threadbare [1/4]
MASSIVE WARNING What you are about to read touches upon very sensitive, sometimes triggering topics. Please proceed with caution and only do so if you are okay with voluntarily exposing yourself to descriptive molestation of a minor, rape, violence, suicide, and severe mental illness. Thank you.
“Doctor Wu?”
Yifan looked up from his laptop and towards the door of his office. His assistant stood at the door, chart in hand. “Yes, Jiaqi?”
“Your new patient is ready to see you,” she said as Yifan stood up and approached her. She handed him the patient’s chart and he gave it a look over. “He was referred to you by Doctor Chang over at the general medicine office in Shenzhen.”
“Shenzhen,” Yifan repeated. “That’s quite a drive.”
Jiaqi nodded. “When we were scheduling him, I asked Doctor Chang why she was sending this patient so far for treatment and she said it’s because she trusted you more than any of the other doctors she ever worked with.”
Yifan chuckled. “Okay, thank you,” Yifan said, moving to pass her and get to the patient’s room, but she stopped him.
“I know you don’t want us to judge the patients,” Jiaqi said, “but from what I gathered from his med list, he’s kind of… I don’t know. I felt kind of creeped out by him. He seemed very distant and drugged out…”
“I’ll take a look at him,” Yifan said, and he moved off again. Jiaqi didn’t stop him this time.
Yifan rapped on the door with his knuckle before he entered the room. The patient, Huang Zitao, sat silently on the examination table, his eyes glossed over and staring at nothing in particular. “Good afternoon,” Yifan said, and Zitao jumped in surprise. “How are you today?”
“I’m okay,” Zitao muttered.
“What brings you all the way to Guangzhou today?” Yifan took a seat on a rolling stool and positioned it a comfortable distance away and across from Zitao. Zitao blinked at him. “I saw on your chart that you were seeing Doctor Chang in Shenzhen.”
“Oh, right,” Zitao said. “I’d been seeing her for my issues for about a year or so. I guess I out-crazied her and she sent me away.”
Yifan jotted down notes on what Zitao was saying. “Can you elaborate on these issues, by any chance?”
“Sure, why not,” Zitao replied. “Well, I personally think I’m fine, but I started seeing Doctor Chang by my mother’s urging. She said I was acting erratically or whatever and forced me to see her. She wasn’t too bad… she was someone to talk to and she gave me drugs so I had to like her - are you even listening to me?”
Yifan looked up from his note - Patient denies any problems. Patient’s mother began patient’s treatment. Patient may have drug dependency. - and nodded. “Yes, I’m listening. I have to take notes; I do it for every patient. It’s for the betterment of your care.”
A smirk of a smile appeared on Zitao’s lips. “You really think I’m crazy, don’t you.”
“I don’t know anything about you yet, Zitao,” Yifan said. “Even if I did, ‘crazy’ wouldn’t be the word to label you. I find that word derogatory, honestly.” Zitao said nothing; he only continued to smirk. “Continue. What did Doctor Chang diagnose you with?”
“Ha, we’d be here all day if I were to tell you the list of shit she came up with,” Zitao said. “Depression. Bi-polar disorder. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Possible split-personality disorder. And like a true doctor, she gave me enough happy pills to keep me erring on the side of sanity. She’s a kind woman.”
“Okay, Zitao, here’s what I have in mind,” Yifan said. He ignored the quiet oh, boy from Zitao and cleared his throat. “You have quite an extensive list of anti-depressants and anti-psychotic medications, and I’d like to see you weaned off of those. I want to treat you with words, not drugs. I want you to see me at least once a week, at most twice a week if possible, and we’ll meet in my office and I’ll let you say whatever is on your mind for a full hour. I subscribe to the school of thought that says drugs will only suppress whatever chemical imbalance is causing your disorders, but talking about what may be the cause for your disorders might cure them.”
“You talk like a big shot,” Zitao said, and Yifan sighed through his nose. “I like you.”
“I’m flattered, Zitao,” Yifan said complacently. “Do we have an agreement?”
Zitao smiled. “We do.”
“Okay then, let’s start by lowering your dosages by half. I’ll write a prescription for each medication and you pick them up tomorrow and start the regimen immediately. You may feel a bit off-kilter, but I promise to make you feel better. Okay?” Yifan gave Zitao a warm smile, to which Zitao answered with narrowed eyes.
