Freudian Delight

The Psychiatrist sits facing the audience, while the Patient is positioned away from the Psychiatrist, his side to the audience (preferably lying down).

Psychiatrist: So tell me about this dream.

Patient: Well, I’m lying in the middle of the Coliseum, completely naked except for a pair of oven mitts shaped like turkeys. My mom, a nonsmoking, nondrinking saint, sidles up beside me with a gimlet in her hand and pulls out a Cuban cigar. Out of the corner of her mouth she asks me for a light.

Psychiatrist: (nodding) Your mother. Good.

Patient: Okay? Anyway, I tell her I haven’t got a light. She looks me up and down and suddenly we’re in my Grandmother’s kitchen, and they’re both force-feeding me hot dogs. Just shoving them down my throat. My Grandmother is huddling over me and she smells like mothballs and death. Just reeks of a decrepit graveyard.

Psychiatrist: Death. In-ter-esting.

Patient: I guess. So then my girlfriend comes in, throws herself onto my lap and turns into one of those hulking, sweaty taxi-drivers. She asks me where I want to go. I say, “back to the Coliseum.” And then I wake up.

Psychiatrist: Alright, alright, this is pretty straightforward. The Coliseum represents the inner sanctum of your mind, where you are your true, masculine self. Your nakedness indicates vulnerability towards your mother, who in her womanly form is only important to you for food, symbolized by the turkey oven mitts. Your father was obviously weak, while your mother was strong: the masculine figure. Because a woman was such a dominant presence in your life, you began to acquire feminine qualities.

Patient: Feminine qualities?

Psychiatrist: Indeed. You developed penis envy, no, penis obsession. Hence the strong women in your life shoving hot dogs down your throat, despite the fact that you are a man.

Patient: I do not have penis envy. I don’t…roll that way.

Psychiatrist: Ah, but what about your meek refusal? You welcomed the force-feeding.

Patient: (sarcastically) You’re right. I do enjoy testing my gag reflexes every once and a while.

Psychiatrist: (ignoring him) Your grandmother’s smell of death most likely indicates that you feel trapped, restrained. Your girlfriend’s transformation into a colossal man probably represents her masculine control over you as well. Trying to direct you in life. When all you really want to do is go back to the beginning, to the Coliseum, where you are a man.

Patient: What?

Psychiatrist: Yes. Women control your life and have feminized you. You are not a man. You probably like men.

Patient: I do not like men! I have a girlfriend, remember? My girlfriend the cab driver?

Psychiatrist: What do you think the real issue is here?

Patient: The issue is that you obviously think I’m not a man! I am! I can prove it!

Psychiatrist: Don’t you think you should own up to your weakness of succumbing to the women in your life? Your femininity?

Patient: No, but I can own up to my weakness of eating Chinese food minutes before I fell asleep.

Psychiatrist: Excuses will get you nowhere, my friend.

Patient: Are you quoting a fortune cookie? I did not just pay $150 to be called gay, have all the women in my life compared to men, and have Confucius’s wisdom bestowed upon me by someone who is obviously a recluse from modern society. I’m leaving. And you can shove your Feminine-Mystique-era Freudian analysis up your conceited ass.