Psychotherapy

This is a work of fiction.

Oh, and about the names. Names can be changed to protect the innocent, and it's innocent until proven guilty, and nothing was ever proven. So I guess the character in the story was innocent, and I guess that's why I'm calling him Dr. Innocent.

In this story everyone is over 18.

Part 1 - Institutionalized

My freshman year of college probably didn't end the same as yours. Mine ended early, and in a mental institution.

My parents' decision to send me off to college on my own might seem dicey in hindsight, after several years of crazy shit and therapy and medication during my early teens. But I had gotten my act together during the last two years of high school. I wasn't doing drugs or shoplifting, and my grades were straight A's. And so, at the ripe old age of 18, I was off to college.

First semester of my freshman year went pretty well, but there were signs of trouble, like some scary drinking binges and the abortion I never told anyone about.

Second semester, everything fell apart. My drinking and drug use went out of control, and I self-harmed. Then I celebrated my 19th birthday by severely beating up my roommate, who had it coming, but that got me tossed from school, and I was facing criminal charges until my lawyer convinced the court I was crazy. So I got sent to the nut house instead of jail.

Lucky me.

My parents weren't rich enough to get me into a cushy private loony lin, so I ended up in a place that was run by the state. It was bad, really bad, scary bad, worst thing in your life bad. The other inmates were honest to God violently, criminally insane. As for the staff, let's just say it was hard to tell them apart from the inmates. And the place reeked of strange odors: sweat, urine, barf, disinfectant.

I had it sort of easy, sort of hard, as I was "Fresh Meat," the hottest girl in the place. My own brand of crazy included a bit of an eating disorder and I lost some weight at college, and I looked a lot healthier than I was. My body looked tight and tiny and my boobs and bubble butt just popped. My big, freaky eyes looked even more supernatural than usual, above my sunken cheeks. Ironic, I think it was, that my body looked its absolute best when my mind was more fucked up than it ever was.

Anyway, I felt everyone's eyes on me every second of every day, and some people tried some shit. Some others protected me sometimes. With my head on a swivel and a little bit of luck, I got out of there alive and mostly uninjured, at least physically.

Why does a place like that even exist? Did they actually think a shithole like that would make crazy people sane? I think it was just supposed to be so horrible that anyone with a shred of sanity remaining would find within themselves the strength to act normal long enough to get the hell out of there. Which is what I did.

Part 2 - Therapy

But the weird part of the story happened after I got out.

Fresh out of Crazy Town, you can't just hit the street unsupervised and get on with your life. You're gonna have people watching you, Big Brother from the State type of people you have to check in with. Plus you're gonna have psychotherapy, and lots of it.

My shrink was a dude I'll call Dr. Innocent, and I was seeing him three times a week, M-W-F afternoons. He was "a well-known specialist in teen and young adult behavioral issues" according to the website. He went hard for a Christian vibe, with crosses and bible quotes and that type of stuff all over his office walls. He was warm and smiling and physically beautiful, and I guess the right word is charismatic. He looked healthy and calm and had a face and body that could have made him a living as an actor or a model. Also on the wall, he had a big framed photo of him with his gorgeous wife and two perfect sons, maybe trying to inspire us mere mortals to pursue godhood like he had.

It was hard not to like him and trust him at first, and in my first session with him I dug deep down and told him all about the horror and trauma of being institutionalized, and my crippling fear of going back. Which came back later to bite me in the nipple, but we'll get to that.

He reassured me and gave me the warmest smile I've ever seen and touched me gently on the arm.

"Don't worry, Karesse," he said. "I'm here to make sure you never have to go back there. You're safe now."

And I believed him.

Part 3 - Transference

I was in my third week of therapy when I noticed that Dr. Innocent wasn't just eye candy to me. I was starting to get crushy feelings about him. He was hot, charismatic, warm, calm, understanding. He was the authority figure you always fantasized about having around to run your life...

Whoa, hit the brakes.

One of the few nice things about the years of therapy in my early teens was that I understood the process a bit. I might be a babe, but I wasn't a babe in the woods. I've always been curious, and I notice a lot of shit, so I watched what my shrinks were doing and did some reading and research on my own. I probably knew more about what was happening during a therapy session than most random nutjobs did.

