I spent the morning in the garden. Taking a Turkish coffee to my bench, I made another attempt to read contemporary fiction, a wasteful hour that I managed to redeem by taking deep breaths, and, between paragraphs, slowing my heartbeat to standstill. Making a mental note to give the novel to Neil, I plunged my hands into the soil, preferring to relocate my ailing conifer. I had switched the phones off and, having decided to spend the day alone, felt able to relinquish myself to the sounds and smell of the house. Later, I returned to my bench and considered again the question of my father and my preference for exploring this issue within myself, my body, rather than the usual method of conversation. Of course, upon my stretch of the coast most of the dominatrices are amateurs, mainly blondes working in retail, possibly more intelligent than their affable, decent husbands, but essentially domestic creatures. Most likely I will have to travel. And so it was, with the gulls resting on chimneys and the desperate laughter of children next door, that I slowed my breath again and tried to examine my body for the source and site of it's requirement.

West Ham 0 Arsenal 1

I don't understand football. While I can see what appears to be happening, unless I choose to view it as a sexologist, it makes no sense to me. Nevertheless, I was happy to purchase two second hand tickets for me and Thom to see Arsenal play. He is aware of my indifference to the game but seeing me read the programme, in particular the player profiles, allows him to concentrate on the game and for us to maintain an equilibrium of interest. By half time I had decided the defenders were very likely to have better relations with their mothers than the forwards. I didn't share this with Thom and also failed to mention that after the game I was hoping we'd go to the annual soiree of my friend, Axel Von Rauffenstein. While he may have pulled his name from a hat and taken to implying a place in German aristocracy, he does have an exquisite collection of erotica.

After the match, we took the tube to Chelsea and I explained to Thom that Axel was an old friend. In fact, while he is the curious result of a violent childhood, he's also an astonishing bore. On the few occasions we have met he notes my occupation and never fails to press upon me the tragic case of his demented niece, now of Berlin. Axel has an impressive, almost transcendent homosexuality, and he courts my every word as if his niece, by osmosis, were being cured with every syllable. Thom and I edged around the drawing room, avoiding our host. I saw two very thin woman, twined round a single wine glass, who threw artful glares at me for bringing a child to such an event. Indeed, I felt the same. My palms began to sweat with shame. And yet, as ever, with a momentary glance at me, Thom saved us both. We were standing in front of an absurd but joyous lithograph by Peter Fendi. A man stood with his mad phallus between two women and Thom, bless his soul, giggled. Perhaps it was the cartoon rendering, but I laughed, too, and before long we were oblivious to everyone in the room. Man and boy, laughing at a picture on a wall.

Gareth says you killed him.

Helen was sat in the kitchen, looking tired. It was Gareth's joke, she said. I was unsure how far the humour went, so I pretended to enter the joke.

It explains my strange behaviour, I suppose.

Helen laughed, her mind clearly elsewhere. There are moments with Helen, the warmth rising on her skin, the freckles, perhaps the felicity of gesture, that incites me to clasp the whole length of her leg and with gentle intent, ease my tongue into her sphincter.

I left early and went to see my father. He receives his medical results today and I went over, partly to avoid him sending me the results in the post, and partly to experience the wordless trance of driving to him. He was wearing his godawful tie and a grin the size of England. Having pancreatic cancer, a midlife affliction, has cheered him greatly. He now feels even younger and, what's more, at his age the disease slows down and can take years to finish off. He can barely walk on his bloated legs but we stared at each other, roundly happy, grinning, bracing ourselves for a few more years of tennis and cool drinks on the terrace. What he did not say then or admit for the rest of my visit was that, plainly, he's already had the cancer for years. As I drove back, unsure if he was in denial or simply staving off my concern, I pulled into a service station. The coffee was weak but steaming hot. I gulped it down and in the searing pain of my throat, I no longer cared for either interpretation. The desire to visit this as a pain upon myself will last for days. I got home, rang George. He was out. I went to bed early, prefering to plan it.

