You (You #1)(80)

“Yeah.” I could easily have one so it’s fine. I tell him I’m not here because of my girlfriend; she’s terrific. I tell him I want help with my OCD.

“What’s your obsession?” he says.

I know all about mirroring, Beck. One of the best ways to get someone to trust you is to focus on what you have in common. “It’s actually kind of funny,” I say. “All the albums you got here. I don’t know how or why, but I’ve become psychotically obsessed with this random video by the Honeydrippers.”

“I love the Honeydrippers,” he says. “Tell me it’s not ‘Sea of Love.’?”

“You know it,” I say and he’s my new best friend. And I’m good at this, I think. I tell him I can’t stop watching the video (you) and thinking about the video (you) and wishing I could go live inside of the video (you). I tell him I’ve lost interest in everything because of this video (you) and I need to get some control.

“Is your lady friend losing patience with you?”

“No,” I say, because if I had a lady friend, she would be too happy to be with me to lose patience. “I’m the one losing patience, Doc.”

“Doctor nothing, kid.” And he shakes his head no. “I’m not a doctor. I just have a master’s.”

I want to ask him why you call him Dr. Nicky if he’s not an actual doctor but I can’t do that and he says it’s only fair that he tell me a bit about his own life. “What you see is what you get, Danny. I’m a forty-five-year-old pothead slash failed bass player with a master’s in psych,” he tells me. “I love rock ’n’ roll and I got into this field originally because I’m a natural bullshit artist. But then I realized I actually like helping people, so here we are today.”

“That’s cool, Nicky.” And the first time I say his name it sounds funny coming out of my mouth, a new word in my vocabulary. Nicky.

I tell him it sounds good and we talk about growing up—he’s from Queens and I’m from Bed-Stuy. It turns out therapy is just talking and maybe you really are just trying to grow. Maybe someday I’ll even be a shrink. I could do this. I could frame my favorite books on a wall in a beige room and talk to people like me, like you.

Nicky says it’s time to wrap things up and make a plan. Is it lame that I’m excited for homework?

“Danny, we’re gonna do a lot of work in here. For starters, you’re gonna learn that you live in a house.”

I have never lived in a house, only apartments. But I nod.

“And there’s a mouse in your house,” he says. “The video. And the good news is that it’s just a mouse.”

And now you’re a mouse, Beck.

“It’s not strong like you, Danny.” He’s very serious now. “That mouse is tiny. You’ve got arms, hands. You have dexterity.”

You only have a pussy and I agree with him.

“You can reach the doorknob, Dan. You can lay down traps.”

Traps.

“You know, Danny, life’s a bitch and sometimes it gets dark in your house.”

He points to his head and I nod. It does get pretty dark in here.

“And that’s when the mice come.”

You came into my store and started this thing, us.

“Sometimes it gets so dark that all you can do is listen to that fucking mouse scramble around and eat your food and shit on your floor and it’s so dark that you can’t see the doorknob,” he goes on. “You forget there is a doorknob and what we do in here is we turn on the lights, Danny.”

“Right.”

“We set the traps, Danny.”

“Right,” I say, louder than before.

“And we open the door and we get the broom and we shoo that mouse out of there,” he says and he punches the air. “And sometimes, we don’t even need to do that because sometimes, we kill that mouse.”

Not this time.

“And it doesn’t happen in a heartbeat. I’m not gonna lie, Danny. But it’s doable.”

“You ever work in construction?” I ask. Most guys in our neighborhood did, at some point, and I like the idea of Nicky and I having stuff in common, being equals.

“Couple of summers back in the day,” he answers, and I was right. “You?”

“Couple of summers back in the day,” I say, too eager. What a loser and a copycat but Nicky smiles and I think of the past few weeks and the nights I spend on the floor against the wall with your panties in my hands, staring at the hole in the wall that I made because of you and covered because of you. “Yeah, Doctor . . .”

He shakes his head and I laugh. “I mean, Nicky. I need to find the doorknob.”

“You’re gonna find it. And if the house/mouse concept doesn’t work for you, you can also think of the video as a zit. You can pop it and it’s gone. Forever, no scars, if you take care of your skin.”

You are not a zit, you are a mouse, and I speak. “I thought you weren’t supposed to pop zits.”

“That’s bullshit,” he says and he looks at the clock. “So. Do you like Thursdays?”

AFTERWARD, when I walk down the street, I feel like a changed person, Beck. Fifty minutes with Nicky and it’s like I have a new set of eyes. The world looks different to me, like I put on 3-D glasses or smoked a joint or fucked the shit out of you. I feel high but straight and I head for the park where I watch the “Sea of Love” video for the first time in a long time. The girl in the video is kind of cute with the Bowie blond hair and therapy is working out already. I mean, watching this offbeat, trippy video makes me happy and I haven’t been happy in a while. And the best part is, that I’m not afraid anymore. You’re not sleeping with Nicky. You’re just experiencing transference. I know about it from The Prince of Tides. It happens. Nicky has a master’s and Nicky is the man and he’d never break the doctor-patient dynamic. It applies, even though he’s not a real doctor.