by Marco Vassi
She did feel the speed at which she was moving, but it had none of the reassurance of a train barreling along its tracks. Rather it was like a runaway bus careening down the highway, swaying and lurching, the driver almost certainly drunk. She, she realized with a start, was the driver! All her life, especially her professional life, Lydia had been the soul of caution, never intruding, never even suggesting too strongly, but merely listening, accepting, acting as a feedback machine, doing little more for the patient than amplifying what she or he already felt. Now, it was as though she had gone berserk, chasing after a goal she could only dimly perceive, much less define. And as always in life, clarity was a function of distance. The closer she involved herself in her pursuit, the less detachment she could manage. She had no criterion for judging whether she might be right or wrong any longer.
The doorbell rang and she broke away from her moody contemplation on her life and from the hypnotic appeal of the massively depressing day.
It was Edmond Morrison, a man in his early forties, who had come to her several months earlier with a problem of impotence. For the previous twenty years he had lived a rather carefree bachelor life, getting his fair share of sex, usually through brief encounters but occasionally by an extended affair. He had never considered marriage. Until he had met Julie, a schoolteacher who had managed the rare trick of not letting him fuck her, while keeping his interest lively. They had dated for two months before she acceded to going to bed with him, by which time he had grown inordinately fond of her and come to know her in a dimensional way. They’d talked about their respective childhoods, met one another’s friends, shown photographs of their parents, and, in short, gone through the entire paraphernalia of middle class courtship. But when the moment came for him to take her in his arms, he found he couldn’t maintain an erection. They tried a dozen times, each one ending in failure, until, in desperation, she had buried her head in his crotch and tried to suck him into hardness. His response was extreme: he hurled her away and burst into a fit of anger, screaming that he couldn’t allow her to do such a nasty thing.
It was shortly after that that he’d gone to see Lydia. Her work with him had been unpromising. He was a handsome man, dark skinned, with black eyes and modishly styled pepper-and-salt hair. A successful electrical engineer, his clothes showed exceptional good taste and the investment of a good deal of money. But like all articulate and educated people, he tended to be very glib about himself, putting forth analytic explanations for his condition before he was able to contact his actual feelings. Lydia knew what he needed—it was necessary for the man to make a connection between his perceptions and his emotions—but she didn’t know how to accomplish that. Doctor Monroe had given his usual advice: “Heavy empathic feedback; reinforce even the smallest show of feeling. But under no circumstances attempt to draw him out, for that might precipitate an explosion for which you really might not want to take the consequences.”
She had been patient, non-directive, but even the most thorough relaxation and breathing explorations had produced nothing but tenuous cerebration. Today, with all the ambivalences of the past week plucking at her mind, Lydia decided to move forward. From one viewpoint, what she planned to do was not very drastic, for therapists all over the country were taking it upon themselves to re-program their patients, involving them in everything from muscle-tearing massage to immersion in pools of warm water. Lydia had nothing more drastic in mind than giving Edmond Morrison a small push, and not even from a very high place.
He seemed dejected as he entered, and removed his jacket and shoes, loosened his tie and belt, and lay down on the floor without saying a word. She let him relax for a few minutes and then asked, “Ed, how long have you been coming here?”
“A couple of months,” he replied.
“Do you feel these visits have done you any good?”
He shifted his eyes to look at her for a few seconds to see if there was a hidden trap in her question.
“Well,” he said, “I feel a little hopeful every time I arrive, and every time I leave. But otherwise, I don’t think I’m any closer to solving my problem than I had been before I started seeing you.”
“Good,” she said.
He looked at her with surprise.
“What I mean is, I’m glad you’re so clear about what’s been happening, because that’s my evaluation also. And quite frankly, I feel that we could go on as we have for years, or you might try other therapists, and still not see through the dynamics of your condition. Oh, you’d certainly be able to understand it conceptually, and I’m sure you could talk on it for hours even now. But to have that block inside split apart . . . that’s the issue.”
She let herself down to the floor until she was sitting next to him. “Today, I’d like to try a technique that some people call guided fantasy. And all that means is that instead of working with your body and waiting to see what sort of fantasy material is released, I’ll sort of help you along, give you little nudges.”
“Sounds harmless enough,” he said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Under ordinary circumstances, it would be, but there’s a very strange energy gathering around me these days, and bizarre things are taking place. This may sound a bit crazy, but I feel as though destiny has suddenly decided to use me as the agent for something spectacular.”
Her words created an odd tingle in his loins, one which mixed apprehension with eroticism. It was as though she were suggesting something disreputable, naughty. He glanced at her with appraising eyes, something he had never dared to do before, thinking it improper in their relationship. What he saw now impressed him. She no longer wore the rather shapeless dress which had been her trademark, but a pair of form-fitting hip huggers that clasped her round thighs and even emphasized the slight bulge of her pubic mound. A sleeveless blouse revealed a slim torso which supported smallish but very firm breasts and—he now noted with wonder—the nipples of which poked clearly out into the thin fabric. It astonished him that he had not noticed all this as soon as he walked into the room.