And so I knew about things like transference. That's where the shrink, who may be the first authority figure in your life who's not completely dysfunctional, attracts some of your displaced and misdirected emotions. Patients can develop an unhealthy attachment to their therapist. Lots of patients even fall in love with their shrink, or at least they think they do. And I was starting to feel that way about mine.

So I did a quick reality check, and asked myself: do I really want to break up this dude's perfect marriage? Was he really gonna abandon his perfect family for me? Were we really gonna run off together and live happily after in a country that didn't have an extradition treaty with the US?

The answer to all these questions was no. Hell to the no. There was no "happily ever after" with this guy, and this wasn't love, it was transference. Once I understood that, it was easy to get my shit back together. Falling in love with Dr. Dreamy had no upside, and potentially it could convince people I was still crazy. And that would be a very bad thing, because it would mean more therapy and more oversight from Big Brother. Or even a trip back to Crazy Town.

Therapy, I knew, was just a game I had to play. And the better I played, the faster my life would get back to normal, or at least my warped version of normal.

So for the next couple of sessions, I was careful. Careful with myself, to make sure I wasn't actually falling in love with this fool. And careful about watching him, because with his Christian, ultra-clean, friendly, smiling, authority-figure brand of sexy, he might be accidentally luring me into transference trouble.

Accidentally? Well, here's where it starts to get weirder. I figured he was enough of a pro that he'd have some idea what was going on, or what could go on, when disturbed young women met charismatic eye candy shrinks. They must have taught him about it at shrink school. He must have had some experience with it. He must have known the right way to deal with it.

So I thought I'd be able to notice him doing little tricks to keep the transference under control. But that's not what I was seeing. It felt a lot more like he didn't know he was radiating "fall in love with me" waves. Didn't know, or didn't care, or...did he want it to happen?

Part 4 - The Other Girl

Okay, so it was still just vague impressions, something that seemed a little off. Nothing you could put your finger on, nothing to worry about. Not until I saw The Other Girl.

Dr. Innocent's office was set up so you went in one way and went out a different way. A lot of shrinks do this if the logistics work, I guess so patients are less likely to run into each other. A lot of people are embarrassed about seeing a shrink and don't want anyone to know about it, especially another crazy person.

His office's exit door opened into a little courtyard. My dad couldn't be bothered to go into the parking lot close to the entrance, like everyone else did, so he always dropped me off on the street. From the street, it was a lot easier to get to the entrance by cutting through the courtyard instead of going all the way around through the parking lot.

So I always walked past Dr. Innocent's exit door on the way in. But I never saw anyone coming out until one day maybe a week or two after I figured out my transference issue. My dad had to be somewhere, so he dropped me off a little early, and I was cutting through the courtyard when suddenly the exit door popped open and out stepped The Other Girl.

I was a little embarrassed because I knew I wasn't supposed to see her, but I couldn't stop myself from checking her out. She was pretty, oh so pretty, maybe even hotter than me, tall with long blonde hair and a nice body and a cute face.

A cute face with blushy pink cheeks and a silly little smile and kind of a distant, happy look to her eyes. Like a girl in love.

And her nipples were hard.

I felt a surge of jealousy, for fuck sake, because there was no doubt that she'd just come out of a session with him. And that lovey dovey look was for him, and the hard nipples were for him, and she was getting the exact feelings for him that I had been getting. And I figured that a week or two ago I was probably walking out of his office with the same stupid look on my face.

She was lost in her own little world and oblivious to me, and she went on her way and I never saw her again. I just stood there with that jealous burn for a minute, but it faded fast when the puzzle pieces finally fit together and then I realized what was going on.

He was making another girl fall in love with him.

Maybe he was missing the signs with me. People always say I'm weird and hard to figure out. But how incompetent would he have to let two patients fall in love with him at the same time?

And if there were two of us, were there others? I flashed back to a conversation between my parents that I overheard, right after I got out of Crazy Town. My mom, wondering if sending me to a male shrink was okay, or if they should find a woman to treat me. My dad, saying relax, this Dr. Innocent guy was the best in town, and he'd checked around and heard the dude had "tons of female patients."

