Don’t Fear the Freudians
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“Expand a bit on that, please?” I asked.
“He claimed that he was in the Navy and lost his eye in a friendly fire incident in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.”
“Why not believe him?” I asked.
“My second cousin is a Navy Seal and that’s quite a hard life,” Jillian said. “It pisses me off when lying turds like Ned try to steal glory and honor of folks in the Armed Forces.”
“Yes, good point.”
“Passports were spread all around his hotel room, too,” she said. “One said he was Brazilian, another claimed he was from Algiers, and the third from Venice Beach. The ID’s said his name was either Miko, Anton, or Ned.”
“Remind me where Algiers is again?” I asked. 
“A city of nearly four million in Algeria,” Jillian said. “On the Mediterranean Sea.”
“Right.”
“Ned was extremely fit,” she said. “An aerobic expert who had worked with seven foot four Los Angeles Laker Kareem-Abdul Jabbar in the early nineties; they put out an exercise and yoga tape and it sold ridiculously well in Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Morocco, Istanbul, and Mexico City, too. Apparently, there were fans of the Lakers and Jabbar in those cities.”
“Jabbar was one of the best big men ever to play the game,” I said. “He had an impossibly effective running hook shot that was a killer to defend against.”
“My dad admired him, as well,” she said.
“What happened to our Ned, though?” I asked.
“After we shared crackers, bagels, and ourselves, he did three-hundreds crunches in the hotel shower to impress me,” she said. “He kept saying, ‘I must defeat my chubby, ugly flabs.”
“Chubby, ugly flabs, huh?” I asked. “What else?”
“I said, ‘Ned, you’re perfect, you have extremely low body fat, there’s nothing to be ashamed of, give yourself a break.’”
I watched Jillian shake her head.
“Ned spat at me then and said, ‘Don’t you grasp how awful and heinous and useless I truly am?’”
“Oh, my,” I said.  
“Anyway, Ned tried to split town before the FBI arrested him late last night,” Jillian said. “He was out at West Farms Mall at PF Chang’s, where they served this amazing Mongolian Beef dish but Ned didn’t get to take a single bite.”
“Why not?”
“That’s what was reported in today’s Hartford Courant,” Jillian said. “Ned was also in trouble for assault, heroin possession, and a DUI in the Montreal area.”
“Damaged human being, I guess,” I said. “Walking wounded.”
“What the hell was I thinking though, Doc?” Jillian asked. “My dad would’ve flipped out.”
“Were you intoxicated?” I asked.
“I was soused on cheap Scotch,” she said. “We drank a lot of it and so I went over the falls with Ned and nearly lost everything that was good in me in the process.”
“You must be more cautious about who you choose to sleep with,” I said.
Jillian nodded and said, “I know.”
 “Was it safe sex?” I asked.
“No.”