In Session (1): The Lay Psychiatrist

The Lay Psychiatrist's testosterone redlines into slippery Freudian territory

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As I open this chapter of my life to pubic view … that was a Freudian slip but I don’t care, it all goes in … it feels like a scene from a movie, the curtain pulled aside, me, in noir and blanc, peeing down at the street. When the woman getting out of the cab looked up, the moment was eternal. An instant can be part of the linear flow, or it can separate off into its own file, as that one did.

She was an estrogen woman, like a pillow you lay your head on and you just fall on through it and keep falling, unless you stop yourself, because if you just keep falling you end up with a Chinese woman.

I pressed the release for the gate downstairs. After a curiously long delay she came into the office, which has one yellow upholstered chair, and a set of mid century Danish chairs in red leather. The arms curve up to join the back, which has a headrest extending on up. The stuffed leather is suspended over a rosewood frame, so that sitting in the chair is like sitting in someone’s lap. She wiggled with unbridled enthusiasm as she settled into it.

I tapped my watch and saw that my free testosterone level was approaching the red zone. I hate getting oily skin. I made a mental note to up my soy consumption. Her entrance didn’t add up. Yellow was a much better color for her and however you dress it, leather is a cow that has been hollowed out. She put her purse on one of the leather chairs and sat in the other.

“Multiple personality,” I thought. The yellow chair carries the imprint of Self, while the other two are like the cerebral hemispheres, separated by a coffee table which inhibits crosstalk. She was obviously split and at an unconscious level I found that arousing. It was a Freudian impulse.

The advantage of lay psychiatry is you don’t have to wait long for the diagnosis. But, before telling the client what’s wrong with her, I let her talk, and I listened, just like a professional. She crossed her legs and her skirt rode up along the curvature of her right thigh. “You’re The Layman,” she said. “I’ve seen you in the ring.” She was being openly appreciative of me. Compared to most men I am massive, with shoulders like a horse’s. I have to monitor my free testosterone levels, because I’m dangerous when I get cranked up.

“What made you become a psychiatrist?” She never took her eyes off mine.

“Lay Psychiatrist,” I corrected. “I used to read self help books when I was waiting to go in the ring. It relaxed me before the match. One day I thought, ‘What the fuck? I can be a psychiatrist.’ But do you know how long it takes to get a license? Fucking insane when you can just walk in some shrink’s office and take his off the wall.”

“Wing Fing,” she said. I couldn’t believe she knew the work of one of my more obscure mentors. My admiration of her knowledge of the self help genre was genuine, and we abandoned self-consciousness, frolicking in a shared delight. I was falling deeper into the pillow.

She had introduced herself as Roxie. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t her real name. She had no doubt traveled under aliases so long names were now accessories, like passports and jewelry. These thoughts mixed pleasantly with her agreeable presence. She sat with perfect posture which presented her breasts with a defiant pride, emotional feelers searching ahead of her commitment to action. The nipples, now hardened into the translucent fabric, dreamed of a thumb, a forefinger, and a poetic disposition.

Somebody else might stay in their head but not me. I live just above my public bone, in the unabridged version of the moment. I knew what she was feeling because I was feeling it too. “You live in the moment and react honestly. You read between the lines. I realized what is so attractive about you right away, but kept it repressed. You’re a lay psychiatrist, too.”

“Suppressed,” she gently corrected. She smiled and recrossed her legs.

I said, “You’re naked under your clothes.”

She said, “Just don’t talk, okay?”