Client R.

Having confessed her feelings for me last week, I now have an honest job of work in gently dismantling her transference. Yet as I took an inconsequential shit, I understood that I could, perhaps, accept my place in the animal kingdom, as a man in time and space, and seduce her, thereby relieving a few of my own not insignificant feelings. There are some moments in the therapeutic process, such as these, when the delusions inspired by seduction can conspire to convince me that sex is not only the fulfillment of the therapeutic process, but it's most profound answer. And so I sat with client R., ignoring her skimpy top and tight, barrister's skirt, and decided instead to compound the vulnerability
of her confession by taking offence.

Why, do you think? Having worked on, extirpated grief, why now as we wind down our sessions, why now reveal feelings for me?

She looked down at her feet and, to enhance the rebuke, I looked up. We spent a moment in silence which I chose to spend examining the spine of my student monograph on sexuality and death, aware that I sounded like her old and worst adversary from her courtroom days. I also understood, in our silence, the intense lust that surely operates in the working world of the judiciary. And yet, at the risk of hearing her say anything unusually pathetic, thereby diminishing my own passion, I answered for her.

Is this a way of sabotaging the work we have done?

This was certainly one of many truths in the matter and, in the uttering, I was able to remain entirely professional while also inflaming her righteous ego and all the passion for which it seeks an end.

You seem upset by my feelings.

I was devastated. Nothing in the room was equal to my loss, so I glanced at a mole on her arm. And from this, her minor imperfection, I was able to nimbly turn the tables back on her and end on a productive, continuing note, but the session left me with a grime in my heart, a yearning for all the lost time, attentive hours I have spent with clients who I craved, and failed, to touch.

Oh, if only.

Did I kill the hypnotist? In my dream, yes. And woke from this with an exhilarating sense of purpose, presence, and an exact sense of my own capacities. Is this what murder feels like? For this alone, it's a crime. And so it was, on this wave of possession I took a hearty shit to a Chopin waltz and buttered my toast in a frenzy. I soon tired of this murderous persona and decided, instead, to further my plans to fleece my very famous client. However, before leaving the house I received a round robin from Gareth. As expected, he's taken charge of the investigation to inform everyone the police will 'speak' to us all in due course. I took the inverted commas to mean that he has, already, concluded I'm the killer. Oh Gareth, this is all moving too fast for me. And my revenge, my dear, will be deadly.

I stopped in the hallway, preferring not to leave for work in a mood of rising paranoia. Instead, I spent some moments with a book of Rubens. It's often posited that paranoia is a defence mechanism related to an intolerable shame but as my eyes rested on the onanistic Venus in Ruben's masterpiece, I was reminded of my preferred explanation as residing in the breast feeding experience, of which I myself was a frustrated victim. I lingered awhile on Venus before, finally, closing the book and opening the door. I left for work with nothing but warmth for the world.

Murder, no less.

On hearing of the unlikely demise of Michael, the hypnotist, my first reaction was one of mild irritation. The idea of Gareth, Neil, Helen and myself bonding over the death of our hapless colleague filled me with dread. Gareth would become the ringmaster of gossip and hold forth in the kitchen for weeks on end and then, come Christmas, just as it slows down and we move on, he creates a clever, even ingenious case against me. Me, murderer. This is the familiar pattern to our politics, albeit mainly concerning unwashed cups and mislaid crockery. So it was, tapping ash into my glorious wastebasket, I went from mild irritation to fascination. It occurred to me that Gareth could make a convincing case against me, and perhaps a lot sooner than Christmas. After all, I distinctly remember my first meeting with the hypnotist and even wrote, at the time, of my initial instinct towards him as murderous. And what alibi's have I? The reputable word of a disreputable fetish club, mainly. And Thom, of course. But all this would only prove I have a keen understanding of my own impulses. It may also suggest a pathology in the hypnotist himself. Far from a random attack, he would have incited his own demise. And so as I led the Tuesday Group today, my mind even further away than usual, I overcompensated with a show of geniality and warmth. This was a shame for me, yet beneficent for my members, as I was dimly aware that it was an absolutely fascinating session.

