Dora: A Headcase

by Lidia Yuknavitch

  Inside the office building, I push the button and the soft coo of elevator happens. I bet he listens for the coo. I bet he pictures my combat boots when I walk down the hall to his office. Who can resist red leather docs and teen girl calves?

  Lemme lay out the stage for you – the inside of Sig’s office, I mean. First of all, there are way too many Pottery Barn lamps. Trust me. The ’rents have our condo all decked out in PB and Restoration crap, so I recognize bouge hell when I see it. Now picture all those lamps with the lowest wattage bulbs in the world. So that the room isn’t really “well lit.” It’s just sort of endlessly brownish yellow, everywhere you look. What they call “warm” light. Probably meant to keep all the nutcases calm. More like swamp glow, if you ask me.

  Then there is this gigantoid mahogany man-desk. Can we say over-compensating? If there’s ever a second flood, the Sig’s ready. That thing could carry lots of fucking animals. On the man-desk is an ashtray – so old school – so not PC in our smokeless, faux, eco-friendly workspaces. The Sig? Apparently he’s a stogie man. I’ve seen a half-smoked brown stub.

  I think the only place I have ever seen cigars being smoked is in black and white movies and old folks homes. Weird.

  OF COURSE the office walls are lined with about a gazillion books, because we wouldn’t want anyone to miss his über smarty-pantness or big-brained balloon head, now would we. Sometimes he saunters over to the books and – I shit you not – strokes the spines. Ew.

  What else. Two absurdly expensive looking Persian rugs, no doubt woven by terrorists, another little table with coffee maker shit on it, a high camel-backed sofa chair that he sits in when we do our thang, and some bizzaro abstract painting of … a forest? Hard to tell. The trees would only look like trees if you were tripping. “Art” for over the hill rich people.

  But the pièce de résistance? The couch. Yep, you heard me. The Sigster has a giant couch. It stretches out for client nuts as the only option – all Italian brushed leather.

  “Dude, what’s up with the couch? I gotta sit on that thing?” was my first commentary. He went off on some crap about reflexology – some batshit theory about how peoples’ subcon-sciouses are more easily released when they are in reclined positions.

  “Isn’t it also easier to see up girl skirts?” I went.

  “That is not the matter at hand,” became his regular defense. Man if I had a Vicodin for every time he’s said that to me … I could fill one of my mom’s prescription bottles.

  You might say we set the rules in that first exchange. Like I say, I’ve learned a lot about our little dialogues since we began. Now I come prepared.

  I never travel in the world defenseless. First off, I wear a Dora the Explorer purse everywhere I go. You know, from kid TV? It’s pink and shiny and hangs across my chest on a long-frayed string. I got it as a kid, but I’ve made modifications since childhood. Two safety pins where my little cartoon chica’s eyes used to be. And I gave her a blowup doll’s mouth with a red sharpie. And I painted a little gun for a hand. Sweet, really. That dumbass little blue monkey that hangs around with her though – I had to make him into a death skeleton.

  Inside my Dora purse I don’t have mascara or lip gloss or gum. I don’t have breath mints or tampons or a joint. I don’t have candy or condoms. What I have, is my beloved Zoom H4n audio recorder. At all times. Everywhere.

  Especially here.

  I knock.

  He opens the door.

  “Ida,” he goes.

  “Sig,” I go. How it’s never occurred to these folks how AWKWARD the fake-o greetings are is beyond me. Hi. It’s me. Your 4:00 nutter. Hello, won’t you come in and let me explore your genitals by pretending to talk about your family origins. What a load of crap.

  Once I’m in, I’m in. This place is mine. I’ll tell you why later. It’s me against him. The opening moves are important. I turn to look at him. I smile the smile of a girl on the cusp of things. Whaddya got for me today, Siggy. Gimme your best shot.

  He stares at me. “I see you’ve … changed … your hair,” is all he’s got. Christ. Child’s play.

  I twirl around with great drama. Then I stand extra upright. I whip my hand up to my head and jut my chin out. He looks alarmed. Like I might attack him. Instead, I violently salute him, click my heels together, look slightly above his sad little pad of gray hair, and shout, “Herr Doktor!”

  Fuck yeah.

  Smoked him speechless.

