On impulse, I rang George.

I sensed that rejecting his supper last night would incline him toward my agenda, and so it went. We shall drink tomorrow night and my dastardly plan is to drag him into my own wanton and regressive behaviour, though he knows nothing, as yet. But of course, it was only on finishing the call that I fully understood this. Of late, I find myself in a rare state of unknowing toward myself, as if doing things to find out the reason I have done them. Was I ever so adolescent, even as an adolescent?

On sensing the affair within the Tuesday Group, I put out word seeking new members and this morning, partook of my first assessment. I was rather disappointed to find myself with another
furious lesbian but, as the interview closed, found myself even more disappointed in my failure to remember the Andre Masson print in my hallway. Titled Lesbos, it shows faceless women lolling all over each other and the emotional tone of my candidate reminded me of this blurring feminine. So as she talked from the throat of this abuse, that abuse, as if I held the sword of Damocles itself, I began to consider lesbianism as an act of theft. I began to wonder if I had ever worked with a lesbian who was the queen of her own feelings, rather than the pilferer or forger of another, far more beautiful woman, mother, sister, aunty. However, rather than pursue this
scandalous thought any further, I simply bid adieu.

Client R.

What can it do, charging you every penny for your absence, what can it do but bring us closer?

Oh, George.

Let us go play, play nicely.

He says he is famous.

My first session with a pop singer who, while resembling a salesman of things plastic, assures me he is very famous and, such the vanity, chooses to think my ignorance of him a therapeutic ploy. We may have spoken of other things but I sensed he was playing this game with me the whole session long and so profoundly has fame regressed him, I felt our only hope was the return of Michael, the hypnotist, to bring this balefully boring man out of his trance. He had filled the room with mirrors and, for a moment, even I succumbed and imagined myself Jacques Lacan and, in imitation of that bastard, considered slamming the door on this wanker fifteen minutes early.

And the day never recovered.

With Helen off for the week, I left early and walked home with nothing in my mind except Boucher's Hercules, his hand fiercely clutching the breast of Omphale. George invited me round for supper, but with nerves frayed and feeling mildly geriatric, I declined.

The Tuesday Group.

On entering the room I discerned a snigger on the face of (married) P. Last week he slipped his confession of congress with L. under the wave of B.'s outburst. And so he sat there, justified in his brown cords, his billowing white shirt, as if the understanding of the group amounted to the approval of his wife. I had the momentary desire to make a personal call on her myself. Instead, I decided to break the bastard.

I took my time. I sensed that P.'s desire for L. was also a resentment towards me, a plain and simple act of oedipal theft and so, the conversation veering toward mothers, I went for the jugular. What is it about L. that you are drawn to?

He wanted to help her.

To save her, perchance? As when a child sneaking into his mother's bed was a way of saving her? The squirming runt then chortled a few words up toward the ceiling, exposing his throat. And he wanted to help her. I was reminded of a paedophile telling me the same thing a few years ago and as P. slowly began to blush, savouring his introjected delight, I turned to the rather elegant L. How did she feel about P.? And in the asking of the question, the affair was ended. As I closed the door on the crummy lot, yearning for some Wagner to clear the air, I found myself with the opposite impulse, scanning the shelves for my de Sade.

To London.

Clearing my throat and finding my deepest voice, I introduced the archetypes. As I explained the meaning our inner dragons, heroes and maidens I was aware that three of the men in the group were barely listening. I quickly understood that yesterday they had all been working with the group lesbian and she had obviously annihilated the feelings of all three. I felt some amusement and pity at these sensitive flowers so completely trampled by the lesbian and then rose a modicum of anger. I imagined taking an axe and surgically removing all the rage from her bloated and smothering plexus. As for the men, I'd have given them a whole days work on the art of telling people to fuck off. And, of course, on mothers.

