(Or if you’re British, though I know you’re not, 201205)
Meeting your ex-therapist in Waterloo Records, browsing the new releases. Meeting your ex-anything is awkward enough, hell meeting your current therapist would be bad ‘ -hi, so..er, see you next week?
What a wonderful commercial I could make:
Convincing your British self to see a therapist? – Years
Paying for two years of weekly therapy? – Thousands
Discovering that you now feel worse about yourself than you ever imagined possible? – Comedy gold
I don’t know what he was looking for. Twenty Ways to Fuck Over Your Client perhaps. I was looking for the McGarrigle Christmas Hour, which I couldn’t find, sorry Erik, I’m sure you would have loved it. Anyway, I didn’t see him until he nudged me. I don’t like nudgers. Nor am I partial to a therapy session in the middle of Waterloo Records, although Austin is Weird, so why the hell not.
I curbed my initial instinct, which was to shout you’re a wanker and run, though this being Austin nobody would have really noticed and I’d probably be up for mayor next year. Instead I stood rather awkwardly under the M-I section and avoided any eye contact and tried to keep my answers to one syllable or less.
Frankly I hate him. Actually I have weird mixed feelings for him which are far too complicated to go into here, in fact it would probably require couples therapy for you and I to deal with it and I’m not sure you’d want to fork out for that, given that this is only a blog and we don’t even have that much of a relationship. Suffice to say, he’s a wanker in therapist’s clothing. Not that there’s a set uniform for therapists. Cordrouys and hush puppies seem to be a good choice for him though.
So there we were, chatting freely:
Him: ‘how are you?’
Me: ‘fine, how about you?’
Him: ‘great, so how are things?’
Me: ‘good, how about you?’
It was as if the months had just melted away. There’s only so many times that you can stare along the row of CDs beginning with the letter M but I think I may have set a new record. Way to read body language Rick.
And then it was over.
‘well good to see you, Maggie’
‘yeah, you too’
He passed me again when I was standing in line paying for the CDs that Waterloo Records actually did have in stock (Charlie Brown Christmas) but at that point I was too busy studying the cover artwork to see him.
Happy whatever Rick.