  4.

  SOMETIMES HE’S SUCH A CHODE.

  I’m serious.

  I mean sometimes when I hit playback I just have to roll my eyes and think, what happens to these graying guys? These middle-aged meat sacks? Do their brains atrophy like their ball-sacks do? I mean, they’ve got Viagra for the nuts issue, what do they take for the fucking brain sag? By the way, I’ve taken Viagra, and though it’s true that if you are a girl it will drop your blood pressure to faint on the floor if you aren’t paying attention, it can make your cum job do loop de loops. They don’t like to tell women that. Typical. The shit they’re coming up with for women pales in comparison. Let’s just say no funding’s going down that hole.

  Anyway, get a load of this:

  “I believe the early disgust you experienced in the first sexual instance, when he tried to kiss you at fourteen, came about as a symptom of repression in the erotogenic oral zone, which, as you yourself related, had been overstimulated in your infancy from thumbsucking.”

  Oh, but wait, it gets even better:

  “The kiss then stimulated disgust not only because it triggered a moment of sexual excitement – but because the pressure of his erect member probably led to an analogous change in your clitoris – in this embrace, you simultaneously desired and feared the male member, and displaced those emotions orally.”

  Did you fucking hear that? Wait. It’s too too good. Lemme play it again.

  See?

  Pure chode.

  I play it and play it. In Marlene’s loft apartment, overlooking Fisherman’s Terminal Dumbasses on ferries in the distance. Tourists hoping someone will throw a fish at them at the market, or sell them coffee and chocolates. I turn the sound all the way up and playback again. The first recording I tried my iPhone, got home and immediately realized I needed an upgrade. It sounded like crap. Now I carry my beloved Zoom H4n – you can capture four-track stereo recording anywhere. Even from inside a Dora the Explorer purse. If you leave enough zipper room to clear its coaxial mic.

  To me, no matter what words he is saying, Sig’s voice sounds soft and raspy, except when he wants to sound important. Then he tightens his throat and aims his chin down toward his clavicle shooting for some über smarty guy he must have been in his past. When he does that chin down thing? Kind of he looks like he needs to burp. But with very stern eyebrow action.

  Marlene is making bacon. She laughs and laughs – a deep throaty Rwandan one. You heard me. I’ve got that laugh recorded. If you’ve never heard a Rwandan laugh, you are missing something mega-cool.

  I say, “I’ve never heard a laugh so deep.”

  She says, “It is my dark continent. It lives in my belly!”

  Isn’t that cool? I have no idea what the fuck that means, but isn’t it cool?

  “What does that even mean?” I ask.

  Again the laugh. I record it.

  “It is a statement made by history. I had to eat it, and now it is in my belly.” She laughs and I laugh too, my laugh riding hers like a girl on a pony.

  “Can you teach me to laugh like that?” She just smiles. All I know about Rwanda is words like genocide and Tutsis and Hutus. Piles of skulls and bones. From TV. That’s why I say her laugh has something in it. Mega.

  With her back to me, she says, “Someday, you will learn to laugh with your whole life.”

  Bacon sizzles and pops. I can smell pig heating up.

  This is where I spend most afternoons and evenings – in Marlene’s loft, reading her shelves and shelves of books from a gazillion
years ago – books that drip sex from the annals of history. They are the only books she owns. Like an antique sexuality library. You’d be amazed how much cooler old books are than new ones. Take Havelock Ellis. Sexual Inversion. 1897. Man that Havie was one weird and zany guy. My favorites of his though is Love and Pain: The Sexual Impulse in Women. 1903. Why can’t I find any books like this written by non-dead folks?

  Then there’s the collected pamphlets of Abner Kneeland – the last guy to be tried for blasphemy in America. Apparently Mr. Christian got a little loose with his sex talk. Started some weird utopian cult called The Freethinkers society. Right next to that is a buddy of his – Charles Knowlton. The Fruits of Philosophy, or the Private Companion of Young Married People. 1832. This guy was prosecuted a bunch of times. The book was about birth control. Figures. Next to that, the collected speeches of Victoria Woodhull, including “The Scare-crows of Sexual Slavery” (1873). Very Emma Goldman. Of course Emma is up there too, along with photography and art and medical and philosophy books. And all manner of pornology – that’s what Marlene calls it – as long as it was published before 1945. And everything ever written by the Marquis de Sade.