Tons of female patients. Tons. Tons of flawed, vulnerable young women seeing a sexy shrink who didn't seem to be very good at managing his patients' transference.

How many of them were in love with him? How many hours a week did he spend around adoring young women whose lush, nubile bodies were filling his office with dopamine and estrogen and god knows what?

Did he get off on it?

I got an answer moments later when I walked into his waiting room, and there he was, outside of his office, picking up his mail. He didn't seem to notice me at first, didn't really seem to notice his mail either, for that matter. He seemed distracted, with this dreamy, distant look and a goofy smile on his face.

Then he finally noticed me, but when he looked at me his eyes didn't seem to be quite focused. His eyes looked weird. Almost like he was high on something.

High on what? Adoration? Worship? The sight of hot young female bodies? Breathing air that was steamy with love hormones?

All of the above?

He looked at me with the eyes of a junkie.

A transference junkie.

Part 5 - Baiting the Hook

So yeah, that afternoon's session with the Good Doctor was tough sledding. No doubt his back-to-back sessions with Other Girl and Karesse were the highlight of his week, and he was all set to jones off my throbbing femininity, but I wasn't my usual sexy, charming self. I was distracted and seriously weirded out by the situation, and trying to figure out how creeped out I should feel about him.

He could tell something was wrong. He had no idea what, and no reason to think it had anything to do with him, but it was unsettling to him. He kept asking what was wrong, and I kept telling him nothing.

But he kept asking. I finally made up a story about having a fight with my mom, and that satisfied him, and I was able to keep it together and get out of there and go have a good hard think about this shit.

That happened on a Friday, so I had a weekend to think about it. I came to the conclusion that it bothered me, that something wasn't right, but that I wasn't in a position to do anything about it.

It bothered me because what he seemed to be doing was wrong, very wrong. He was supposed to helping troubled, vulnerable girls get better, but instead he was using them -- no, us -- to get his own thrills. By that point it dawned on me that he might even be fucking some of his patients, Other Girl or some of the others, and maybe he was trying to get there with me. I damn sure knew THAT wasn't okay. I tried to remember if Other Girl looked like she might have just been fucked, like her hair or makeup were messed up or her blouse was buttoned wrong, but other than her high beams being on, I couldn't remember. I tried to remember if he ever said anything sketchy to me, anything that crossed the line, but I really couldn't remember anything alarming.

And that led to why I couldn't do anything about it, because I couldn't prove anything, not even in my own mind. I wasn't sure if he was really doing anything, and even if he was doing something, I only had a vague idea what it was.

Somehow that made me think of my dad, who fished a lot, and he always said the big fish hide in deep water under logs or rocks, and you had to draw them out. But they'd come out if you used the right bait.

Dr. Innocent was a big fish. I needed to bait the hook and draw him out. I needed to use the right bait. Did I have the right bait? I had the right bait. I was the right bait.

Part 6 - Taking the Bait

So what was my plan? I didn't start out with much of a plan, and didn't ever really make much of a plan, which is probably why everything went sideways in the end. I had this vague idea I was gonna act sexier in my sessions with him and see how he reacted. If he did react, that would prove (to me at least) that I was onto something, that maybe he was getting off on getting his patients to fall in love with him, or maybe worse, and so I wasn't just imagining it. And if I saw it, then I'd figure out what to do next.

Great plan, huh?

So I guess you could say I didn't have a strategy, but I did think about tactics a little bit. I knew I couldn't just show up in slutty clothes and throw myself at him, he was smart enough to see through something that obvious. I needed to make the changes more gradually and draw him out slowly. I needed to take baby steps.

For the next session, I wore my usual jeans and hoodie uniform, but I put on some makeup for the first time since before I went into Crazy Town. Not a lot, but even so, I was stunned by the transformation when I looked in the mirror. I guess I "clean up good."

Dr. Innocent sure as hell noticed.

"I see you're wearing makeup today," he said. "I think it's a really positive sign that you're taking more care with your appearance. Tell me what you think."

What I thought was that he was perving on me bigtime, and I could just feel it. And it was creepy, but okay, maybe kinda sorta hot at the same time. But he was still keeping it under wraps, using shrink terms to make it seem like his interest was professional.