We moved on to the most shattering part of the day. I suspected the lesbian would get a few projections of dragon thrown her way and the three men, hurrah, released their anger in doing so. I usually get a few pitched my way, often as hero. While this is mildly flattering and allows me to confirm the women I have seduced, I actually prefer to be considered dragon. However, for the first time in memory I was today considered a maiden. A rather plump and delicate lady in her fifties, always inclining forward to show me her breasts as she spoke, decided to make a play with me as her fucking maiden. I was devestated. If she had said dragon or hero I may have considered a gentle blow job in the toilets, but in asking her precisely what she wished to save me from, she shrivelled. The last time I experienced maternal pity I had paid for the pleasure and long may that continue.

To London.

And so I banged the drum and led my gang into their first ritual. I led them out into the garden and one by one they threw the past into the fire. And as they named themselves and their good riddance I watched the birds fidgeting in the trees, as if disturbed at our solemnity. After, I gave the group an hour of silence. This is always the best of times. As they hovered between their imagined pasts and their unlikely futures, I roamed among them like a god, savouring their liminality and horny as a goat.

To London.

As the train pulled in, I checked for my inner child. Confirming my general fuckup, all I summoned was the image of Thom, aged five. Probably guilt. (I really must check whether he saw me buy the O that day on Devil's Dyke). Myself notwithstanding, I managed to guide my twenty students into their own imago and, as chief midwife to the birth of fifteen inner kids, it was deeply moving. Of course, two were stillborn and three, apparently, were already in the room. I challenged all three ego's on this and, one by one, gently asphyxiated their children. It was a cracking success.

All week I've had folk on their knees.

Break down, exposure, supplication. I've responded with cruelty, indifference, penetration. And in each case I'm certain my response was more beneficent than empathy and insight. (I would like to remind you, dear reader, that while I may be lascivious night and day, in eighteen years of therapeutic work I have never touched a client, neither in lust nor decorum). And so as I took my lunch on a park bench, the squeals of youth in their retarded clothing, the muggy air and the scotch egg I couldn't swallow- the whole day had a general air of flatulence about it - I took to wondering that while I have a certain influence on the lives of a few individuals, I didn't have enough actual power in life. I may exert a not inconsiderable power over life, but not within it. In the working world, I was a vagrant.

I threw the rest of the egg in the bin and, pushing aside a fleeting desire to collect butterflies, returned to my room. Within minutes R. arrived and as she folded her legs away from me I was aware of bringing a certain mischief into the room. The unexplored grief over her dead mother had sat for years, heavy as a bolus in her belly, and while it may have advanced her legal career, it made for little intimacy. Her avoidance took many forms and one of these was to throw questions at me. This time I let them fall, one by one, like little pins at my feet. This went on for twenty minutes but the silence broke her. She howled for her mother, sixteen years dead, she howled like an animal. The grief had yanked itself out. Her back was arched and juddering like god was trampling on her.

It was soon over. She sat there, slumped in the chair. All desire had gone from the room. I momentarily felt like a murderer. She seemed to grow pale and cold. Certainly, it was a death. I let her rest.

Where's the hypnotist?

Noone's seen Michael for days, says Gareth. Over the past week I've delighted in the cruel singsong of Gareth's courtesy toward me but today, the errant hypnotist's behaviour means Gareth and I are suddenly brothers. But as we stand in the kitchen, laughing away at the terrible or trivial things that may have happened, I am filled with a gloom and a sudden, desperate need for my son.

There was no answer. I pictured Thom shopping with his mother. I saw him senseless with boredom as she hauls him from one centre of procurement to another until, finally, I realised that was my childhood, not his.

Luckily, the Erotic Print Society had sent me a postcard of Scalbert's The Bathers, and as I stared at the standing nude, I wondered if her lithe and trim, almost twentieth century figure, resembled in any way the body of Helen, two doors away. I had a very real urge to burst into her room and clutch her arse. I'm still unsure if it was the urge, or the suppression of, that convinced me I was unravelling.

The London course starts in two days.

I've done no reading, no preparation. And I'm libidinally erratic. Entirely diffuse.

They were on their knees.

