The First Bad Man

by Miranda July

There was no way around it. I called back and made an emergency appointment. I would have to tell her what I had done and admit that I was struggling with my conception of her. She seemed pathetic and desperate to me now. Obsessed. “Good, good,” she would probably say. “Keep going.” It would turn out that this was the key, witnessing this exchange between the primordial mother and the primordial father. “But I eavesdropped!” I would cry. “It was essential that you perform the role of a spy, a naughty child,” she would say, excited because for the first time in her twenty-year practice a patient had shifted the field—this was a psychiatric term, shifting the field. It meant everything could be exposed for what it really was, every question answered, total clarity for both doctor and patient, leading to a true friendship inaugurated by the therapist reimbursing all her fees in one lump sum. Dr. Broyard would now come out wearing a mask that was a crude drawing of his own face and it would be revealed that the entire exchange in the hallway was a farce—it was the rebirthing.