It Is So Worth It For $75 an Hour

Four near-confessions to my therapist and the sudden last-second reversals I made when I saw her reaction of dawning horror:

1) “Yeah, one time at Hooters this dude was seriously getting up in my face, so I took this pepper mill, reared back, and just totally bashed his---bashed his blog. I bashed his blog on my own blog, because, you know, I didn’t like it.”

2) “I guess you could say I’ve always been attracted to Kermit the Frog in a weirdly sexu---successful way. See, I like the fact that he’s a success. At being a frog. Name me a more successful frog and I’d love to hear about him.”

3) “Favorite movies? Well….oh, you know which one I really love? It makes me cry every time I see it. Children of the Cor—a Lesser God. Children of a Lesser God. Beautiful film. About deaf people, you know. Turns out they’re a lot like us. Not totally, of course, because they're basically retarde---retardant to cruelty, they just hate it, like everyone else. Seriously. Very retardant to people not being nice.”

4) “Who wouldn’t love to disinter the bodies of the dead and prop them up around the apartment and pretend you’re having a fabulous post-Oscar party? Um….ah….the answer to that, of course, is me. And that’s question one of our little quiz on how well you know me. I answered that one for you to start you off. Okay, question two is, um, what is my name?”

Three attempts by my therapist to be nice and the sudden last-second reversals she made when she just couldn’t hold it in:

1) “You shouldn’t feel your desire for role-playing with your partner is unhealthy; in fact I’m sure that if you discussed it with her openl---no, wait, I’m sorry, there is nothing erotic about wanting to pretend you’re a table and she’s a chair. It just doesn’t make any damn sense at all.”

2) “Yes, I agree, of course a small portion of the blame for your adult failures lies with your parents….if by ‘your parents’ we mean ‘you’ and by ‘small portion’ we mean every last bit of it. Oh God, you should actually be glad they didn’t just drown your finger-pointing self right in the sink. They had every bloody right.”

3) “Basically what I’m noticing with you, and please don’t take this the wrong way, because I’m only talking to you doctor to patient, is a dangerous, intensely troubling pattern of what we call Violent Dissociative Personality Cogni---oh, shut up and kiss me again, you handsome devil!”