Barrows felt exhausted listening to this, and disgusted. But there was more….
“One of my colleagues at the Clifton T. Perkins Evaluation Center wrote an entire diagnostic paper on a dermatologist who would topically anesthetize appropriate prison patients and, with pliers, squeeze the ‘milk’ out of large moles, and lick it up. During my internship at the psych wing of the Fallaway Med Center, there was a nun who constantly volunteered for duty in places like Calcutta, Karachi, and the Sudan. Her sister superiors alerted us to her problem: she was cleaning the ears of the dying with Q-Tips and sucking off the wax.”
Fuck, Barrows thought.
“Stercoraceous syndromes are actually even more common,” she continued. “People obsessed with human excrement—their own or that of others. Adolf Hitler was said to be a stercoramanic; he liked to defecate on women’s faces—poor Eva Braun, hmm? A reverse syndrome involves the opposite, clearly Freudian: people who can only become sexually aroused while being defecated on. The actual shit-eaters are called coprophiliacs or cacophiles—hence the children’s colloquialism caca. You’d be surprised how many feces-eaters there are in the realms of modern mental disorder.”
Barrows’ head began to feel light from shock.
“We’ve even had a few vomit-eaters,” the elegant woman added went on, “like the derelict you saw at the bus stop. People who can find no sense of actualization without the self-abasement of consuming the puke of strangers—they’re called ‘refluxomanics,’ by the way. And though I’ve never actually met a phlegm-eater before, I’ve read several case files regarding them. So you needn’t feel exclusive, Mr. Barrows. There are, indeed, other people sitting in the same boat as yourself.”
Barrows needed a drink. Bad. Phlegm-eater, he thought. There it was, a single, simple term. “But you also called it… what?”
“Dritiphily—from the Middle English noun drit, meaning something akin to human filth. You see how obscure the base word is? It doesn’t even actively exist in our language any more. But obsessive-compulsive symptomologies do indeed exist within a broad range of clinical verges. Utterly minor to the utterly outré. Your regrettable affliction—your dritiphily—is the most extreme manifestation of the poor soul who must count to ten every time they see a red truck, or must step on every third crack in the sidewalk.”
Even Barrows, in his overall shock, had to take exception. “Paying rummies and sick street whores to spit in my mouth isn’t exactly stepping on sidewalk cracks.”
“Outwardly, no. But inwardly, it’s all rooted in the same inception,” the staid woman replied. “We simply have to identify that inception—in your particular case, Mr. Barrows—and then we’ll disclose the proper avenue of your—”
“My cure?” Barrows said hopefully.
“Yes.”
She turned her hand, raised her rice-paper wrist to cast a glance at her watch. “We still have plenty of time. I think we should go on.”
“All right,” Barrows agreed. “Please.”
“So what have we done thus far? We’ve identified the more intricate manifestations of your dritiphily. We’ve established, through your own self-revelation, that you are habituated to eating phlegm, and that this ingestion is the only thing that permits you to achieve sexual arousal. Yes?”
Barrows didn’t like the sound of that, but he kept reminding himself what he was here for. Hence, his reply: “Yes.”
“Normal childhood, normal upbringing,” she said more to herself. “Not at all uncommon. The bad childhoods, the abnormal upbringings—those are the environmental breeding grounds for the Henry Lee Lucases, the John Wayne Gacys, the Jeffrey Dahmers. But you’re a successful investment financier, not a psychopath, not a serial-killer.”
Thanks, Barrows thought.
“Instead, your anomaly is rooted in between those notions. It’s hidden. It’s secreted away somewhere. Think of a well-crafted clock, but with the tooth of one solitary gear broken. We will find that cog, Mr. Barrows, and we will fix it.”
“You make it sound easy,” his voice grated.
“It may be. How badly to do want to be cured?”
He looked up quickly. “I’ll do anything. Pay… anything.”
“You’re accustomed to throwing money at your problems,” she acknowledged. “But that may not suffice here. Your mind is not a carburetor simply in need of a new gasket. But as your current psychiatrist, I’d be negligent in not informing you of some potential ‘quick fixes.’ There are, for instance, some rather radical treatments not endorsed by the APA, available in South America. Cariothiazine infusions which alter the chemistry of your brain, acupuncture, various aroma- and thermal-therapies. Narco-synthesis and bio-feedback cycles. I’ll admit, sometimes they work, but I can’t recommend them.”
Barrows sat closer to the edge of his seat, wringing his hands. “I’ll try anything, and… I’ll pay. I’ll pay a lot.”
“So you’ve said. One thing I can recommend a bit more than the latter would be an aversion-therapy clinic in Köping, Sweden. Believe me, they’ll cure you of anything—the hard way.”
“I’ll do it!” Barrows nearly shouted at her.
“I don’t suppose that the $30,000-per-month in-patient fee would bother you. But I’ll be honest in informing you that all too often these rather Pavlovian aversion techniques only eradicate one disorder to expeditiously replace it with another.”
“Great. I go from eating phlegm to eating shit? No thanks,” Barrows gruffed. He sat back, hands held out uselessly. “What then?”
“Your best chance for a successful recovery?”
“Tell me!”
Her long fingers idly rolled the cigarette then crushed it out. “Your best chance for a successful recovery stands with what you’ve previously frowned at. Maintained—and expensive—psychotherapy,” she said. “Certainly, I’m aware now that you’re a man of considerable income, and, especially due to the nature of your profession, you may think that I’m merely recommending the option that would most benefit my own financial interest. Therefore, to reduce any such trepidations, I’d be happy to give you a list of other psychiatrists who would be happy to render a second opinion.”
To hell with it, Barrows thought. Her staunch demeanor and cool locution told him enough: She’s it. Where else can I go? Fuckin’ Sweden? Goddamn South America? Besides, at the very least, she was attractive; Barrows, in fact, caught a quick fantasy in his mind: Sucking down a big green loogie and fucking her right there on the desk. Maybe if he put a gun to her head, she’d spit in his mouth. “That won’t be necessary. I want you to treat me. Please.”
“Fine,” she said crisply and leaned forward. She began writing on a small tablet. “For the first month, our sessions will be five days a week, seven if necessary. You’ve told me that you typically embark upon your… need… when you leave work, correct?”
“Yes.”
“So I’ll schedule you for, say, six p.m.? Will that suffice?”
“Yes,” Barrows agreed.
“Instead of stalking down James Street every day after work, you’ll be coming here.” She finished writing, handed him a small slip of paper. “Here’s a prescription for a drug called Hydroxyzine. Ten milligrams four times a day. It will help ease the physical aspects of your dependency. In the meantime, I’ll schedule you at Harborview for a physicaclass="underline" blood tests, histamine counts, and the like, and also your first atropine injection, which helps take the edge off too. Then we’ll set you up for a written battery—MMPIs, TATs and TEDs, the Baley Scales and the Rorschachs—these are tests which might seem frivolous to you, but their conclusions will help me get a better fix on the more systematized aspects of your psychological make-up.”