The Last Collection (3 page)

“Lying is good now and then,” the doctor continued. “A little deception on occasion never hurt anyone, right?”

Kerner shrugged noncommittally. “Well, I don't know, but I just don't think it's fair to charge me $50.00 when you told me on the phone it would be $35.00.”

“How do you know it was me on the phone, Mr. Kerner, eh, eh, eh? Answer that one.” The doctor shouted, half-standing on his chair.

Kerner's nervousness increased. Was this typical? he wondered. Perhaps this was some type of avant-garde technique employed by the doctor to provoke some childhood memory.

“You can't prove it was me on the phone, can you, Mr. Kerner?”

“No,” Kerner said meekly. “But . . .”

The doctor cut him off. “Okay. . . . Now if you keep arguing, Mr. Kerner, in another minute I'll raise my fee to $55.00 an hour, and every minute of arguing after that, it will go up another $5.00 an hour.”

“I'm not arguing anymore,” Kerner replied.

“Good.”

“Maybe . . .”

“Yes? Yes?” said the psychiatrist.

“Maybe you could make it $40.00 an hour instead of $50.00.”

“Look, what do you take me for?” the doctor asked angrily, pressing a button so that his chair was suddenly pushed forward. “You think this is the old Rachel Market on Main Street or something?” he asked, propping himself against the desk top. “I don't bargain.” He pressed a button and the chair went back. “If I say $50.00, it's $50.00. I'm a man of my word,” the doctor said and gazed up at the ceiling.

“Maybe we could saw it off at $45.00?” Kerner asked quietly.

The doctor's seat jerked forward. “I said $50.00, and it's $50.00.” He slammed the top of the gargantuan desk and then, pressing his button, was carried down and almost out of sight behind his battlements.

“Okay, how about $47.50?” Kerner suggested, knowing that with his problem every penny counted.

“It's $50.00 or nothing,” the doctor said, suddenly coming back into view. “It's a matter of principle!”

“Well, okay, but I just don't think it's fair.”

“Look, Mr. Kerner, in life one has to pay for one's mistakes. You got me angry. You have to pay for that. Now enough talking about money. Let's hear about your problem.”

Kerner's nervousness increased. Now he suddenly felt the first suggestion of nausea and that made him determined to try and discuss his problem. He fought down a slight panic which the sick feeling provoked in him.

“I want to discuss my problem with you, Dr. Lehman, but I'm finding it very difficult to start. . . . Maybe you could ask me certain questions about what you think it might be, and then if you hit on it, I'll just answer yes, and maybe then I'll be able to discuss it.”

“All right, Kerner, if you want to act like a two-year-old child, we'll accommodate you and do it that way.”

Kerner was about to protest the insult as well as the fact that the doctor had dropped the Mr. from his name, but he held himself back.

“Now let's see,” the doctor said, rubbing his head. “You're in love with another woman.”

“No, I'm not married and I'm not in love with anyone.”

“All right, you're in love with another man!”

“No,” Kerner replied. “I'm not queer.”

“Are you sure about that, Mr. Kerner?” the doctor asked, fixing Kerner with a hard stare.

“I'm definitely not in love with any man.”

The psychiatrist looked at Kerner suspiciously, squinting his eyes. “Are you trying to tell me you're not a fag, Mr. Kerner?”

“Look! I'm definitely not! What is this? I mean, come off it. What kind of therapy is this?” Kerner half-shouted, raising himself out of the little chair.

The doctor appeared unperturbed. “I'm hardly ever wrong. The minute I saw you in my waiting room, I thought, Oh, oh, possible latent homo . . . of course, I could be wrong.“

“Well, you are wrong, as a matter of fact,” Kerner said angrily. “I'm no queer.”

“Well, I'll take your word for it for the time being. Now let's go on and see if I can hit on your particular perversion, shall we?”

“It's not a perversion,” Kerner said, reacting with defensive quickness.

“Let me decide that when I hear about it, okay?” the doctor snapped.

