The Image Consultancy (fiction)
Why you so obsessed with you?
I don’t remember the morning I stopped seeing myself. That uncanny era of my life begins as a nervous blur in my memory. But my earliest moment of clarity is coming down from an anxiety attack in my therapist’s office, trying to resist searching for my reflection in the polished metal of his Newton's cradle or the black glass of his open laptop.
“I have to remind you, once again, that I am not your therapist,” he said. “There’s no need to lay down on that couch.”
The more I watched him, the more I believed it. He had a relaxed posture and an even temperament, but his hard eyes betrayed his impatience and judgment. Whoever he was, he wasn’t trying to help me so much as fix me. A technician.
Why was I here? A fading echo of a memory occurred to me - a steady voice saying, “You’re not invisible. Come to 117 Downing.” So, I hadn’t hired this technician: I had been summoned.
I stood suddenly, darted to the window. We were fifty floors high in Midtown, catercorner from my office building. I peered down at the disheveled hippie couple trading trinkets for food at the entrance (a salad for an evil eye, a burrito for a hand-carved ocarina). Their familiarity eased me. I returned to the couch, sitting this time.
“What did you do to me?” I demanded. “I was fine yesterday. Now, I can’t see myself in the mirror. Nothing. Like I’m goddamn Dracula.”
A smile twitched at the technician’s lips. “In a way, you are,” he said. “But I assure you, your vision is perfectly fine.”
“Perfect, huh?” I tipped my head cautiously toward the laptop. In the reflection I saw the seat-back of my chair, the blinds filtering sunlight, and the spinning blades of the ceiling fan. I couldn’t see myself at all.
I removed my glasses and tossed them from hand to hand. Still nothing. I banged my fist on the desk, tipping his coffee cup. The spill barely missed the keyboard.
The technician ignored my outburst. He asked, “Did you shave this morning?”
I raised my hand to my face and felt smooth skin. The scruff of weeks past was gone, and there was a slight, fresh cut on my upper neck, where I always nicked myself. The technician studied me as my mind scrambled to make sense of things.
“Your vision is fine,” he repeated. “And as a reminder, you’re not invisible. You see what you need to. Your self-image is less, uh, sticky now. That should improve your performance.” He stood to leave.
“Wait!” I said. “What did you mean by—” But he cut me off with a raised hand and empty eyes.
“I’m sorry. Our time is up.”
It didn’t take me very long to get used to it. The technician hadn’t lied: Anything I needed to do, I could do perfectly well without seeing myself. I tidied myself in the washroom, checked my teeth in elevator mirrors, adjusted my suit in shop window reflections. I could frame myself properly in a selfie, and I appeared normally in pictures, according to others. At first I felt the glaring absence of my image, but soon I learned not to notice. It’s like when you’re driving and you stop noticing the car—you’re just going through the motions.
I’m sorry, it’s hard to find the right words for something so bizarre.
He was right about the improved performance, too. I feel silly admitting this now, but I was always tongue-tied in presentations because I couldn’t get over the reality that hundreds of people were watching me closely, hanging on to every utterance. I would fixate on how weirdly my lips moved when I talked, how dry my mouth got.
After the procedure, I may well have been Steve Jobs or Obama. Presentations were no sweat. I also reclaimed hours of my day which I once spent grooming and re-grooming in a vain attempt to upkeep my quaffed standard. Friends said I seemed more focused. My dates were impressed by my eye contact and “unbothered aura”.
I felt lighter than I ever had.
I visited the technician again when the black mass began to torment me This time I made the appointment, paying him a rush fee to see him in the dead of my third sleepless night.
“Whatever this is, fix it,” I said, trying to ignore the row of dark, swirling spheres in my periphery. “I’m burning through my sick days and I need to be back next week.”
The technician watched me with his clinical stare.
“Don’t tell me this is part of it,” I said.
“Not for everyone,” he said. “Have you kept up with any of your practices? Meditative, spiritual, therapeutic?”
I looked at him blankly. He sighed and whispered something into his watch.
Then to me, “When is a tool not a tool?”
“When it’s not wielded properly,” I said rotely. Where had I heard that? A movie, a seminar, The Art of War?
“If this… entity is bothering you, and you won’t do the work to handle the deeper issues at play, then I suggest you switch places with it. That way, you can enjoy looking at yourself again.”
“Switch places? How?”
“I don’t have the answers for everything.”
Tsk. “What kind of therapist are you?”
“Again I must remind you…” he said. (My memory is a gray swirl here.) “...we’re out of time.”
Sleeping pills, lots of them. And sex. That’s how I made it through the rest of the year.
The mass grew, taking on my shape but none of my features. Black smoke, swirling endlessly, dense and dreadful. It was impossible to ignore. It was just a reflection, never showing signs of autonomy, but it still terrified me to my core. Was it me, or something rotten inside of me? I grew a beard again, let my fashion slip to shit, and wore a permanent look of weary paranoia on my face.
They gave out bonuses in December; I was terminated the next day. I had become sloppier than ever at work, tanking deals, losing clients, poisoning the brand (their words). I was inarguably a liability.
The life I had built seemed to be imploding before me.
Then I saw myself in the washroom mirror. Saw myself. And I cried with relief, despite how ugly and broken-down I was. In the joyous appreciation of my reflection, I didn’t notice what my body had become. Leaving the office, my head in the noise-canceled clouds, I ignored my coworkers’ wide eyes and muffled shrieks.
Outside, I paused by the couple instead of passing them. They ate croissants while weaving hemp string along a tree branch. They did not recoil from me, but regarded me with a distant kinship, like they had always known me and were glad that I was finally catching up.
“You like Johnnie’s subs, right?”
“Yes,” I said.
“We’ll trade you one for this dreamcatcher when it’s done,” they offered. They looked me up and down. “Seems like you might need it.”
“I’m done here,” I said pridefully. “Terminated. Besides, I wouldn’t know what to do with that.”
“Of course.” They smiled. “Well, best of luck in your new life, friend.”
I held my arm out for a shake and dared to look down it. A gaseous void in the shape of an arm - totally colorless, catching no light and casting no shadow. I knew without looking that the rest of me was the same.
The couple pulled me in for a hug. Bright lights enveloped in darkness. I trembled.
“This doesn’t bother you?” I asked.
“It's fitting,” they concluded. I did a double take.
“Yes, this is how we always saw you,” they said. “This is how we see most of you.”
Eventually, I stopped noticing. All has been well since.