Magdalena said, “That’s so”—she wanted to say “disgusting,” but Norman seemed to be so proud of his picture for some reason—“that’s such a horrible picture.”
“That’s not so,” said Dr. Lewis. “What our very rich and influential Maurice Fleischmann has done to himself may be horrible, but it’s not a horrible picture. To my mind it’s an important picture, the sort of documentation that’s very valuable for our profession.”
“That’s Mr. Fleischmann?”
“The very one,” said Dr. Lewis. “Look at those long skinny legs.”
“Where did it come from?”
“I took it myself about half an hour ago and downloaded it onto the computer.”
“But why is he naked?” said Magdalena.
Dr. Lewis chuckled. “Because I told him to take his clothes off. I told him we needed to create a ‘visible timeline’ of his progress. ‘A visible timeline,’ I told him.” He chuckled up to the edge of open laughter. “I also said I wanted him to take that picture with him and look at it every time he feels like yielding to his so-called addiction. I’m halfway serious about that part. But mainly I took that picture for my monograph.”
“Your monograph?” said Magdalena. “What monograph?” She hesitated. She didn’t know if she should expose more of her ignorance—but she went ahead anyway. “Norman… I don’t even know what a monograph is.”
“A monograph is a treatise—you know what a treatise is?”
“In a general way,” said Magdalena. She didn’t have a clue, but Norman had said it in a tone that presumed every literate person knew the word.
“Well, a monograph is what you call a highly detailed, very scholarly treatise that tells you a lot more than you really want to know about a very specific subject, in this case the role of masturbation in so-called pornography addiction. I want this monograph to be so detailed, so dense, so packed… in fact, swollen… with documentation, including photographs like Mr. Miami’s crotch, you’ll get a migraine just trying to read it. I want this thing to be so… dense that any scientist who reads the whole thing—any scientist, any physician, any psychiatrist, any medical school academic—I want that sonofabitch to scream with pain from the burden and the meticulous clinical detail, dried and compacted into bricks, that Dr. Norman Lewis has laid on him.”
“But why would you want to do that?” said Magdalena.
“Because I happen to know these jealous shitheads are starting to call me a ‘schlocktor.’ ”
Magdalena just stared. She didn’t want to ask another question that indicated all the things she didn’t know.
“Schlock is a Yiddish word that means cheap and poorly made,” said Norman, “especially shoddy stuff that’s being passed off as high-class. So a schlocktor is a doctor who shows what a cheap, shallow, bogus ‘expert’ he is by appearing on television shows like 60 Minutes and dumbing down complicated stuff so millions of idiots will think they understand it. It’s all jealousy, of course. My righteous colleagues like to think of themselves as bearers of exclusive mysteries up on a peak the idiot-millions can never ascend. Any doctor who goes on television and makes it less mysterious is automatically a cheap apostate”—Magdalena just stared her way through Norman’s apostate—“trading the mysteries in for some sort of vulgar celebrity. My monograph will hit them like a sandbag. It… will be above… them. It’ll have a title like ‘The Role of Masturbation in Pornography Addiction’—‘addiction’ in quotes—or maybe ‘The Agency of Masturbation in Pornography Addiction.’ Agency is a very scholarly affectation among bearers of the mysteries these days. Anyway—masturbation. Many physicians, even many psychiatrists, don’t get it. No man gets ‘addicted’ to pornography without it. Otherwise a poor bastard like our distinguished Mr. Miami would quickly get tired of staring at girls with cocks in their mouths. But if he can keep his hand on his little joystick and keep coming to climax, there’s no limit to ‘pornography addiction.’ A jerk—pardon the pun—like Moe the First may not look like much, but he can ejaculate as many as eighteen times in a single day sitting in front of a computer watching this pathetic garbage online. Eighteen! I bet you never knew a man had that much in him! Well, our Maurice Fleischmann does! And he can’t stop, not even when his crotch looks like… that.”
Magdalena kept staring at the picture, and it was a horrible picture, no matter what Norman said—but meantime he was unbuttoning the button-up front of her modest, demure nurse’s uniform. She’s sitting at her office desk like a professional, a nurse,