  One word for you. Justine.

  With her big man hands Marlene makes bacon. With big man calves she struts around the kitchen in a midnight blue silk robe and platinum wig and alligator pumps. She bends and presents me with a plate of bacon, her lips red as a coca cola can, her eyes circled with Kohl, with her Adam’s apple bobbing she says, as deeply and sweetly as the real Marlene, “Won’t you have some Schwein, Liebchen?” Her skin so dark I want to lick it. If I was ever gonna choose a mother, this would be her. Chocolate Madonna.

  I fill my mouth with sizzled pig. Possibly my favorite food ever.

  Marlene is a manwoman. I first met Marlene at the Wet Spot below Queen Anne Hill. Before it went porno they had wonderful horrible punk band shows. Marlene was at the door taking the benjamins. Since no alcohol was sold or served, we could all get in – buncha whacked out kids with their parents’ pharmaceuticals in their pants and flasks in their underwear. We danced so hard every night we baptized ourselves in bruise. Alongside punkers and bikers and strange angry bald guys – no doubt neo-Nazis or some shit. Marlene was always reading books from inside her little money booth, so one night I went in there and we just really hit it off. She was looking at a book of erotic photos from like before 1900 or something. The Charlotte Baker series by Gustave Rejlander. They were weirdly creepy. I adored her immediately.

  She sits across from me and pours herself a scotch. Pours me one as well. I play back once more. This time I catch a bit with my own voice in it:

  “Yeah? Well I once saw my father getting sucked off by Mrs. K. They were in his study. The door was ajar. Saw him pop his cork, basically. She had her skirt up over her big, white, adorable ass. How’s that for family romance?”

  Then Dr. Sig’s voice goes, “ Yes, your witnessing your father’s desire satisfied orally is of great consequence in your narrative.”

  I hear myself go, “Look Doc. It’s not rocket science. It’s a fucking blowjob.”

  My stomach twists. I hate the sound of my voice. “I think he thinks I’m a pussy,” I say to Marlene. Stuffing what’s left of my bacon into my mouth.

  Holding her piece of bacon between her long nailed fingertips and taking a tantalizing tiny nibble at a time, Marlene says, “How so?”

  “Well I think he thinks I’m actually there for…” I fill my mouth. I hit rewind. I look at the hardwood floor.

  “For what, Lamskotelet?” Marlene takes a sip and I can see she’s savoring the bacon and scotch in her mouth before.

  She.

  Swallows.

  This is among her many pet names for me. Lamskotelet. Lambchop. In German. Marlene’s father and grandfather were Krauts. I’ve learned things you never hear at school about the history of Rwanda. Lamskotelet. I grin like a girl with a mouthful of bacon. I talk with my mouth full. “Sometimes I think he thinks I’m a moron. That I’m a confused depressed little second wave EMO girl. That I’m there at these appointments … you know, for real.”

  Marlene claps her bacon hands with blue lacquered nails and throws her head back and laughs the laugh. She suddenly rips off her platinum and tosses it across the room. The little black-webbed hairnet exposed and weirdly glorious.

  “I have the perfect books for you today!” She announces, her hands clasped in front of her face like Christmas, and she sashays away to the shelves.

  I busy myself rewinding to a different moment in the day’s recording. Hoping for a humdinger. Hoping to drown out my own voice.

  I’m making a mix.

  Dr. Sig’s voice with cut-ins of Bowie, Lou Reed, Black Flag, Richard Hell, the Adverts, X, and this hilarious bit with Elliott Smith up against Dr. Sig’s discussion of suicidal impulses. If all goes well I’ll have a mix ready by the xxx-mass rave at The Kasbah. At full decibel, it oughta be one helluvah show.

  When she returns, Marlene has what looks like two one-hundred-year old at least ten-by-twelve dark red cloth cover beauts. She hands them to me. They’re heavy. Not like books now. I can feel my biceps while I hold them. My heart races. Nothing is better than these old books in Marlene’s loft. Well, almost nothing. I place them on the table. They smell like dirt and old. They look like something before capitalism. Not disposable. Not fast. Nothing about Barnes & Noble. I look down at the titles and screw my face up.