After a week of trying and failing to read the prose of the mindless psychosynthesists, I was aching for a decent shit and had taken to smearing manuka honey on my toast each morning and hoping that, if accompanied by a slow Chopin Nocturne, it would ease the flow. And so as I sat on the can with, thank Christ, my own smell rising, I took to wondering how I'd break those bastards in the Tuesday group.

Well I did and they were on their knees. I reminded them of the group agreement and the rule whereby any interaction by members outside the group had to be talked of within the group and, furthermore, we will sit here in silence until that rule is respected. And watching them twitch and sweat for ten minutes was nothing less than lovely.

However, as I glanced up and down my shelves wondering which 19th Century Russian to read next, I sensed B.'s agitation and felt the silence would be broken not by the confession of congress between L. and (married P.), but by something deep within the mulch of B.'s soul. Her leg had become spasmodic and was now rhythmic. It was now gearing up to act out, or flash back, and I desperately wanted none of either.

I was abused!

I was abused and you don't believe me!

Oh, we do, we do.

She was buckled over, head in hands, squealing away. And in the release that B. had provided for the group, in the pity and the tissues, P admitted his infidelity with L. and everyone else felt that wasn't really the point at the moment, and P. was inclined to agree. And so it passed, the wounded matriarch lay upon the floor, the patriarch restored.

Later, I lit a quarter pipe and went to bed.

I tried to re-read Robert Bly's Iron John.

Now this is a book, I said to myself, that is full of immense good. I drifted.

I drifted off, realising that is precisely what makes it so unreadable.

I wouldn't say lying is second nature to me.

It's my first, my only nature.

So if anything arises from these shenanigans with Gareth and Helen it's that I haven't told or even considered telling, a decent lie to explain my recent misanthropy. In the current climate I'd very likely barter a diagnosis of 'depression' but my mood is always light, my faculties grossly intact, and yet rather than devise my own I appear to have settled for Helen's saving lie. All of which points toward no place but her breast.

I rang my father.

In forty years of chatting with my dad, we've never risen from the first circle of hell. The air between every word we ever speak is heavy with dead meat. Of course, in my twenties I did enough training and transpersonal work to imagine myself over it, and him. And yet, as I call him now and find, each day, my own politics silently morphing with his, I find myself returning to nothing else but love. I told him about my fleas.

You have to break the life-cycle.

You what, dad? What do you mean?

What do you mean, dad?

Helen says Yes.

On Friday afternoon, imagining sex in Helen's room as a grope of large hands and difficult clothes, a scene originating from the delicious Grosz print on my bathroom wall, I knew I was trying to elevate the encounter for, most likely, far from resembling anything from the Master's weimar period, it would very probably end in nothing more than a tense and ridiculous snog.

However, I had not reckoned on Helen making her own calculations so when she said 'yes', I took it to mean that Gareth was two floors below us, Neil'd gone to yoga, the hypnotist had yet to build a client list and so, indeed, fuck, whatever.

I felt uneasy at the control Helen seemed to have taken over the situation and, worsened by the momentary sense memory of my younger self who was forever surprised at the ferocity of female desire, I plunged a hand in my pocket, squeezed the life from my penis, and walked over to her window.

Did we say four o'clock?

There was nothing new. The road below, the bridge. The nineteenth century slums and shithouses now considered priceless. However, the matronly tone in her voice had reminded me of my own role and so, assuming the passive, arrogant and annihilating spectre that served me so well on Wednesday, I turned and smiled, as if shy. Although Helen would allow herself to be seduced by passivity, I also suspected she required a severe duality in her lovers and that, within minutes, she would expect me to take full control.

While considering this discrepancy in her sexual and social selves, wondering if it were part of her difficulties in finding an equitable partner, I slid my hand under her bra. I continued my silent questioning of her until, with a gush, she pulled me down and away from her nipple. I was surprised at the severity of this resistance to the maternal erotic and not a little angry that her selfishness had betrayed itself so quickly.

I began to wonder if Helen and I would ever do this again until, instinctively, I smacked her arse and, as she blushed, I sensed we would. It was a cue that released me from my timorous pose and so, no longer expecting her to touch me, or my penis, I simply swivelled round, parted the tip of her labia, and entered from behind.

