the other hand, I had a few distinct successes.
One man, a highly paid advertising executive, gave up his job and family and joined the Peace Corps, spent two years in Peru, wrote a book on faking land reform in underdeveloped countries, a book highly praised by everyone except the governments of Peru and the United States, and is now living in a cabin in Tennessee writing a book on the effects of advertising on underdeveloped minds. Whenever he's in New York he drops in to suggest I write a book about the underdeveloped psyches of psychiatrists.
My other successes were less obvious and immediate.
There was Linda Reichman, for example. She was a slender, young rich girl who had spent her last four years living in Greenwich Village doing all the things rich, emancipated girls think they're expected to do in Greenwich Village. In four weeks of treatment prior to my own emancipation, I had learned that this was her third analysis, that she loved to talk about herself, particularly her promiscuity, with indifference to and cruelty toward men, and their stupid ineffectual efforts to hurt her. Her monologues were occasionally flooded by literary, philosophical and Freudian allusions and as abruptly empty of them. Each session she usually managed to say something intended to shock my bourgeois respectability.
It was only three weeks after letting the dice dictate anarchy that I had a rather remarkable session with her. She'd come in even more keyed up than usual, swivel-hipped her rather swivelable hips across the room and flopped aggressively onto the couch. Much to my surprise she didn't say a thing for three minutes, for her an all-time record. Finally, with an edge to her voice, she said: `I get so sick and tired of this . . . shit. [Pause] I don't know why I come here. [Pause] You're about as much help as a chiropractor. Christ, what I'd give to meet a MAN some day. I meet nothing but ... ball-less masturbators. [Pause] What a ... stupid world it is. How do people get through their crummy lives? I've got money, brains, sex - I'm bored stiff. What keeps all those little clods without anything, what keeps all those little clods going? [Pause] I'd like to blast the whole thing ... fucking city to pieces. [Long pause.]'
`I spent the weekend with Curt Rollins. For your info, he's just published a novel that the Partisan Review calls - and I quote - "as stunningly poetic a piece of fiction as has appeared in years." Unquote. [Pause] He's got talent. His prose is like lightning: cutting, darting, brilliant; he's a Joyce with the energy of Henry Miller. [Pause] He's working on a new novel about fifteen minutes in the life of a young boy who's just lost his father. Fifteen minutes - a whole novel. Curt's cute, too. Most girls throw themselves at him. [Pause] He needs money. [Pause] It's funny, he doesn't seem to like sex much. Wham bam, back to the old writing board. Wham-bam. [Pause] He liked the way I sucked him off though. But . . .
`I'd like to chop his hands off. Chop, chop. Then he could dictate his novel to me. [Pause] Chop his hands off: I suppose that means I want to castrate him. Could be. I don't think it would bother him much. I think he'd consider it gave him more time for his precious writing, his all-important fifteen minutes in the life of a little prick. [Pause] "Stunning novel" - Jesus, it had the grace of late Herman Melville and the power of a dying Emily Dickinson. You know what it was about? A sensitive young man who discovers that his mother is having an affair with the man that's teaching him to love poetry. Sensitive young man despairs. "Oh Shelley, why has thou forsaken me?"
[Pause] He's another ball-less masturbator. [pause] `You sure are quiet today. Can't you even throw in a few uhhuhs or yesses? I'm paying you forty bucks an hour, remember? For that I should get at least two or three yesses a minute.'
`I don't feel like it today.'
`You don't feel like it today? Who cares? You think I feel like
One man, a highly paid advertising executive, gave up his job and family and joined the Peace Corps, spent two years in Peru, wrote a book on faking land reform in underdeveloped countries, a book highly praised by everyone except the governments of Peru and the United States, and is now living in a cabin in Tennessee writing a book on the effects of advertising on underdeveloped minds. Whenever he's in New York he drops in to suggest I write a book about the underdeveloped psyches of psychiatrists.
My other successes were less obvious and immediate.
There was Linda Reichman, for example. She was a slender, young rich girl who had spent her last four years living in Greenwich Village doing all the things rich, emancipated girls think they're expected to do in Greenwich Village. In four weeks of treatment prior to my own emancipation, I had learned that this was her third analysis, that she loved to talk about herself, particularly her promiscuity, with indifference to and cruelty toward men, and their stupid ineffectual efforts to hurt her. Her monologues were occasionally flooded by literary, philosophical and Freudian allusions and as abruptly empty of them. Each session she usually managed to say something intended to shock my bourgeois respectability.
It was only three weeks after letting the dice dictate anarchy that I had a rather remarkable session with her. She'd come in even more keyed up than usual, swivel-hipped her rather swivelable hips across the room and flopped aggressively onto the couch. Much to my surprise she didn't say a thing for three minutes, for her an all-time record. Finally, with an edge to her voice, she said: `I get so sick and tired of this . . . shit. [Pause] I don't know why I come here. [Pause] You're about as much help as a chiropractor. Christ, what I'd give to meet a MAN some day. I meet nothing but ... ball-less masturbators. [Pause] What a ... stupid world it is. How do people get through their crummy lives? I've got money, brains, sex - I'm bored stiff. What keeps all those little clods without anything, what keeps all those little clods going? [Pause] I'd like to blast the whole thing ... fucking city to pieces. [Long pause.]'
`I spent the weekend with Curt Rollins. For your info, he's just published a novel that the Partisan Review calls - and I quote - "as stunningly poetic a piece of fiction as has appeared in years." Unquote. [Pause] He's got talent. His prose is like lightning: cutting, darting, brilliant; he's a Joyce with the energy of Henry Miller. [Pause] He's working on a new novel about fifteen minutes in the life of a young boy who's just lost his father. Fifteen minutes - a whole novel. Curt's cute, too. Most girls throw themselves at him. [Pause] He needs money. [Pause] It's funny, he doesn't seem to like sex much. Wham bam, back to the old writing board. Wham-bam. [Pause] He liked the way I sucked him off though. But . . .
`I'd like to chop his hands off. Chop, chop. Then he could dictate his novel to me. [Pause] Chop his hands off: I suppose that means I want to castrate him. Could be. I don't think it would bother him much. I think he'd consider it gave him more time for his precious writing, his all-important fifteen minutes in the life of a little prick. [Pause] "Stunning novel" - Jesus, it had the grace of late Herman Melville and the power of a dying Emily Dickinson. You know what it was about? A sensitive young man who discovers that his mother is having an affair with the man that's teaching him to love poetry. Sensitive young man despairs. "Oh Shelley, why has thou forsaken me?"
[Pause] He's another ball-less masturbator. [pause] `You sure are quiet today. Can't you even throw in a few uhhuhs or yesses? I'm paying you forty bucks an hour, remember? For that I should get at least two or three yesses a minute.'
`I don't feel like it today.'
`You don't feel like it today? Who cares? You think I feel like
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