Robert Greene goes to Therapy

CW: Gore, body horror, violence

Cold bite of February sunshine gleams off the snow banks, while the wind runs around concrete corners, clamoring through my body, and I feel my teeth squeeze each other harder. Walking to my office in the city, the cold reminds me of how hot and angry my belly feels this week. My teeth clench closer as I remember to put away the small box of news headlines and terrible thoughts I’ve heard on my feed this week while I was trying to shit, trying to sleep, or leaning over my microwave plate of prepped lunch. I put them away and mindfully stomp my boots over the snow-trampled sidewalk.

There will be 2 more new clients today, and Eesh! - Five more of them tomorrow; very sad, very sick, very rich men. I can hear them already, “She wants me to be present without fixing her feelings? Hmm, yes, this has been helpful. I’ve never thought of it like that before. When can we do this again?” Naming the terror of wracking their brains to earn the attention of their wives. Naming the fear of never touching comfort again from the despair of the shower after getting drunk alone again.

My phone makes a beep, and I know it's my Mother, sick and scared for years now. The screen displays the cursory headlines I skip over to access my messages. More screaming faces remind me to feel fearful and helpless. I click on her message to show I remember I am bringing her dinner over after work tonight; I silence the thread in preparation for the multiple messages she will send today. The reminder is not enough to quell her worries, but I know there is nothing I can say to give her enough today.

I voice-text Anna, my Admin; she sent me the name of a new client. The name is familiar, have I heard of him before? I look him up quickly; ah, yes. I have read that author; lucky for me. He reads like he is going to be subtly pretentious in session, just enough to claim it wouldn’t have been important for me to have heard of him.

I wipe my glasses on the wipe from my pocket, and I notice I am already sweating, even though it is freezing. I make my way up to the office.

“Doctor J, hi. You’re here. O good- listen, I have to leave, I’m sorry; my kid got into…”

I smile at her easily, “That’s fine, Anna. The 10 called me already so it’s just the new guy today. I’ve got that. You can go- go ahead.”

“Thank you, I’m so-“

“Anna, it's all good.”

It takes a minute for my office chair to feel good; my legs don’t feel the same as they did in the picture on my desk. Deep eggplant gown in front of a white tablecloth and a busy party. Thankfully, I can clear up a lot more paperwork now than I did at that age. My memories drift between tiny chortles and longing for longer than I pay attention to, while I am typing short phrases and checking off notes.

The new client comes in 10 minutes. I check my makeup in the mirror from my desk and replace it back to it’s home in the drawer. I sit for several minutes, looking out the office window. The cold sun next to me, just opposite the glass. I take a minute to remember the things I am here to share, for healing, not only one man, but all of those around him, all of those he reaches.

Sure enough, he’s on time.

“Welcome, Robert, good to meet you. Come on in. Sit wherever you would like”.

“Yes, thank you, Doctor J Howard?”. His gaze darts from my face, the leather recliner, the plush couch, and the streamlined, simple chair opposite my desk. He considers this choice for a moment and then sits in the recliner. I sit opposite him, upright on the couch.

His voice shakes, anxious and pensive, “Thank you for seeing me. I’ve never done this before. I don’t really know where to start”.

“I understand, yes, that is something I hear often. What’s bringing you in?”

“Ah, okay. Well, it started, wow, maybe a month ago.” He smooths out the sleeves of his sweater, darts his gaze around the room, “I don’t know, I have ideas, it’s just that they all start to sound the same. Everything I write feels like it has the same shit; it’s all the same bucket. Everything I start is so… boring!”

“I hear you, how frustrating! Sounds like a bit of the old writer’s block eh?” I instantly regret the casual phrasing. I notice I’m working too hard to give a feeling of familiarity.

“Oh, you’ve heard of my work? Well, yes.” His gaze turns to the books on the shelved wall opposite us and the window. He smiles, “Honestly, I didn’t expect you to be a woman. When I searched the name, it gave me an image and well, you’re clearly not that old man it showed me. Heh. Yes, anyway” his head points down for a moment for him to think and I am grateful he cannot see my eyes widen on impulse of my offense and surprise.

“You searched ‘Dr. J. Howard’ from my advertisement and got a man?” our eyes meet, and I am smiling, applying humor to my incredulity.

“Well, I had to make sure you weren’t in the files.”