I have considered long and hard the mechanics of the intercourse that ensued but what strikes me now and is fondly remembered is the way, when were done, Helen pulled her shirt towards her, leaving for a long while one breast covered, the other exposed, and in this way we formed an understanding that I could leave her now, neither approved nor disapproved.

I woke to nothing.

No feeling in belly or balls. And while this happens every morning, the weight of myself carried on into breakfast so, trying to offset it with some Bartok folk dances, I took to considering again the reality of my desire for Helen. And perhaps it was, after all, as fake as my original intention. I left for work feeling heavy, unclean, incestuous toward myself and yet knowing, in every duplicitous cell of my body, that only a sexual resolution would provide clarity.

Again, the kitchen. She was wearing a pale thin skirt. Seeing her legs and sensing the skirt was a considered choice, I assumed the kettle and the cups with a confidence that if she spoke first we'd get straight to the point, and to her vulnerability.

I think you're ill.

She said this without meeting my eyes and so I knew then, for certain, we could be fucking by tea-time if we wanted. And yet, at this moment, her statement still required a response but I knew better than to invite any further comment on my illness for while it served as cover for our sexual plans, in all likelihood Helen probably does think I am mentally ill. Finally, tipping a little milk into her mug and far more concerned with maintaining our cover than her professional opinion of me, I arranged to see her at four.

In the kitchen, stirring my coffee slowly, waiting for news.

Finally, Neil.

I'm sorry to hear you're ill, he said. He reached for one of his cleansing teas and something in the rare clarity of his gesture said that he, Neil, would never get ill and, furthermore, illness and disease were very likely moral issues. I was over the moon. I summoned a gravelly voice, said a mournful thank you, and left. To add to my joy, Helen was off sick.

Helen had saved me, but couldn't face me. Or herself, perhaps.

In order to dispel a sudden, unbidden plan to cancel my clients and continue my seduction of Helen at her home and onto her sick bed, I threw open the window and lit a fat cigar. The gratitude, the pity, the sickness. I actually wanted her. Helen. Of course, in feigning desire I may have created a real desire. Or was it, perhaps, that a real desire for her only began when knowing of her desire for me and so, as I tapped ash onto an awning below, I considered if this were a case of desiring the desire of the other. I am always susceptible to this view, implying as it does the theatrics of want.

Client R.

A good session.

Aside from one or two hazy moments trying to gauge her level of nipple arousal and from there to considering the question of who was a surrogate for whom, it was a reflective and meaningful piece of work. I can be good when I give a toss.

Gareth must be sulking.

Helen had summoned me to the five o'clock meeting with her menopausal note and quite clearly she, along with Gareth and Neil, were waiting to vote me out of the house for the wholly justified reason of smoking illegal substances on the premises. They'll probably assume it's cannabis and I could conceivably bring an arthritic knee to the table, but the danger was not losing my room but rather the tiresome chimera of my reputation, for the truth is that between them Helen and Gareth know every person in this town.

I had nothing to gain from attending my five o'clock execution and while knowing I had to do something, I was unable to summon more than a mild irritation but along with that came a curious itch of sexual desire for Helen. I also knew that while she was the prime mover in this plot, she was also it's weakest link. Helen? I would have to be vague, difficult, unswervingly arrogant. I'd have no masculine or even physical presence. I would be the mother she lost. I'd completely avoid the subject. I'd be absolutely devastating. Helen?

I let myself into her room. I sat on her floor.

Long pause.

(She huffed and puffed)

Long pause.

Can you hear...? Someone's playing Chopin.

(Huffed and puffed)

At last, no, she couldn't hear any music.

I went to the window.

I don't know if I've ever done anyone any good...

Silence

Is there ever a time to...explain

I knelt beside her, took her arm. And swifter than even I expected, she tremoured, retreating into her body and so, with a languorous, almost abusive confidence, I stroked her arm, then her wrist. I kissed her hand and at this, the formal and perhaps distancing gesture, she exhaled, rendering her desire and inviting mine. I kissed her neck, licked her wrist, her lips and then, knowing the momentum was mine, broke it.

