“I don’t have VD. ,
“Too bad that it’s true.
“Cause now I can’t see
"You suffering too!"
“She hates me!” Job intoned. “That’s how it is with me. No matter how swell something is, it always turns sour.”
“Who said it was swell?
"You go straight to Hell!”
The redhead turned away from him contemptuously and went to sit on the far side of the room.
“She hates me!” Job sighed.
“I don’t think so,” Mr. Baariasol said. “But let’s assume for a moment that she does. Don’t you see that you bring it on yourself? That’s the pattern. It isn’t that your luck is bad. It’s that you somehow — subconsciously, I suppose -- contrive to turn things sour yourself.”
“You’re like an alchemist in reverse,” Fat Tits chimed in.
“What does that mean?” Job asked.
“Alchemists turned dross into gold. You turn gold into dross.”
“What da broad means is dat ya turn steak inna crap wit’out even eatin’ it,” Little Gat translated.
“It’s not my fault!” Job protested.
“Maybe it is!” The others all spoke together.
“I don’t understand. How is it my fault if my shoelace breaks?”
“Subconsciously, you may be trying to punish yourself,” Fat Tits told him. “Without realizing it, you probably put so much strain on the lace when you’re tying it that its breaking is inevitable.”
“Why should I want to punish myself?”
“When you know that, you won’t have to anymore,” Dr. Baariasol told him. “That’s what we have to work on here. Only you can tell us. Why do you want to punish yourself?”
“Why do you want to punish yourself?” the others chorused.
Job's brow wrinkled. The others were silent as he mulled it over. “Sometimes I do feel guilty,” he admitted finally.
“About what?” Fat Tits asked the question for the group.
“Well—” Job looked around him nervously "and his voice got very low. “I cheated on my income tax last year,” he admitted.
“Dat made ya feel guilty?” Little Gat looked at him with amazement. “
“Yes. A little.”
“It’s a good t’ing ya not in my line a work,” Little Gat told him.
“It must be something more basic than that,” Fat Tits opined. “What have you done that really made you feel guilty? What's the worst thing you ever did in your whole life?”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“Let’s give him an example,” Dr. Baariasol suggested. “We’ll go around the room and everybody can tell what the worst thing is they've ever done. Then Job will find it easier. You start.” He indicated Archer.
“The worst thing I ever did . . ." Archer mused. “I guess it’s that I once voted for Spiro Agnew.”
“I was goin’ to Detroit on a job once an’ I copped my family’s Right Guard an’ left dem defenseless,” Little Gat remembered.
“What happened?” Archer asked.
“Nuttin’. We lived in a Polish neighborhood. Nobody noticed.”
“That’s pretty bad,” Fat Tits granted, “but it’s not as bad as what I did. Talk about guilt! I deceived my psychoanalyst.”
"Wow!
“How?”
-—the redhead wondered.
“I got friendly with another patient of his. Between us we cooked up this monster dream—a Freudian fantasy to end all fantasies. My appointment followed this other patient’s, you see. Well, this one morning, the other patient went in and told the analyst this monster dream as if it was his own. Then I went in and related exactly the same dream.”
“That’s awful!” Dr. Baariasol momentarily blew his cool. “You could drive a therapist over the brink doing a thing like that.”
“It didn’t drive this therapist over the brink,” Fat Tits told him. “But it sure did unsettle me. You see, when I got through telling the monster dream, the damn shrink just looked at me calmly and said, ‘What a coincidence! You’re the third patient to tell me exactly that same dream this morning!’ ”
“Served you right!” Dr. Baariasol muttered.
“How thin your crime
“Compared to mine.
“At age sixteen,
“I was so mean--
(“Little Audrey
("Ne’er so tawdry!)
“I sneaked into
“My parents’ room.
“To seal—’tis true!-—
"My pater’s doom.
“Oh! worst of sins!
“I poked holes in
“Dad's condom ’skins’
“With a hatpin!"
“Very interesting, in view of your problems relating to promiscuity,” Dr. Baariasol told the rhyming redhead. “We must be sure to come back to that. It could be the crux of your problem.”
“What happened?” Iceberg, curious, asked the redhead.
"My mother got pregnant
(“Too bad! She got caught.)
"Her sister got pregnant.
(“Poor Dad was distraught.)
“A neighbor got pregnant.
(“Poor Dad! What a hex!)
“Our spaniel got pregnant.
(“Poor Dad gave up sex”)
“And so you’ve been trying ever since to carry on valiantly where he threw in the sponge. Very interesting,” Dr. Baariasol observed.
“Are your sure it isn’t genetic, Doctor?” Fat Tits claimed the right to consultation. “After all, that spaniel—-"
I don’t think so. We’ll see. Dr. Baariasol turned to Iceberg. “And what about you? What's the worst thing you ever did?” he inquired.
“I put itching powder in my brother's jockstrap.” Iceberg hung her head.
“I see. Then your hostility toward men must have started at an early age. We’ll have to come back to that too if we have time,” Dr. Baariasol told Iceberg. He turned to Job. “Do you see what I mean now?” he inquired.
“I think so.”
“Then tell us about your own experience.”
“I farted during the Moment of Silence following the Pledge of Allegiance in the third grade,” Job blurted out.
There was quiet while the group considered what they had heard. Archer was the first to speak. “That doesn’t seem so terrible,” he told Job.
“It was unpatriotic. I was the leader of the color guard. I was holding the American flag. It was a desecration. Today they could even arrest me for it. Worse than that. When it happened, I was so startled that my arms jerked and I let the flag touch the ground.”
“You mean the floor,” Fat Tits corrected him. “I presume this was an indoor ceremony.”
“Floor . . . Ground . . . in the third grade you don’t make distinction. Yes, it was indoors. It was a school assembly. I broke wind in front of the whole school—teachers, principal, honored guests, everybody. And it wasn’t just unpatriotic. It was sacrilegious too. I mean, it was supposed to be a moment of silent prayer. Only it wasn’t silent when I barfed.”
“What happened? What was the reaction?” Dr. Baariasol asked gently.
“Everybody looked at me. The principal turned very red. Some of the kids laughed. The teachers were angry. It was embarrassing. It was humiliating. It was traumatic.”
“It was traumatic,” Dr. Baariasol agreed. “And it undoubtedly set up a neurotic mechanism. You see, the guilt you felt back then has never been relieved. All your life you’ve been paying for that unfortunate incident. Every time you have ‘bad luck,’ an ‘accident,’ it’s really you imposing retribution on yourself for having been irreverent and unpatriotic.”