There’s something like a dog park on the roof. All you can do is walk around, back and forth, in small circles. But so what? It’s a change. It’s something different. You get away from the smell and the trapped feeling for a while. But it doesn’t make your thoughts or the sinking feeling in your stomach go away.
One night, rain was pelting down like giant nails, but I trotted around on the roof anyway. Back and forth. It didn’t matter that I was freezing my ass off, that the rain stung my cheeks. Anything that is not just flat-out sitting or lying down is gold around here.
Radio, TV, internet? Not a chance. I have full restrictions. I’m not allowed to see, hear, or read anything that isn’t directly linked to my case, like detention documents or memos from the court and fun stuff like that. No binge-watching shows, no music, not even a single text. I’m not allowed to make or receive phone calls, and the only person who can visit me is my lawyer.
Three times a week, the commissary cart comes by and I stuff myself with two thousand calories of chocolate and Coke. Sugar is a super-underrated drug, and it’s the only one you can get your hands on in here.
Actually, it’s incredible how much you can long for the moment when two strangers turn the lock and bring in a tray of food. For the first few days I almost started bawling each time. Just getting to see another person made my whole body rejoice. I darted out of bed and was about to throw my arms around their necks, and then I peppered them with at least fifty questions about everything under the sun just so they wouldn’t leave again.
As soon as I’m on my own, my mind starts buzzing. The smell comes back.
* * *
I had been here for two days when they sent me to the psychologist.
“I didn’t ask to see a shrink,” I told the guard.
He stared at me like I was a speck of dirt the janitor had missed.
“It can’t hurt.”
I think his name is Jimmy. He’s got one of those gross goatees that looks like wiry pubic hair on the end of his chin, and his eyes are ice-blue. I one hundred percent recognize him, probably from étage or some other club.
The guards can be divided into two categories, no problem. Number one: the ones who see this as just a job, something that puts money into their account once a month. Maybe the jail is just a temporary stop on their search for a more rewarding or better-paying career. Number two: the ones who get off on the power. The ones who came here on purpose. Maybe they were rejected from the police academy, probably thanks to the psychologist. They’re the ones who like bullying and violence and consider the inmates to be vermin.
You quickly learn to tell the difference. Even though most of them have the same cold eyes, there is a crucial difference between apathy and contempt.
Jimmy is definitely one of the power-hungry ones. It’s something about how he looks at you. Sort of from below and above all at the same time. As if he considers himself better than me, superior, even though he knows deep down that it’s really the other way around, and that makes him furious. He spends way too much time at the gym. His upper arms are thicker than his thighs, and his neck would look better on a bull. I have such an urge to pin those fat arms to his sides.
He responds to every question with another question.
“Are you joking? What do you think? Do I look like your mother?”
I just want to scream in his face.
If one of us needs a psychologist, it’s sure as fuck not me.
* * *
I have a theory about psychologists. I’m not saying it’s true for all of them, but I certainly have encountered my share throughout the years and so far I haven’t run into any exceptions.
Here’s the thing: if you get a degree and are fed a bunch of explanatory models and diagnoses, it seems to me like it’s pretty much unavoidable that you would later try to apply what you’ve learned. It would be stupid not to. So you get out of school and greet people—clients, patients, or whoever—with the attitude that you should be able to explain why people are the way they are and do the things they do. A psychologist’s job is basically to force the rest of us into one of their templates.
Suggestion: you should do the opposite!
Reason: people are unique.
All those psychologists who came and went. Was that life? All the self-assessments and personality tests. The first thing they start with, obviously, is a rough childhood. It seems to be every psychologist’s wet dream to find a broken soul who has repressed a bunch of terrible memories from their childhood.
The bizarre thing about all these diagnoses they throw around is that it’s so easy to see yourself in most of them. There’s not a single psych test where you wouldn’t check off some of the boxes.