Standing up slowly,

I mouthed the word 'yes'.

Left the room.

Locked in my room, I watched from the window as everyone left the house at the normal time. The meeting had been cancelled. Knowing I won't know til tomorrow the full meaning of any of this, I took a bottle of brandy round to George and we sat in silence around the Rowlandson, studying the flayed lips of desperate men and one, abundant woman, generalising a desire that had not quite departed.

Combing fleas from the dog.

Aside from being the most gratifying experience of the day, it allowed me to postpone my preparatory reading for the course in London and, in particular, enabled me to avoid Assagioli's Psychosynthesis, whose interminable positivity has actually constipated me since Sunday.

The Tuesday group. In low moments I sometimes entertain the dull idea that in running this therapy group I have at last found a group of people that cannot exclude me, but then I prefer to fantasise scenarios in which they do. And as I sat there, glancing at my own bookshelves, it slowly dawned on me that my deepest wish was coming to pass. Six months ago, when the group began, I had noted the sexual attraction between L. and (married) P. and I've assiduously monitored it ever since. Today, yearning to pull some Dante from the shelves, I began to feel the altered dynamic. They were gently avoiding each other and yet, while the idea of their consummation was bothering me, I was more disturbed by the collusion of B. Perhaps sensing a new maternal role for herself, B. was politely covering for the libidinous couple. In fact, she was doing it with such a confident, distasteful relish that I wondered if the group, in moving from my quiet, but firm patriarchy to this slovenly matriarch, had willed the entire romance. It's a shambles.

Later, having done the dog and feeling morally fortified at somone else's scandal, I was aware that at least I had something substantial to divert Buckley with at my next supervision. However, I still feel vaguely voyeristic and detached from today's debauchery and the desire to discipline them, or throw B. out the window, has not yet arisen.

Gareth and I walked up the garden path.

If not for being so absorbed in suicidal consideration of Thom's discretion on my behalf the day before, I could easily have slowed my pace and avoided this encounter with Gareth. I gestured for him to enter but as he did so, clutching a rather twee canvas bag, he turned and with an aggressively effeminate hand on his hip said, 'You're not going to Edinburgh at all, are you?' I slowly wiped my feet on the mat. What a tiresome and literal man. But happily, when at last I lifted my eyes to meet his, he'd gone.

The hand on the hip, his insane elbow. Gareth's anger was an exhibition of an ancient maternal force and as I entered my room, sniffing, I began to wonder if I wasn't starting to resemble his errant father. And so, settling in my chair and deciding I was more than happy with his teenage projection, I checked my client list.

A little note from Helen. The handwriting is hard and pointy, almost etched into the paper, there are no longer any soft contours to her letters. It wouldn't take a graphologist to see that Helen is plainly menopausal. And yet, wasn't I always resistant to her slightly matronly air? At our first meeting this resistance took the form of my utter certainty that Helen was a woman who would never enjoy fellatio, only ever administer it. Undoubtedly, this visual has impaired our working relationship ever since.

Will I be going to the meeting on wednesday?

Oh, Helen.

You're stitching me up.

So we drove to Devil's Dyke.

This was neither my choice nor Thom's but, the supply of O running short, I had phoned my dealer, K, and found myself acquiescing to his peculiar desire to rendezvous in ever more picaresque surrounds, even though we know precisely where the other lives. In case Thom got suspicious, I had thrown a kite into the back of the car.

Seeing K. with a pair of binoculars, I left Thom in the queue for an ice-cream and, handing over enough money to buy a small car, took the O and merrily waved it around with sufficient abandon for no one to notice. But K, as ever, wanted a chat. I have a book for you, he said.
Seeing the title, Mallarme and Circumstance, I was quickly reminded that twenty years earlier a promising academic career awaited him on delivery of a dissertation K. only ever finished in the delicacy of his own mind. As I remember it concerned numinosity and negation in the turn of the century Symbolists', the silences of whom morphed into K.'s own. With Thom waiting, I went straight for his jugular. Had he read it? No, why not? Was this an emblem of all his lost hopes being palmed off onto me, grateful, as I was.