“Whatever you say, Doc,” Zitao said.
“Alright, I want to see you again exactly a week from now, so we can evaluate your progress with the lower dosages. Make sure to tell the receptionist this so she can schedule your appointment and give you a reminder card.” Yifan stood up and put his hand on the door knob. “Have a good day.”
“You too, Doctor Wu,” Zitao said, and Yifan left.
As Yifan approached his office, he took note of the group of assistants that congregated outside his door. When they heard him coming, their chatter ceased and all eyes turned to him.
“Wasn’t he strange?” Jiaqi asked.
Yifan shook his head. “He’s a bit disturbed, it seems, but that’s nothing new. It takes a lot to shock a doctor of psychiatry.” With a nod, the group of women split in two and they allowed him to enter his office and shut the door.
“His confidence is really attractive,” one of the girls mused aloud as the rest dispersed.
Jiaqi laughed and shook her head. “Stop fawning over the doctor and get back to work.”
“How, exactly, are you getting here from Shenzhen?” Yifan asked Zitao at their next meeting.
“I take the bus,” Zitao answered, making himself comfortable on the broad couch in Yifan’s office. He laid back and kicked his feet up.
“That might be costly after a while. If you want, I can try to find a doctor closer to you that can continue the same care I’m giving to you,” Yifan said.
Zitao shrugged. “It’s not my money. It’s my mother’s money. It doesn’t matter to me.”
Yifan nodded slowly. “Okay, let’s get started. How have you been feeling since you started taking a lower dose of your medications?”
“The same,” Zitao said.
“Has anyone around you said different?” Yifan asked.
“I don’t live with anyone, so, no,” Zitao replied.
“You live alone?” Yifan asked, taking note.
“My mother kicked me out of her house about six months ago. Even still, she bought me a place close by… a real shithole of a place, and told me to only come to see her when she asks me to. If she’s asked, I don’t know. I don’t answer her calls.”
Yifan nodded. “Would you say that you and your mother have a rocky relationship? Has it always been the way it is?”
“Yes, and yes,” Zitao said. “My mother was a social climber, and she ruined my life because of that. I’ve had so many surrogate fathers that I’ve lost count.”
“Did your mother remarry several times?” Yifan asked.
“My mom’s never been married. Well, unless you count her current relationship… her ‘husband’ is living in the hands of a ventilator and an IV drip, and she’s collecting little pockets of insurance money as he dies. But, yes, she lived with, dated, fucked a lot of guys as I was growing up. Some of them lived with, dated, and fucked me too.” Zitao turned his head and looked at Yifan, who was peering over his glasses at him, pen stationary on the paper.
“Is that figurative or literal?” Yifan asked.
“Is what figurative or literal?” Zitao countered.
“What you said last… that your mother’s boyfriends ‘lived with, dated, and…’” Yifan cleared his throat. “Had sex with you.”
“Oh, it’s both,” Zitao said. “I’ve had hands on my ass and dick since I was, like, ten. I lost my virginity at 14 to my mother’s then-59 year old sugar daddy… the thing about being a sugar daddy is, you don’t have to like women to spend all your money on them. You just have to be generous enough to give the money away. So.”
Yifan nodded, jotted down more notes. “Would you say that because you were molested, your general relationship with men has suffered?”
“Not at all,” Zitao said with a smile, and Yifan felt his stomach tie itself into knots. It was no wonder Zitao was as out of whack as he was; he’d grown up jaded. “I love men. Men love me. It’s the women I don’t like… unless they bribe me. Like Doctor Chang.”
“Okay,” Yifan said in a low mutter. “What would you describe your sexuality as? Do you have a healthy sex life?”
“I… think I’m pretty damn gay,” Zitao said, laughing. “As for healthy sex life… I don’t have sex, presently. No one to do it with.”
“Do you not trust other men? Enjoying their company and trusting them can be mutually exclusive,” Yifan asked.
“No, I trust men. If a beautiful guy like yourself told me jump off of a bridge into a shallow lake because it feels good, I’d probably do it. That’s how much I trust men.”
Yifan tried to ignore Zitao’s compliment; it was out of place and inappropriate, but it didn’t fail to stick out to him.
