Charlotte Roche - Wrecked

“Guten Tag,” she replies, and we release each other’s hands from the handshake. It’s all rather embarrassing.

She’s usually wearing a pantsuit. Or a masculine blouse with a V-neck sweater over it. She likes pastel colors. Pink, lilac, salmon, light blue, mint green. She has long blonde hair. And breasts. Big ones. A nice body—not too thin, not too chunky. She looks very healthy. Thank goodness—I want her to live a long time. Did I mention her breasts? She has breasts. And breasts are a major theme of my therapy. My breast complex runs my life. I complain to her regularly about women with big breasts and blonde hair. And she has big breasts—at least from my perspective, as a tadpole in the breast department—and platinum blonde hair. Sometimes I feel funny saying what I want to about it. I ask her if I’m not going too far for her. But she’s totally supportive. It’s not about her feelings or sensitivities. She’s a doctor. She stays above the fray. I have to be able to say anything in therapy without thinking about how she will feel about my breast comments.

She’s also a lot bigger than I am, which I like. She wears a lot of mascara, jet-black, and light blue eye shadow. It works perfectly with her dark blue eyes. Her whole face reminds me of Agnetha from ABBA. She always smiles at me so knowingly and kindly. She’s on my side. It’s nice. That’s the way it works with therapy—the therapist is on the patient’s side. She puts a lot of effort into understanding me.

She lets me enter the sacred space of the consultation room ahead of her. There’s the couch where I’ve already spent so many hours. The room has been nicely aired out so it doesn’t smell like another patient. We wouldn’t want that. The idea is to pretend that other patients do not exist. But I don’t let myself be fooled. Not even by Frau Drescher. She closes the window, and I wrap myself in the fleece blanket with the strange pattern on it—to protect myself from all the forces of nature about to be released upon me. Then I lie down. She always puts a freshly washed light blue cloth on the pillow where I put my head. Sometimes, when I show up with freshly washed hair, I get it all wet. She says it’s no big deal—that each patient gets a new one anyway. A thin piece of cotton prevents any direct contact between the oils of the various patients’ hair. Where Frau Drescher stores these cloths is still a riddle to me. At the foot end of the black leather couch is the type of mat you would usually place just outside the door of your apartment. It has hard bristles. Frau Drescher knows that it scratches me and she’s said I can remove it from the couch. But I never do. I want to get right down to business. So for the entire hour I just hide the fact that the mat bugs me. Especially in summer, when my legs are bare.

Once I’m lying there, I wait for her to close the door and sit down behind me. The door is soundproofed, which, being paranoid, I like. I lie there in my usual funereal position, with my arms outside the fleece blanket—don’t want anyone to think I’m secretly playing with myself. I put my hands together and interlock my fingers the way people do when they’re praying. Despite the fact that I’m totally against prayer. I look up at the ceiling: white wood chip. And at the wall to my left: white wood chip.

When I look past my feet, there is a huge painting leaning against the wall. No idea why it’s propped against the wall instead of hanging from it. What is Agnetha—as I like to think of her—trying to signal to me with that? I always think she’s trying to tell me something. But in the case of the painting, I have no idea what. Maybe it’s something like, Hey, check it out, dear patient, I’m human, too, and don’t always follow through on everything.

The poorly painted image is of a colossal devil figure. He’s a naked man, and he’s squatting on the ground. I keep looking at his crotch, but his balls aren’t hanging down. A bunch of kitschy little birds are flying around his head. As I’m talking about my latest problems, I keep racking my brain for a reason she might have for putting this image right at the feet of her patients. She’s probably crazy herself. Anyway, I’ve stared at that painting for hours upon hours. I’ve seen it blurry, at times when I’ve been crying. And I’ve seen it shaking, when I’ve had a panic attack. I’ve had to look at that image of the devil with little birds flying around his head in every imaginable emotional state. What is she trying to tell me?

If I were to look to the right—which I never do—I’d see a room stuffed full of tasteless objects. Two fake trees, a black vase out of the 1980s that must be three feet tall, on top of which she’s put a huge polished purple stone. The entire windowsill is crammed with useless stuff. A steel turtle sculpture with evil eyes, some sort of ashtray filled with black sand, a beanbag gecko. I guess Agnetha came of age style-wise in the 1980s. In fact I’m sure of it. But what do I know? Funny thing. I’ve never thought about how old she is. She’s definitely older than I am. Definitely. I read somewhere that psychologists and psychiatrists—what’s the difference between them again?—try to trick their patients by decorating their offices completely differently from their homes. The patient should have something to get annoyed with. The decor in Frau Drescher’s office functions extremely effectively that way for me. When she moves or takes down a painting, I’m thrown into crisis. I walk in, immediately notice the change, and ask her, completely dumbfounded, what the story is. Why do people always have to change things around? Where’s the painting gone? When is it coming back? The way she looks at me, I can tell that five other patients have already reacted exactly the same way. So much for my wonderful individuality.

Then we begin.

“First I need to apologize to you, Frau Drescher, just in case you can smell anything. It’s best if I just tell you directly, rather than spend the entire hour wondering whether you’ve noticed anything.”

“That’s right, Frau Kiehl, it’s better just to say it. You don’t want anything to distract you or weigh you down here. Let’s just get everything out in the open right from the start. What is it that I might have noticed?”

“I just had—shortly before I came here—sex. So there you go, now it’s out. And I only washed up quickly afterward. You always say I don’t need to be perfect when I come to see you.”

“Nice. With whom?”

“Haha. Are you making fun of me? With whom? With Georg, of course.”

“Yes, of course. I was just asking because of the sexual fantasies you’ve talked about recently.”

“I know, I know.”

“Do you feel good as a result?”

“Ha, of course! What do you think? I always feel good after having sex with Georg. I’m kind of amazed that we still have sex, since we’ve been together for so long. In previous relationships, I lost any interest in sex after about three years. This time it’s still going after seven years. Pretty amazing. But I worry that it will end soon. You know how it is: once the sex is gone it’s just a question of time before the love withers and dies, too.”

“Really? You think that’s how it works?”

“Yes, I do. That’s what happened in every single one of my relationships since I was thirteen. That’s exactly how it works. I keep trying to figure out why it’s stayed so good with Georg for this long. And I’ll tell you this, Frau Drescher: I think I’m letting myself be fucked by his money. That’s what I think. The reason it’s worked for so long is because he’s the first guy I’ve been with who’s had more money than me—as a result I still find him sexy. I don’t mean sexy in the sense that he looks so good, but in the sense that I want to fuck him. I’m pretty sure that’s the reason.”