September 13th, 1973, Dr. Hendricks stands with his back to his client, dressed in a cleanly, neat-pressed pin-stripe coat. He returns to his cushion, a small shot of vodka in hand, setting it down on the counter. “So, what’s on your mind today, Jacob?”
He stares at the drink, then up to Dr. Hendricks, a bit confused. “Not much.” He replies, swallowing his nerves down into his stomach for them to fester like phlegm, making him more nauseated. “But when is there much going on?” He chuckles, fake, but polite.
“Often, I’d say.” Dr. Hendricks claps his hands together, letting his pale hands bask in the light filtering through the lines in drawn shades. A soundtrack of gentle trickling water plays through the office. Jacob Wolmin lies on his back, facing the popcorn ceiling, yet eyeing the shot on the table. “Well, we can start with your mother’s most concern.”
Jacob sighs, rolling his head towards the back of the couch like a teenager. Yet he’s nearly twenty-five, and he doesn’t feel like he’s matured at all. “I haven’t talked to Brady in almost a year, if not more.”
“True, but you still speak of him as if he’s around.” Hendricks splashes his notebook with furiously scribbled words, in such chicken-scratch that Jacob doesn’t even try to peek. “It’s unhealthy, your obsessions with people, the past. When’s the last time you thought about your future?”
He sits with the thought, humbled by how long it takes him to reply. “Maybe a week?”
“My point.” The doctor shakes his head during the elongated silence. “Have you been keeping up with your homework?”
Jacob leans over and pushes the shot across the table back towards its real owner. “Yes, " he says flatly, folding back onto his side, now facing the therapist, though his gaze is cold. “Like I do every week.”
Dr. Hendricks pushes, “But you’re not putting in the emotional effort.” He lies his pen flat and flicks it into the clip at the top of his clipboard. “You do the action, but do you stop to think about why you’re doing it?”
“I know I want to throw up every time I piss.” It’s unlike him, to be this blunt, but he can’t help it anymore. “It’s miserable, and girls avoid me like I’m contagious. I try, you know I do, but I feel like being castrated would just be easiest for me.”
“No.” Dr. Hendricks lifts his hand gently to cut him off. “Let’s analyze that. You picked castration as opposed to celibacy, why is that?”
Suddenly, he’s eyeing that drink again. “It’s harder to ignore it than wipe it out altogether.” The air chills as the light dims outside, warm breaths of sunset coming in.
“You’d rather give up entirely than keep trying?” Jacob knew that would find its way back to his mother, so he waved his hand in denial.
“No, I want to keep trying. A girl will come around eventually, just…discouraged is all.” The answer keeps him from tearing up, but Hendricks isn’t placated with a digestible answer, so he pries again.
Dr. Hendricks shifts one leg over the other. “Have you actually been seeking out women, as opposed to trying to let them come to you? You tend to take the submissive role in a relationship, does that apply to women, too?”
Jacob can’t keep eye contact with him, so he doesn’t. He sits up from the couch, head pounding from the sudden pressure change. “It feels wrong to harass women for my own sake. It doesn’t feel like I’m being a leader, it feels like I’m forcing them. I asked out Jessica and Cheryl and both denied me. I tried asking Cheryl a second time later in the week and that made her cut me off entirely.”
“Do you feel like you’re not ready? Perhaps you’re trying too hard and coming off as desperate. Tell me, did you actually like either of these women or was it to placate your mother?”
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Jacob stares at the floor, snatches the shot off the table, and downs it in one swing. His whole body goes limp when the flavour doesn’t burn at all. “Water.” He smacks the shot glass back onto the counter and rolls over, no longer facing his therapist, like a petulant child.
“Listen, Jacob,” Dr Hendricks leans his elbows on his knees, his voice incredibly stern. Part of him felt his shrink had spoken to his dad before and tried emulating the disappointed father's voice. “Your mother specifically came to me because I work with Dialectical Behavioral therapy, but if you aren't going to comply, I’m afraid a different form of therapy might suit your situation better.”
“What do you mean?” Jacob turns over his shoulder, before finally sitting up.
“I mean, shock therapy, behavioral camps, surgery. We’ve already tried light aversion therapy, we’ve been practicing psychoanalysis for a while. Maybe we move from drug-aligned to shock therapy-”
“I’ll have a girlfriend by the end of the month.” He protests, “I promise you, just please don’t send me off to a camp. I’ll have someone by the beginning of October, okay?”
“That’s what I thought.” Dr. Hendricks sits back, though he wouldn’t show it, he is pleased with himself. He’d done this twice before, during the initial talk period, he threatened him with pills twice before putting him on them. If he didn’t comply and comply soon, he’d be out of luck. “I at least want you to try, if you don’t have someone to show me, that’s alright, but I want to see a phone number, a photo, some sort of evidence that you did try.”
“I will.” He said, feeling the sweat pool down the small of his back. He bites his lips until the peel comes down inside of his mouth. “I will.”
Jacob clutches his book bag handle as he slips down the stairs, passing hallway posters of smiling people comforting their spouses, their children, and the elderly. Tickets underneath papers that ask you “Do you want to hurt yourself or others?”
He ignores every single one and heads straight down to the lobby. Rounding the corner, the sight is adorable, as his young goddaughter sits alongside the receptionist of the therapy office. Her little fat hands grip multiple pens at a time and try to scribble out a drawing. The receptionist peeks her head up, a short smirk before she returns to Maddy. “But it’s not a rainbow if it doesn’t have all the colours.”
“We don’t have all the colours!” Maddy squeaks, pushing her bangs out of her face. “So it’s my rainbow.”
Jacob approaches, leaning one arm against the receptionist’s desk. He tries to find something he likes about her, something to fawn over. He first looks at her eyes, brown, deep, and warm in the lighting. Her eyelashes are short and her nose is upturned, her hair reaching her middle back, completely straight. He tries to imagine what it would be like to kiss her, to hold her, but in his mind her face is morphing. Her skin gets darker and her hair shrinks up short, his hands press against the nape of her neck and feel up her buzzcut. Her chest is flat as his hands run down, and their fly unzips between his fingers.
Jacob lurches forward, covering his mouth, holding in an ounce of water and boon-hong sandwiches he made for his and Maddy’s lunch. His stomach settles when he thinks of the car, getting home and he’s able to swallow his nauseated breath.
“Are you okay?” The receptionist asks, leaning past her desk to touch his back, but he quickly shutters away from her touch.
“Fine, I just need to get home. You ready to go, Maddy?” He swallows once more to get it all the way down. “Pack up your stuff, c’mon.” While he waits, he takes a small foam cup from the counter and fills it up at the water station just beside the receptionist’s desk.
“Almost done!” Madelyn trills back in response, slapping her pens down on the counter and lifting her drawing. She attempts to neatly fold it up. “Thank you, Shelly!” She bows slightly, as her godfather often did, and comes around the desk to Jacob chucking out his cup. They take each other’s hand when Jacob hears fumbling behind him.
“Hey, ACDC!” The receptionist calls out, reaching across the table with a sheet of paper. “You’re missing something.”
Deducing she means him, considering they’re the only ones in the room, Jacob pads over and takes it from her. The second he sees it’s a phone number, his heart halts to a stop. He can ignore the homophobic nickname, he’ll gladly take the evidence. “Thanks, I’ll call you later?”
“Oh, no, that’s for my church. They do singles nights on Fridays.” She smiles, and he wants to throw up again out of sheer embarrassment and self revoltion.
“Thank you.” He manages to say anyway. “I’ll consider it.”