Portrait of the Nymph as a Young Disaster
The bombshell booby-trap blonde, Amora Throe, slumps on the couch, her sprawling locks a peroxide supernova. It’s Thursday and she’s at the therapistโs office. Again. Between the cascading strands of pale bleach-yellow, a cute throw pillow reads in cursive script: ๐ด ๐ฟ๐๐ก๐ก๐๐ ๐ต๐๐ก๐ก๐๐, ๐ธ๐ฃ๐๐๐ฆ ๐ท๐๐ฆ
“So Amora,” Her therapist adjusts his glasses. “How is your week going?” The short sleeves of his crisp white button-up stretch taut over his defined, weathered biceps. His tone is stern and measured. His name? Dr. Gideon Pinch.
“It’s alright. I guess.” She shrugs. “I got another waitress gig. At Red Lobster.”
“That’s good. And how’s the nymphomania?”
“Well…” She glances at a poster hanging on the wall. It reads: ๐ฎ๐๐ , Grant me ๐ป๐๐ ๐บ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ to accept the things I cannot change, ๐ป๐๐ ๐ช๐๐๐๐๐๐ to change the things I can, and ๐ป๐๐ ๐พ๐๐๐ ๐๐ toโ
“Amora.”
She sighs. “I got fired.”
“Because…”
She pouts. “Because the manager caught me banging the busboy in the walk-in freezer.”
“I see.”
“Frigid bitch,” she mutters under her breath. Then her eyes light up. “You wouldn’t believe how hard your nips get in there!”
“And that’s the sixth restaurant job you’ve lost this year?” he asks, unimpeded.
“Seventh.” She smiles sheepishly. “I also got hired and fired at a Bennigan’s. Same day.”
“Because…”
She blushes. “Back-alley blow-job on the head bartender, between a Bonobos and a Bed, Bath, and Beyond.” She puts a finger to her chin. “Or maybe it was a Bath & Body Works.”
“Mhm.” The doctor grunts in that familiar, disappointed way. Like her father used to do. He scribbles a note. “Amora, we’re going to try something different today.” He pulls out a stack of ink-blotched cards. “A Rorschach test. Just tell me the first thing that leaps into your mind.”
She glances at the first card. “The guy from The Bear bending me over the open trunk of an old Chevrolet Impala. He’s got a tire iron in the back and its missing a wheelcaโ”
“We haven’t started yet.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
He flips a card. “Go.”
She considers the blotch. “My naked legs hanging off the side of an airboat.”
“…really.”
“Uh huh.”
“An airboat.”
“I worked for an Everglades tour company one summer. I dated a swamp guy with a Duck Dynasty mane and no teeth.”
“Okay.”
She leans in, lowering her voice.“You’d be surprised what a man with no teeth can do.”
“And this?” He flips the card.
“It kinda looks like…” She squints. “Me being shared by five cocaine-smuggling backpackers in a hostel bed in Costa Rica.”
“Let me guess,” Dr. Pinch says dryly. “You spent a summer in Costa Rica.”
“No, but I’d love to!” She beams.
“Okay, last one.” He flips the card.
“Uh, hm, oh! Me, butt ass naked, suspended from aโ”
“A dog.”
“Huh?”
Dr. Pinch leans forward. “Most people say it looks like a dog. Or a wolf.”
She tilts her head. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not seeing it.”
“These are the ears.” He points. “Right here.”
She tilts further and further, nearly upside. “I don’t seeโoh! Oh! I see it!”
“Thank God.” He leans back, sighing with relief.
“Except it’s not a dog. It’s a werewolf!”
“A werewolf?”
“Mhm.” She nods excitedly. “And he’s staring me down, his ravenous predator eyes flush with hunger. He’s planning to kidnap me and drag me back to his cave lair, where I’ll be forcibly bred by his pack ofโ”
“Right.” Dr. Pinch chucks the cards across the room. “Enough that.”
“Oh!” She gasps.
He yanks off his glasses and pinches his brow, releasing a long, pained groan.
“Did I…do something wrong?”
A terrible silence hangs over the room.
“I think it’s terminal,” he finally says.
“Terminal?”
He looks up. “You might be the first terminal case of nymphomania in documented medical history.”
“Dr. Pinch.”
“You will die horny.”
“Oh don’t say that Dr. Pinch!” She pleads. “I’ve already been let go by every other therapist in the city. I can’t hold down a job or an apartment. You’re my last hope!”
“It’s been a year of this, Amora! A year of me listening to one perverse escapade after another. An endless litany of depravity!” The Doctor throws up his hands. “I’m just a man, goddammit! What the hell do you expect me to do?!”
The silence falls again. And lingers.
Amora glances at the poor soul, slumped in a familiar pose of paternal disappointment. Chastened, ashamed, her eyes wander the room until they land, at last, on the poster.
“Well,” she says thoughtfully. “You could commit a grotesque breach of professional ethics and endanger your career by choking a patient with your belt while ruthlessly pounding her tight bubble butt into this couch, until her sweat stains through and ruins the linen.”
He snorts. “Amora…”
She flutters her eyes innocently. “Yes?”
Dr. Gideon Pinch glances at her and smack his lips. “You know what. The real therapy starts here.” He rises, removes his belt, wraps it tight around his knuckle, and pulls the strap taut with a snap. “Buckle up.“ฮฉ