Girl [Maladjusted] by Molly Jong-Fast

Author:Molly Jong-Fast
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307415301
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

how an obese, muumuu-wearing fascist helped me lose weight

I THINK IT’S IMPORTANT to mention something that I have observed. The more famous the parent, the more shrinks for the child of said famous parent. I think this is because famous people are obsessed with their children’s mental health.

My mom was no Phyllis Diller, and so I had only four serious shrinks growing up. My first shrink was Doctor A. Doctor A would look deeply into my eyes and say:

“Tell me about your relationship with your mother.”

I was eight. “I think you’re a dork, Doctor A.”

“Do you think having a mom who writes erotica is affecting your sense of well-being?”

I picked up the digital clock that Doctor A was intermittently staring at. “This time isn’t right, Doctor A. I think this clock is about thirty-five minutes too slow.” I started trying to change the numbers.

Doctor A was in her mid-forties. She had a nervous condition which manifested itself in her habit of constantly pushing her brown hair out of her eyes. Doctor A weighed slightly more than a hundred pounds. Almost all female shrinks in Manhattan are super skinny because otherwise no one would ever listen to them (due to the New Yorker’s innate hatred of anyone weighing more then Paris Hilton’s Chihuahua). “The clock is not wrong. Now tell me about your mother.” She looked at me earnestly.

I looked back at her earnestly. “Can I get some candy? I love candy. Well, actually, now that I think about it . . .”

“What? Now that you think about it.”

“I truly love the Tastykake Crumpet.”

“Please, Molly, focus.”

“I love the caramel.”

“Molly, where are you?”

“Doctor A, I think you’re a dork.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say. Tell me about your mother.”

That exchange pretty much sums up four years of therapy. I hated Doctor A because she was annoyingly earnest, because she gesticulated like a crack-addicted toy poodle, and mostly because she didn’t give me candy.

Doctor R gave me candy and was a social worker with a long Greek name and an apartment on Central Park West. I thought she was dumb. Sometimes she would listen to her answering machine and open her mail during our sessions; those were the times I liked her best. Sometimes she would stare at me and ask things like, “Do you feel repressed because your mother writes dirty books?” I was eleven.

Doctor L did not give me candy but did seem to have some clue as to what he was doing, which makes him totally stand apart from Doctor R and Doctor A. Doctor L had a fancy office between Madison and Fifth Avenue. Doctor L looked like an owl, and this was wildly amusing to me because his initials spelled owl, too. Once he gave me a piece of cake. I also liked him because his professional-looking office (old leather couches and expensive dried flower arrangements) actually was an office and was not in his living room. Doctor L wouldn’t let me play with the dollhouse in his office; but then again, when I started coming to him for therapy I was fourteen.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.