Before You Close the Gates

[mallorys_camera]

I love this photograph beyond words for reasons I can’t even begin to describe…

It’s a French factory. Building began in 1891. Builder was Louis Marie Hilaire de Chardonne who invented the first artificial silk. Unfortunately, his silk didn’t catch on. The stuff that did was called rayon.
Oxymandias for the 21st century. If only I was Shelley…

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I saw a therapist yesterday. I picked him at random out of a phonebook because he was both a social worker and a psychotherapist. His office was incredibly sparse and untidy with big clear garbage bags of used Gimme Coffee cups strewn about. He’s a rather big, hulking guy who may have had a speech impediment at one point in his life. In fact, he kind of reminded me of the villain of Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon if Francis Dolarhyde had been a good guy. No matter. One enters into these situations with a certain fatalism, accepting the luck of the draw: Here’s where the conveyor belt has taken me.

I have Medicaid, of course, and no I’m not ashamed of that: When I was making $150,000 a year, I paid into the tax system. Time to get some back! But I use the Medicaid for RTT MD calls basically. I never see a doctor myself. And I didn’t want to use it for psychotherapy, figuring we don’t actually value that which we don’t actually pay for. Yes, my taxes paid for it way back when but I no longer have a visceral connection to that. If I used Medicaid for psychotherapy, it would seem like I was getting it for free.
So I negotiated a payment rate: Twelve sessions at $20 a pop. The goal is to get an actual job in that time that would not involve standing behind the counter of a Quiki Mart checking underage ID at 4 in the morning. Then we renegotiate the payment.

“How dysfunctional do I seem to you anyway?” I asked. A reality check.

“You don’t,” he said.

“So I’m still maintaining?”

He nodded slowly. “Pretty much. Although obviously, you’re deeply depressed.”

Didn’t feel any kind of emotional connection but that’s okay: He’s a mirror and a tool.

Around 9pm, B called ostensibly to talk about RTT although he could have done that through text. Something he said set me off towards the end of the call so I hung up on him, after telling him, “By the way, have I told you to go fuck yourself recently? Then I’ve been remiss. Go fuck yourself. Fuck you. Fuck that cunt Jayne LeGro that you used my fucking car to go fuck that spring while you were padding your escape route.”

He immediately called back and left a message about how he and I and Robin should all go together to the Trumansburg Fair this weekend and then he just kept texting me till midnight which was just plain weird.