“Bother me? No, but it made me sad. And it made it much easier to do what I could for him. I never took him inside me. But I saw him for months. Talking, soft touching, listening to him. I’d go to his hotel room every time he came to the city on business. He’d order whatever I wanted from room service and then we’d get into bed with the food. He liked me to feed him. And then he liked to feed me. And he liked me to massage him. Just lightly, you know, with oil. He was strong, worked out a lot, and I liked looking at him. All stretched out on the bed. He never closed his eyes, though. And we never shut off the light. I’d use the oil to loosen him up, and then I’d-”
She cut herself off. “I guess there’s no reason for me to go into all that, is there?”
“If you want to tell me about it, I want to hear about it,” I offered.
She’d pulled me in and lulled me with the cadences of her speech. If Cleo Thane wanted to become a sex therapist, she’d be very good at it. The only problem was that as much as I earned-$225 an hour-she made more than three times that.
“It hurts. This confusion. These conflicts…” Her lips trembled and she looked away.
“What scares you the most? What is the most confusing?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe it’s the book…” She hesitated. And then in a quieter voice said, “No. Not exactly the book. But it’s related to the book. It’s really the man I’m seeing.”
“Seeing? As in seeing a client?” I was surprised. In all the time she had been in therapy with me she had never mentioned that she was seriously dating anyone, and I’d been waiting for a revelation like this.
Six months may sound like a long time for a patient to hold back important aspects of her personal life, but opening up was not always a simple act. Cleo had been obfuscating since she started with me. It was my job to be patient and do the best I could and trust that she would tell me her secrets when she was ready.
She shook her head. “No. He’s not a client. He’s my fiancé. A lawyer. At a very prestigious white-glove law firm. I hired him a year ago to help me set up an offshore account for my company.” She let out a delightful peal of laughter. “How ironic is that? I hired him. After a while he asked me out. This love shit is worse than the guy who pulled the knife on me in bed when I first got into the business. Him I knew what to do with-I reached out and grabbed him by the balls. I squeezed so hard, his little baby fingers opened and the knife just dropped out. But this love stuff? I don’t know where to grab.”
When you are a therapist, you often become preoccupied with a patient’s body language and voice. Obsessed with those things, in fact. From an inappropriate smile you understand a conflict, from crossed arms you pick up on an unwillingness to open up, from closed eyes you detect a reluctance to face the truth. In listening to a client, you hear not just the words, but the subtleties of inflections, pauses and rhythms of the voice. You sometimes hear words that almost come out but are aborted, the sighs, the hints of tears. For me, voices are a rich source of information, especially when a patient is lying down on the couch and I can’t see his or her face.
But Cleo was sitting up and facing me. She had been clear from the first: she didn’t want to lie down on my couch. That, she said, would make her feel too much as though she was working.
“What is so confusing about the love stuff, as you call it?” I asked.
“I never believed in romantic love. I once read that it’s something that was invented in the twelfth century. And up till now every experience I’ve had was just more proof. This has never happened to me before. And I’m not sure I’m cut out for it.” A faraway look in her eyes suggested just the opposite.
Doctors are not supposed to admit this, but we like some patients more than others. And I liked Cleo a lot. She was refreshing and honest. She was authentic. And that went far with me. But mostly it was because I-Morgan Snow, not the doctor part but the woman part-identified with her. It was partly the similarities in our professions and partly that I, also, had to work hard at not trying to please the people in my own life too much.
Identification with a patient is a healthy, normal part of therapy. In fact it helps us to get deeper insight into the men and women we are treating. But it is important to be aware of this identification so that we don’t lose our objectivity.
“Why don’t you think you can be in love, Cleo?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Isn’t it?”
“You are too clever.” She gave me a smile, along with the compliment.
This woman was seductive in the most delightful way. Her charm was like a song that made you happy and, just for a little while, while you were listening, enabled you to stop worrying about everything else.
And if I reacted to her that way-me, her therapist-then I could just imagine how the men she met reacted.
“You do ask good questions,” she said, trying to get me off the track.
I nodded. Waited. Knew she had more to say.
“The man I am in love with thinks I might be in danger.” A slight frown creased her forehead.
This was not what I had expected. “Why?”
Outside a cloud passed in front of the sun and the office was cast into shadow. Just for one second. But in that second, Cleo looked frightened. And even younger. And vulnerable.
How could this woman, who ran a successful twenty-firstcentury brothel, who teased and tortured and pleasured men to the tune of two thousand dollars a session, look so innocent and vulnerable?
“Cleo?”
“Yes?” She had been so deep in thought she couldn’t remember what I had asked her.
“You said that this man thinks that you might be in danger. Have you been threatened?”
“No. Nothing has happened, not yet. But he’s afraid of what will happen when word gets out about the book.”
“Has the deal been announced?”
She shook her head but didn’t say anything. The clock on my desk ticked, making a slight but distinct sound as each second passed. We were running out of time, but I didn’t want her to leave before she answered me.
“I really am in love,” she said.
“You say that as if you have to convince me of your feelings.”
“Maybe…maybe I have to convince myself.”
“Why?”
“Because how can I love someone but not be able to make love to him?”
“And you can’t?” This was an important revelation, and I watched her carefully as she composed herself and then answered.
She shook her head. Once. Twice. And then a third time. Finally she began to speak. “No. No matter how hard I try. I can’t do the simplest things with him. How can I feel the way I do about him and not be able to go down on him without gagging? He puts one hand on my breast and I freeze. He kisses me and I get sick to my stomach. You know, even though I’m getting paid to do it, I still like sex. Always have. It’s what I do. How can I not be able to do it with the one guy who really matters to me?”
Her tears caught in the reflection of the sun in her eyes. Cleo even cried in a lovely way: her eyes didn’t get red; she didn’t scrunch up her face. Her lips quivered and a small sob escaped from her lips. “I’m really confused.”
She had just told me more about herself in the past fifteen minutes than she had in all the days and weeks that she had been coming to see me. I nodded. “I know.”
“Do you think this is what I’m really here to talk to you about? Not how I want to please people. Not the book, but what is wrong between this man and me.” She shook her head vehemently. “Is that what happens in therapy? People come to you for one thing and find out something completely different is bothering them?”
“It might look like that, but everything is connected in some way. However, figuring that out isn’t your job right now. You should just feel free to tell me what’s on your mind. Whether it seems connected or not.”