The psychos on the couch eventually become the psychos in the chair with the notebook, finally and officially cured because they are fixed, better than you, the healer. Turning patients into colleagues: That’s the greatest success the fields of psychology, psychiatry and social work are likely to achieve.
I know. I’ve sat in enough of their waiting rooms, from Bangor to Orono and even New York once, looking at old magazines. When I started out, none of the waiting rooms needed new paint jobs. Mama started me on the shrink treadmill early. When the best and most expensive didn’t work out, she hunted through the phonebook. I’m into the Ps now.
My mother doesn’t understand the therapeutic process. For instance, we’re standing in the kitchen. Mama’s in her PJs with a coffee cup holding her up even though it’s four in the afternoon. Mama is big on appearances when she goes out the door but inside the house it’s housecoats and the fuzzy grizzly bear slippers she gave me for Christmas. She decided they were warmer and cuter if she wore them. Mama’s looking at me with this perpetually surprised look on her face. It’s hard to figure out what she’s thinking because she always has that bat-out-of-the-fireplace look since she tweezed her eyebrows so much they don’t grow back anymore.
She’s standing there with her bare face hanging out saying, “Oh, Georgie! I was just talking to Mrs. Whositz at the grocery store and she said her Tanya’s psychotherapist really helped with her anorexia.”
“Damn it, Mama! You were talking about me in the goddamn grocery store!”
“Don’t swear. And perhaps you could supply me with a list of places where I’m allowed to speak about my daughter?”
“Sure. It’ll be a fuckin’ short list.”
“Don’t swear.” Mama always says that in a low tone—“well-modulated” Dr. Three-Therapists-Back called it—which makes me think Mama’s back on the Valium. If you take Valium for a long time—I googled—your lungs someday don’t work anymore. So maybe it is a long-term solution. “Well-modulated” is supposed to calm me the fuck down but it doesn’t work. Or maybe it’s supposed to keep Mama relaxed, I forget. We’re both supposed to “self-monitor” but I don’t want to look at her and I sure as hell don’t want to look at me.
Anyway, back to my for instance: “I don’t know what you’re so upset about, Georgie! I wasn’t blabbing about your mental health. We were talking about Tanya’s success!”
“Tanya’s a bitch.”
“Yes, but you can be, too, dear.”
“Goddamn it, Mama! What does Tanya’s anorexia have to do with me? I don’t have anorexia. I wish I did. I tried it and it made me hungry.”
“Well, eating disorders are all on the same rainbow, Georgie.”
I should just get tips on puking from Tanya but she’s got a thing about fat girls. Can’t really blame her for that. I mean, everybody’s got a thing about fat girls. Especially me. I read that if you have fat friends it makes you feel like it’s okay to be fat, too. There are people who want us to accept ourselves or even love ourselves no matter what. That seems unreasonable to me. The people who say that are old fat broads who are tired of trying to lose weight and just want to drop out. Or they’re so-called experts, skinny bitches who have somebody else do their makeup. I mean, experts are ridiculous, you know? People with good genes need to shut up when they feel the urge to give weight-loss advice to the terminally fat.
I know. I’ve been over 200 pounds since I was thirteen. I don’t even know what I weigh now. I decided when I turned fifteen that I wasn’t going to look at the scale until I felt like I’d be happy with the numbers. That was almost two years ago and every time I go to the bathroom, I feel like the scale in the corner by the bathtub is looking back at me.
Summer’s coming. There’s a misery, but at least I won’t have to suffer it at school. Everybody’s been to school so you know the drill: You’re either the moose or the hunter. Guess which one I am? Yeah, fat and in high school is like walking around with those huge moose horns that don’t fit through doors.
Hey, maybe if that bitch Tanya is cured, she’ll go from skinny bitch to moose, too. We could be friends for awhile there while she’s just overweight. Then when she gets to be too moosey, I’d have to stay away from her and laugh at her in gym class and bitch her out in the cafeteria for eating something. Like I said, I can’t have fat friends. They’d make me bigger by osmosis and I can’t get any bigger.
Last week I had a different kind of counsellor at school—the stupidest species. The newbie guidance counsellor scheduled a meeting with me (in my free period without even asking. Missing math would have been much better.) Anyway, this guy who used to be the phys-ed guy before he got arthritis starts asking me about my goals.
