Page 1 of Thwack!

Physical Therapy

“And that’s when I saw the tablecloths,” Cooper said with dramatic inflection. “Do you know what they had on them?”

Dr. Davies shook his head. He was seated in a typical pose, leaning back in the chair behind his desk, holding a pen in his right hand. Now and then he used the pen to make a note about how fucked up Cooper was on the pad in front of him.

Cooper knew he was fucked up. That was why he’d been going to therapy for his entire adult life plus about half his teens years. Therapy had never managed to do anything about how fucked up he was, but he kept trying. Dr. Davies was the latest in a long line of therapists, and definitely the best looking of them.

Cooper had started with female therapists because of that transference thing where patients supposedly developed crushes on their doctors, but he’d never been able to relate to women—undoubtedly his mother’s fault—and so at some point he’d switched to men. Not that he’d gotten any further with male therapists (which was obviously his father’s fault), maybe because they were all straight. Or so he assumed. You weren’t allowed to ask, which he knew because he’d tried asking Dr. Davies. Because of him being so attractive and all.

Dr. Davies had thick hair in a rich shade of dark brown, worn in a lustrous swoop, and an equally thick beard, which Cooper wanted to rub all over himself. Dr. Davies also had piercing brown eyes behind appropriately studious glasses and sternly compressed lips. He always dressed in maximum professional attire with a jacket and tie, the whole nine yards, and was every inch the perfect therapist. But Cooper didn’t feel any better.

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” he told Dr. Davies. “The whole Chuck E. Cheese dining area was done up in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The tablecloths, the napkins, the plates, all of it.”

“I see,” Dr. Davies said, making a note on his pad. “And how did that make you feel?”

“Invisible. Like my parents just didn’t listen. I’d told them I wanted Power Rangers. I never even watched the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were radically uncool. Everyone at the party was probably laughing at me.” He picked at a bit of lint on his sweatpants.

“And you were how old at this point?”

“Six. But it’s been like that my whole life, Doctor. I could give you a hundred examples.”

“I’m sure you could.”

That had sounded a little sarcastic, as if Dr. Davies was bored of listening to him explain why his life had been nothing but misery and failure. Your therapist wasn’t supposed to get tired of you. Your therapist was supposed to care about you and fix you.

“I don’t see how I can forge a trusting relationship as an adult when my trust was so thoroughly broken when I was a kid.”

“So you feel that if there had been Power Rangers on the tablecloths at your sixth birthday party you would be a functioning adult today?”

“Well, it’s not just the tablecloths. It’s the whole thing. Years and years of neglect.”

Dr. Davies consulted his notes.

“And by neglect you mean getting tangerines in your snack pack instead of fruit bites.”

“I wanted fruit bites,” he reminded Dr. Davies sulkily. He needed a new therapist. Sure, Dr. Davies looked like a dream, but he didn’t seem to understand the gravity of Cooper’s situation.

“And you believe this relates to your inability to form lasting romantic relationships how?”

“Because what I learned as a child, over and over, is that I’m going to be disappointed. And then my boyfriends do it too. They disappoint me.”

“Yes, so you’ve mentioned.” Dr. Davies tapped his pen on the pad in front of him. “Your last relationship—Mike, I believe.”

“No, Mike was the one before that. My last relationship was with Steve. If you can call it a relationship. Basically he fucked me and forgot me.”

“After you blew up his phone with thirty sequential text messages while he was trying to take an exam.”

Cooper crossed his arms over his chest. This was why he didn’t bother to voice his needs. Because they never got met anyway. It wasn’t wrong to expect the guy who’d fucked you last night to respond to a text the next morning, and it wasn’t wrong to explain to your therapist why it bothered you when he didn’t.

“Cooper,” Dr. Davies said in a tone that sounded more weary than therapeutic, “we don’t seem to be making progress here.”

Cooper shook his head. He totally agreed they weren’t making progress, but he didn’t appreciate the implication that it was his fault. Someday he would find the perfect therapist. Then he would be able to find the perfect boyfriend, and then his life would be perfect.

“You’ve been repeating the same patterns for years without resolution. I don’t believe further talk therapy is indicated.”

Cooper sighed. One more person letting him down. Now he would have to find a new therapist and start over from scratch with explaining how his parents had made him choose between karate and soccer because doing both was supposedly too time-consuming or too expensive or something.

“Never mind then,” he said dispiritedly as he rose to his feet.