Dora: A Headcase by Lidia Yuknavitch

Obsidian. Her hair black as a record album falling down on my face. The stone of her necklace jabbing my throat. Then I unzip my pants and pull down my deal and spoon rub my twinkle till it’s red. I’m a fucking daughter of Eve.
    Dizzy.
    White.
    Vibrate.
    I grab my cell from my backpack, my pants around my thighs. “Obsidian?” I go. Silence. “Obsidian?”
    But it’s just my own ass calling me.

7.
    SOME MEETINGS I LIE, SOME MEETINGS I FLIRT, AND some meetings I box. With the Sig.
    Think about it. Psychotherapists—they’re all hot for your deepest darkest secrets anyway, so the more you lie, the happier they are. It gives them the chance to delve . Penetrate . Use weird hand gestures. Write crap down. And the whole set-up of this doctor /patient shit is completely porno. You spill your guts and cry like a pussy while they “father you better.” Christ. How is that different than Mrs. K ass-up in my father’s study? Yeah. I’m pretty sure the word for that is subjugation. Marlene taught it to me.
    All I’m saying is that you’ve got to get the upper hand in these deals or you are screwed.
    Anyway. Today Sig’s hell bent on talking about my blackouts, so the gloves are off. Turns out that’s the only part of my story he’s interested in. Letcho. But there’s no fucking way I’m telling him anything about Obsidian. Like ever. Whatever comes out of his pie-hole, I will motherfucking one-up it.
    In his cozy little liar’s den.
    With oriental rugs and floor to ceiling book walls.
    Me the girl on the couch. Catholic girl skirt with silver buckles.
    Him in the blonde camel back chair. Dockers and a blue button down. Tweed sport coat. No I’m not kidding.
    Hot girl on man mind fuck.
    Let’s get ready to rumble.

    We back and forth it a good while with neither of us going down. I’ll give the guy this – he’s persistent. He sort of hammers home with the same big words argument until it sounds true. Oddly, big words are kind of mesmerizing. Like neuropathology. Like psychosomatic. Paramnesias. If you don’t have what it takes, he could really hoo-doo you into thinking that you don’t know who you are.
    To make sure I do not get tricked I stare at the clock behind his head. Get this. It’s a cuckoo clock. Only the cuckoo doesn’t shoot out like it’s supposed to. It cuckoos at the top and half hours, but no bird.
    He goes, “There are neuropathologies created when the psyche is in an excited state.” It’s 4:30. The cuckoo clock does its thing. I get up and walk over to the clock. I reach up and push on the little door. It’s stuck in there. I stand on a chair and shove my fingers in the slit and try to grab that little fucker.
    “It’s no use,” Siggy says, “it’s stuck.”
    “So why do you have this broken fucking clock?” I ask.
    “Nostalgia. It’s from Vienna. My mother gave it to me. But it keeps time.”
    I get nostalgia. I remember hearing piano music before I could talk. But I’ve never seen it happen. I remember the smell of my father’s aftershave – when he’d hoist me up onto his shoulders – I remember how I could see the world from the perch of father. I remember laughing with his head between my little girl legs.
    I sit back down on the couch across from him, but I keep my eyes on the stuck cuckoo’s door. Today Siggy’s got ants in his pants. He’s ratcheting up the lingo, I can tell, because his voice is ever so slightly higher and tighter like someone is slowly choking him.
    That’s why when he says, “Ida, your hysteria is the case for sexual excitement,” I have to immediately drop my gaze back down from the busted cuckoo clock with its stuck bird to his head and upper-cut with “Gee, you mean to say my giz biz is what
makes me a psycho? Does it make you a psycho too? You know, when your little man salutes with a pearly drop on his little head?”
    You got to have your junk at the ready. Like I told you, he’s a sly one.
    Then I make a misstep though. I tell