It’s just dawning on me that this is exactly the aversion therapy setup that I’d been trying to envision. A room full of well-intentioned strangers sleeping on top of a mountain for adventure.
Maybe I’ll conquer this shit. I’m tired of being a mess. I’m so sick of me.
A couple hours later I’m sitting in Lenore’s office, feeling a little foolish. She’s waiting for me to explain my emergency.
Let’s face it—I just drove more than sixty miles because I got pissed off when my penis took a time-out when I was about to have sex.
“So just how weird was your weird day?” she asks into the silence.
“Well…” I clear my throat. “Maybe your hunch was right about me. That there’s something weird going on with me and sex.”
“How do you figure?” she asks.
“You know the dual control model of arousal? Accelerators and brakes?” It’s a dumb question, because of course she does. It’s like asking a shrink if they’ve heard of Freud.
“Of course,” she says. “Excitation versus inhibition.”
“My inhibitions are really easily triggered,” I say in a casual voice. But I don’t feel all that casual about it. “Yesterday we were, uh, fooling around…”
Lenore grins. “You and Daphne, huh?”
“Don’t get too excited. I mean—I did. But then all of a sudden I didn’t.”
“What triggered you?” Her expression is calm and open.
I trust Lenore completely, and therapy is an excellent tool. But this is surprisingly hard to talk about. “It was just a door slamming in the breeze. It was loud, but completely understandable. But my dick didn’t care. I had, like, a full-on panic attack.”
“Tell me exactly how you felt in that moment,” she says.
“Uh, cold. Clammy.” I remember the way my sweat cooled into goose bumps. “And my heart felt jumpy. I was on, like, high alert. And I didn't want anyone to touch me.”
“Okay.” She folds her hands on the desk. “And how did that play out? Was it embarrassing? What did your partner do or say when this happened?”
“I was embarrassed. I still am. But it could have been worse. Daphne’s friend drove up a few seconds later, interrupting us anyway. So I’m not even sure Daphne noticed my…” I cringe.
“Dick deflation?” Lenore provides.
“Is that good clinical practice?” I yelp. “Putting words in the patient’s mouth?”
She merely shrugs. “I hate to break this to you, but losing an erection due to a moment of stress is perfectly normal for any man, at any time. Even a twenty-two year old Casanova. You know this already.”
“But it didn’t feel normal at the time,” I argue. “I felt like a basket case. I still do.”
“All right. So tell me why it feels like an important realization in your life, and not an instance of really unlucky timing.”
“Because I’m so—” I try to put it into words that don’t make me sound trivial. “My sleeping alone thing is already weird, and disruptive. You pushed me to think about why I don’t have sex anymore. And I can’t really explain it. Where’s the connection between head injuries and skittish sex?”
Lenore’s smile fades. “What if there isn’t one?”
“A connection?”
She nods. “Let’s just suppose for a second that your problems are larger than the brush-off I just gave you. Let’s suppose you’re experiencing a true sexual dysfunction. Why would you assume it’s connected to a head trauma?”
“Because that’s the thing that changed.” Isn’t it obvious? “Did you happen to read my file, by the way? I know it’s only been a couple days since I asked.”
“Yes,” she says quietly. “I pulled it Wednesday night and read the whole thing.”
“So… did you find any dates in there?”
“Yes,” she says. She reaches for a sticky note and shows it to me. Saturday, December 10th. No surprises there. “That’s the night you were admitted to the hospital.” Then she swallows uncomfortably.
“Anything else, Lenore? You kind of look like you saw the devil.”
That’s when she chews on her lip. It’s her tell, and I rarely see it. But she’s nervous about something. “I read the whole file twice. Every word. The last time I read it was during the month we began working together. But now I know you better, so it read differently to me.”
“And?”
She sighs. “And there are some things in there that seem strange.”
“Are you going to tell me what they are?”
“Yes, but first I need to tell you that this is all speculation on my part.”
“Just please tell me what you saw.”
“First of all, the information they sent over about your medical treatment is woefully