Lidia Yuknavitch - Dora - A Headcase

I stare at him. I blink the big eyed blink of an idiot. Then try to stop. What the fuck. He lights his cigar. The air between us is suddenly heavy with a deep tobacco musk. For reasons I can’t explain I think of Heidi. I’ll give him this, he’s a smoothie.

Turns out, I have seen this Jung character on TV. He’s a teleshrink. Mostly his gig is about dreams and animals and new age ju-ju-whammy. But his show is huge.

Yes , I text, he’s rich . Where exactly are we going with this? It’s amazing how fast the smell of a cigar goes from aromatic to gag me.

He reads. “Ah, then you are, as usual, ahead of the game,” Sig says.

How is this helping again? Hello? Voiceless chick sitting across from you? Recently chased off of a bus by some chester the molester? Sig smokes. The smoke, well this is going to sound weird but the smoke seems to be in his control. It wafts up in great curls toward the ceiling, then falls a little above your head, like it’s turned to look at you, to study you, to record your actions and behaviors. Man. I must be in pretty bad shape.

Sig stands up and glides by me on his way to his bookshelf. I have to twist around so I can see him. He does that pet the books thing. Great. Maybe I was wrong to come here. I accidentally stare at his wang area. Flat as a pancake. Get a grip.

From the bookshelf where he’s stroking his collection, Sig says, “Jung is a hack. Former colleague of mine. Former student, actually. Unfortunately for me, he has come back into my life with very … serious repercussions.”

Now I’m pissed. I punch my little iPhone letters with venom. Wtf dz this hv 2 do w me? I consider chucking my iPhone at him.

He reads. “Everything, my dear Ida,” he says.

Okey-dokey. My shrink’s toppled his dreidel. And it’s probably partly my fault. Karma’s a bitch, right? I’m fucked. I stand up and rub my almost hair and make like I’m gonna leave. What was I even thinking? But when I get near him he gently grabs my arm.

“Ida,” he says, “please. Sit.” He pats my shoulders. He guides me back to the couch. “All will be revealed.” He smiles. Briefly he doesn’t look insane.

I open my mouth. I try to talk. A sad little breath rasp comes out. I sit down on the couch. More and more with my little gimpy iPhone I feel like that chick in the chick flick The Piano . But it’s all I’ ve got. Look , I text. My dad had a huge coronary. My mum fled 2 vienna. Stuk w my dads ho n demon midgets. Hav no voic. Sum perv trid 2 grab me. Things aren’t ql, ok?

He reads.

He nods.

He chuckles.

Yuck it up, asshole. He looks up without saying a goddamn word.

Fine. Well let’s just wrap this little charade up then. I text, Dy hv any blo? Top drawer of desk? Coz so far dats d only thing here to help. Jst lite me up and il b outa yr hair . I sit with my hands at rest. Without drama.

The dude remains unflappable. Dang. I actually sort of admire it.

“I do, as you suggest, have benzoylmethylecgonine. But I think we’ ve both partaken adequately. No?” He leans toward me. “Do not despair, beautiful Ida. I can help you. But in order for me to help you,” he puts his hand on his own throat, “you, will have to help me.”

Jesus. I shoulda known. Does it all really come down to this? Am I gonna have to blow my shrink? Pass out? Wake up in the emergency room? Would that make us even?

He laughs. Like he knows what I’m thinking. “It isn’t that,” he reassures me. “And besides, you already gave me, shall we say, a colossal rise on that score?”

Well I’ll be goddamned. He certainly seems to be taking that well.

“I’ll get straight to the point,” he says, leaning in even closer, and now his eyes look like two silver dimes. “There is a certain video in your possession.”

My neck bristles and I shoot my knees together making a clunk sound.

“Oh come now. Don’t look so surprised. I know because my publicist knows, and he knows because his minions found it on … what do you call it? YouTube? Aptly named for a nation of egocentric children.” He turns and walks over to my clock present on his desk. Yep, the one with the camera in it. He bends over so his face is directly in front of it. He smiles and waves. “Hello,” he says into its face. Then he blows cigar smoke at it.

Busted.

I look down into my lap. I have to pee. My knees itch. When he speaks again his voice is a father’s voice. Not my father’s voice, but the voice some other father would use if he was angry or stern. I’m no idiot. I know what a father voice is supposed to sounds like.

Gotta up it a notch. I text, IK bout yr sho.

Sig reads, then itches his head. Then itches it harder. Then coughs.

“Ida, I need that video. I cannot let it fall into the wrong hands. There are people who want it. They want to profit from it. They … well. Let me show you.” He paces back and forth. He coughs. Then he walks over to his desk drawer and I think maybe he’s going to bring us on over some blow after all but instead he hits the playback on his desk phone. Voice message.

“Sigmund — look. What people want these days isn’t reality TV. They want beyond reality TV. They want the next level. They’re hungry for it. Hell they’d kill for it. What happened to you — it’s the next level. No one has ever seen anything like it — uncut, uncensored, HBO baby. HBO wants the Emergency Room scene. Your ER drama blows those fake TV ER dramas out of the water.”

“That,” Sig explains, “was the man who chased you. He wants to offer you a hefty sum of money for that footage, Ida. He wants it for the big show he’s made of my life’s work.”

Sig stands up and walks over to his bookshelf again. He runs his palm over an entire row of shit brown bound books. Like a hundred of ’em all in a row. “These are my case studies. My life’s work. The labor of my body, my mind, my very soul. This one,” he puts his hand on a slim volume at the very end of the row, “is yours. I named you ‘Dora.’ This is your story.”

Unamed me after my purse? I text.

“No, Ida. I named you after my niece. A girl of your age who was both cruel, and once, kind to an old man.” He runs his hands back across the spines of his case studies. “Really, they are all that’s left of me.” He looks at the ground.

Jeez, is he gonna cry? For a second I feel sorry for him.

“They want to make my books into televised excrement! It seems there is very little I can do to stop them. They even want … Jung. My ungrateful nemesis. To play me.” He drops his head. He walks back over to his camel back chair and sits down. His shoulders look smaller. He smokes his cigar. It smells briefly like benevolent grandfathers.

We sit in silence staring at each other. My breathing is sort of funny. I hold my breath in an attempt to straighten it out. Don’t be a pussy. Stay frosty.

“Seeing as you are responsible for this video coming about,” he says through his cigar smoke, “I feel it is my prerogative to ask that you give it to me, and only to me. I think,” he puts his cigar in an ashtray on the table between us, “you owe me that.

It’s a matter of ethics.” I stare at the stub of cigar. Yep, looks like a brown pudgy little dick. Erectionless. Why am I here?

I study him through the smoke dissipating between us. He’s right of course, what I did to him on one level does suck giant dong, but it’s MY art. I made it. It’s what I do. Hell, it’s the only thing I know how to do. I get to decide what to do with it. Goddamn it. My art is all I am. I don’t say anything. I don’t move. I try to look at him like I’m the statue of fucking liberty. Concrete. Like I can pee standing up.