I now have a hypnotist in the room above me. I have imagined R. and myself doing all manner of filthy things in that room, now even my fantasies have been supplanted. No wonder they petered out to such a pathetic and banal end this morning. I think it's time I touched her. I also thought we had voted on keeping this house as 'talking cures' only and now we have this circus act with his straggle of smokers and obesitists clumping up the stairs beside me. Why did no-one tell me? I love nothing more than being out of the loop, but there are things I should be told.

It was with this half formed thought, one removed from actual feeling and doing battle with another half-formed thought concerning Lacan's method, that I returned to my room and found Gareth's little note:

'Boredom is anger spread thin'.

First thought: I'll bite his neck.

5 am. Couldn't sleep so I lay on the couch listening to Gorecki's Sorrowful Songs while the rolling news played out silently on the television. I tried to think of R. Masturbation seemed the only hope of puncutating these swathes of sleepless time so, with my flaccid dick in my hand I tried to imagine some companiable, domestic sex with R. There was a joyous, bouncy and entirely unerotic quality to these imaginings and forty minutes later I was still holding my limp and useless dick. It wasn't until I included some bumbling teenage romance as prelude to the pornography- a kiss on her neck, my nervous hand on her bra- that I became excited and then furiously whacked off the whole business in seconds. I was appalled.

Today will be ruinous.

I'm a fake.

Now don't get me wrong, I am . I really am. And while I may langourously admit the falsehood that permeates me to my bones, it is mitigated by the near certainty that you are one, too.

In all those of years of my own therapy and training, in fifteen years of being supervised and supervising, of facing the avoidance and denial of which I was constructed, I never once felt I had really smelt flesh. Of course I howled like a baby, lay curled in the corner of a north london drawing room, danced like a bear but for all that I never felt close to an imperative or essential sense of myself. Without being wholly aware of my duplicity, I was making all the right noises. And now at forty seven as I become more entrenched in the familiar defence mechanisms and resemble further the dreamy teenager I tried and failed to heal, I am aware that no fundamental change was, or is, possible. So what am I now, if not the happiest fake on earth? I tried, didn't I, yes I did. I tried.

And what is it, anyway, to be false? I sometimes wonder if it isn't the entire engine of existence. It may be that in sleep, as I dream, I am identical to myself. Yet it'll be the fake who steps out of the bed.

I know. I'll get R. into my weekly group sessions. Expose her to others then she'll come crying back to me.

I'll give her reduced rates.

Saturday.

Every other saturday I gain a glimpse of the problem. This impasse there's no way of breaking, this aporia of fucking hopelessness. I picked Thom up from his mother. We went for a swim and a tuna jacket potatoe. I was told to return him at five o'clock 'for his bath'. Why is she now so lazy in her cruelty to me? Thom is nine years old and can take his bath any time of the day or week he likes. But there is nothing, not a thing you can say to the mother of your own son when you only see him twice a month. Well, I'm dumbstruck, aren't I. What can I do but stand in her garden and stare? Even her gnomes were laughing.

Thom is nine. Yes, the mercy of the mother. My relationship with my son, the only person I've ever loved, is dependent on someone who loathes me. Every time I walk up that garden path I am happy to think myself a piece of nothing if it means more time with Thom.

Yet he loves me. He does.

Sometimes I yearn for him to become older, a teenager, for him to reject me and release us all from this lung of loathing.

I'm half pissed. I'm two bottles under and when I'm done I'll write what I came to write.

Client P. has been dreaming of submarines. Like most fat men he conveys an air of self pleasure and occasional wonder that there may exist things in this world that he cannot eat. And so when he confessed that he had been sexually abused as an eight year old (did he really think I didn't know? ), he did it with the same air of bemusement and I momentarily felt like telling a silly joke. But I have never seen a man sweat like he did today.

Later, I followed him. Having paid for a foul Cornish pastie I came across P. extracting a large wad of notes from a cash-point. Convinced that on the pain of his confession to me he was about to pay for some annihilating sex, I followed him down western road without a single other thought in my head until, at last, he freed us both by slipping into the pub.

She came.

I was running late, unwashed, pissed off. Irked by seeing Gareth. I share this therapy house with him and three other counsellors. He is the child. He smirks with news and gossip that, artfully, allows me to know that I am so beyond the pale he won't even bother imparting it to me. He is an unutterable shit but we forgive him everything. He is gay. Of course, I never know what he might know, or what I may have told him in my dreams so even passing him in the hall ruins my day.

And then R. came . She is feeling better. Today, anyway. And why? She has a new job. I felt mildly betrayed. Something to do with police cells and drugs and my mind wandered and only returned when, shifting deeper into her seat and opening her arms, she seemed to offer me her pale thin wrists and, sensing my renewed attention must have understood she had previously lost it. She withdrew from me, folded her arms and god knows what else she spoke of.

Gareth's probably right. Whatever it is, he's probably right.

Wednesday. It's always a good day, wednesday. It holds the sweet fear of knowing that I'll see R. on the thursday. Client R.
She's not obviously special. There's the flat brown hair, the somewhat long, even large face but it's the thin, pliable skin that faintly suggests, at thirty six, a weariness of using her overt vulnerability and points to a suggestion of wanting, even desiring a genuine chat. She wants to be honest with someone and as a mark of this she has cultivated a plainer style, so, as ever drawn to faint neglect, I warmed to her instantly. But I have, of course, honoured her apparent intentions. And while in the summer months I may have discerned her youthful breasts, I was never unaware she once practiced law. Yet here I am, thinking of her. Is she my nemesis? Is she, really? This faintly boring woman broken by the infidelities of a boring husband? What am I doing.

I know what'll happen.She'll demand her own complete abasement, defilement even, leaving me haggard with my own cruelty and then, without a blink, she'll take me to the cleaners. Someone'll have to pay for her pain.

Now let's be clear. In 12 years of practice I have never abused my position. Ever. In fact, I have 18 years of therapeutic work and a completely unblemished record. There.

I must walk the dog.

Why did I fill in that moronic profile?
Are those my favourite things?

I should not be doing this.
Was I ever so revealing?

I feel like a teenage girl.