He hadn't really taken the bait.

I had to turn up the heat. For the next session, I wore shorts, nothing outrageous but it was the first time he saw my bare legs. And I wore a flirty top with a little bit of a scoop neck, and over that a cardigan instead of a hoodie. It was more cute than sexy, but there was a lot more to see.

"I see you're starting to show your femininity a bit more," he said. "That's a sign that your self-esteem is returning. What do you think?"

What I thought was that "femininity" and "self-esteem" were code words for "tits and ass." But he was still hiding behind his shrink shield and still hadn't really taken the bait.

So what could I do except turn up the heat again?

I dug through my wardrobe and found this sexy little top I hadn't worn in forever. It's old but it looks new because I only wore it a couple times, because I bought it right before my boobs got bigger and then it was too sexy, you know?

It was beige, or "nude" I guess, and on my bigger boobs it stretched and looked pretty sheer, and when my nipples popped out it looked almost like I was actually nude. So it was pretty much obscene unless I wore it with a bra. But I didn't like how it looked with a bra, so years earlier I had just stopped wearing it.

But I wanted to wear it now, for Dr. Innocent. Maybe I wanted to turn up the heat and lure the big fish out from under the rock. Or maybe I wanted to just because I wanted to.

Anyway, how was I gonna get out of the house past my parents dressed like that? I could wear the cardigan, but it was a hot day so if I buttoned it all the way up it would look suspicious. So I came up with this brilliant plan, I'd wear the bra under the top, but I'd go into the little bathroom just outside Dr. Innocent's waiting room and take it off right before I went in.

Even with the bra, my dad gave me this concerned look when he saw how I was dressed, but he didn't say anything. Not surprising, because he had a difficult time talking to me after putting up with years of my crazy shit. So he just drove me to the shrink office and dropped me off, and I went right to the little bathroom.

But it was locked, and the little red sign said OCCUPIED. I waited for a few minutes and nobody came out. Was somebody in there asleep, or taking a monster dump, or rubbing one out? Who knows. Anyway, I was out of time and it was time for my appointment. So I went into the waiting room and started waiting. It was quiet and I was the only one there, of course, and no sign of the Good Doctor, and then I came up with my next brilliant idea.

You ever see a girl take off her bra without getting undressed? Like, under her clothes? Maybe you have. She reaches behind her back to pinch open the hooks, then pulls one arm up into her sleeve, does a wiggly shrug, and then the bra comes dropping out of the other sleeve. Mystifyingly magical to most men, but plenty of women can execute it flawlessly.

Well, I decided to do that. In his waiting room. And it looked like I got away with it. I was done and my bra was tucked safely into my purse, and my breasts were free and happy. It was about 15 more minutes before Dr. Innocent came out to get me, which was surprising because it was the first time he made me wait that long.

It was also surprising because he looked seriously pissed off.

Uh oh.

Part 7 - The Big Fish Strikes

He sat at his desk glaring at me, and then he stared at my tits without even pretending not to, and suddenly my whole plan seemed really stupid. I felt embarrassed and exposed and practically naked, and of course my nipples freaked out. I could feel them puckering up and hardening against the thin material of my top. My arms and were shoulders bare, because I'd left my cardigan in the waiting room, and my breasts might as well have been bare too.

"I have a security camera in the waiting room," he finally said.

Oh shit.

"You know," he continued, "If I send the state a bad report on you, you'll get sent back to The Institution. You don't want that, do you?"

"No."

"Then I need you to be cooperative and truthful now. Can you do that for me, Karesse?"

"Yes."

"You've been teasing me, haven't you? Leading me on, right?"

"No, I, I, I..."

"Don't lie, Karesse. You've been teasing me."

"Okay...yes."

"Give me your purse."

"No, I don't think--"

"Give me your purse."

So I gave it to him. The bra was on top and he took it out. Fingered it. It probably still had some of my body heat in it. Maybe some dead skin cells from my boobies. I thought for a second he was gonna hold it to his nose and sniff it. He finally set my bra on his desk and glanced inside my purse. Just glanced at first, but then his eyes widened.