--way--it comes to this--I wanted to get America, hell, the world, hot. Over my fantasies. Over my words. I wanted to make the whole world cum....."
"You aren't going into ze Coke commercial jingle, are you?"
"You knew some things about plebeian culture, don't you, doc? We could go on the road, you and me. Anyway, I can't go to Kentucky without going by way of Saturn to get there if you get my drift. And the non essentials, the permissions in all those flowery words where inside I'm screwing my mind every way from Sunday, and wanting someone to screw my body--I want to get really well and truly laid--I thought they had to do that to you when you were famous, that it went with the fetes at the publisher parties or something--another dream shot to hell, and not that I don't like that they think I'm a good writer, man, that's so truly terrific I can't begin to tell you, honest, but they're wrong. I'm not a good writer. I'm a bum writer. I'm taking my own sublimations, which is where they see my work, and not giving anybody a hard on, I mean I would like to be a good writer and be jacked off to at the same time, my book at least. I mean, I'm grateful, but I'd like to be a hot writer too. I just got stupid enough to come along at the right time is all."
"And ze problem?"
"I'll go home tonight and jack off to your pipe and your goatee. Cause you know what your pipe in your mouth and your goatee under it look like? And I'll feel guilty so I'll not cum, get a limp on, so then I'll jack off to an image of a pipe cleaner, cause it's an object and--"
"Fetish, have you ever heard of a fetish, zir?"
"Well, that's out the window. I never put it together. Objects I can't jack off to anymore. Thanks, doc, you unmanned me years ago and you've unmanned me again."
"Your mommikins did not get to you before I did?"
"Yeah. Yeah she did. "
"Zo you zink of sthupping her? To get a how you say revenge?"
"I don't know. God, I mean, You, I'm covered with sweat. This has been exhausting. Now I don't know what to do. I mean, fetishes, of course I'm not a dummy, I know what they are. I never knew I had one before. Man the old mind, you try to sublimate and they got a sex category for that too. You can't win, huh? I guess I had that little curtain up for my last safe bet, my last safe jack off, and you've shot that wad cleanly and expertly. Thanks yet again doc."
"You want to sthup your mummy?"
"No, never cared for Karis, but dammit, now you've killed even that remote possibility. Look, doc, my momm--my mother never liked me. I could never please her. So when I sthup--when I was sucking Ricky last night and said---"
"Please..."
"Would you knock a couple of dollars off the bill if I don't say her name--"
"I'll knock your teeth down your throat if you say it...."
"Wow, emotions today from a shrink wrap, will wonders never cease? Anyhow, maybe I called her what I did and then said mommy because I want to be six again and I want her to cuddle me and touch me like I'm real or something and then I could grow up and have sex without the Portnoy guilt and I could write about it head on and I could not be so screwed up and...."
"Look at all the writers who are screwed up....and they make a bundle."
"By being screwed up. I wanna be not screwed up. I wanna be Henry Miller, dammit! Get great reviews in "The New Republic" and boys still jack off to it behind the barn too. But I hit it big by accident. I went round the mulberry bush and some people found the leaves intriguing even done up by me, and I wish my mommy had loved me. I wish somebody had. I wish somebody would notice when they're reading my book on the city busses, would look up and notice that's me sitting across from them watching them read my book. I used to dream of that, doc, to be a writer and to look at someone reading my book and they would smile at me and they would say hello. Man what the hell does a person have to do to get said hello to around here anyway?"
"Hello."
"I'm paying you a fortune. You can be generous. If you didn't get any money out of it, you wouldn't say a word to me. Right?"
"Zadly, right."
"You read my book, doc?"
"Never heard of it. Be serious."
"I got a lump in my stomach the size of a grapefruit, when I thought I wanted to fuck mommy. You think my analysis of why I called out to her, (doing your job, doc, I am, right?, but that's how you fellows work it, the patient does the labor, and you get the money for the baby and get your secretaries to write the articles on your patients for the journals and you get the money and fame for that too and Matt the Stud would interview you I bet) and I might as well tell you this also, after I said that name which I respect your right not to hear from lips such as my own, and then mommy, I said, cried out, while Ricky and I were 69ing, Mommy, I'm coming. And I cried it like with big boxcar tears running down my cheeks. Freaked Ricky out I can tell you. Freaked me out too. He dressed and ran away from me. I dressed, tried to run away from me, and found me in my own clothes instead, keeps working out like that."
"You are one zcrewed up little ten cent philosopher, you are... Ximple minded, too, wot."
"You have hit the nail on the head. I am a phony. I am a prevaricator. I just wish someone would wank off to my book. Instead of killing me with this 'what a breath of fresh air' in such a filthy cluttered marketplace as book publishing. I WANNA BE FILTHY TOO! I'm a breath of terrified air, stilted closed in air, and of growing into something I do not like, of crying to the peonies I wish you were all skin peonies and I wish I could ride you to the break of day. Or the break of neck. Which ever comes first."
"There's the window, my zon. I shall open it if you like. Fifth Avenue awaits. You might get lucky and fall onto the top of a city bus and right underneath you is someone man woman boy girl one eyed llama whatever jacking off to your book, bolstered to the heights of eroticism, to a desire that is so intense and so magnificent that he she or it as the case might be just whips it out and goes to town right in front of god and autumn and the bus driver and the passengers, and that, my zon, probably will be as close to human contact as you will ever get in your life, since you know it isn't true anyway, but you still have the hope, yes?, so go ahead, zay the word and I'll open the window...."
"No, doc. Don't want you to dirty your lilly white paws." Patient, had enough with endless patience, me: Goes to window. Opens it. The sound of Manhattan below and above dins into his head. Autumn cool wind blows in. Hot streets blow autumn cool away. Even this high up. Story of my life.
"One thing before you go...."
One leg out of window, feeling for ledge, of which there is none.
"Your insurance will cover my payments, otherwise you would pay before jumping, but one other thing..."
"Yes?"
Both legs out now, I'm sitting on the window sill.
"It'll damn well guarantee a second printing."
"AIEWEEEEE!"
"Dumkopff." Listens to the traffic crunch, the screams, in a long time the sirens. Placid. Content. Another satisfied customer.
Sighing, doktor lies back in his cushy leather chair. "Ilsa, oh those were the days, sweet beer garden, sweet memories." As herr doktor closes his eyes, takes his pipe out of his mouth, puts the pipe on his desk, places his hands on his little paunch, sighs, and dreams the dreams of the just. And to tell you the truth, one dream's about Ilsa and the guy from the Dell computer commercial and it is a most juicy one. Who knows? He might write a book about it some day. Crazy world, isn't it? Have fun with it.
the end