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.