good with him?”
“I’d rather not.”
“I’m sure something good will occur to you.”
“Yeah, well, if it’s mandatory. He taught me and my dead brother to make pancakes. The whole process. One egg per person, a little seltzer in the batter to make them fluffy, how to flip them up in the air—though a lot of the time they never landed back in the frying pan. We would sit at the counter and watch him in amazement. They were our favorite thing to eat, his pancakes. Typical kids of divorce. The parent who isn’t there is a wonder, while the parent you end up living with you take for granted. Our favorite foods were the few things our father made—pancakes and curries—instead of any of the thousands of dishes our mother made. She was a much, much better cook. And the curries were really something he showed us for later in life. We wouldn’t eat just pancakes for our entire lives, he said. So he taught us how to make curry from scratch, using whole spices—not just some mix out of a jar. No, we measured out turmeric and coriander, made garam masala mixtures, everything. It was way too spicy for kids. He wanted to show us what a hard-ass he was. Although it occurs to me now how crazy that was. Showing kids he was tough—by eating spicy food! Ridiculous!”
“Still, I’m pleased you were able to say something positive. When people decide to shut someone out of their lives, they tend to limit themselves to seeing the negative aspects of that person. Like you and your best friend. It’s as if you feel bad for thinking you should quit the friendship, so you convince yourself, in retrospect, that there wasn’t a good side to it. But it couldn’t have been all bad, or else you wouldn’t have been friends in the first place.”
“I still only see the negatives.”
“That’s the way you rationalize ending the friendship. You are afraid of the vengeance of the person who is being abandoned. Because you’re actually afraid to leave anyone, no matter who.”
“Right. That’s why I have you. You help me get away from the people in my life who are bad for me.”
“If you say so. But it’s interesting nonetheless that you need help to leave people.”
“That’s the way it is. Without you I wouldn’t have left my parents, and I wouldn’t be about ready to finally get rid of my best friend.”
“I would like to point out that I did not encourage you to take such steps.”
“I know. You say that every time. I know. I know. I’m here with you but I come up with the ideas myself. Obviously you never say, ‘Do this or that.’ Tomorrow is another push-Elizabeth-to-the-limits day, by the way.”
“You’re going to a brothel with your husband again? You already know what I think of that.”
“Yes, I know. But it helps me get further away from my mother and closer to my husband. It’s proven, Frau Drescher, an empirical fact, and you can’t change my mind about it. Maybe most of your patients don’t pursue a healthy marriage that way, but I remain convinced these brothel visits are good for us. The same way that every time I make pancakes for the kids, I can feel my father sitting on my shoulder and watching. Everything has to be perfect, for Papa, so he’ll love his daughter. Everything takes effort. And just like when my mother sits on my other shoulder when I’m giving my husband a blowjob. She hates men. She hates cocks. When I was a child, she constantly told me that men were only good for procreation and that sex was never the slightest bit enjoyable for her. Unfortunately that lesson didn’t take. From that perspective, I’m definitely cheating if I go to the brothel with Georg tomorrow. And just thinking about it gives me diarrhea.”
“Would you like to go here? I’m happy to wait.”
“No, thanks. You know the story. I can’t go number two anywhere but at home.”
“We need to work on that some more, Frau Kiehl. You must obviously know there’s nothing wrong with using the toilet here. It’s human to leave odors behind.”
“Yeah, well, then I guess I don’t want to be human. Let’s not talk about it anymore—it’ll just make the situation worse. And no matter how bad it gets, I’m not going to use the toilet here. Except to pee. Anything else is out of the question.”
“How long have you been with me? Eight years. And still so little trust in the surroundings. The other patients go here.”
“That’s great, but the last thing I want to hear about is the toilet habits of your other patients. Yuck. It’s disgusting of you to even bring it up. Seriously, I’m going to be sick just thinking about it.”
“All I can do is invite you to use the facilities here and reiterate that you are very welcome to do so.”
My intestines make a horrible noise.
“That’s your fault, for talking about this. Let’s change the topic. You and your strange invitations. So, where were we? The important things!”
My intestines make more ugly noises. I attempt the impossible—to ignore them.
“Ah, yes, right, we were talking about the fact that I think it’s good to do a favor for my husband and in the process to betray my mother. I always feel free, relaxed, and happy when I do the opposite of what I was brought up to do. She was completely off the mark with her hatred for men. And as a result, I had to come see you for eight years before I realized that men weren’t the enemy. Or at least definitely not the only enemy. In my case, unfortunately, Mother is the enemy. My husband is a much bigger feminist than my mother.”
“Yes, I think you’re right.”
She laughs. I sometimes think that’s my job—to get my therapist to laugh. Even the most awful things I try to express in a funny way—that way she has fun working with me. I want so badly to be unique and to stand out from the other patients. The smartest, the funniest, the bravest, the favorite. I want to be the patient who lets my therapist in the fastest and furthest so she can have the most success with me. With me! I push myself hard, too. I reveal to her all the most disgusting parts of my personality—the bad, the evil, everything has to be aired so she has plenty to work with. In therapy, protecting yourself is completely wrongheaded. She’s on my side and only wants to help. So, everything out. I don’t bother hemming and hawing and vacillating. I don’t think, Should I tell her this or that? Get it out, speed up the healing process. And learn as much as possible from her about the process, so I can take over and always be a good wife for my husband and a good mother for Liza.
During this hour we talk for the hundredth time about the connection between sex and parents. How you have to do everything well so your parents love you and how upset I still am about all the crap my parents planted in my head. I tell her about the outing planned for tomorrow and how proud I am that I can suck cock better than any hooker. I explain to Frau Drescher how we choose our prostitutes. Georg and I are actually too polite for the red-light district. We’ve often slept with unattractive women because we can’t bring ourselves to say, No, she’s not for us. We’re too gentle for that. We’d rather sleep with an ugly woman and pay her a ton of money—about three hundred and fifty an hour, because she has to service two clients at the same time—than to tell her she doesn’t appeal to us. I’m tougher than my husband. He gets disgusted afterward and spends ages in the shower trying to wash the images of the fat woman from his mind. I always have to laugh, thinking what a couple of idiots we are for being too shy to just say what we want, like every other customer.
Over time we’ve developed a signal to use if one of us finds the
