Chapter One – It’s A Big Step
I am now in a psychotherapists’ waiting room in the City of London: CityTherapy.com in Farringdon. I have never been in a psychotherapists’ waiting room and I wish I wasn’t here now. The one answer to the question “Why am I here?” that occurs to me is that I am being a bit of a useless cunt. I’m a bit sorry for myself. The shrink I’ve been allocated in response to the form I filled out online is called Grace Phelan and I’m half hoping she will tell me to stop feeling sorry for myself and kick me up the arse. That is unlikely for £150, with the promise of more paid sessions in the future if she doesn’t assault me, I admit, but the fact that a bit of a kicking (verbal or otherwise) is unlikely, makes me perversely nervous. I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen or what I’ll be asked to talk about. I’d prefer to be chastised rather than psychoanalysed then sent on my way. The whole idea of psychotherapy makes me nervous. But then, what happened happened, didn’t it? So Michael, my manager, told me to come here. That’s another answer to that question, “why am I here?”.
I’m sitting in one of the compact, upholstered, pinky-purple armchairs clustered around a magazine-littered glass table. Three other people are here, ignoring the magazines and looking down at their phones. Why bother with magazines any more? (Though I then remember I have one in my hands. But I’m not reading it. No one notices. That is true a lot of the time. People don’t notice. Anything.) The carpet is light blue, the walls are papered with pinky-purple paper, which matches the chairs I have a deep suspicion of. There is classical music in the air and a few potted plants sit around quietly like the patients, doing nothing. Everything in the room says relaaaaaax.
I don’t.
Suddenly, a woman in her mid-twenties emerges from Room 3 sobbing loudly, with her coat over her arm. She walks slowly to the reception desk and says something. The receptionist agrees to whatever is being asked, I deduce, because she nods sympathetically and solemnly and says a few quiet words I can’t hear. The woman then exits.
I guess the patient has asked if they can invoice her, rather than being made to fiddle around doing a credit card payment in floods of tears. (We can all hear her sobbing in the hallway beyond reception for at least a minute, until the lift doors close behind her.) On the other hand, maybe the broken, unhealed woman just did some kind of runner, promising to pay later but choosing not to do so. Or maybe she just claimed breach of contract on the spot and said plaintively, “Look. It didn’t bloody work did it? I’m a mess. I’m not going to pay for this shit now am I?”
“Fair dos,” said Fiona (or whatever her name is) quietly assenting, “The pay ‘ere is shit. I’m leavin’ anyway,” and Fiona let the broken woman hobble off.
Like Room 101, I think to myself. That’s not funny. And who cracks jokes to themselves? And then more alarmed, my confidence, my very self – it feels like – ebbing suddenly away, I think involuntarily, What bloody happened in there? What happened to her?
Normally, I would think, Who cares? Who gives a shit what happened to her? But my hands, I now notice, have been sweating since she emerged and my forehead is trying to catch up.
The door to Room 2 then opens and a blond man in a burgundy-coloured tie and charcoal flannel suit walks out looking unharmed, maybe even like he benefited from the experience. He seems relaxed and confident. A picture of mental health, he pays his bill on the spot, unselfconsciously chatting with Fiona. He then exits without shedding a single tear. Maybe he started out like the woman and in a few months she will have a spring in her step. Or maybe it is the other way around. These people might be like FTSE 100 Directors: they make tons even when they fuck it up. Not it. You. Me!
Next, a dark-haired, gentleman of Asian appearance in a nice-looking grey shirt emerges from behind the same door and asks the armchairs to yield up Sonya Thomson, which they do. The woman next to me is the thirty-something, auburn-haired Sonya, it turns out and she is all smiles as she walks in to her therapy. She asks how he is as she shakes his hand in the doorway and enters his room. He enthusiastically tells her he is fine and asks how she is as he closes the door. He seems like a nice guy. I wonder what Grace will be like? I asked to see a woman. I worry about why.
A couple of names are called (“Ewan? Poppy?”) and the remaining two people, a hipster and some kind of braided, green and blond-haired surf-girl with money, get up and walk into Room 1. They are clearly a hangover from a time when nearby Shoreditch wasn’t overrun by City types and lawyers like me.
The rather academic-looking old woman therapist who calls them in, smiles in a consoling way as they walk past. Couples counselling. They’ve been before a good few times. There have been no massive breakthroughs yet, says the consoling smile. 70/30 they don’t make it, says that smile. It’s not going well. Maybe they were both booking a removals company online on their phones while they sat in the waiting room for their last ever session.
I noticed that they did not exchange a word or even a glance in the waiting room, but sat enthralled by their mobiles instead of talking to one another. They were even undistracted by the sobbing (they come here all the time so maybe that proves it’s a common occurrence). Then again maybe that’s just modern, virtual, Instagram-life. Neither of them really “connect” with the outside world, including each other. It is killing relationships some people say. I wouldn’t know.
On the other hand, maybe hipster and surf-girl were both texting each other. About what? I don’t know. The sobbing woman, or about how well it’s going for them. Or how fantastic the hipster is at licking her out now and how amazing surf-girl is at blow jobs. Finally, she’s got the hang of it, or gotten over it and I’m wrong and it’s not removals men but wedding bells. The therapist just doesn’t know it yet. Or maybe they were insulting each other furiously. Or maybe they were each texting their respective lovers.
