Oh yes we read sappho and ginsberg and adrienne rich and and and and
they had this energy this self-selecting energy
I should write about yoram yovell. How many times I have written about yoram yovell.
That's what I mean. I had this shrink. I remember showing up at his office in a purple felt mini-skirt. It zipped up the back. Black tights. Doc martens. I don't know what else but I loved that purple skirt and my memory is lit up with the feel of it, the look of it. There is this thing with a young woman who wants to be the object of the gaze and then is disgusted by the gaze. You know. This is Kate's Green Girl. I remember one day in Yoram's office, he greeted me and he had the warmest smile. I felt something inside of me, that bone below my stomach. He looked at me and said how much he liked it—and I said my skirt?--and he said your whole gestalt.
And I remember the use of the word gestalt which is as significant to the memory as the purple skirt.
I also remember the feeling when I left his office, this aching. And I remember there was nothing that could fill it. Nothing. It was enormous I knew I must die.
But then occasionally, with Yoram, I felt so alive.
One day he told me that his office neighbor, Dr. Prince, saw me there in the waiting room. He saw many of the pretty young women who saw Yoram. And Yoram told me that Dr. Prince said, of me: “I feel sorry for you.”
We were known to be difficult, you see.
I don't know why Yoram told me that--perhaps later he regretted it or should have regretted it but it stayed with me for a very long time. Fifteen years now. My father was paying him so much money to talk to me for 45 minutes twice a week, to prescribe drugs, to occasionally call me at home, after rehearsals.
Were we really so bad?
(Were you angry? She asked me. Did you think “You son of a bitch”?)
One day, I was taking the train with a woman named Marigold. We volunteered together at Gilda's Club. We began talking about our shrinks in a general way and I told her that I had a small crush on mine, he was on the upper west side.
Don't tell me it's Dr. Yovell she said.
It is.
We were in the train, in the 1 train headed south. We both held the bar, gripping, standing close. She was tall, beautiful in that old money East Coast way. There was something about her, some confidence, that attracted me. It was something I decided belonged to east coast women but would never belong to me. A savvy. Despite her suffering, she knew how to be in the world in a way I did not. I was fragmented. I still am.
Anyway Marigold was stunned and stared for a long time. I'm very jealous of you, she whispered. He used to be my doctor. I broke our contract and now he won't see me.
What was your contract?
I was not allowed to have a drink. I had to stay sober to stay in therapy.
Oh.
One day, I was waiting for him, and I went to the bar down the block. On Amsterdam. I had a drink. Or more. I showed up at his office. I was really drunk.
He kicked you out?
Not right away. But later. He said we were through. I couldn't come back.
Wow.
I love him, she said.
Yoram was a short, balding Israeli doctor. He was not exactly sexy but I knew what she meant. He was seductive. He spoke in low tones, and looked into your eyes with an intensity. He would moan occasionally. It was like sex. Sitting across from him. His body and my body. It was better than sex. Sometimes he would talk about his days in the army. He would speak of the "dirty" Arabs.
Another woman, from a very religious family, told me how her therapist tried to get her to masturbate. She never had. And he said, I will show you how. He started to show her-- "like this" he said--but she left the office and never returned. I liked her. Devorah. I should have left. I was always too curious, too eager to see what would happen next.