Charlotte Roche - Wrecked

“Yes, I think you’re right.”

She laughs. I sometimes think that’s my job—to get my therapist to laugh. Even the most awful things I try to express in a funny way—that way she has fun working with me. I want so badly to be unique and to stand out from the other patients. The smartest, the funniest, the bravest, the favorite. I want to be the patient who lets my therapist in the fastest and furthest so she can have the most success with me. With me! I push myself hard, too. I reveal to her all the most disgusting parts of my personality—the bad, the evil, everything has to be aired so she has plenty to work with. In therapy, protecting yourself is completely wrongheaded. She’s on my side and only wants to help. So, everything out. I don’t bother hemming and hawing and vacillating. I don’t think, Should I tell her this or that? Get it out, speed up the healing process. And learn as much as possible from her about the process, so I can take over and always be a good wife for my husband and a good mother for Liza.

During this hour we talk for the hundredth time about the connection between sex and parents. How you have to do everything well so your parents love you and how upset I still am about all the crap my parents planted in my head. I tell her about the outing planned for tomorrow and how proud I am that I can suck cock better than any hooker. I explain to Frau Drescher how we choose our prostitutes. Georg and I are actually too polite for the red-light district. We’ve often slept with unattractive women because we can’t bring ourselves to say, No, she’s not for us. We’re too gentle for that. We’d rather sleep with an ugly woman and pay her a ton of money—about three hundred and fifty an hour, because she has to service two clients at the same time—than to tell her she doesn’t appeal to us. I’m tougher than my husband. He gets disgusted afterward and spends ages in the shower trying to wash the images of the fat woman from his mind. I always have to laugh, thinking what a couple of idiots we are for being too shy to just say what we want, like every other customer.

Over time we’ve developed a signal to use if one of us finds the woman or her body repulsive. We say, “Wow, it’s warm in here.” Because I don’t think we are particularly attractive, it doesn’t really bother me if someone isn’t good-looking. In the book of life—where I mentally record all the extraordinary experiences I have—it’s good to have slept with a fat woman or, accidentally, with one with huge fake silicone breasts. But Georg can’t roll with the punches as well as I can.

We also never pick young prostitutes. They are too insecure. And so twitchy with their hands. The women we choose for threesomes need to be at least twenty-eight or so. But we’re happy if they are a lot older than that. Up to fifty works for us. A lot of customers seek out extra-young women to fuck. They think the youth will rub off on their cocks. It doesn’t.

Does it make me a lesbian if I’m always messing around with women? Even if it’s my husband’s wish rather than mine? It’s not always easy to unravel the difference when people are in love and together. Drawing a line between what he wants and what I want is difficult. But in any event, my husband doesn’t want to touch another man, which is a shame, because then we could change our sexual adventures around. A woman here, a man there, and always me and my husband in bed with them. But if I ever do something in bed with a male prostitute—if we could ever find one who didn’t look too gay—Georg would never participate. He might watch, but I find that idea strange.

I also talk to Frau Drescher for the hundredth time about how proud I am to send my husband to the brothel alone sometimes, and how it absolutely sparks my desire for him. It’s crazy the effect it can have. Sending your husband off to another woman. I’m always trying to be less of a control freak, trying to get beyond my normal urge to be like that, which is strong. And when I loosen up enough to send him off to a brothel alone, it makes me feel so good. My husband is still afraid of the fits of jealousy I used to have—or, let’s be honest, had until recently—because of my fear of losing him. Million-dollar question: I wonder how long Frau Drescher thinks it will take—how long must I behave well before he’s no longer afraid of me? How long—how many years do I have to spend proving to him that, with her help, I’ve cut out many of the evil, aggressive, ugly parts of my personality—before the good outweighs the bad in his eyes?

Every once in a while I ask whether we still have time. She answers, “Yes, we have a few more minutes.”

Then I start on another topic. I ask her how long it will be before I stop thinking about my mother while giving blowjobs, how long it will be before I stop hearing her whisper that I’m debasing myself. Which isn’t true. He goes down on me just as often as I go down on him.

And then at some point Frau Drescher answers my question about the remaining time with “Now the time is up.”

I lift myself and sit upright, take a deep breath, then start to fold up the blanket. Frau Drescher always says, “You can leave that, I’ll take care of it.”

That’s part of the ritual she has for preparing for her next patient. Folding the blanket and putting it over the chair as if I had never been there. Hopefully she likes me the way I like her.

I say good-bye, survive the elevator ride down, as always, and then listen to loud music in the car on the way back home to Liza and Georg. I’m a good mother and wife. I try to clean up my messy psyche for the sake of a healthy future together, as a family and as a couple.

I drive along the ugly street toward home. There’s a patch of grass and a few trees at one point along the way, and I always look for a rabbit or squirrel. Sometimes there are a few there. At night I’ve even spotted a fox. The happiest moments of my life are when I catch a glimpse of a wild animal. In my case, it’s usually normal woodland creatures because I never go very far away. I’m against traveling to distant places. When I see a squirrel I’m even happier than after I have sex with Georg. I don’t know why we don’t live out in the country somewhere, near some woods where I’d have the chance to see more wildlife. The feeling I get when I see a deer or squirrel is overwhelming. I’m no longer myself, and that feels great to me. Time stands still. I hold my breath and smile. Like a hunter, I’ve developed a good eye. I notice every movement in the bushes. On the highway I keep one eye on the road, to preserve my family’s life, but the other one is on the fields and woods along the side of the road. I always see the most deer. Then, for an instant, my life has purpose. I try to convey my enthusiasm to our kids, but it just doesn’t work. “Yeah, yeah, Mama, a deer, great.” I can’t explain why I don’t try to create more of these moments of happiness by going for walks in the woods or even training to become a forester. I’m a big believer in happiness through scarcity. It’s precisely because you see wild animals so rarely that it makes you so happy. I’ve noticed that it seems to be the same way with other adults. I know a lot of adults who are happy to report that they’ve seen a squirrel in their backyard. And if it comes back often, they convince themselves it wants to be near them.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing to see today in the strip of green grass. Too bad. Maybe next time. Happy moments really are rare in my life. But before I can let my mind wander too far down this depressing path, I’m home.

I turn the stove back on. As soon as it begins to sizzle, I take the pan off the burner and put it on the trivet on the table.

“Dinner is ready.”