“Would it be safe to say that this unhealthy relationship with both men and women contributes to the issues you suffer from now?” Yifan asked, although he already knew the answer. The key was to see how Zitao reacted.
“What’s unhealthy? The fact that I’m gay?” Zitao asked, defensive.
“No, no. The fact that you so overwhelmingly trust men, despite being wronged by them for so many years, is unhealthy. It’s not the… I don’t want to say the correct way but it’s not the normal way to deal with a situation like that,” Yifan explained.
“I think it’s fine,” Zitao said.
“Alright,” Yifan replied. He noticed that Zitao had dodged the initial question almost expertly and decided he would rephrase and ask it again during a different session. “Your mother does care about you, though, correct?”
“If you want to say that,” Zitao answered. “I don’t think her using money on me is necessarily motherly, but I guess I’ll take what I can get.”
“You said she was the one to push you to see Doctor Chang,” Yifan pointed out.
“I’m sure she only did that because it made her look bad to all her snooty, bitchy friends that her son was psychotic,” Zitao said. “She’s not nurturing at all.”
“Did she know about what her boyfriends were doing to you?”
“If she did, she didn’t care. She wanted their money and their lifestyle so badly that it didn’t matter to her what was happening to me,” Zitao said.
“And you truly believe that?” Yifan asked.
“Yes.” Yifan watched Zitao’s Adam’s apple bob in his throat as he gulped and stared up at the ceiling. “I believe it and I don’t think I’ll ever believe otherwise.”
Yifan laid his pen down and stared at Zitao’s profile. He was completely sure that Zitao’s case would be a hard one to crack, but it was a challenge he was willing to take on.
“Have you made any headway, Doctor Wu?” Jiaqi asked, leaning in the doorway of his office.
“With what?” Yifan asked, transcribing his notes from the previous session into his computer.
“With Huang Zitao, Doctor Chang’s patient,” Jiaqi explained. “I saw that he was due to come in today, so I thought I would ask how that was going.”
“It’s… going,” Yifan answered. “He’s got a lot going on. It’s nothing I can’t handle, but I feel like it’s going to take a lot to convince him that things are wrong. He’s in denial, it seems.”
“Is he as weird as he came off to me before?” Jiaqi asked, and Yifan shook his head. “It must just be me, then…”
“He’s got a grudge against women, because his mother neglected him growing up,” Yifan said. “It’s very possible that that’s why he acted strangely toward you.”
Jiaqi nodded. “Can you keep me updated on him, Doctor? I’m interested in his case… from what you’re telling me, the whole situation sounds very intriguing.”
“I’ll tell you what I can,” Yifan said with a nod, and Jiaqi smiled and turned to leave. As she did so, she let out a gasp of fright, followed by a nervous laugh.
“You scared me,” Jiaqi said to Zitao, who had been making his way to the office for his appointment. “I didn’t even hear you coming.”
Zitao said nothing; he only glared at Jiaqi with a slight snarl on his face. “Come in, Zitao,” Yifan called, and like that, the trance was broken. Zitao brushed past Jiaqi, who glanced back at Yifan and gave him a look that said, “see, that’s what I mean,” before she walked away back to her workstation.
“Good afternoon, Zitao,” Yifan said, getting up and shutting the door. “How are you today?”
“You and your pleasantries,” Zitao said, plopping down on the couch. “Just because I’m damaged goods doesn’t mean you have to pussyfoot around me.”
“Alright,” was all Yifan replied with, because it was simpler to just say that than to explain that he was just acting the way he should as his doctor. “I’ll open the floor to you today. I won’t ask as many questions as I did last time… you pick the topic, you talk as much as you want about it. Sounds good?”
Zitao shrugged. “It’s not like I have any other choice.”
“The boyfriend my mom had when I was ten was really the one who corrupted me, so to speak. I don’t think I was corrupted but you’re definitely going to think that, so I’ll just cut to the chase and say it for you. I didn’t like him, because when I was ten I still gave a fuck about my mom and was jealous that these guys were getting her attention but not me. I acted out, disobeyed him - because, why should I have listened to him? He wasn’t my father. He never ended up being my father. And he would punish me. He’d lock me in my room and not let me eat until the next morning. He’d kick me around, push me into walls, sometimes choke me… and then he took it a step further.
