Phoebe Berman's Gonna Lose It(4)

“I have tried. There’s something wrong with me.”

“You have to stop saying that,” Sandy says with a sigh, shaking her head sympathetically.

“Okay.” I shrug. “But I’ll still be thinking it.”

I let my mind wander to past kisses I could never let get too far, and to the one date I wanted so desperately to go on but never made it.

For insurance purposes, Sandy qualifies my condition as panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder, but she insists I ignore those labels. Instead, she likes to frame my particular brand of anxiety as a phobia. Like the way some people panic at the thought of getting on an airplane. Or have a debilitating fear of heights. Only in my case, I have a phobia of intimacy. She prefers to look at it this way because “people get over phobias all the time.”

But I disagree with her. Because no one with a phobia is this desperate for the one thing that they’re most afraid of. Emetophobes don’t want to throw up; germaphobes don’t yearn to be sneezed on. But I want to have sex. I want to go on dates and be swept off my feet and run through the airport hysterically while begging the star-crossed love of my life not to get on the plane. Whatever I have feels more like a curse than a phobia.

And the closer I get to thirty, the more it feels like all these things aren’t going to happen for me. It’s starting to feel like I’m running out of time.

Sandy narrows her gaze and leans back in her chair. “Could these big feelings have anything to do with Jamie getting married?”

I fiddle with a hole in the bottom of my faded Queen graphic tee. It was a hand-me-down from my dad, a security blanket in T-shirt form, and I’ll keep wearing it until the day it’s nothing but one loose thread. It felt more than necessary to put it on after I opened the letter this morning.

I look down at Sandy’s Birkenstocks and bare toes as I mutter, “Probably,” when what I mean is Yes, definitely. My twenty-two-year-old sister marrying her high school sweetheart while I need to start thinking about potentially freezing my eggs is not helping the situation.

I sink back into the couch, my eyes watering from the cat hair that clings to the fabric. At the reminder of Barbara, I offer a tiny wave to the corner of the room, where Sandy’s orange tabby lounges on the windowsill. She glares back at me.

“Tell you what,” Sandy says while clapping her hands together, bangles clanging. “Let’s flip Mrs. Friedman’s assignment on its head.”

She scribbles something on her legal pad, tears the page off, and hands it to me. PHOEBE’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS is written at the top in Sandy’s allcaps chicken scratch. I let out a groan.

“You have so much to be proud of, Phoebe. I want you to take the week off from beating yourself up. Instead of focusing on the one thing you haven’t gotten to, I want you to focus on all the things you have accomplished since you wrote that letter to yourself.”

I make a conscious effort not to roll my eyes but still find myself eagerly snatching the paper out of her hand.

“You know I’ve never turned down an opportunity to make a list,” I admit.

Along with rearranging my T-shirt collection, making lists has always been one of my greatest sources of comfort.

“But I’m not using this.”

I try to hide my horrified expression as I examine Sandy’s crooked handwriting on the unsightly yellow lined paper. I dangle the sheet in between us like it’s a used tissue.

“I have my own supplies.”

I gesture to the tote bag at my feet, a gift from last year’s class, and catch myself smiling at the Teacher Phoebe embroidered in red thread on the front. Inside the bag I have my label maker, paper, gel pens, colored pencils, and markers. Everything that comes in handy when the time comes to make a good old-fashioned list.

Sandy accepts her paper back graciously.

“Great. I can’t wait to see what you come up with.”

Her eyes dart to the cat-shaped clock hanging by the door as she makes a dramatic display of cracking her knuckles. Our time is up.

“Will I see you before the wedding?” she asks.

I swallow my annoyance, knowing she’d have no need for questions like this one if she would only use the planner I got her for Christmas last year.

“Yes,” I tell her. “I’ll see you next Monday. The wedding isn’t until the following weekend.”

With a flick of her wrist, she makes a note on the same sheet of paper I just handed back to her. I recoil at the disorganization. “I’m excited to hear about the progress you make with your assignment.”

I shuffle to the door, my steps weighed down by the presence of the letter in my pocket.

I can almost hear it hissing.

Lose your virginity. That’s all I ask.

“Thanks for today,” I tell Sandy, even though I feel just as hopeless leaving her office as I did when I got here an hour ago. Maybe even more so.

Sensing my resignation, she gives me her signature closemouthed smile.

“Take care, Phoebe.”



* * *



—

The car behind me slams on its horn before I even have the chance to register the light has turned green. Over the course of the hour-long drive home in Los Angeles traffic, my general feeling of despair has morphed into a blinding irritability. I fight the urge to park in the middle of the intersection, walk into traffic, and lay myself down in front of the gray minivan tailgating my bumper. Instead, I wave and mouth “Sorry” through the rearview mirror.