"We need to talk." How many times had I already invoked those words! We really didn't need to talk; it never did any good anyway, but 1 couldn't beat around the bush when human lives were at stake. Now we had a new problem on our hands because 1 had seen reality while Monica was still convinced that we could go on the way we were, without having any effect on others.
As the old saying goes, it takes what it takes, and it wasn't until we had done damage to the structure of the building that Monica was brought to her knees. She still didn't like Shapiro and continued to stonewall in our sessions, but she plainly needed him. Monica's one of those people who will never say she needs help, and she never admits she's gotten it, even when someone has been helpful. But the day the Department of Buildings got into the act and the big flatbeds pulled up with huge wooden beams that would be the new structure for one side of our building, Monica looked as if she was ready for anything. There was only one other tenant in the building besides the couple downstairs, an elderly woman who hadn't seen a prick in decades, and we all were put up in the local Motel 6 while the repairs were done. Anyone who'd lived in that building knew who the source of the trouble was. The young couple downstairs was understanding, but the elderly woman screamed at us in the most vile manner as we registered for our room.
"1 did my share of fucking." She was waving her finger. "But you're a little cunt, miss. And you…" She pointed to me. "You seem like a very nice young man, but so was John Dillinger. You've got to put your dick back in your holster. Didn't the two of you ever hear of sublimation. I used to teach art history. Sublimation's when you take some of your sexual energies and turn them into art. Think of all the greatness that would lie ahead of you if you stopped trying to be the Black Stallion, young man. You're interested in theater sets. You could be the next Ingo Jones. And I wouldn't have to worry about the ceiling falling down every time I got into bed."
The first thing Shapiro asked us when we went to see him again was, "Are there things the two of you enjoy doing together besides sex?"
"That's how you think about things," Monica said. "If you're balanced you're good, if you're not balanced you're bad. It can only be one way Well, we're not balanced. We have a wonderful relationship, but the only thing we like to do is fuck. We don't talk, we don't like gardening, we don't play tennis…." In spite of the damage to the structure of our building that'd been caused by our fucking, and the fact that she had appeared desperate at first, she still seemed to be intent on throwing a wrench into the couples counseling.
But then suddenly she grew quiet.
"What are you thinking?" Shapiro asked, running his hands through his non-existent hair. "Do you want to know what's striking from my perspective?"
"No."
"You see, that's striking too. First you're quiet, as if you want to listen. Then when I ask if you want help, you say no." Did Shapiro want to help or did he merely want to win? I wasn't sure, but I could tell he was having an effect.
US
After several months in therapy, we began to see some improvement. There hadn't been any new structural damage to the building. On several occasions when the lack of new symptoms came up for discussion-at least the kind that were accompanied by building code violations-Shapiro asked coyly if we thought it had anything to do with the couples counseling. From Monica's perspective, Shapiro was more interested in proving he was right than in helping our relationship, and she had no intention of gratifying his wish by admitting he had done anything for us. In fact, I myself wasn't sure. Yes, it was true that no waterbeds had broken; yes, it was true that we were no longer looked at as a danger by our neighbors; yes, it was true there'd been no building inspectors knocking on our door at all hours of the day and night; no, we hadn't had to move into the Motel 6 any time lately. But the basic thing that held the fabric of our relationship together-the passionate, unforgiving fucking-was as intense as ever. We couldn't be together without fucking. One night we tried to follow Shapiro's advice and have a quiet candlelit dinner before jumping onto the waterbed, but we couldn't wait. We swept the cartons of moo shoo pork, fried rice, and crystal shrimp dumplings to the floor and made love right on the kitchen table. I felt I was following Shapiro's advice when I ate a few noodles off the table before sticking my face in Monica's spread legs, but the fact was, even the world's best lo mein was no competition for Monica's hairy cunt.
Monica continued to agree to see Shapiro because I claimed it was helping me. I was actually developing a good kind of selfconsciousness when we fucked. Who wants to wake up to find out that when the moon came out he had turned into a werewolf and left a path of destruction in his wake? On the other hand, 1 never worried about Monica. She liked her sex rough. The more 1 stabbed at her, the further up her twat or asshole I penetrated, and the harder I did it, the happier she was. She also liked to be slapped around and spanked. Shapiro reassured us none of that had to change.
"No one is trying to malign your inventiveness, your athleticism, or your desire to make use of each other's every orifice," Shapiro stated, slamming a fist down on his desk. "But it's nice to feel you have choices. I don't sense you are choosing. It sounds like you are slaves to desire."
Despite the fact that Monica appreciated what Shapiro was doing for me, she was still resistant and resentful about seeing him. Everyone had to pay a price for their pleasures. A little bit of instability in the structure of a building didn't seem much of a sacrifice when it came to maximizing one's potential enjoyment of life. If it ain't broke don't fix it became Monica's mantra in counseling. The fact that we'd broken a dining room table, two sinks, a toilet seat, numerous waterbeds, and the beams holding up our downstairs neighbor's ceiling didn't faze her.
One morning Monica took my dick out of her mouth long enough to say, "We don't need couples counseling."
"What do you suggest then?" She put my dick back in her mouth, moving her thick lips up and down the shaft. She held her finger up in the air, motioning me to wait until she was done. Monica was actually competitive in her cock sucking. Each time she blew me, she wanted to see how much she could get in her mouth. But it wasn't in the least bit mechanical. She was exuberant. She licked and slurped like a child eating a fudgesicle on a hot day. She was aiming for the stem, a goal she'd never achieved without gagging, though she got closer every time she went down on me. Finally, just as she took my dick out, turning around so that I could put it in her ass, she said, "We just have to rent a first-floor apartment in a building with no basement. Then we won't have to worry about downstairs neighbors, beams…."
"Don't forget soundproofing." On several occasions, hearing Monica's screams, our neighbors had called the police. I wasn't being facetious when I told Monica, "We need to find one of those Nazi war criminals who built the torture chambers. They were experts on soundproofing. That's the only way we're going to feel free."
"Either that or we could move to the mountains."
"I don't mean this as a criticism honey, but the way you go on, we're liable to have hyenas and even bears scratching on our door."
Despite all the turmoil, each time Monica took her clothes off was a thrill for me. I gazed on Monica's pussy like a teenaged boy seeing a picture of a cunt in a dirty magazine for the first time. When she came out of the shower, 1 gloried in how much hair her Venus mound had. I loved the smell of her armpits, and when she walked by me in her underpants 1 wanted to pull them down and bury my face between her buttocks, as narrow, skinny, and tomboyish as they were. And I'm quite certain she felt the same way about me. Returning to Monica's body was like making a nostalgic visit back to the aunts and uncles who brought me up when my mother blew me off for not being a good enough fuck. They were of modest means; they never occupied mansions, but each room was filled with cherished memories of a boyhood characterized by sex fantasies and jerking off. Monica and I loved each other's bodies almost as much as we hated each other's minds. She hated couples counseling and my new-found concern for the sensibilities of our neighbors in the building, and I hated her stubborn refusal to realize that there were other things in the world besides fucking. Yet the two of us lived in the world. Some degree of control, of repression, was necessary even in the little society that was our relationship. Wasn't that, after all, what Freud was talking about in Civilisation and Its Discontents?