“You’ve changed,” he said, somewhat lamely.
“Yes,” she told him. “And so has your inability to see me in certain ways.”
“What ways?”
“With desire, for example.”
Lydia was startled to hear her words. What she said couldn’t be considered anything less than a straightforward erotic ploy.
“Why am I doing this?” she wondered. “Do I feel any desire to get it on with this man, or am I just being reckless?” It was astounding how quickly she was leaping levels.
Edmond looked intently at her face as it melted before his eyes. First the sharp-edged mask which was his conditioned perception of the therapist. Then the young and sensuous woman beneath that. Then the wise lady who could guide him into himself. Deeper still, he saw the teenage Lydia, with her pimples and plans. And then, the almost terrifying features of an utter stranger, someone, he realized with a start, he did not know at all.
“Close your eyes,” she told him.
His lids flickered and lowered. At once, his breathing became deeper.
“Now, try to let all your tension flow into the floor. In this position, gravity becomes a friend instead of an enemy. You don’t have to use a single muscle to support yourself. In fact, you can let your muscles be massaged by the pull of the earth. Sink into it, sink into the arms of Mother Earth.”
She spoke slowly, evenly, her voice low. She was like a woman lulling an infant to sleep, and also a snake charmer, weaving a web of music around the head of a cobra, dancing with her flute, mesmerizing the serpent with sound and movement until it responded to the slightest flicker of the master’s eyes.
“In this approach,” she went on, “the key word is surrender. You are to give up all your tension, all your resistance. Melt into the floor, and melt into yourself. Pretend that the floor is quicksand, and that you are
being sucked down, pulled into the wet enveloping darkness. Go into a space where there is no time, no differentiation, but only an all-encompassing forgetfulness, a loss of every sensation except your breath, an end to all experience except emptiness.”
She watched him closely. His breathing had become deep, regular. His face had lost all its wrinkles. He began to look very, very young. This was the condition of pure receptivity, and now she faced the most difficult part. It was now that she would try to suggest something to him to begin his fantasy machinery, to start the journey into his psyche to find out where he might be blocked. It would be a voyage into the dark for, while she might foresee some of the general responses possible, she had no way of knowing what his specific reaction would be.
In the past, at this point, she would have given him a neutral image, such as standing on a beach or walking through a woods. Now, however, she gazed at him a long time, trying to get some vague glimmering of proper direction. Then, all at once, she smiled. She had seen it.
“Can you see yourself as a Viking?” she asked.
He was quiet a long time, and seemed to be struggling with something. A small frown formed on his forehead. And after several minutes he reported, “I can see it. I have on a silver breastplate and helmet, a shield, and a huge sword.”
“Fine. Where are you?”
“I’m stepping off a boat. I’m with a small raiding party. We’re going to attack a small village.”
“Good,” she said. “What happens next?”
The process was beginning to get exciting. She felt like a potter at her wheel, except that instead of clay she was using the psychic energy of another human being to create shapes. There was something godlike about it, and small warning bells went off in her mind, trying to warn her to be careful. But the pull forward was too strong, too compelling.
Ed began to shift about on the floor. She noted that his breathing was getting more rapid, more shallow. His face had regained most of its tension.
“I’m rushing into a hut. There’s a woman there. She’s nursing a baby. She’s young, perhaps only twenty, and wearing just a skirt. Her breasts are round and gleaming and filled with milk. I . . . “
He broke off, his body stiff with resistance, unwilling to continue.
“Go on,” Lydia urged. “Follow the fantasy.”
“She looks up at me,” he continued. “Her eyes go wide with fear. She tries to shield the baby and to cover her breasts. The nipples are still dripping. She tries to move away from me. She seems more naked to me than any woman I have ever seen. I have burst into the very core of her intimacy. And now my cock is rock hard, stiff, hungry.”
“What do you do?”
“I step forward. I’m laughing. I pull the baby from her arms and . . .”
Now he froze into a grotesque contortion, his fists clenched, his jaw locked, his spine rigid. Every muscle in his body was under intolerable strain.
“NOOOOOOOOO!”
Like a dam bursting, the tension exploded and he let out a loud booming scream, a sound that shook his entire frame. He began to roll about on the floor, his fists pounding the rug.
“Keep going,” Lydia whispered, but even as she said it she wondered, “Good God, I hope I’m not pushing him into some realization about himself that will damage his psyche.”