“Supermodel,” I said, just to watch his face work through it. He couldn’t help himself. He glanced down at my belly and made a face like he’s got gas or something. Bitch.
Then he asks me what I want to be when I grow up and I say, “I dunno,” and he says “Me, too,” and smiles like that’s clever instead of pathetic. He was probably relating to me at my level or some shit that 50-something guys try to do, thinking they can still be cool at their age. Lame.
The former phys-ed teacher (I now officially refuse him any title with the term “guidance” in it) talked about safety schools and showed me a few glossy brochures to get me hot and bothered. I wonder what I’m supposed to do because there aren’t any fat girls in the brochures. There are pretty, happy black girls and smiling Asian girls with glasses and all the guys look like they’re on The Basketball Team of Vacant Smiles. No dweebs, goths or fatties need apply, I guess.
Lame-o says if I write some essays, I’d have a shot at some kind of scholarship because my marks in English are so high. That doesn’t seem all that impressive to me. It should come easily. Everybody speaks English here. I swim in it. If your language is whatever they speak in Malaysia and you get good marks in English, that would be worth something.
I think about my options. I’m good with a camera. That would have been cool since I could have assistants and look like a photographer all the time. Draped with enough cameras, like a whole store’s inventory, I’d have some fat camouflage.
I quit photography, though. I was getting some good action shots for an in-class assignment, taking photos of these two lanky girls who probably will end up as models snorting coke off each other’s ribs. Anyway, I was kneeling in front of them (it makes them look even taller) when some assholes—my so-called peers—made fun of me because my ass crack was popping from my jeans. Then I had trouble getting up quick and the boys were just howling mean.
The teacher, Mr. Call-Me-Mike Sandling was a good guy I guess, saying “Alright! Alright! That’s enough!”
When I looked up at him with my big, watery cow moose eyes, we both knew I wouldn’t be coming back through his fuckin’ door.
I wondered later if that’s why I got scheduled to see the guidance counsellor. Maybe Call-Me-Mike thought I should get some attention from the crippled up phys-ed teacher, get some guidance and maybe some diet advice so I don’t come into school one day with home-made pipe bombs strapped across my moose belly.
I thought about the pipe bombs hard when the former phys-ed bonehead put his twisted up hand on my shoulder and says (real soulful) “You’ll figure it out, Georgie. Everybody’s got something.”
Is the Psyche 101 textbook actually called Useless Platitudes? I’ll figure it out. Everybody’s got something. Ha!
“Yeah,” I said. “I can see you’ve got it all figured out.”
He grimaced, but said nothing. Then he went back in his office, shut the door, took out the pistol he kept in his desk drawer to protect himself from the black kids and hockey goons he’s scared of and put the muzzle in his mouth. He paused to roll a tear and feel bad for talking to me just before he blew his brains out. The back wall of the guidance office will always be art no matter how many times the school custodian repaints. Well, I would if I were him, anyway.
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nbsp; I’ve been eating more pizza rolls since my chat with the phys-ed teacher. I think what a useless bitch he is and pop another one. I think about how, even if I get some kind of bullshit English scholarship, it’s like four more years of being stuck in a bigger high school but with debt and no job at the end. Then I eat another pizza roll. Nobody’s going to give me a scholarship for going to a cabin on a mountain so I can be alone to commune with my moose brothers and sisters, watch TV, order in pizza and read Twilight and The Hunger Games and graphic novels for the rest of my life. Then I think how all life is like being stuck in high school forever and I finish the bag of day old pizza rolls. I’m sick of pizza rolls, now, but that feeling always wears off.
I guess I’m looking for a rescue helicopter to haul my moose ass out of here in a big moose net. That’s why I tell Mama to call the new therapist, the one down in the Ps. Look at me, so weak and young and full of hope, huh? I’ve seen a lot of helicopters but Moose Rescue never comes. I forget how many counsellors I’ve seen. Dad lives with his new and improved family now but Mama says he’s got excellent insurance through work so I can go get “theraped” AKA mind raped as much as I want. You’d think they’d come up with a better title. Therapist spells ‘the rapist.’ Didn’t they even notice?
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.
The Dangerous Kind & Other Stories Page 9