Online Psychology

(Young woman in web-cam held psychology session. She is sitting in front of the computer with an earpiece; the rest of the room is dark).

Well, I must have been nine. No! It was later. Yeah, I was a teenager, he was thirty-something. Tall, slick man with a sports jacket and jackass grin -something about him that one. Well, it doesn't matter what he looked like, I guess. I think we met at one of my dad's family functions. I remember being introduced to him, he took my hand with a little too much force, took a little too long to let go and I had to look him in the eyes. I could see he wanted something from me, that he wanted to shovel out my insides, latch onto my mouth with his lips and breathe in and out, inhaling and exhaling, and watch as my hollow self inflated and deflated, using me as a third lung. As a brown-paper bag. We might have been standing by the veranda that selfsame night when it happened. A knee grab, muscles flinched, sucked-off spaghetti straps, tug at an earring. Then someone opened a door and he looked like a rat caught in the garage under all that light. I was looking at his profile, his measly scruff, crater-face from bad acne abuse, weak chin. Then I crossed my legs and he stormed off like a tin soldier.

I don't think so. Every relationship since has ended more or less in the same way. Somehow someone else manages to hold them under a hot lamp.