No, I just thought you might like it.

I was in no mood for his passivity but our long acquaintance, and my continued supply of O, required the proper response. But I simply didn't have it and so, unwilling to absorb the wounds we'd suddenly slashed open, I just nodded and walked swiftly back to my son who seemed, at that moment, to be very slowly handing over his own money.

I cancelled Thom.

Ignoring the hurricane of his mother in the background (albeit suddenly picturing the dionysiac excess of her sexual freedom), we re-scheduled for sunday. I felt instantly guilty and, as I reached for my toast, was reminded of Deleuze's comment on masochism as the attempt to resolve guilt by reactivating the Oedipus complex. I realized I had cancelled Thom in order to confirm for myself these amorphous feelings of guilt and while I have often considered guilt an adolescent, almost working-class emotion, nevertheless I spent the next two hours in various tawdry shops, searching for rap music for my son. Plainly, I prefer parental guilt. Hauling myself from this nadir, I took myself to Brown's and ordered a bottle of the house white.

She made me tea.

As a last gesture, laden with insufferable pity and disdain, Helen makes me tea. So careful not to brook any actual questions about my chair at Glasgow university (in case I change my mind), she enquires gently about the smell in my room. It's been a week since the quarter pipe so, not unduly concerned but feigning astonishment, I'm soon on all fours searching for those pesky mice. Meanwhile Neil, sipping his own tea, is fairly confident it's not smelly mice at all. I take a deep breath, weighing the anger, choosing to ignore it and him. And this is not difficult for in the annihilating presence of Helen, Neil is of no consequence. He was very likely a disappointment to his mother and, preferring to maintain that role, will probably be deeply gratified for any confirmation going. This is an occasional shame for, when alone, he can be a humourous and ironic Gestaltist. The end result of this mid morning escapade was that I now have three fictions to maintain, that of my imminent departure to Glasgow, the run of mice in my room and, of course, the ongoing pretence that I actually believe in therapy.

Later, George called.

Would I care to see the Rowlandson oil (1821) he has just purchased?

(A woman masturbating on a platform before a circle of gawping men).

I nearly cried in gratitude.

She didn't say, I didn't ask.

Twenty minutes before R.'s arrival, in a frantic and somewhat desperate attempt to understand my regression at the weekend, I found myself listening to Stockhausen's exquisite sextet Stimmung, while furiously reading Deleuze's introduction to Sacher Masoch and it was in this ridiculous state, twenty minutes later, that the delightful R. opened the door and smiled down upon me. And so it began. I was caught in her gaze and slowly, dutifully, savoured myself as her object. Moving gently, a soothing and halting tone, almost feigning a stutter, I quickly sensed her empowerment would pay dividends. So I gently maintained her in her role, me in mine, and within minutes she was talking about sex.

The tapestry of R.'s fantasises is neither broad nor very deep and, in fact, fairly tiresome. She dreams of rough fucks with lonely men, usually on hard floors or against cold walls. She is fully aware these men are those she will meet in the prison cells when she starts her new career, a week hence. And she is also aware these fantasises may be a way of gaining purchase on a job she is nervous of starting and yet what captivated me was the absolute certainty that she was making it all up. In our therapeutic past, I have savoured her acts of transference far too much to bother healing them but never has she rehearsed and lied so fabulously. Yet, while it was neither intimate nor seductive, the message was in the room ready for a later, quieter time and towards the end I was rather tired and craving a return to the lunacy of my Stockhausen.

Helen and Neil popped by.

They will think of me in Glasgow.

The fleas are falling.

I don't know how I'd have coped without the O.

I woke early and spent an hour in bed wondering if the itch on my ankle was psychosomatic and deciding that if I could resist scratching my leg to the hollow bone, then the fate of my life might be wholly other.