Hoping for greater things, I took an undifferentiated shit to the sweeping, elegiac scape of Bax's 1st symphony and so, with Gareth on the prowl and feeling heavy and ponderous, I left for work with no inclination for anything other than stimulants. I considered calling my dealer, K., but seeing Helen drive past and certain she'd seen me, I carried on to work and promptly made a strong, albeit instant coffee. Later, as I meandered down to the Classical Longplayer, I had a moment of synchronicity that would have made even Jung proud. I spotted K. on the street, wearing his favourite anorak, and about to enter an antiquarian bookshop. He looked unusually present and was bearing a carrier bag of hardback books. Was he buying or selling? My uncertainty over this irrelevance led to a renewed surge in the desire for stimulants. I went to heckle him but stalled, taking a savage mouthful of apple instead. Not wanting to approach K. on the street, I decided the only way to appease my need for drugs was to secretly ascertain the titles of the hardbacks he was reading and so, disposing of the core, I slipped quietly into the bookshop. K. would have been oblivious to a bomb, so it was easy to peer over his shoulder, noting his distinguished, if elderly hands. Heaving with delight, I left the bookshop feeling refreshed, invigorated to know of his passion for 19th century Egyptology. I returned to work a balanced, temperate man. A therapist, no less.

Mmmm...

I woke at five withdrawing from O. The Erotic Review was splayed open on the bed. My memory was slow in reassembling and, feeling weak and constipated, I did precisely what I shouldn't. I filled a whole pipe with O and spent the morning in bed, capitulating to ancient visions of shame and loss, plus an eroticism I couldn't rise to.

By lunch I was staggering round the house with my Collected Rilke. I could hear my voice booming the lines. Then stop, check myself. I had no idea if I was reading aloud or not. I took a breath and felt a clear, perspicacious sense of my own condition and decided, forthwith, to spend an hour with a professional. I put a call to Madame X. She would be in her early forties now, an exquisite age for a woman. It came to nothing. Having passed her accountancy exams, finally, she has now retired from the scene.

George? Probably he has a few numbers lying around. Without thinking, I called him and it was nothing less than two men, in midlife, connecting in open lunacy. Without my uttering a word, he took the call and said, What in god's name are you doing? It was if the satellite between us were an incendiary thing and we were at instant risk of implosion along with, perhaps, the shires and meadows of his childhood. It came to nothing.

I spent the afternoon in the bath playing with the taps, safely.

Thom wants a skateboard.

I sensed a slight misgiving from his mother and yet, as Thom was such a sedentary, literate boy, I was eager to endorse anything that increased his velocity. The concern of his mother, of course, served only to fuel my enthusiasm. And so it was we spent the morning, all three of us, in another overlit emporium. A place where people, humans, seek out and solve their need for plastic. Indeed, it was unprecedented. We had not been together in public, the three of us, since the divorce. And every minute Thom's fearful diplomacy made me wince. However, on seeing his mother as pained as me, I relaxed.

I was aware of thinking and, on occasion, fantasising about ex yet the reason for inviting or, perhaps, intimidating her into joining us today remained, for now, elusive. Of course, I was aware of a slow burning desire to see her naked body again. She does have the most beautiful, yet entirely normal, legs and upper thighs. I suspect it's very common, yet it always felt extremely rare. I was also aware of wanting to play a more authoritative, symbolic role in Thom's life. Our weekend escapades sometimes have the air of, exactly that, escapades. And so in buying the skateboard in the presence of his mother I was, perhaps, initiating Thom into the first stage of manhood. Or increased momentum, anyway. I do know how pitiful this sounds.

