“Ow! My meniscus!” Fat screams when I slam my cereal bowl on the coffee table, lunge at her like a linebacker and manage to swat her ass before she dives to the safe sea of stained carpet. She sprints across the room to maintain a safe zone between her idiocy and my anger.
“New couch, jerk.” My fingers smooth out the cushion fabric where her talons so carelessly knead only a moment ago.
“My bad.” She yawns and flops on her side in a pile of yellow feathers that she freed from the catnip-stuffed bird.
“You seem quite distraught about it.”
Fat glares, her green eyes glow with a nucular-evil hue. “You damaged my meniscus. Expect a call from my lawyer, lady.”
I grab my phone and do a quick search. “You have no idea what a meniscus is, do you?”
“Don’t be preposterous. Of course I do.” I step closer to her and flip my phone around so she can read the screen. Her eyes quickly scan the information. “In the joints. Huh. Well that’s certainly a surprise.” She lifts a paw to the screen and gently pushes it away, as though the small act will also shove her stupidity away as well. “I deal with the brain, not the body.”
“Don’t really deal with the brain either,” I close the webpage, quickly check Twitter, then put my phone down.
“I meant the psyche.”
“No.”
“The soul?” If anything, this back and forth gives me a solid jumping-off point. The synapses in my brain fire rapidly.
“Uh uh.” I walk past her, open my journal that’s on the desk and scribble down the first few words of an idea.
“Is it time to deal with all the debris you’ve left cluttering up the place?”
I look up, mid-thought, and scan the room. “What are you talking about? I cleaned yesterday.” I hunch over the desk again to finish writing down my idea about… “Fuck. I lost it.”
“I was going for a metaphor with the debris thing. Thought you’d appreciate it.”
“And I thought I told you I didn’t need to talk about it.”
“So you do know what I meant,” Her eyes momentarily grow wide with delight before her normal face returns. “But you need to talk about it. Be an emotional bulimic. Purge those feelings.”
I reach into the desk drawer. “That’s too much, Fat.” I pull out the laser pointer and the red dot appears by her feet.
“It’s that fucking thing again. Don’t worry, I got this.” Fat bounds and I move the pointer over by the television. She sprints and misses. Her head whips around frantically. “Where are you, you little beasty?” I point it on the cat post. When she catches sight of it she gallops and leaps, claws-first. Fat misses again, and the momentum from her landing throws her into a sideways spin. She leaps back to her feet and sees the pointer over by the window. The red spot hovers on the thin window covering. Her head bobbles as she mirrors the unsteady movement of the pointer while I laugh. Fat reaches up and bats at the dot with such force, the resulting sound from hitting the window scares the hell out of her. She jumps like she’s been shot out of a canon.
“What do you expect me to say here? I’m pissed off.” I put the laser pointer back in the drawer.
“At him.” Fat’s tone is definitive.
“No. At myself. I always think I can just have things the way I want them without considering what the other person wants.” I sit on the desktop and kick my feet up by the printer. Fat’s belly swings when she runs over to join me.
“You two wanted the same thing.”
“So I thought. Such a shame, we have great chemistry.” I lean against the wall. “He let me know that he’s actually looking for more than what I’m able to offer.”
Fat nods with what I take to be understanding, “Bigger breasts. Men, right?”
“Not at all close to what we’re talking about here, Fat. But thanks for that. He just decided he wants to settle down and have a one and only. We both know I’m not the right fit for that at the moment. Had to let the whole thing go. From three to zero like that,” I snap my fingers. “And dating a male harem didn’t even blow up in my face, high five.” I hold my palm out, she doesn’t go for it. Frankly, she hasn’t offered any input in about thirty seconds. With a bend of the neck, I see that her gaze and full attention is locked on my chest. “Do you mind?”
She blinks hard and comes back to the conversation. “Sorry, go on.”
“This shrink cred of yours is wearing awfully thin.” Fat pats my forearm with her paw until I take the hint and my fingers scratch her fur. “You know I went to lunch today with a friend of mine. He said that my problem is I don’t jump.”
“He obviously doesn’t know that you jump rope in the underground parking at night.”
“It wasn’t a literal thing, moron. He’s right. I’ve never jumped. Do you think that’s a bad thing?”
Fat’s eyes close when I scratch her neck. She’s silent for so long I think that I might have to wake her. She keeps her eyes shut, “I think that you’re fucked up through and through, but as long as you’re happy that’s all that should matter.”
“True. You can be my soul mate. We’ll get old and obese together. It’ll be so romantic, they’ll make a Disney movie about it.” I chew the inside of my cheek, “I think I’m going to stop dating for a while. This whole endeavor is exhausting.”
“Eureka!” Fat’s eyes pop open. There’s no mistaking my dry expression; Fat maintains a hopeful grin nonetheless. “I think we’ve just had our first breakthrough. Wait,” she looks pensive a moment, reading the look on my face, “you’re fibbing, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am. My life is what awesome aspires to be.”
Sessions with Fat 