I toyed with my good news. It seems that a minor school of integrative psychosynthesis is running a seven day course in London. The locally known Mark Van Gogh has cried off and they've asked me to replace him. It's all shadow/soul work. While I find the Jungian individuation process bracingly metaphorical, the imagery is dull and embarrassingly adolescent and yet, lying in bed nearly comatose with ego dystonia, I warmed to the idea of working with the primal, even if it is only the howling of youthful cosmopolita.

The offer was plainly the return of a favour but it took me a long while to trace and it was only when I understood it went back three years to the alibi I provided for the entirely disreputable anon (and that anon is the second favour I have done him), that I finally lunged for my legs and scratched like a cat.

The tuesday group. Minimal work for maximum profit. Particularly on a day like today when each plays their part. It feels like conducting an orchestra through a soothing but never ending coda, such is the ease in anticipating what everyone will say. The only time I need sharpen my awareness is when I hear a discordant note. They do all the rest. After all, such is the evolution of the species we are all mentalists now and it was with this quietly depressing thought that I ascended the stairs and met Michael, the hypnotist. My first instinct, perhaps it was the surprise or perhaps also his innocent chubbiness but my first instinct was, in fact, distinctly murderous. I quickly warmed to him. The hypnotist congratulated me on my appointment to Glasgow University (how typical of Gareth) and I, in turn, welcomed him to our House of Correction. He laughed without guile but had no desire to linger. I suspect he has already fallen into the bosom of the house.

I called the council and the department of Pest Control arrived this morning. He drove a plain white van, obviously at pains to draw no attention to my shameful infestation. His van was even packed with plasterers gear for his covert operation. I found all this pointless discretion quite amusing so I cheerily opened the door and boomed loudly of MY FLEAS over his tiny frame. I'm done with shame and while enough remains to render me respectable and civic, I won't have anyone colluding with me over it. And if I sound pious it's probably the flagellating ecstasy of all my recent scratching.

Later, I found Gareth. He is always more agreeable in the kitchen which, in a phenomenological sense, he owns entirely and so I waited till I heard his delicate noises before I entered, pretending to huff and puff.

It's like working with a ghost, he said. You don't talk to anyone. You don't debrief. Or come to meetings. Helen and Neil were in tears about it. (Helen and Neil! He's been bonding with them! My god I am out of it).

I intended some form of explanation but Gareth's overweening eyebrows, his subtle mocking of Helen and Neil, all of it hardened me again and I realised that I preferred the Gareth who slipped incisive little notes under people's doors. So I switched into a pitiful grandiosity.

I've had an offer. Basically, I 'm unsure what to do. Edinburgh university (why Edinburgh?) have offered me some lecturing. It'll mean leaving everything, leaving you lot etc etc

So Gareth and I bonded over my news and it was good because Gareth actually prefers having significant information he can pass on, irrespective of whether there is any actual truth in it, and so on the basis of this falsehood and a few inanities we were again the best of friends.

And god will bless the liar.

This evening a letter tells me I have, in fact, been offered a job.

It's like working with a ghost. How easily that slid into the unconscious. And how completely it'll ruin my sleep.

A 19th century nude has arrived in the post. All we know of her from the daguerreotype is that she was Italian but we can discern from the Venetian garden, not to say the distinctive chin, that she was most likely of noble birth. I only glanced at the picture yesterday but this morning the awareness of her nobility set in train images of gilded, guiltless aristocratic orgies and from there to my own mother until the image elided with that of R. and from there into the face of the faceless backside I enjoyed on thursday. And now, truth is, I feel a bit lost.

I could, or perhaps should, have descended further. I could've kicked back on the sofa with some digital porn and a bag of crisps, trying to fathom the name of a lover from my youth. I could've put my feet up and made that call to my elderly aunt, or re-read a novel I never much liked the first time. But I didn't. I stayed with the daguerreotype of my Italian lady. I stared and stared until it yielded the remembrance. In the ample buttock and hip, the twisted wrist and tilted head I finally understood that she resembled entirely Vallin's Bacchante with a Bunch of Grapes. I began my day.

The fleas are rampant.

I have fleas.

