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my faults. Then I stopped myself halfway through because it was clear that the surgical removal of just the first half would mean a great deal.
    “You know,” she smiled, “those who love themselves are inclined to forgive themselves for their faults. I wouldn’t want you to have unrealistic expectations regarding therapy. Therapy may not be able to help you fix everything you might consider a fault, but it can help you to accept it. To be at peace with it. To discover things about yourself that are unique and then embrace them, love them, and live with them.”
    I wanted to jump up and kiss her.
    However, my time was up, and while I was getting ready to get up and leave, she began telling me about how we were going to start with about ten sessions and then see how we were getting on, and whether or not all this had any sense.
    “Actually,” I said at the door, “that would be really devastating, to hear you tell me after a few sessions that you no longer wish to be my therapist because I’m a lost cause.”
    She laughed, honestly, as she was showing me out.
    You idiot, why do you feel the need to make your therapist laugh?
    As I was driving home, my cheeks were burning and I had a minor headache, but I kept thinking about how absolutely wonderful her last comment was. She is someone who gives me permission to be who I am. No better, no worse. I don’t think I’ve had anything like that with anyone in my entire life. Even if she wasn’t one-hundred-percent honest, even if there was a hidden motive behind her permission, it was still nice of her to say it. It was as though she told me I was just fine, no matter what I was like. The point was to find out what I was really like. This, perhaps, didn’t have to be that difficult?

A situation like this one:
    It’s almost midnight. I get into bed wishing to forget everything about the day as quickly as possible. Tomorrow everything will reappear, there’s no doubt about that. Still, I’ll be safe for a few hours. Sleep is awesome. Insomnia is one of the rare things I’ve never had trouble with. I sink into a deep sleep as though it were a pleasant thought. As though I were going under anaesthesia. I just choose to sleep and, there I am, on the other side, already gone.
    The remote is in place. I usually flick through the channels a little before falling asleep. Might as well be honest, I know only too well that porn movies start a quarter after midnight on cable. I don’t know how you feel about them, but they always do a good job of putting me to sleep. Ten minutes of porn; oh that’s plenty! More than enough. They can go on to develop their plot for as long as they like – I’ll be fast asleep. And so, while flicking through the channels, because the porn movie won’t start for another five minutes, I come across my old love. There he is, walking around in a hat and long coat, the same Bogart wannabe from fifteen years ago, the one I was so crazy about and the reason I imagined I was the victim of Jupiter gone mad, Hank Chinaski’s mistress, Ingrid Bergman herself, while also being ugly, like the famous hunchback of the even more famous church in Paris, the reincarnation of Ernest Hemingway, born only to amuse and mesmerize him, just like Aska enchanted her wolf, which I did well for a while. But only for a while. Wolves are there to eat you, no doubt about that. They’re not there to bake cookies with you for the rest of your life, or hold the yarn for you while you wind it into a ball.
    Well, that’s the guy walking across the TV screen and talking about how this city has been destroyed by vulgarity, the invasion of primitive people, and the lack of taste of nobodies who were born to this world due to a mistake of nature. And he’s saying all this right when I want to watch my ten minutes of porn, do what’s supposed be done during this time, and then calmly and peacefully fall asleep.
    It’s not too pleasant when you realize, with your hand down your