When my therapist asks me what’s wrong today,
I start to regret even attending this video meeting.
She wants to know if it’s the depression
or the anxiety or both. She wants to know
if I’ve been feeling suicidal. I tell her I haven’t
been feeling suicidal but that I have a new problem.
She motions for me to talk about it. I sit there,
then eventually decide to say something. I ask her
if she watches movies. She nods, then I ask her
if she likes Nicolas Cage. She shrugs. I start
to explain my problem. I explain that every time
I close my eyes, I see Nicolas Cage,
and how sometimes, when a person is talking to me,
I have trouble focusing on their words
because my mind is stuck in that scene
from The Wicker Man in which Nicolas Cage
hijacks a bicycle at gunpoint. Or that other scene
from The Wicker Man involving Nicolas Cage, equipped
with a full bear costume, jogging over to a woman
and sucker-punching her in the face.
My therapist asks me if this problem
has been hurting my job. I admit that it has been.
That just this morning, I got scolded by my boss
for being too unfocused and fucking up too much.
I express my frustration. I express that I feel
like Nicolas Cage about 45 minutes into
the movie Mom & Dad, which is the part
where he smashes a pool table with a sledgehammer
while sing-screaming “The Hokey Pokey.”
My therapist is asking me something
about “reoccurring violent thoughts,”
but I only hear the tail-end of the question
because I’m looking at my desktop background
on my second monitor: an AI-generated image
of Nicolas Cage eating pizza with 2 wombats on Mars.
I ask my therapist if she thinks I could qualify
for disability if I list “crippling Nicolas Cage obsession”
as my reason for applying. There’s judgment on her face.
Maybe I’ll just stop talking about this.
Maybe I’ll hide it from the world forever —
lock it in a safe like the one Nicolas Cage has
in 2011’s Trespass, which shares a plot
and even some dialogue with 2010’s
Spanish home invasion-themed cult hit, Kidnapped,
which is probably because the writers
of Trespass figured Nicolas Cage’s unrestrained acting
would be distracting enough
to stop anyone from noticing such plagiarism.
A few days after therapy, practicing spiritual growth,
I change my desktop background to an image
of a sunflower, then I turn on the TV. I browse Netflix,
practicing more spiritual growth by skipping over
the “action” and “thriller” sections. Then my girlfriend
comes out of the bathroom. She has only been home
for an hour after a weekend at her parents’ house.
She’s holding something: a clump of long gray hair.
We stare at each other.
Her expression is accusatory.
When she finally speaks, her voice is cutting.
She wants to know who I’ve fucked. She wants to know
what “dumb cunt” was in our shower. I start stuttering
like I’m talking to a cop. I want to deny everything,
but I don’t know how to explain that the hair came
from a gray wig. That I bought the gray wig because
I wanted to be an elderly Nicolas Cage for Halloween —
like in the movie The Retirement Plan —
and even if I found the words, I’d also have to explain
that I liked wearing the wig so much that I kept it on
in the shower, matting and tangling the fibers,
cursing it with this permanent wet-dog odor,
which is why I ended up throwing the thing out
just in time for trash pickup. Evidence: gone.
Gone like the dinosaur skull Nicolas Cage once bought
for $276,000, which he later found out was stolen
and needed to be returned to the Mongolian government.
When she asks me again who I’ve fucked,
I feel something tiptoeing into my brain:
a 1990 talk-show episode with Nicolas Cage
doing a somersault, throwing money into the crowd,
and karate-kicking the air before sitting down
to be interviewed. She asks me again for
a third time. Then a fourth time. And a fifth.
I’m about to choke out my story when she says
to forget it. She doesn’t need to know. She confesses to me
that she has been unfaithful recently. She says the details
don’t matter. We’re even now, so let’s just forget it all.
She walks into the kitchen and opens the fridge.
Phew! That was close.