The Psychologist

On some days, when he woke up to a freezing morning and felt his private parts so cold that they gave the impression that they had spent the night covered in ice, Jorge Amadeu would look for his wife in bed — like a blind person looking for their lost cane — and would then cover her in a hug, clinging to her as if he wanted to absorb her in his gigantic form. Feeling her tiny body, he could never avoid thinking about how much smaller she became each day, usually after this thought a slight depression would hit him, and he would hold her even closer. But as he held her nearer, he would start imagining her becoming smaller in his arms, small to the point of him being able to envelop her all, until she disappeared. He would then tremble, scared, desperate, unable to know if he should hold her tighter to keep her with him or loose off his arms in order to make sure she didn't disappear by being absorved in his body. When he felt his private parts awaken, his thoughts were always joined by reminiscences of times long lived, when he was still a eunuch; however, more than anything, he remembered a woman, who came out of nowhere into his life and in the same way disappeared. From her only remained a story.

The psychologist was a tall woman in her mid thirties, which gave her long legs, the longest Jorge Amadeu had ever seen, she stood about six feet tall, had short black hair in a pixie style and was constantly chewing gum. There was always a little table next to the chair where she kept a fish bowl with lozenges — A good substitute for cigarettes" she explained once. She had given up smoking and to calm down a bit she sought satisfaction in the lozenges. She was a terrifying woman, not only because of her height and beauty, but mainly due to her confident eyes that seemed to see through any nonsense in anyone's head. At first they made him all nervous, so much that Jorge Amadeu even decided on the idea of looking for another psychologist, however, he ended up liking the first session so much that continuing with her looked like more than just an option. At a certain point in their session the nervousness went away, but more than her sympathy —manifested in smiles and a twinkle in her eyes when she spoke — it was to stop thinking of her as just a woman he would like to have a relationship with which helped him become more comfortable, not that he was no longer attracted to her, he still did, it was impossible not to, but he chose, at a certain point, when he realized how natural, how fun it was to talk to her, not as a man, but as another human being, a person —like hadn't felt like in a long time — that everything became easier, it was no different from talking to a friend, if there was a difference it would be due to the fact that this one had a duty to get inside his head and help him fix the parts of himself that weren't working well, besides having breasts, ofcourse; but he tried to ignore that. Anyway, she was a strange woman and he took comfort in this. Her strangeness manifested itself in how her oficce was organized, a room big enough to stretch out two hundred hands without feeling cramped; the air circulating —unlike in most offices he'd been in— was natural, it wasn't the artificial air of an airconditioning, but born from the wind beating its wings and entering through the open window, an air that did not seem to have left the atmosphere and known the vices of the city, so it had remained pure and fresh. The room didn't have much furniture, just two sofas, each facing the other, the bigger one —sightly above the other— was the doctor throne and the smaller one received the worried peasant, which is why if you sat at the above sometimes it looked like you had the eyes of a god looking at whoever was on the small sofa. At first they felt uncomfortable, naked, completely invaded from being seen to the core, to their rotten parts, until they remembered that it was not any kind of god that was looking at them, but a deus-ex machina that would solve all their problems, like in an ancient greek play. In addition to the sofas, there was a small shelf, a table, the aquarium with gum, a shelf with books and some drawers at the bottom of it. The only thing that changed in the room were the paintings on the wall, the first time he entered, he almost ran away when he saw one of them, the painting of two breasts, with pink nipples, pasted on the wall behind the doctor, right above her head. The breasts were so mesmerizing, that they might as well had eyes. At that time he had to clear his mind and think about other things in order to ignore them. At least he tried, until the doctor mentioned having painted the paintings herself and asked him what he thought. With a dry mouth he was only able say that it was interesting, that he liked the color work. " Most men don't like them, they feel angry, uncomfortable, as if they've never seen breasts. But it's natural, usually are men with problems with the female species that come to see me, that's why the paintings are there, to accept them it's the first step to recovery." The second time he visited the office, the painting was no longer that of breasts, it had been replaced by one of legs, long shining legs that reminded him by lot of the psychologist's. He didn't mention that, but for some reason, she always seemed to guess what was going on in his head. She had smiled "Do you want me to tell you a secret?" She whispered, as if the walls had ears " The truth is that I'm the model in the paintings, I had no one else to use, so whenever I want to draw, I undress in front of the mirror and paint. The only setback, naturally, is that I can't see my hindquarters. That's why I am thinking about buying another mirror. The plan is simple, I will put both mirrors face to face, and from the one infront of me I will look at the one flashing behind my back, and draw. What do you think, genius right?". And then there was the painting of a vagina. Knowing it belonged to the woman in front of him made him feel like he had hook in his head, constantly being pulled by some invisible fisherman, looking for something inside him. However, it was different from before, the strangeness came, but it only remained for a little while, at some point he realized he was no longer looking at the painting, just like that. He strangely felt even more comfortable with the psychologist, as if with the paintings she shared a large part of herself, thus making it natural for him to also share about himself.
