Shrinky Dink

Last week I was wandering around the streets late at night (as I often do), and I found myself lingering outside a club, wondering whether or not I wanted to go in. I knew what I’d be in for if I entered the place, and I had to decide if I wanted that or to just enjoy a quiet night.

As I pondered this, a rather down-and-out homeless man talked to me. He asked me to come back to the Christian mission where he was living. I declined.

He was almost fifty (a factor that usually doesn’t stop me), and he did have three teeth that were missing in the most charming way, but he was even too incoherent for me.

I was waiting for my friend Dax to negotiate something with a rail-thin girl who was strung out on meth and who was flying at about light speed compared to my usual standard state of lethargy. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it's people on meth or crack. Heroin can be annoying, but usually the people just pass out and don’t bother you, unless they OD. That can be a true irritant, but I’m getting off the subject.

At one point Dax threw in the towel and we headed for the train. That’s when he propositioned me, offering money if I’d have sex with him. This is not without precedent, as I once let him lick my vagina for $100 while I watched 3rd Rock from the Sun and tried to block it out. Dax is a male escort himself, but he cannot seem to get anything from any ladies, so he pays for his poon.

Again I declined, prompting Dax to whine that I’d broken his heart and a bunch of other bullshit. Poor him.

Two days later five big guys wailed on Dax and put him in critical condition. Now his jaw is broken and he has to have a metal plate in his face, which will make it very hard for him to get through airport security.

I feel bad for him.

So after I turned down Dax’s cash-for-cooch offer, I wandered back to the club. Some guy named Yonkel was hanging around outside. He was from Israel and told me that he recognized me from some shitty art show we were both at and proceeded to ask me all the boring getting-to-know-you questions.

Yonkel also told me that he was a doctor. A psychiatrist, to boot.

Immediately I was impressed. I thought about what kind of drugs he could prescribe me and how I always wanted to date an MD.

We were deciding whether or not to go into the club and he told me to relax and take a deep breath. That was gay, but after I did it, I decided I would not go into that place.

Yonkel asked if he could walk me to the train. If I knew what was going to take place in that thirty-minute hike, I probably would have declined, but he was a fucking twenty-seven-year-old MD, a man of my dreams, so I couldn’t resist.

And then it started...this onslaught of questions. I thought that shrinks wouldn't try to analyze people outside of their job, but here we were.

After mentioning that his family was wacky, Yonkel asked me about my upbringing, about abuse in my family, all of these really heavy questions. I’d expect to answer these queries if I were in his office, but on the street it was a bit awkward. And he seemed to be completely oblivious to the fact that he was crossing major boundaries by hammering away at this stuff. Still, Yonkel was undaunted.

I started to get offended and I wanted to get away from him. But then he started to draw these conclusions about me, which sound terrible when I write them, and it’s almost embarrassing, but it does explain a lot. The answers were so simple that I am almost mad I did not come to these conclusions myself.

All these people, all these articles that I’ve written, the constant parade of shitheads coming into and out of my life for a day or two is just my way of trying to find intimacy. It was a good answer, I thought.

So all of these mornings, brushing my teeth and watching those little white cum strings that form along the bottoms of my teeth and the pits in my gums and the inside of my cheeks that are impossible to spit out and all those times I had to reach into my herpes-scarred mouth to separate and lift the knots and yarn that collect and breed inside my flushed, ugly, pounded face, and all the stains that I come across later, and all the accusations of me having VDs and sleeping with weirdos--all that is me trying to find intimacy and failing.

It’s an interesting prospect.

I knew Yonkel worked at a local university as a psychiatrist, but I didn’t exactly remember his full name. I tried to look him up on the Internet, but I could not find him. I wanted him to be my psychiatrist.

Surprisingly, I ran into Yonkel the next day. I informed him of my search and I think I scared him a little bit. Unfortunately I don’t have the insurance to even afford a shrink.

One thing that I know and that always comforts me is the fact that I know that my mother is sleeping with a man who has genital herpes and she does not seem to care. Sometimes these simple realizations make all the difference.