The third motive in inviting Thom's mother was at the border of my awareness in the asking, this morning. It would be better if you came, I said. I had no idea why death and foreboding, personal, perhaps even environmental, had suddenly entered my voice. And yet it occurred to me then, at the cashtill, paying for the Harmony skateboard, that I didn't want to stagger round my father's deathbed alone. Perhaps I wanted help, her help. Of course all motives will, finally, coalesce toward sex and death so none of this concerned me.

It had been friendly, sometimes tense. However, as we parted she turned on me, saying, was it really necessary for me to come? It was a quiet thrill to know that she, too, had indulged the ambiguity of the situation. To prolong the mystery, for her and, perhaps, myself, I simply said, Yes. But again the foreboding entered my voice and I sounded frightened, ghastly. And so I took to my bed with a quarter pipe, no desire in the mind or groin, and returned to the question of my motives. As I drifted off, beyond the call of sex and death, it was the second motive, the new paternal role I was fashioning, it was this, till sleep, I tried to sustain.

Of course, desire begets desire but this afternoon the circuitous route toward Helen's nipple took a wayward, yet vital turn. This morning, awakening to hypnopompic gloom, I decided to clear my mind for today's session with client R. by merrily wanking to a memory of her opening thighs. With the clarity of release, I devised a plan. Months ago client R. and I agreed that dealing with her mother's death was our main concern and so we are now, in contractual terms, winding down our work together. Some esteemed colleagues, of course, will argue that psychoanalysis never ends, it is only ever abandoned. And so, spreading butter upon my toast and aware of my increasing desire for R., I decided to take the latter view. We could always explore her creepy brother.

I took my wholesome intentions to work and, with Gareth avoiding me on the stairs, entered my room in a splendid mood. It was all shattered, however, when client R., wringing a little warmth to her pale hands, confessed she had feelings for me. In choosing to wear her most archaic clothes, I sensed that R. was expecting absolution, not a response in kind. She was rolling in ashes and, ultimately, this was an ordinary act of transference. However, I was quite certain that her feelings had yet to percolate down to any form of lust and, equally, was devastated by that. Of course, her revelation served more as a reminder to me because, like all knowledge, I had known it always. I simply preferred to play with my denial. I was wholly pissed off, aware that I had weeks of work in gently, professionally, dismantling the whole thing with not a whit in it for me.

And so, I ate a crummy biscuit in the kitchen. Neil entered, looking ill. I flapped my arms a bit, suggesting I was busy. Back in my room, I felt a reckoning had occurred and, focused on my Persian, felt I had two choices. I could accept the destrudo of my recent inclinations, or I could cross the hallway, check for voices. I could gently tap on her door and, proving Isakower's thesis, take Helen's warm breast in my hand.

Gareth and the head of Holofernes.

I found him in the kitchen. He was unusually quiet and the generally vampiric air around him was slowly, almost willfully diminishing. We pottered about each other, peaceably, as if the kettle were a roaring fire and the rest of the world a hateful thing. We spoke generally of our clients and small matters of housekeeping, but there was an air of fullness, an unusual sense that Gareth was neither happy nor unhappy to talk, as if the mission were already accomplished. In fact, as we stood behind our mugs, I felt from Gareth an air of satiation, of self- achievement that reminded me of Cranach's Judith, holding the severed head of Holofernes, and I began to wonder for the safety of my own neck. But putting aside my own preservation, I decided to attack and began to wonder at Gareth's own shenanigans. Where was the naked Neil? In the cupboard? Had I interrupted another session of buggery? And Helen?Does she know? What does she know? The rising insanity of my speculation was only appeased when, placing the mug on the table and heaving my most authoritative voice into the room, boomed: Helen's not depressed! We've been fucking for weeks! She's never been happier! Gareth took this with an impressive, almost mournful calm. And so I left the kitchen with a disdainful lowering of my eyes, a parting gesture, but with no sense of vindication, only my own incipient lunacy. I made a mental note to take Helen's entire nipple into my mouth, and to speak to her more often.