What am I doing here? Kerner wondered. Not only was the doctor making him nervous, but he was starting to feel the sickness coming over him. This man could never help him, he thought; but still, if there was the slightest chance that he could be aided in this strange office with its South Sea setting, he must take it, no matter what.

The doctor suddenly pushed another button and water began to fall from the ceiling into the pond like a sudden rainburst. “Could your problem be that you can't get it up?” the doctor asked, hunching forward across his desk.

“Get what up?”

“Your cock!” the doctor said.

“Are you serious? I'm very potent.”

“Very potent, huh? Can you make it hard at will, like I can? . . . Eh? . . . Well?”

“I don't know,” Kerner replied, flabbergasted.

“You don't know!” There was an incredulous sound in the doctor's voice.

“No, I don't know. Is that a crime or something?”

The doctor ignored Kerner's counter. “If I said to you, ‘Raise me a hard-on in sixty seconds,' could you do it?”

“I'm not sure. . . . I've never tried it. . . . Well, maybe I could. . . . Yes! I think I could.”

“You
think
you could?”

“Yes, I could. I definitely could.”

“Are you absolutely positive?”

“Yes, I said I could. Don't you believe me?”

“Believe you? Why should I believe you? You've already lied to me once.”

“What? I haven't lied about anything!” Kerner shouted.

“Yes, you have,” the doctor said calmly with a light tone in his voice.

“About what?”

“You lied to me about being a fag.”

“I'm not a fag, goddamn it! I have no reason to lie to you,” Kerner said angrily. He stood up and grabbed the little chair. “And what the hell do I have to sit in this crazy little thing for?” Kerner threw the chair aside. “It's for a midget!”

“If you don't like the chair, you can always lie down on the cot.”

“I'll sit on it,” Kerner said.

“As you wish,” the doctor replied. “Just, please, no more lies, Mr. Kerner.”

“I didn't lie. I'm not queer or impotent. Those are not problems of mine. Mine is . . .”

“Yes? Yes, what? Tell me! Get it out already. Let's hear it! Yours is . . .?

“I don't know what's the matter with me. I just can't seem to start talking about it . . . it's sort of . . . humiliating. Maybe you could ask me something else?”

The doctor pressed a button and sank almost out of sight again. “You're getting me very angry, Mr. Kerner.”

“I'm sorry. Believe me, I'm trying. I can't help it.”

“You'd better help it because it doesn't pay to get me angry. Now I'm going to ask you a few more pointed scientific questions relating to what your problem may be. If we fail to get anywhere with these, we'll have to take another approach.”

Kerner shivered, afraid to think what that other approach might be.

Why? Why? Kerner wondered, why did he come here? Why did he have to be so unfortunate to have a sickness so unique and so bizarre that it seemed beyond cure? He felt all alone, helpless. He wanted to cry.

The doctor was now pressing a series of switches. The sound of thunder suddenly burst out of hidden speakers, and a strong wind coursed through the room as though a large fan had been turned on somewhere. The rain continued to fall on the lagoon and Kerner was now rapidly getting drenched from the sheets of rain that were being swept across the room by the hidden wind-making machine.

Kerner got up and, dragging the couch with him, moved several feet to the side and sat down.

The doctor came into view again. Kerner fixed him with an angry look.

“You know,” the doctor said, “I think I know what's bothering you.”

“You do?”

“Yes,” said the doctor. “One of the most common problems that my male patients seem to have is penis anxiety.”

Kerner waited.

“In effect, they feel that the size of their tool is inadequate. . . . Now is that it?”

“No,” Kerner said. “No, I don't want to talk about anything like that. That's not a problem of mine.”

“Good. I'm actually sick and tired of hearing about the problems guys think they have with their petzels. Every second guy starts off like, ‘Uh, Doctor . . . it's about my organ,' or, ‘Doctor, it concerns my genital member,' or, ‘Doctor, it sort of has to do with my whatchamacallit.' Then they all proceed to tell me that it used to be a lot bigger but that somehow when they weren't looking it shrank.”

“No, I don't have a problem with my thing,” Kerner said, self-satisfied.

“With your what!” the doctor shouted incredulously.

“With my thing.”