“He… he came into my room one night after he’d been particularly rough with me… for not doing my homework when he told me to or something like that. He sat on the edge of my bed and apologized, then asked if he could lay down with me and hug me because he felt bad about what he’d done. I didn’t say yes or no; I just laid there and he got underneath the blankets with me. He put an arm around me and held me tight and I pretended to sleep, and that’s when he started to touch me.
“He put his hand down the front of my pajama pants and fondled me, started grinding against my ass and breathing hard on my neck. I was just ten years old, I didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, so I didn’t scream or cry or anything… plus, it felt kind of nice, so I didn’t want to say something and make him stop. He broke up with my mother not too long after that, and I never saw him again. But I didn’t need to, because he’d done enough damage. I was different then than I was before that night.”
“How so?” Yifan asked, studying Zitao closely.
“The other guys my mom dated… specifically, the ones that touched me and fucked me, I was the one who seduced them. I guess I missed that guy from when I was ten and I was looking for someone to replace him. A lot of them turned me down and quickly got away from my mom, others tried it, felt guilty, then left my mom, and the rest ate it up and stuck around for so long just because of me. So, I guess I’m only really a victim of one incident. I asked for the rest.”
“How… how, at such young ages… eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, how were you seducing grown men?” Yifan asked.
“It’s simple, really,” Zitao said. He sat up gracefully, then rose to his feet. “I would misbehave on purpose so that they would hit me. I hated being hit, but I would moan when they did it and the ones who liked it… well, they showed that they liked it. Because I liked their attention, I would do other things to them in order to keep it.”
Yifan froze as Zitao took his pen and pad and tossed it aside, then replaced them with his thighs, straddling Yifan’s own.
“When my mother was away… on trips, out drinking or shopping or both, I’d get in his lap like this… I’d call him Daddy, whisper it to him, rub myself against him, feel him grow hard against my leg… and then I’d…” Zitao reached down between them and pressed his hand against Yifan’s crotch. “I’d rub his cock… and sometimes he’d cum in his pants, or sometimes he’d take it out and cum on me… it was so easy. It still is.”
“Zitao, you’re behaving inappropriately,” is all Yifan could manage; he wanted to yell and berate him for crossing the line the way he did, but that would have only brought more harm than good. “I need for you to get off of me right now.”
“What, don’t you like it?” Zitao crooned, moaning as he dug the heel of his hand against the cold metal of Yifan’s zipper.
“If you don’t get off of me now, I’ll be forced to call the police,” Yifan said, and even he was shocked by how level-headed he’d managed to remain.
That threat was enough to make Zitao leap off of Yifan’s lap and fall back onto the sofa. “You can’t call the police. Please, you can’t.”
“I… I won’t. Just… don’t do that again,” Yifan said. He rubbed at his forehead with an open palm before he stood up and paced a bit. “I think we’re done for today.”
Wordlessly, Zitao got up and left. Yifan nearly collapsed into his office chair, trying to piece together what just happened and how he allowed it to occur.
“Jiaqi, I need you to contact Doctor Chang and tell her that I’m terminating my services with Huang Zitao,” Yifan said the next day.
“Hm? Really?” Jiaqi asked. “What happened?”
It was still early in the morning, and Jiaqi was only one of the six assistants in the office at the time, but Yifan leaned in close and whispered anyway. “Yesterday’s session got out of hand. He was talking about when he was molested by his mother’s boyfriends while he was growing up, and… I think he may have had some sort of psychotic break. He attempted to demonstrate, on my body, what he did with those men.”
Jiaqi clapped her hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe it.”
“Just… call Doctor Chang and let her know, and have her contact Huang Zitao and relay the message,” Yifan said. “Don’t tell her about this incident, though, please.”
“You should report it,” Jiaqi said as she picked up the phone and flipped through the Rolodex for Doctor Chang’s number. “That’s sexual assault.”
“I understand that,” he replied as he started for the exit. He understood, and knew reporting it was the next step he should take, but he felt badly for Zitao. He wanted him to get help, not get arrested, prosecuted, and put in jail.
Putting distance between himself and Zitao would be the best remedy, Yifan believed. Perhaps Zitao would be too afraid of the next doctor calling the police on him to repeat what he’d done.
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