speaking with someone?”
I hadn’t. I’d thought about ripping open my gown and kissing him, but that was it.
I told him I’d consider it.
I know people whose parents sent them to therapy when they were seven and have never stopped going. In my therapy-averse household, the idea of “speaking to someone” had never come up.
I went to my company’s HR department to get a copy of my insurance provider directory, which is one of the saddest things anyone can ever do, and in fact was so sad that the Internet was invented so no one would have to do it ever again.
Faced with a long list of random names and addresses, I tried to think about how to create preferences. I wanted to talk to a woman more than a man. I wanted a place close to my office so I could run out at lunch, be a fucking lunatic for an hour, and then run back. I noticed that most female therapists seemed to be named Linda, Debra, or Karen, so I figured I’d let them cancel each other out and I’d go with someone not named any of those things. I also remembered a piece of advice from my father, who once told me that you should choose a doctor based on the way their office answers the phone.
I started making calls. You’d be surprised how many therapists in Midtown then had very old answering machines, ones with actual tape where you hear it grinding on and then groaning off. I listened to their outgoing messages, and they all sounded the way my mom sounds on my parents’ answering machine—like a hostage with a gun to her head, haltingly reciting a threat that will be broadcast on Al Jazeera. Only one person calmly and clearly stated her name and also mentioned that I should be aware that if I was on a cell phone, my message might not be transmitting. This struck me as a relatively sophisticated understanding of technology. I went ahead and made an appointment with this therapist, Connie, and then went back to crying at my desk.
Connie’s office is in an old Midtown New York building, above a Pax. And it’s always been the same. You walk past the security guard, who’s kind enough to keep it to himself that he knows you’re there because you’re a train wreck, and then you always wait a bit too long for the elevator. Once in the elevator, you press 3 and then look at yourself in any of the four mirrors that line the walls, reflecting back at you an uncomfortably fragile, frizzy version of yourself. But you can’t help but look forward to the moment you push the doorbell, and Connie buzzes you into the waiting room, where a white-noise machine purrs discreetly and there’s a copy of Architectural Digest featuring a spread on Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Malibu mansion. You will sit and look at their home theater, and the surprising adobe theme, and you will think about what there is of significance to report about your own mansionless life.
Finally, some other patient opens Connie’s door to leave and you pretend not to look at them even while you’re trying to decide whether any of the details of their appearance give away that their problems might be more interesting than yours.
Then you rise and enter the inner sanctum, an office with buttery yellow walls and a painting of flowers and vases with some French words floating around the canvas, just to give the whole thing an air of sophistication. The room is warm and womb-like, and the only reminder of the real world is a window that looks across a gray alleyway and directly into a dentist’s office, where sometimes, out of the corner of your eye, as you’re talking about some particularly navel-gazing bullshit, you’ll see someone in the middle of a root canal.
Finally, there is Connie herself, sitting in a big leather chair. She is always well dressed, often in a pantsuit with some chunky jewelry, a sort of free-spirited Hillary Clinton. She is now in her late sixties, with red hair and large owlish eyes magnified further by rectangular glasses that occasionally hang from a chain
I hadn’t. I’d thought about ripping open my gown and kissing him, but that was it.
I told him I’d consider it.
I know people whose parents sent them to therapy when they were seven and have never stopped going. In my therapy-averse household, the idea of “speaking to someone” had never come up.
I went to my company’s HR department to get a copy of my insurance provider directory, which is one of the saddest things anyone can ever do, and in fact was so sad that the Internet was invented so no one would have to do it ever again.
Faced with a long list of random names and addresses, I tried to think about how to create preferences. I wanted to talk to a woman more than a man. I wanted a place close to my office so I could run out at lunch, be a fucking lunatic for an hour, and then run back. I noticed that most female therapists seemed to be named Linda, Debra, or Karen, so I figured I’d let them cancel each other out and I’d go with someone not named any of those things. I also remembered a piece of advice from my father, who once told me that you should choose a doctor based on the way their office answers the phone.
I started making calls. You’d be surprised how many therapists in Midtown then had very old answering machines, ones with actual tape where you hear it grinding on and then groaning off. I listened to their outgoing messages, and they all sounded the way my mom sounds on my parents’ answering machine—like a hostage with a gun to her head, haltingly reciting a threat that will be broadcast on Al Jazeera. Only one person calmly and clearly stated her name and also mentioned that I should be aware that if I was on a cell phone, my message might not be transmitting. This struck me as a relatively sophisticated understanding of technology. I went ahead and made an appointment with this therapist, Connie, and then went back to crying at my desk.
Connie’s office is in an old Midtown New York building, above a Pax. And it’s always been the same. You walk past the security guard, who’s kind enough to keep it to himself that he knows you’re there because you’re a train wreck, and then you always wait a bit too long for the elevator. Once in the elevator, you press 3 and then look at yourself in any of the four mirrors that line the walls, reflecting back at you an uncomfortably fragile, frizzy version of yourself. But you can’t help but look forward to the moment you push the doorbell, and Connie buzzes you into the waiting room, where a white-noise machine purrs discreetly and there’s a copy of Architectural Digest featuring a spread on Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Malibu mansion. You will sit and look at their home theater, and the surprising adobe theme, and you will think about what there is of significance to report about your own mansionless life.
Finally, some other patient opens Connie’s door to leave and you pretend not to look at them even while you’re trying to decide whether any of the details of their appearance give away that their problems might be more interesting than yours.
Then you rise and enter the inner sanctum, an office with buttery yellow walls and a painting of flowers and vases with some French words floating around the canvas, just to give the whole thing an air of sophistication. The room is warm and womb-like, and the only reminder of the real world is a window that looks across a gray alleyway and directly into a dentist’s office, where sometimes, out of the corner of your eye, as you’re talking about some particularly navel-gazing bullshit, you’ll see someone in the middle of a root canal.
Finally, there is Connie herself, sitting in a big leather chair. She is always well dressed, often in a pantsuit with some chunky jewelry, a sort of free-spirited Hillary Clinton. She is now in her late sixties, with red hair and large owlish eyes magnified further by rectangular glasses that occasionally hang from a chain
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