It wasn't, however, just through her paintings that she shared something about herself, she often talked about the problems her height caused in her relationships with other men. Since adolescence she had been tall, and because she was more attracted to shorter men, she had always dated people who were smaller than her. Unfortunately for her, they all had some confidence problem, at first they didn't show it, but over time she noticed some discomfort on their part when it came to their height, as if her stature made them smaller as men. They didn't like to be seen with her on the street, they hated when she wore heels; either they lived together or not, at home they always wanted to do all the masculine tasks, like doing the garden, changing the oil in the car, fixing the gas, even the ones they didn't master — like pumbling — they had rather lose their head than admiting not being able to do something. And they also had always to be right. Over time, most of them, even the ones who seemed candid and timid at first, started to show some aggression, as if to make their position in the relationship clear.They began in bed, then in arguments, but when they seemed about to make things physical, she always ended the relationship. It wasn't like that with all of them ofcourse, there were others she didn't even have the opportunity to break things off with, usually with those, who instead of becoming aggressive and annoyed, the changes didn't show as much in the beginning, they usually became taciturn, would lose their weight , energy and would stop doing things they use to enjoy; then the more noticeable change would start to show: the decreasing in their size. Due to her own height, for her they were always small, that's why when it happened, she didn't notice, it began slow, so slow that when she realized , they were already of the height of a child, but the moment she tried to do something to help them, they would shrink even faster and would then disappear, in tin air. Nobody believed her when she told them about it, they had rather believe the rumors that she devoured all her boyfriends, like some kind of greek myth monster.
After seeing three consecutive boyfriends disappearing right in front of her, she wasn't able handle it anymore, drowned in a strange, empty feeling for weeks, until one day she realized she had to do something, anything to stop it from happening again; and that's how an idea came to her, it was so simple, considering all their problem seemed to be driven from some psychological point—she guessed; she would major in psychology, and after studying enough, she would find a solution to the problem and thus save herself from a lonely life. Her first conclusion as a psychology majoring was just as simple, the cause could only be her height, thefore the best solutíon was to date taller men, her preferences shouldn't matter. Her first boyfriend after that decision was someone she met at university, a passionate arts majoring student, very kind and quite humorous, and more importantly: he was the same height as her; not that it was just a coincidence that came from her looking for tall man, no, it was all premeditated, a result of a period filled with a strong obsession, the same obsession that would lead a person suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder to seek to make everything in their room symmetrical. She sought, researched until she found a man whose height was one hundred percent proportional to her's, so much that when they walked together on the street, side by side, they looked like twin palm trees. At first things were going well, so well that she thought she had made the right decision, that she had found the solution to her problem. But things couldn't be that easy, that's what reality screamed, entering without authorization, to destroy her life again. It happened three years after they'd started dating, a few months after they'd graduated from their respective courses at university, their first year living together to be exact. The idea of ​​living together was hers. Before she had even finished college, she already had found a job at a clinic where she worked before as an intern. The plan was simple, while he looked for a job they could rent a house and live off what she earned - which actually wasn't that little. But that was her first mistake, althogh at the time it did seem like a great idea, nothing that came after had even crossed her mind. Twelve months after graduating, her boyfriend started to change. Since graduation he had been looking for a job as an illustrator, spent his mornings leaving CV's in companies, and his afternoons working as an art teacher in a secondary school. She, on the other hand, was already established as a psychologist and opportunities to work in some larger hospitals were even starting to appear. Naturally, she remained the biggest provider. When she first noticed he was getting thiner, she didn't think too much of it, her guess was that his weight loss was stress-influenced, from working all those hours with teenagers. She'd limited herself to suggesting him to eat more, and tried to make sure they went out more often, to relax, to the park, cinema, the zoo, the museum, you name it, every place couples could go they went. Sometimes they just walked