“I . . . I . . . throw the baby against the wall,” he continued, gasping. “I throw it hard and ruthlessly, not caring whether I kill it or not. The mother tries to go to it, but I strike her with my sword. I cut her arm deeply, and suddenly there is blood everywhere. The sight enflames me. I grow wild with lust. I fling myself upon her. I suck her tits, drawing the hot milk into my throat. She struggles against me, and then, magically, my cock is out. I yank her skirt away. I am still sucking her breasts, drinking the delicious honey of her body, and at the same time pushing my cock into her, probing her belly, slipping between her thighs, and finally finding the hole. She is wet! I can’t believe that she is aroused. Her baby is dead and her arm is half cut off and a savage is gnawing at her nipples, and yet she responds. She groans when I enter her. Her face is a mask of hatred and still there is desire in her eyes. Her movement is as much into me as against me. I feel her slick cunt walls pulling at my cock, her ass pumping, and then I am coming, shooting into her. Suddenly, everything becomes everything else. Her milk squirting into my mouth is my sperm spurting into her cunt and both are the blood that is covering our bodies with wet heat. And I am putting the seed of a new baby into her to replace the baby I have killed. Her face keeps changing. I see the face of every woman I have ever fucked, the face of Julie, and now it becomes the face of my mo . . . my moth . . . my . . . no . . . not her . . . not my mo . . . “
Ed sat bolt upright, his face covered with sweat. His body was trembling, his hands clenching and unclenching, and his eyes were pried wide open as though he had just looked upon a definitive terror.
“Ed,” Lydia said softly.
He put his hands over his face, and to their great surprise, started to sob, great heaving gasps that seemed to burst from his heart. He cried like a little boy, without reservation, without shame, without embarrassment, letting a lifetime of buried feeling well to the surface.
Lydia watched the child emerge through the consciousness of the man, and a deep warmth suffused her chest. She had done it! She had forced him to make the connection.
When the crying stopped, and he took his hands away, his eyes were pools of amazement.
“Was that me?” he whispered. “All that violence and horror and pain and brutality. Can that really be what’s inside me?”
Lydia ran a hand through her hair, sighed deeply, and began to explain to him what had happened. She knew that her interpretation would be off the cuff, but thought that that’s what she should give him, without any theoretical shenanigans.
“All of that . . . ugliness,” she said, “is what lies between your surface personality and your true nature, which is one of simple affection. All of the years you spent fucking women were a function of the superficial self. That’s why you were such a successful cocksman, because you had everything in control. But when you met Julie, she touched something deeper in you. And when you started to respond at that level, you had to go through all your negative feelings. And you became frightened of facing them, so you shut yourself off. And since we can’t cut off one part of ourselves without that affecting all the other parts, the erotic impulse was also corralled, and thus your impotence.”
“But I can’t believe all that is inside me,” he said, reaching for a cigarette. He lit it and smoked for a few seconds. “I know I’m not a bad person.”
Lydia realized that he hadn’t understood what she had told him. So she tried again, from a different angle. “We all have that inside us,” she said. “It’s the disease of our civilization. We see its results either when we act it out, and become murderers or rapists or just generally hateful people, or when we suppress it and pretend it isn’t there, at which point we become dull and empty and lifeless.”
“But then what can we do with it?” he asked, finally seeing the point.
“Just feel it,” she told him. “Go into it and touch it and don’t be afraid. Then your feelings, your deeper feelings, will be released, first the tears, and then the joy, and finally the simple peacefulness that lies at the heart of everything.”
She paused for a few moments and then went on. “The structure of your fantasy is incredibly clear. The baby at the woman’s breast was you, the old you, and you had to kill that baby in order to make a new one. Cutting her was destroying the false image you have of women in order to avoid facing the fact that you have been defending against seeing your mother in them. When your mother’s face did emerge at last, you fell apart. But by then you had already planted a new seed in her belly, thus fathering your new self. And what you found most astonishing is that even though you we
re being murderous and brutal the woman still desired you, which expresses your feelings of being unworthy as a child for all the erotic desires you had for your mother and couldn’t communicate. And then to learn that she reciprocates those feelings, why that is truly traumatic.”
Ed shook his head. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It is simple, once it’s understood. But even as dramatic as today’s session was, it’s going to take time until you can weep freely, and then integrate those feelings into your total self. And even more time before you are operating completely out of your core, and able to love Julie and give her a baby and fuck her like you wanted to fuck your mother, all at once.”
Lydia lit a cigarette for herself, blew smoke, and thought for a while. “You know,” she said finally, “I’m beginning to see that once we free our fantasies, they will take us anywhere we want to go. But not just in our heads. They will tell us what we need to know to live well, like fairy tales or parables. And they can change our emotions, and our perception of reality, and even the nature of reality itself. It’s strange and wondrous and magical, and the whole process excites me and disturbs me terribly.”
They were silent for a long time and then Ed cleared his throat.
“I have something very embarrassing to say,” he told her.
“What better place or time?” Lydia said.
“I’m very aroused.”
For a second she didn’t grasp his meaning, and then she glanced down and saw the erection tenting his pants.
“It feels like it will stay hard forever,” he remarked. “What do I do with that?”
“Call Julie, I would say,” she replied, but even as she spoke she knew that that wasn’t what either of them had in mind. She had to admit to herself that her arousal paralleled his. She hadn’t paid any attention to her state because she had been swept up in maintaining her therapeutic distance, and lost in trying to think through the meaning of his fantasy. Yet now, she could feel the unmistakable moisture dampening her inner thighs, the telltale wrinkling of her nipples through the fabric of her blouse. Suddenly, the whole structure of their situation fell away, and she was a woman, coming into heat, and he was a man who seemed ready to tear all their clothing off.