Wrecked. Charlotte Roche
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most of your patients don’t pursue a healthy marriage that way, but I remain convinced these brothel visits are good for us. The same way that every time I make pancakes for the kids, I can feel my father sitting on my shoulder and watching. Everything has to be perfect, for Papa, so he’ll love his daughter. Everything takes effort. And just like when my mother sits on my other shoulder when I’m giving my husband a blowjob. She hates men. She hates cocks. When I was a child, she constantly told me that men were only good for procreation and that sex was never the slightest bit enjoyable for her. Unfortunately that lesson didn’t take. From that perspective, I’m definitely cheating if I go to the brothel with Georg tomorrow. And just thinking about it gives me diarrhea.”
“Would you like to go here? I’m happy to wait.”
“No, thanks. You know the story. I can’t go number two anywhere but at home.”
“We need to work on that some more, Frau Kiehl. You must obviously know there’s nothing wrong with using the toilet here. It’s human to leave odors behind.”
“Yeah, well, then I guess I don’t want to be human. Let’s not talk about it anymore—it’ll just make the situation worse. And no matter how bad it gets, I’m not going to use the toilet here. Except to pee. Anything else is out of the question.”
“How long have you been with me? Eight years. And still so little trust in the surroundings. The other patients go here.”
“That’s great, but the last thing I want to hear about is the toilet habits of your other patients. Yuck. It’s disgusting of you to even bring it up. Seriously, I’m going to be sick just thinking about it.”
“All I can do is invite you to use the facilities here and reiterate that you are very welcome to do so.”
My intestines make a horrible noise.
“That’s your fault, for talking about this. Let’s change the topic. You and your strange invitations. So, where were we? The important things!”
My intestines make more ugly noises. I attempt the impossible—to ignore them.
“Ah, yes, right, we were talking about the fact that I think it’s good to do a favor for my husband and in the process to betray my mother. I always feel free, relaxed, and happy when I do the opposite of what I was brought up to do. She was completely off the mark with her hatred for men. And as a result, I had to come see you for eight years before I realized that men weren’t the enemy. Or at least definitely not the only enemy. In my case, unfortunately, Mother is the enemy. My husband is a much bigger feminist than my mother.”
“Yes, I think you’re right.”
She laughs. I sometimes think that’s my job—to get my therapist to laugh. Even the most awful things I try to express in a funny way—that way she has fun working with me. I want so badly to be unique and to stand out from the other patients. The smartest, the funniest, the bravest, the favorite. I want to be the patient who lets my therapist in the fastest and furthest so she can have the most success with me. With me! I push myself hard, too. I reveal to her all the most disgusting parts of my personality—the bad, the evil, everything has to be aired so she has plenty to work with. In therapy, protecting yourself is completely wrongheaded. She’s on my side and only wants to help. So, everything out. I don’t bother hemming and hawing and vacillating. I don’t think, Should I tell her this or that? Get it out, speed up the healing process. And learn as much as possible from her about the process, so I can take over and always be a good wife for my husband and a good mother for Liza.
During this hour we talk for the hundredth time about the connection between sex and parents. How you have to do everything well so your parents love you and how upset I still am about all the crap my parents planted in my head. I tell her about the outing planned for tomorrow and how proud I am that I can suck cock better than any hooker. I explain to Frau Drescher how we choose our prostitutes. Georg and I are actually too polite for the red-light district. We’ve often slept with unattractive women because we can’t bring ourselves to say, No, she’s not for us. We’re too gentle for that. We’d rather sleep with an ugly woman and pay her a ton of money—about three hundred and fifty an hour, because she has to service two clients at the same time—than to tell her she doesn’t appeal to us. I’m tougher than my husband. He gets disgusted afterward and spends ages in the shower trying to wash the images of the fat woman from his mind. I always have to laugh, thinking what a couple of idiots we are for being too shy to just say what we want, like every other customer.
Over time we’ve developed a signal to use if one of us finds the woman or her body repulsive. We say, “Wow, it’s warm in here.” Because I don’t think we are particularly attractive, it doesn’t really bother me if someone isn’t good-looking. In the book of life—where I mentally record all the extraordinary experiences I have—it’s good to have slept with a fat woman or, accidentally, with one with huge fake silicone breasts. But Georg can’t roll with the punches as well as I can.
We also never pick young prostitutes. They are too insecure. And so twitchy with their hands. The women we choose for threesomes need to be at least twenty-eight or so. But we’re happy if they are a lot older than that. Up to fifty works for us. A lot of customers seek out extra-young women to fuck. They think the youth will rub off on their cocks. It doesn’t.
Does it make me a lesbian if I’m always messing around with women? Even if it’s my husband’s wish rather than mine? It’s not always easy to unravel the difference when people are in love and together. Drawing a line between what he wants and what I want is difficult. But in any event, my husband doesn’t want to touch another man, which is a shame, because then we could change our sexual adventures around. A woman here, a man there, and always me and my husband in bed with them. But if I ever do something in bed with a male prostitute—if we could ever find one who didn’t look too gay—Georg would never participate. He might watch, but I find that idea strange.
I also talk to Frau Drescher for the hundredth time about how proud I am to send my husband to the brothel alone sometimes, and how it absolutely sparks my desire for him. It’s crazy the effect it can have. Sending your husband off to another woman. I’m always trying to be less of a control freak, trying to get beyond my normal urge to be like that, which is strong. And when I loosen up enough to send him off to a brothel alone, it makes me feel so good. My husband is still afraid of the fits of jealousy I used to have—or, let’s be honest, had until recently—because of my fear of losing him. Million-dollar question: I wonder how long Frau Drescher thinks it will take—how long must I behave well before he’s no longer afraid of me? How long—how many years do I have to spend proving to him that, with her help, I’ve cut out many of the evil, aggressive, ugly parts of my personality—before the good outweighs the bad in his eyes?
Every once in a while I ask whether we still have time. She answers, “Yes, we have a few more minutes.”
Then I start on another topic. I ask her how long it will be before I stop thinking about my mother while giving blowjobs, how long it will be before I stop hearing her whisper that I’m debasing myself. Which isn’t true. He goes down on me just as often as I go down on him.
And then at some point Frau Drescher answers my question about the remaining time with “Now the time is up.”
I lift myself and sit upright, take a deep breath, then start to fold up the blanket. Frau Drescher always says, “You can leave that, I’ll take care of it.”
That’s part of the ritual she has for preparing for her next patient. Folding the blanket and putting it over the chair as if I had never been there. Hopefully she likes me the way I like her.
I say good-bye, survive the elevator ride down, as always, and then listen to loud music in the car on the way back home to Liza and Georg. I’m a good mother and wife. I try to clean up my messy psyche for the sake of a healthy future together, as a family and as a couple.
I drive along the ugly street toward home. There’s a patch of grass and a few trees at one point along the way, and I always look for a rabbit or squirrel. Sometimes there are a few there. At night