I told you. I don’t see the point. I’ve made my peace with it. It’s a fact, like where I grew up or the color of my eyes. Please, I don’t see why you keep coming back to it. I told you. Some things should just remain a mystery.
I was naturally enticed by the idea of a mystery, as anyone would be, and I hoped she might reveal at least the nature of this secret. But for some seconds, the analysand did not speak. She only stirred in her chair (was she lying on a couch? I thought not; something about the quality of her voice made me think she sat upright), and then she immediately changed the subject.
The topic to which she leapt was an argument with one Charlotte, a name that had already come up several times during the session. It seemed that she and Charlotte had argued over the arrangement of food in the refrigerator. Then the patient complained that Charlotte always left the kitchen-cabinet doors open. Finally, she decried Charlotte’s continual invasions of her privacy, saying, She talks to me all the time. When I’m in the bathroom. When I’m in the shower. While I’m washing dishes and can’t hear over the water. That booming voice: it follows me everywhere.
I thought this Charlotte must be her roommate. With whom else does one have such dull domestic spats? Dr. Schussler had obviously heard much of this before, for she inquired whether the two women were following the ground rules they had established. As her client went on to reply, it was clear that the doctor was as bored as I with the course this session was taking. She signaled her disengagement by continually shifting her weight in her leather chair, sending out squeaks and creaks that somehow connoted a jeering disapproval.
Finally, she intervened. Remember, said Dr. Schussler. We did talk about whether you were going to take seriously these incompatibilities. It is not simply a matter of housekeeping standards. Charlotte is a bicycle messenger, and you are a financial analyst. She has barely completed a junior college course in accounting, and you have a master’s degree in business administration and econometrics. She accuses you of being a “collaborator” for not being open at work about your lesbianism.
(Lesbians!)
She jeers at you for wearing “straight” business clothes. She says you think like a man. These are serious problems, as you yourself have said, and they are not going to disappear simply because Charlotte thought you were “stunning,” as she put it.
Yes, said the patient. Totally true. You’re right. But just the same—she paused—all that bicycle riding has given her a truly amazing pair of legs.
The doctor coughed.
The thighs, most especially.
Silence from the therapist.
And let’s just say that I immensely enjoy all the many ways she considers me stunning.
Her analyst tssked. You know what I mean, she said.
Oh, all right. I do. Of course I do. We’re completely different. We have nothing in common. It’s ridiculous in so many ways. But when we take our clothes off … when the sex is so very good …
Lesbian sex! I experienced a moment of extreme titillation, for there is no one who is not curious about homosexuality, and especially about lesbianism, if one is a man. I felt my groin tighten and my penis begin to stir, bodily acts about which I could do nothing. One might as well try to stop one’s heart from beating as attempt to prevent this involuntary rush of blood to one’s manly parts, especially when one has been presented with an image of two women, naked, their beautiful legs, their breasts, the hidden places into which they—and so forth. Although I considered my reaction altogether normal—as I have said, any man in my position would have responded similarly—when the tumescence proceeded briskly, I became quite alarmed. Further engorgement would require me to stand and adjust my trousers—and then all would be lost. My chair would creak; they would hear me; I would never again learn about lesbian sex, or indeed any other aspect of the patient’s life. I would be plunged back into loneliness in my dreadful house by the sea. I therefore forced myself to think of the two women in their roles as squabbling roommates—the disputed refrigerator shelves, cabinet doors, shouts over running water—arguments so banal as to dispel the deepest desire and compulsion.
Oh, Charlotte’s all right, the patient was going on (to my relief, as I began to wilt). Really. You’re making too