“Hi,” said the man, happy to be with The Psychologist again.
Before the skinny guy slid out past him, the man wondered if something might be wrong. Did he not have an appointment today? Had it been canceled? But Doug was with him.
The man did not know why The Psychologist called him Bing.
Then the man was talking. The Psychologist seemed to be listening and nodding along like always, so this must be an appointment. As he had so many times before, the man heard himself describe his living nightmare to The Psychologist: telling of always having felt the need to do . . . something . . . and of countless costly preparations made through many, many years. He listened as he used all his usual phrases to describe so often figuring out exactly how his path should go . . . but that the nightmare was knowing no psychologist, or anyone else for that matter, could really make any clearer what had always been the most obvious reality in the man’s whole world: that his entire life had become a life-eating pattern of distraction from actually doing by only ever further perfecting plans for how to best do one day (soon).
The man looked over at Doug with him, and beamed, then back to the stern Psychologist dressed in black.
But the man knew the smile he felt now plastering the width of his face must look so stupid and out of place. Maybe crazy. This brought a fresh sense of urgency to hear himself get to his good news about the breakthrough he had reached at home, basically all on his own.
It was not that The Psychologist had failed him. Of course not. The man’s particular nightmare just happened to be the type that could only end by waking. No one inside could make the nightmare’s conditions more livable. So, the man had reached outside, and found…
“This is Doug,” the man heard himself say.
“Hello, Doug,” said The Psychologist, his face cool and bland.
“Doug, here, is very creative,” explained the man. “He’s like a grenade. I throw him in, and, well . . . I can still plan and schedule and everything, but Doug knows how to do things with iuns. And he’s just more . . . romantic . . . than me. More wild, free…” The man scratched his neck.
“So, Doug is the missing piece?” asked The Psychologist.
“Yeah! It feels like that, right?” the man responded, turning to Doug.
The Psychologist’s sharply aloof gaze remained only on the man. “Doug is you,” The Psychologist said. “Now you’re doing both. It’s working.”
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