lying is wrong

UNLESS YOU ARE LONELY

He wondered, if you lie to your therapist, do they always find out? Do therapists have the intuition of a woman scorned? He was paying too much money to lie, but did anyway. He had no choice. She had kind brown eyes and wrinkles around them that suggested she might smile a lot. Or maybe she was of an age where he had a chance at sleeping with her. He watched The Departed too recently. He hums the tune of Comfortably Numb. He knew it was easier not to think about it and continue on.

“So, have you been sleeping okay?” she asked. “Has the magnesium helped?”

He nods yes while looking down, “I’ve been good about it too.”

He had not slept in 41 hours which was good by his standards. He took one ritalin and one xanax before he showed up. Two nights before, he had just started his UK garage set at 2AM. An adequate amount of cocaine kept him awake but two days later, he never ended up crashing. He didn’t tell her this. A historically awful liar, he was proud of himself.

She wrote something down. “That’s great. Has it been hard falling asleep? And the dreams?”

“Oh sure,” he said, rubbing his eye. “But, you know, I read before bed now. Wake up to piss around 3, read a bit again. No longer running in the dream, though. Just sort of, pacing.”

On the nights he did fall asleep, it was only after drinking white russians, messaging any tattooed woman who scared him on dating apps, and jerking off to his phone with the TV still on. He would nod off on his couch somewhere between Ancient Aliens and sermon paid programming. One was a dominatrix.

“Back and forth?” she questions.

“What?” he says, lost in his own.

“Pacing, back and forth?”

“Oh right, yeah. Just kind of dawdling like an idiot.”

That part was true, but it wasn’t a dream. It was him after every show, smoking two cigarettes while walking home from Bushwick. The first was for the walk. The second one was to delay going up for just a minute longer.

“That’s good,” she said. She half-smiled at him. “Keeping your mind calm is important, and your body too.”

“Yeah,” he said, rattling an empty coffee cup on the table. “That’s what I figured.”

She set the notebook aside and laid one hand on top of the other. The book was left open. Her handwriting was illegible. He thought that must be a requirement for graduate degrees. He tried not to squint looking at it.

“What about the loneliness?” she asked. “How’s that been?”

He thought about it. The way the air felt heavier at night. How silent his apartment becomes when his ears stop ringing after a night standing at the subwoofer. He thought about how much easier it was to find love in his 20’s, before his skin was translucent and eyes stained red. He thought about his dad’s backyard wedding at home. Who remarried after two decades without his raven. While everyone danced to New Order, he watched from behind the DJ table wondering if his dad felt that heaviness too.

“Better,” he said. “I think I’m getting used to it. I actually have a date next Thursday.”

She nodded. “Good,” she said. “That’s really good.”

Maybe he was really that convincing, but he knew he wasn’t. Either way, he figured he’d keep coming back. He wanted to be understood even if it was lies. More than that, he wanted somewhere clean to be.