  Fisiologia del Dolore. Fisiologia dell’Amore.

  “What do they say?” I say.

  “Physiology of Pain. 1880. And this one,” she pets the other as if it is beloved, “Physiology of,” she pauses and closes her eyes, “Love. 1896.”

  I stare at the author’s name and want to eat it with my bacon and scotch: “Mantegazza,” I say, shooting for not American mouthed.

  “Mantegazza,” Marlene echoes.

  My recording sessions, I have to say, I think of it as a stroke of pure genius. I have to wonder if any other patients do this. I can’t be the only one who has thought of it, can I? And it’s just so kick ass to play back when you get home. Beats the fuck out of television.

  Other times though when I’m listening I feel itchy. Like … I don’t know. I feel kind of like I get him. I mean like radically. I mean like I can see and feel what he means before he says it. Which makes no sense. Our lives are nothing alike. We’re so far from each other we are like illegal aliens to each other’s countries. Old man balls. Still. Sometimes it’s like his words were already in me.

  I pick up the beautiful heavy red books. When I go to put them in my backpack I see greasy thumbprints on the covers. I smile. “Marlene, I’m gonna take a whiz,” I say. In the bathroom I sit on the toilet. I pull out the recorder and play back, my own pee another sound layer. Siggy’s voice goes:

  “Your father has made you ill. You experience your own passions as evil, just as you perceive his to be evil. The punishment for which is illness.”

  I just sit there drip-drying with my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands thinking. Yeah. I get that. Way down. My vag spasms a little. Piss shiver.

  But when I wipe up I hear him ask the lame-o question of the year: “Do you masturbate, Ida?”

  With my erratic bird voice going, “Do you? I mean men your age?” Christ. Had to be quick on the draw on that one. How and when I touch myself is none of his goddamn business. And my twinkle pet information is only available on my terms. I’ll use it if and when I need it. Perv.

  Then his voice on the H4n goes, “Ida, it is not a condition of our relationship as patient and doctor that we discuss my sexual history. It is your sexual history that has bearing on the content at hand. It is your sexual history that has put you in a difficult position.” It’s not the soft raspy voice. It’s the man he thinks he used to be voice. Deep and clear throated. Chin down.

  Clever bastard. Then I hear me going, “Yeah, but aren’t you supposed to also build up some kind of fake Herr Doktor trust sh
it so I’ll tell you all my girl secrets? Transferral or Trans-fickle or Transfuck of something? Why should I tell you jack shit if you aren’t holding? What’s in it for me?”

  God I hate my voice. There’s no whole body yet in that voice.

  And he goes, “Help. Help is what’s in it for you. Do you want to go into your life as an adult coughing and losing your voice? Do you want to move into your future relationships with all of these mixed up emotions? I can help you straighten it all out. It begins in your dreams.”

  Sly smug one, he is.

  To which I thought the only solid one would be to tilt my head to the side, soften my eyes and mouth, slowly finger my purse in my lap and say, “Are you mad at me or something?”

  I shut off the playback. I give myself a once over in the bathroom mirror. I already have five o’clock shadow on my head. I laugh. Still nothing girl voice. I open the mirror medicine cabinet. There are all of Marlene’s pills. Lined up quite perfectly. I zoom in on a bottle – pick it up – bring it closer – that’s when I see her name. His. Hakizamana Ojo. I put my finger on the words. Possibly the coolest name I have ever touched. Then I pocket the pills. She’s got lots of them.

  Do I masturbate. You know what? Siggy can suck it. You have to watch out for these little booby traps. You have to stay one step ahead of the game. He’s got my father’s money on his side. The purse strings. He’s got the power to make a story of me that will make or break me. Think about it. If you can’t outsmart a middle aged shrink by the time you are eighteen, how the hell are you going to get through a life?

  I thank Marlene for the books and bacon. When I get home I’ll go into my bedroom and lock the door. I’ll log and capture my newest audio onto my Mac. I’ve got software. I’m mixing voices.

  I consider it my duty to beat Sig’s story of me. Like a race. Because baby, on my eighteenth birthday, I’m so fucking outta there.

  5.