Then a really odd thought occurs to me: maybe they were texting the same bisexual lover. And they hadn’t found out yet that they were two-timing each other with the same person. All they said in therapy was that things weren’t right between them anymore. Neither Poppy nor Ewan had yet admitted that he or she was bisexual, (but one of them was) so the hellish possibility I have just imagined is not considered by either of them even to be possible. Maybe they will never find out they are fucking the same person. Or rather that they are being fucked by the same person. Who knows it all. Who has worked it out and is laughing at them both, as they sit there in the waiting room – getting texts from him, or her. They are each being fucked up the arse. Literally. By a malicious bisexual (strap-on or a dick?) who feeds off their sexual humiliation as a couple. But today, surf-girl and hipster will, in fact, find out what is happening to them both. That they are being fucked by the same person. After the horrible revelation in front of the academic, there will be a vicious, screaming row in front of Fiona – who will refuse to charge them and will resign triumphantly on the spot (“yer see: therapy don’t work and the pay ‘ere’s shit”) – amidst the unsightly, degrading spectacle of the romantic young couple’s meltdown, their dream of a sexually successful marriage now in ruins. I will also witness surf-girl Poppy’s and hipster Ewan’s humiliation-hell as I leave today, never to return.
A woman or a man, I wonder, this evil bisexual bastard, I have unmasked? A strap-on or a dick, up both of their arseholes?
They both find out today. Oh God. Jesus Christ.
I am now sweating heavily.
But who cares? I tell myself. Slow down.
Really, who gives a shit? Not one of my concerns: their collapsing relationship or the bisexual who is humiliating them both.
That’s better.
I do feel better for a bit. But then a few moments later, the door to Room 101 opens and a woman in her mid-thirties leans out. She wears a black suit with a simple floral scarf below a pleasant but bespectacled face. That actually really rather attractive face is surrounded by ample, glossy, well-styled black hair, which is above shoulder-length. Immediately, I can see she is trying to diminish or silence a serious rack (which has said “hello” first, to all the men she ever met in her life before she even opened her mouth), with a crappy, baggy, cream M & S blouse. “Pipe down! Pipe down!” shouts the blouse. “No way! No way! scream the tits. Eye contact, eye contact, think the boys, (but not as in those Pornhub videos, I think to myself and laugh out loud).
She, the very presentable, semi-hot cause of the public loss of face of her last non-paying patient, looks at me, smiling in response to my laughter and says,
“Mr Minchin?”
“Yes?”
There is then a pause, I suppose because I shouldn’t respond with a question. It is obvious what I am supposed to do: acknowledge I am being called in and then stand up and bloody go in, making sure I shake hands in the normal way. But instead I just sit like a lemon, gawping at her and waiting for the most obvious explanation in the world as to why this woman who makes people break down and cry and then charges them for it is calling my fucking name.
“I’m Grace Phelan, I’m your therapist. Would you like to come in?”
“Yes, thank you.” I say, and don’t move. Because, No, fuck off and leave me alone, is what I think.
You’re not fucking me up the arse, continue my thoughts, somewhat hysterically and irrationally, as I return her puzzled gaze.
Hysterically and irrationally? On the other hand, what if the vicious bisexual is, in fact, Grace, my therapist?
God, you’re evil, I think to myself.
“I’m sorry,” says M&S, startled, whose expression actually visibly changed at my earlier thought, about her not fucking me up the arse. Clearly, she is a witch, who can read people’s thoughts if they try to resist her power.
Not forgiven. Not forgiven, you bitch. You heard it all through the wall in your office, didn’t you?
I realise too late that I have said these words out loud to her (not just thought them). So, maybe she cannot read thoughts, but instead she can make you say them out loud, I conclude logically but terrifyingly. I am also shaking my head at her as I look at her.
“Are you OK, Mr Minchin?” says Grace, looking alarmed, and a little scared.
But I’m not falling for that.
“I’m not going in,” I tell Satan. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Fiona reach for the phone on her desk.
I might be resigning today, but this geezer’s fucking nuts!
“Mr Minchin, I don’t know what is frightening you, but we can talk about that.” Grace looks across at Fiona. Fiona’s hand remains hovering. Grace looks back at me. “We can’t, I’m afraid, conduct therapy in a waiting room. You will have to come inside my office.”
I snap myself out of it. I am getting lost in my imagination here. I have no evidence that Grace is the bisexual demon destroying the young lives of the people next door. Or that such a demon even exists. And anyway, it is too late to cancel with her, so I drop the magazine on the glass table, (which I now realise I have been torturing into a tunnel-shape) get up and walk in, shaking her offered hand first. [Pre-Covid draft clearly. In the world of the pandemic, this man is saved.]
Then something real not imagined hits me: my handshake. I had forgotten that handshake. That old remnant walking the earth again. I thought I had left it behind years ago. It is the handshake, that on my sixteenth birthday, I decided never to give to anyone ever again. Because handshakes are part of that first impression you give. But that old handshake was suddenly back: limp, sorrowful, wounded and very, very sweaty. [old and derivative this is a long way off]
So Grace’s very first experience of me was not positive. And as I walk in to her room, I feel myself step backwards into the darkness I have made so much effort to escape from, since I was a boy.
I then stand in that room, Grace is closing the door behind me. I’m not sitting down. I think,
Why, oh why, am I even fucking here, when actually, until now, until recently, I’ve been doing just fine?
I stare at the white leather and steel armchair I’m meant to sit in. Grace walks to the other chair, turns, but remains standing before it, looking at me and says, calmly, kindly and softly,
“Please have a seat Mr Minchin and tell me, in your own words, if you can, what was happening to you out there and maybe, why you are here.”
But suddenly, I can’t speak, or even see, for all the tears pouring out of me and announcing, for whatever reason, that I’m not doing fine any more. And this – and I half-gesture, once, weakly, faintly, one small stroke in the air, towards my torso, towards my chest, towards my Self, towards the seat of my soul even (I later think), as I stand weeping in front of Grace – this…Just. Can’t. Go. On. Any. More.
And yes, I do say those last six words out loud too, as I stand shaking before her, this therapist, this Grace, this…woman…already the witch of my undoing.
Jodie Foster and the Super 8 