What happened—I don't dare call it a memory—was a psychic experience or a hallucination.
I won't attempt to explain or interpret it, but will only record what happened.
I was touchy when I came into his office, but he pretended not to notice.
I lay down on the couch immediately, and he, as usual, took his seat to one side and a little behind me—just out of sight—and waited for me to begin the ritual of pouring out all the accumulated poisons of the mind.
I peered back at him over my head.
He looked tired, and flabby, and somehow he reminded me of Matt sitting on his barber's chair waiting for customers.
I told Strauss of the association and he nodded and waited.
"Are you waiting for customers?" I asked.
"You ought to have this couch designed like a barbers chair.
Then when you want free association, you could stretch your patient out the way the barber does to lather up his customer, and when the fifty minutes are up, you could tilt the chair forward again and hand him a mirror so he can see what he looks like on the outside after you've shaved his ego."
He said nothing, and while I felt ashamed at the way I was abusing him, I couldn't stop.
"Then your patient could come in at each session and say,
'A little off the top of my anxiety, please,' or
'Don't trim the super-ego too close, if you don't mind,' or he might even come in for an egg shampoo—I mean, ego shampoo.
Aha!
Did you notice that slip of the tongue, doctor?
Make a note of it. I said I wanted an egg shampoo instead of an ego shampoo.
Egg… ego… close, aren't they?
Does that mean I want to be washed clean of my sins?
Reborn?
Is it baptism symbolism?
Or are we shaving too close? Does an idiot have an id?"
I waited for a reaction, but he just shifted in his chair.
"Are you awake?" I asked.
"I'm listening, Charlie."
"Only listening?
Don't you ever get angry?"
"Why do you want me to be angry with you?"
I sighed.
"Stolid Strauss—unmovable. I'll tell you something. I'm sick and tired of coming here.
What's the sense of therapy any more?
You know as well as I do what's going to happen."
"But I think you don't want to stop," he said. "You want to go on with it, don't you?"
"It's stupid.
A waste of my time and yours."
I lay there in the dim light and stared at the pattern of squares on the ceiling… noise-absorbing tiles with thousands of tiny holes soaking up every word.
Sound buried alive in little holes in the ceiling.
I found myself becoming lightheaded.
My mind was a blank, and that was unusual because during therapy ses- sions I always had a great deal of material to bring out and talk about.
Dreams… memories… associations… problems … But now I felt isolated and empty. Only Stolid Strauss breathing behind me.
"I feel strange," I said.
"You want to talk about it?"
Oh, how brilliant, how subtle he was!
What the hell was I doing there anyway, having my associations absorbed by little holes in the ceiling and big holes in my therapist?
"I don't know if I want to talk about it," I said. "I feel unusually hostile toward you today." And then I told him what I had been thinking.
Without seeing him, I could tell he was nodding to himself.
"Its hard to explain," I said. "A feeling I've had once or twice before, just before I fainted.
A lightheaded-ness … everything intense… but my body feels cold and numb…"
"Go on."
His voice had an edge of excitement.