“What thing? C'mon out with it. Say it!”

“Say what?” Kerner asked, confused.

“You know what I mean. Give your thing a name. Don't be ashamed to call it what it is. It's not dirty. We're in the midst of a sexual revolution, man! Don't be embarrassed. Now call it something appropriate.”

“You mean, like prick?” Kerner asked.

“Right. Very good. Now we're getting somewhere. What else?”

“Cock?”

“Good, good. What else?”

“Rod?”

“Yes, yes. Very good.”

“I know a lot more,” Kerner said, feeling a sudden surge of enthusiasm.

“It's enough, it's enough,” the doctor grunted. “Don't you feel better now?”

“No. I didn't feel bad to begin with, at least not about that. I told you. Besides, you said you were tired of hearing about guys with that type of problem.”

“That's true, I am tired of it. But my professional responsibilities compel me to deal with this problem, if and where it exists, no matter how aggravating and distasteful I find it. So then, Mr. Kerner, what is the length of your prick?”

“Pardon me?” Kerner's jaw dropped.

“You heard me!”

“You're not serious, Doctor, are you?”

“Come on now, don't play games, Mr. Kerner. This is serious business. I'm sure you've measured it several thousand times. Everyone has, you know.”

“Really?” Kerner replied. “Have you?”

“Yes, once or twice,” the doctor replied matter-of-factly.

“Only once or twice? I thought you said everyone did it thousands of times?”

“That's true, but I don't include psychiatrists in the general statement. We tend to be less anxious about such things due to our deeper insight into ourselves. . . . In any case, when I said once or twice, I meant once or twice today.”

Kerner squinted with disbelief and wiped the side of his face where the rain had wet him. He pressed his hand against his cheek for reassurance. He seemed to be losing touch with reality. The doctor's talk and the strange room with its lagoon and rain and thunderclaps were making him dizzy. Again he felt an urge to weep but he forced it down.

Maybe, just maybe, he thought, something good would come out of all this craziness. Or perhaps he was only grasping at straws. It seemed hopeless, utterly futile. This strange doctor was definitely making him frightened but his sickness made him even more afraid. Why couldn't he verbalize it? Why was he so ashamed? He had kept it all to himself for six months. If he'd had one close friend, perhaps he would have been able to discuss it with him, but he had no close friends and no one that he trusted. Once again he tried to force himself to talk, but he couldn't.

Meanwhile, the doctor had gotten out of his chair and was walking towards the lagoon. He walked into the thatched hut and continued speaking from inside.

“Yes, everyone does it,” the doctor said. “It's just that certain categories of professionals do it less than others. Some do it more. For instance, from my experience, architects do it by far the most of any group. From my experience, they measure on the average about every fifteen to twenty minutes.”

The doctor came out of the hut still talking as though he were making a speech. “For example, I have one patient who, irrespective of where he might be at the time, whips out his pisser like clockwork every fifteen minutes just to see if it's still there and to ascertain that it hasn't shrunk during the preceding period of time. In the building where he lives, he's known as the mad flasher. Many a time someone waiting for the elevator has been surprised when the elevator doors open to find him bent over his tool with a tape measure. But he's not the exception. He's more the rule. Another one cut out all his pants pockets so he could shove in a caliper every thirty seconds or so to see if the circumference was holding steady.” The doctor climbed back into his seat.

Suddenly, almost as though he had no control over the words, Kerner shouted, “I'm addicted!”

The doctor's chair shot high into the air. “I knew it! I knew it!” he yelled, peering down at Kerner. “I knew there was something wrong with you the moment I saw you. ‘Here comes a real sicko,' I said to myself. Cock measuring isn't good enough for you. You have to be a lousy junkie, eh? I could tell you were arrogant the minute you walked in the door.”

Kerner tried to protest, but the doctor rolled right over him.

“Don't worry, Mr. Kerner, we'll effect a cure, even if I have to rip this ugly sickness out of you with my bare hands. . . .”

“I don't think you understand. It's not . . .”

“Don't worry, my friend, I understand. What are you on? Coke? Shmeck? Nembutal? Mandrax?”