almost exactly to the norm. According to the statistics, the average American man was five feet nine inches tall, weighed one hundred and fifty-eight pounds, had brown hair, wore spectacles, caught one and one-half colds in winter, smoked cigarettes, drank liquor socially, preferred brunettes to blondes, demanded that his wife be a good companion rather than a good cook, enjoyed baseball above all other spectator sports, liked beefsteak and French fried potatoes more than any other single dish, awoke at six-thirty on weekdays and went to bed by ten at night, and would rather live in California than any place on earth. Incredibly, John Garrett had found that these statistics described him almost exactly—the one exception being that he preferred French fried onion rings to French fried potatoes.
In the past two years, however, John Garrett had taken less pride in regarding himself as average, much to Saralee’s bewilderment at the sudden change of party line. More and more often, Garrett liked to think of himself as a unique entity, special, nonconforming, and somewhat set apart from ordinary specimens of homo Americanus . Whether or not this personal rebellion against the average was due to his recent renown in professional circles, or due to his liberating sessions with Dr. Keller, Garrett could not say. On the other hand, his wife Saralee could say, but she said it only to herself: John deserves to be bigheaded once in a while, because he discovered something that will help ‘the human community’—the last she had read in a magazine—but in her eyes, and most of the time in his own, she suspected, John Garrett was still five feet nine, one hundred and fifty-eight pounds, and hair brown as ever at forty-nine, and he was still as unsure and insecure and dependent upon her as ever, thank God.
Having reached the entry arch of his destination, John Garrett quickened his pace, rapidly climbed the single flight of stairs, and found himself face to face with the glass-paned door that bore the black legend,L. D. KELLER, M. D. As before, he wondered why psychoanalysts did not printPSYCHIATRIST instead ofM. D. beside their names, and then decided that as long as there remained so much fear and resultant hostility toward analysts, discretion was the better part of honesty.
Opening the door, Garrett stepped into the office, then paused to close the door softly behind him. He moved through the empty blond reception room, and entered the spacious main office as unobtrusively as possible. He could see at once that they were all present, sitting, compulsive and neurotic, in the same chairs as ever, and that the session was in full swing. No one turned to greet Garrett as he tiptoed to his chair, for it was understood that he was always late (‘tardiness may often be a resistance to the embarrassment of discussing taboo topics in the presence of others,’ Dr. Keller had once remarked), but now Dr. Keller, from behind his oak fortification of a desk, acknowledged his arrival with the slightest flicker of his eyes.
Garrett sat stiffly a moment, then consulted his watch. The group therapy session always lasted precisely one hour and twenty minutes. Since Garrett paid ten dollars for his weekly attendance, this meant that he was paying twelve and a half cents a minute. Because he had been sixteen minutes late, there remained only one hour and four minutes. The delay had cost him two dollars. Still, there was eight dollars’ worth of time left. He needed part of that time, today, especially today, but there were six others who needed it, too. Perhaps a close search of the faces of his fellow patients, he decided, would tell if their urgency matched his own.
They were seated in a crooked semicircle before Dr. Keller’s desk, and Garrett began reading from left to right. On the beige divan to the far left were Mr. Lovato and Mrs. Perrin. Mr. Lovato, a slight, homosexual artist with a growing reputation for
In the past two years, however, John Garrett had taken less pride in regarding himself as average, much to Saralee’s bewilderment at the sudden change of party line. More and more often, Garrett liked to think of himself as a unique entity, special, nonconforming, and somewhat set apart from ordinary specimens of homo Americanus . Whether or not this personal rebellion against the average was due to his recent renown in professional circles, or due to his liberating sessions with Dr. Keller, Garrett could not say. On the other hand, his wife Saralee could say, but she said it only to herself: John deserves to be bigheaded once in a while, because he discovered something that will help ‘the human community’—the last she had read in a magazine—but in her eyes, and most of the time in his own, she suspected, John Garrett was still five feet nine, one hundred and fifty-eight pounds, and hair brown as ever at forty-nine, and he was still as unsure and insecure and dependent upon her as ever, thank God.
Having reached the entry arch of his destination, John Garrett quickened his pace, rapidly climbed the single flight of stairs, and found himself face to face with the glass-paned door that bore the black legend,L. D. KELLER, M. D. As before, he wondered why psychoanalysts did not printPSYCHIATRIST instead ofM. D. beside their names, and then decided that as long as there remained so much fear and resultant hostility toward analysts, discretion was the better part of honesty.
Opening the door, Garrett stepped into the office, then paused to close the door softly behind him. He moved through the empty blond reception room, and entered the spacious main office as unobtrusively as possible. He could see at once that they were all present, sitting, compulsive and neurotic, in the same chairs as ever, and that the session was in full swing. No one turned to greet Garrett as he tiptoed to his chair, for it was understood that he was always late (‘tardiness may often be a resistance to the embarrassment of discussing taboo topics in the presence of others,’ Dr. Keller had once remarked), but now Dr. Keller, from behind his oak fortification of a desk, acknowledged his arrival with the slightest flicker of his eyes.
Garrett sat stiffly a moment, then consulted his watch. The group therapy session always lasted precisely one hour and twenty minutes. Since Garrett paid ten dollars for his weekly attendance, this meant that he was paying twelve and a half cents a minute. Because he had been sixteen minutes late, there remained only one hour and four minutes. The delay had cost him two dollars. Still, there was eight dollars’ worth of time left. He needed part of that time, today, especially today, but there were six others who needed it, too. Perhaps a close search of the faces of his fellow patients, he decided, would tell if their urgency matched his own.
They were seated in a crooked semicircle before Dr. Keller’s desk, and Garrett began reading from left to right. On the beige divan to the far left were Mr. Lovato and Mrs. Perrin. Mr. Lovato, a slight, homosexual artist with a growing reputation for
Similar Books
