Johnny was serious about cleaning up his act. He called Doctor O’Hara over for an all night session. He said to the good doctor, “I have to clean up my act. I have to find out why I do such reckless things. I’m a father now. I have to be responsible.” Johnny was sweating, his eyes looked frantic. He was beginning to think of himself in the third person. He was becoming too introspective.
Doctor O’Hara laughed and said; “You know what your problem is? You have no character.”
Johnny scratched his head and replied, “What do you mean?”
The good doctor replied, “You have no backbone, no balls, no moral fiber. You’re a mush melon weakling who relies on hype to make himself look like a Guru, You’re a phony Johnny Oops.”
“What do you mean by that,” Johnny whispered?”
“I mean you’re a farce Johnny Oops. You’re a charlatan. You’re no philosopher genius. You’re just a guy with a glib tongue and a great line of bullshit about faith. If you ask me all that touchy feely stuff about Dialectic Spiritualism is a load of crap.”
“How can you talk like that to me? You’re calling me a liar. I thought you were my friend?”
“I am Johnny boy, that’s why I’m giving it to you straight. I’m trying to get you to see yourself for what you really are. I’m trying to get you to stop lying to yourself.”
“I don’t want to see myself this way. It’s horrible, what can I do to change? I can’t go on living like this.”
“You have to reach deep down within yourself and find your better half?”
“I thought you said there is no inner self?”
“In your case I’m willing to make an exception, it’s the only chance you have.”
“Why is it ever thus,” Johnny whispered?
“Because you have made yourself into some God damn type of Messenger and now I’m giving you the ‘word’.”
“Poor me, I’m being stabbed in the heart by my own ‘words’.”
“No Johnny, in what passes for your soul. In the place that determines who you really are.”
Johnny appeared almost hysterical. He shouted, “I’m going to change. You’re going to see a new Johnny. You’ll see.”
Doctor O’Hara scratched his head, “I don’t want to see a new anything, I want to see the real Johnny Oops. Why can’t I get this straight in your head?” Now the good doctor was whispering.
It went on and on like this for hours. After a while it became difficult to tell who was the patient and who was the doctor. Finally they both decided to have a drink and relax. One drink led to another.
Doctor O’Hara confessed to Johnny, “I have developed a deep-rooted sense of insecurity due to my inability to cure you of your mental inadequacies and machinations.
Johnny admitted to the good doctor that, “I view you as the father figure I always needed: someone of force and a disciplinarian.”
The two of them ended up hugging and crying before they both passed out on the couch.
Jody found them in a drunken stupor some time later limbs entangled on the couch. She ordered them both to the showers and had the housemaid bring them pots of steaming black coffee. When they had recovered sufficiently to countenance a lecture, she read them the riot act.
She told them, you have violated the doctor/client relationship and i hope that is as far as it went.”
They both sheepishly mumbled words of apology and retired to their respective rooms. Frankly neither one remembered what they said or what they did or didn’t do.
Doctor O’Hara used what remained of his faculties to make a mental note to make an appointment to see his own analyst.
Johnny made a mental note to try and remember what they had been discussing. For now our philosopher genius was safe just as he was or is that as much in peril of losing his soul as he ever was.
Whichever it is or isn’t, it doesn’t look like Johnny has much to lose. For now he is going to continue on his path to enlightened chicanery, convinced that he is, as it was preordained, a Guru of overwhelming dimension and practically no character at all.
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