on the street, as they used to back in their first dates. It was one of those times she felt something unusual about those walks, they had a strange feeling, as if something wasn't right —but she was hopeless. Until one day, while they were in the mirror, both brushing their teeth, she noticed for the first time the impossible, so she got closer to him and made them stand touching shoulders, her heart raced a bit the moment they met, like a needle filled with electricity had been stabbed in her; but still didn't believe it, so she asked her husband to stay where he was and ran to another room, when she came back she had a tape measure, first got to measuring herself, confirming her height, no inch had be added or taken from her body, she was still the same height as ever. Then it was her boyfriend's turn, she raised the the tape starting from his toe, as if prepararing his coffin, and counted the centimeters, when the tape reached his head, she stopped, surprised, but then muttered something like "impossible" in her breath, and went back down and repeated the same procedure, but again came with the same result, five centimeters shorter than he had been before. Her hands had started shaking, her chest was tightning and her eyes were mosturing. Crying out in exasperation she screamed for him to stand better, to straighten his back and lift his head. And he did as instructed, not once blinking or complaining, but to her despair the tape whispered the same height, as if mocking her stubbornness. Still holding the tape in her trembling hands and repeatedly pulling the tape around his body, she fought a cry, a deep cry in her throught, stratching around it, asking to come out. Her voice shook as she began to mumble, asking him what was wrong, why was he shorter, what had she done to make him feel smaller, weren't they the same height? That should be enough, shouldn't it? She loved him and he loved her, what other reason would he have to feel smaller? Answer me now. Please say we can work this out, yes, for this we must work together, I-we we will try our best. She cried in her boyfriend's arms, who just ran his hands around her back and spoke in a hushed voice, told her it was just her impression, he was still the same height as ever, she wasn't giving him any reason to feel smaller. But two weeks later his shrinking got worse, and just like many other boyfriends before, he shrunk until he vanished. That's how she realized that it had nothing to do with height, but with the male mind, which couldn't bear to see a woman stronger than them, a woman more independent; was what intimidated them, made them feel small and eventually disappear, not necessarily because they were sexist — although some actually were —, no, their problem was not with her, but with themselves, in their insecurity as men, created by society who asked them to be the strongest, the providers and protectors, when a woman that surpassed them appeared, they felt smaller, less manly, because they couldn't fufulfil what they perveived as their responsability as a male. Some responded with anger, aggression, and others simply shrunk so much that they disappeared in their insecurities.
Realizing that didn't help much, but she still decided on something, she would become, she would be the savior of those insecure men, she would reduce herself to make them feel greater, with hopes of them one day gaining enough confidence to stand with her, feeling like equals. That was how her next relationships began to develop, she behaved as if smaller and as a result her boyfriends felt bigger. But those relations didn't last long, it was tiring for her to keep the facade and in some cases, in some of them she began to notice a certain arrogance, they gave the impression of not respecting her, that's how she decided to stop pretending and gave up the idea of having a normal relationship. The truth to be honest, what she feared the most was falling in love, she dreaded the idea of one day finding someone she would love as much she had loved her college boyfriend. She had loved him so much that in her mind there were no doubts that if he had asked her, she would have reduced herself just to please him. If she found someone like that and fell in love, to please them she would shrink to the point of herself disappearing, like her boyfriends often did. The worst thing is that she wouldn't even notice herself shrinking, it would happen so naturally that the day she realized her situation she would be waking up to find the room, the bed , everything around her bigger, but would then realize herself the size of a flea, and just like that she will vanish.
Still holding to his wife, Jorge Amadeu thought about why his psychologist had told him her story, how in the end she had explained to him that if he didn't solve his problem soon, he would condemn everyone who had a relationship with him to make themselves small just so they wouldn't open a hole in him and allow his insecurities to find the sun and grow.
Loosing his arms, Jorge left his wife body, and rolled in bed. Staring at the ceiling he thought again about his psychologist, how she had helped him. Opening his hands he raised them to the air, trying to catch her last words to him, but no matter how he searched the air,he found nothing.