My smile falls, and my voice flattens, “Is that a joke?”

“A half joke, I think.”

I feel a drop, a cavernous plunge that moves through the middle of me. My spirit bottoms out; I can see that while this man finds his needs serious enough to avoid from my recliner, his connection to the world around him is delusionally flat. All of his assertions on power and success now face the gaping pull of shame at what he has found at the bottom of all of it, nothing. A plummet so fast and so blinding he hasn’t named it yet. He avoids it now with superficial jabs at the worst of current events, as though he is swimming in it with any similarities to the way I am, the way we are.

“Mr Greene,” my voice goes calm, flat, and matter-of-fact, unflinching, “I’m noticing that maybe out of your discomfort at this meeting, the discomfort of sharing on your distress, which is also perhaps novel and uncertain, you have attempted to make a terrible joke. This must be a very strange setting for you. I’d like to help you, and I believe I can. I have been helping men for over 25 years, healing the drains of depression suffered by even the wealthiest men. Tell me, when did you know you weren’t feeling well, Robert? What did you feel in your body?”

“Well. It’s not that I’m not feeling well” he looks up and around at the bookshelves again.

“Then what do you think brings you here?” I make a note in my thoughts; contrarian. “Other than your sneaking suspicion I am a man familiar with billionaire predators?”

“Now just a minute-“

“Just a minute indeed,” I invite him again, “you can permit yourself to stop avoiding it. What are you feeling now?”

He sees I am in the room with him, for maybe the first time. I am here, my face and my eyes are his mirror and there is no way out.

“You think this is anything like you’ve heard before?!” He’s yells at me, his torso across the coffee table and his arms gesturing to my books, “I can’t feel ANYTHING,” he sobs, with panting and wailing. I shape my lips into firm pity.

He catches his breath, sopping with mucous and tears, pressing out the words “I can have anything I want. I can get anything I want, and now there is nothing FOR me. Nothing holds me, all I can see are the things I use to appease my gaping mouth, and I want to cut out my eyes!”

I answer softly, after he is quiet, “I can hear your despair, love.”

He looks up, uneasy at my phrasing, “I can see you have believed that the old man you might find here would offer you some peaceful words, to quiet your longing.”

I pause gently, “I have always hated that part of the movie, when we are sold the adage ‘love overcomes fear’. What data do we have to support this? When has this ever been true? Therapy overcomes the damage of trauma? Maybe. About 75 percent of the time. On a good day. Does love compete then, with hate or fear? When? When we sit beside a lover while we also watch the news headlines, of tentacles of power swallowing up my children? When we bring the desperate family their daily bread? I’ll tell you the sad truth, sir, like your books, it is foolish and naïve at this point of our story to assume that love is coming to tend to your fear. You have already eliminated that option.”

I lean back on the plush couch. My right leg lifts off the floor, and opens to reveal my row of large, sharp teeth in a smile extending from where my anus should be up between my breasts. I turn my body so my large, hungry, drooling mouth of sharp teeth is now talking to Robert Greene. Her voice booms and the cold February glass shakes.

“In your death, they will NOT reanimate your corpse, and this is not the privilege you think it is. It reveals your epigenetic shame in trying-”

“TRYING” My mouth’s tongue forces each repetition of the word, heaving my body forward each time.

“TRYING!” my body thrusts forward a third time “FOOLS! To sword yourself into a sheath!”

My mouth has positioned above him, shrinking in terror and veiny-eyed confusion, my legs standing on the arms of the leather recliner, my eyes reflecting his dread.

“You will never embody, Robert Greene, because you are only OF body. From this violence you have been created and back unto this violence you return. Receive my kiss!”

I squat my teeth over him and bite off his head. His body bleeds out. My legs climb down and support my large mouth back onto the couch so I can digest his head.

I pick up my phone as I lay back, and I order a rotisserie chicken to be delivered to my Mother’s small home outside the city. After my mouth has comfortably digested, I receive a voice note from Anna.

“Hey, Doctor Judith, listen I can’t come in tomorrow. The schedule is in the link in the calendar”.

I read the names.

My satiated fingers wipe a drop of flesh from under my breast, off my belly.

I smile; I feel clearly that I am not afraid. I am the strongest I have ever been in this body.

I read the names again, hm, that one sounds familiar… I search him up, ah, yes. I do recognize this man from a headline I have read.