While browsing an old copy of the Journal of Sexual Medicine I found an article on the latest research into therapeutic treatments for vaginismus, when a flea landed on the word 'surrogate'. I pinched it between finger and thumb and presuming it dead, flicked it away. By lunchtime I was standing in the bath showering cold water over my ankles.

My plan for the day was to drink coffee, catch up on administration, my reading, perhaps ease down with a quarter pipe. I had no intention of dealing with fleas today. However, come late afternoon my feet and ankles were bloody with vicious scratching and the fantasy of ringing everyone I know, friends, clients, family, Gareth, neighbours, everyone, and blurting out the truth of my horrible infestation was beginning to feel like a salvation required on every level.

No.

I picked up thursday's newspaper, smoked an entire pipe of O, and drifted to sleep vowing never to read the Guardian again, or to view the natural world as metaphor, and as I drifted these two resolutions became one.

I took her cheque and closed the door.

That was yesterday. Since closing the door on R. I've swam the length of my worst selves.

First, I smoked half a pipe of O. Having lost my tolerance, I felt the thrumming in seconds and the whirl of warmth went right to my fingers. I wanted to explore the impasse that was opening up. It went like this. R. had seemed so impeccably and charmingly unaware of my lust, that I was absolutely certain she knew of it. And as the O drew me further into my chair, I pondered the finesse and subtle working of what is, undoubtedly, her seduction of me. Pleased with my reasoning, I took a cab into town.

There were two desires at work here. The first was to see George and to sit at his kitchen table while he fussed around me. The second desire, looming closer every minute, was the certain knowledge that I would not be returning home without having resolved my feelings for R. in some deep and anonymous sex. It may appear a curiosity that George and sex are twin motivations and, certainly, there is history. (We met at a particular club at a time when we were both enduring our divorces and, in the spirit of the place, we managed to bond).

I was welcomed with lemon cake and tea. But, even for George, arrival without warning requires an explanation. I'm regressing, I said. George was preparing something Thai and nodded a few times as if refusing to allow this to come between him and his cooking. I was glad of the indifference. I knew that in referring to deeper issues I was, as always, refusing actual intimacies. However, as the question of regression was a real and current concern, I felt momentarily sad for myself in selling it so easily. The sadness passed.

George spoke of guilt and his elderly sister and the distance between them but the O was holding it at bay and I wasn't certain if the distance referred to was emotional, or geographic. Within minutes I was in another cab and, as if to confirm the regression, was heading towards the club where I first met George and in which I hadn't set foot for five years. I had neither my membership card nor any of the required paraphernalia.

The Liverpudlian owner (AM) knew me and I was allowed a drink at the bar. I may have remembered a few old faces or pretended so. But it was probably my nonchalant and non-committal chat with AM, along with the quiet of the night, that convinced him to allow me join the games. In short, I spent twenty minutes or so working a dildo into the rotund backside of a woman who could have been thirty, or fifty. I don't know. It was considerably later that I got, very likely, what I came for: hot wax all over my screaming bollocks.

All my fears, my certainties, ebbed.

Eventually I slept. I slept like a baby.

How could R. ever hurt me?

God give me the strength to lead a double life.

Of course I lead one already, but without the payoff. I was probably fibbing in the womb. And I think of Thom at six months and how even then he could smile sometimes, just for my sake. I wonder if deception is as natural as the air we breath. In fact, sometimes when I'm alone it seems as if every breath is an attempt to hide, or deny the existence of a previous breath.

Of course I could take all this to my supervision with Buckley next month. Only thing, he is fifteen years younger and a career Freudian with no humour or nuance whatever. My questions would be more interesting than his answers and the whole shabby thing would leave us both tainted with self -disgust. How careful he is to avoid any suggestion of undermining, or oedipal overcoming as he sits there in his green, immaculately pressed cords. I yearn to free him up and offer my face for a good slapping.

Buckley? He is no nemesis. As the Russians knew, choose your enemy well for you will become him. And on that note, I promise to be kinder to Gareth.

R. tomorrow