He was wearing sandals.

I smiled.

My very famous client was plainly trying to feel the earth, to root himself in something other, something yonder, and so when he then slipped off his sandals and laid bare feet upon my Persian, I decided then I would punish him for playing with chaos.

Talking about sex with certain men, idiot men, requires one to speak first of love and so it was I cajoled my idiot famous out of his vainglorious reverie and into the detail. And he came up with pearls. The week preceding I was convinced of the homoerotic in very famous and today he presented me with a tableaux that reminded me, first, of the Mapplethorpe in my kitchen and then of the 19th century Japanese in the hallway. He spoke of penetrating a nameless women in the missionary position while she, head thrown back, fellated his dear friend. He gestured to dismiss this as the orgiastic times of any touring band. And yet, it was two small details that had me almost levitate with delight. The first was the positioning of his friend (surely the drummer) who was standing over them and the second, the clincher, was the bottle of vodka from which, mid coitus, my client would merrily swig. I decided the neck of the bottle was plainly a phallic displacement and kindly enquired after his dear friend, the drummer. He's married. He's married with three children. And on that defensive, but definitive note, I got bored and began to consider the polymorphous perversity of the infant and the regression of celebrity and drifted from there to thoughts of George in his kitchen and from there to a complete understanding of what I would be eating tonight, and the manner in which I would cook it.

Mmmm.

Last night I took a quarter pipe to bed and imagined life without my father. All I saw was a glacial emptiness, a nuclear coldness, and yet possibility, too. But when was that ever lacking? I suspect I am entering the most deranged phase of my life. In the morning, my watch had broken. I immediately wrapped and posted it off to my horologist in London and then, trying to stun myself awake with a Turkish coffee, the signs slowly dawned. I was in the garden, a child. The voices of beautiful women. The terrible coldness. And then the fear my father would ruin it, his fierce love, and then the fear that he wouldn't. I drifted to another place, perhaps Eliot's rose garden, and from there to the unlovely decision to run my hard nails down Helen's cool arse.

Shaving.

I took a rather over pronounced shit to the coy piano of an early Mozart and then, staring into my shaving mirror, took an over long look at the shape of my mouth. Certainly, it was my father's. I had once taken the slight downward curl of the mouth as a mark of disdain for much of life but, today, examining myself for any involuntary twitches, I had to accept that my mouth was less a reflection of contemporary culture and plainly more to do with the old man. And while I left the bathroom with no plan other than a few mind games with Gareth, a quick grope with Helen and an earnest display of concern for the hypnotist, at least I was awake to the death ahead.

Gareth was in the garden, smoking.

I think Helen's depressed, he said.

With that, he flicked his butt into the bucket. We were finished and I maintained my momentum past him, up the stairs, and into my room. I felt no concern that Gareth knew of my affair with Helen, in fact a spread of warmth came over me as I reached for the Four Quartets, almost relieved and somehow justified, settling in my chair and reading the words as if for the first time. By the time I reached Little Gidding, I had began to pity Gareth, always the maid to the matriarch.

I was expecting an Indonesian, perhaps a Japanese dish, at any rate something from George's Asian phase, so when I arrived for Sunday lunch and found myself cordially admiring his, admittedly exquisite, bangers and mash, I knew that he was suffering as much as me. A passion for international cuisine was clearly no redemption for the futility of academe, or midlife, or, in particular, his life. And yet seeing my own future in his despair I had no desire for the details, but revelled in them nonetheless. So, since resigning as head of history and throwing himself into cookery, George has lurched from a mania for celebrity, to weeping on his kitchen floor, clutching a bag of chips. He spends hours on the phone seeking entry into 'Masterchef', or somesuch broadcast with no budget, reality, whatever. And then lunges to the other side of the crater of midlife despair, weeping for the end of all hope. It struck me then, as I chiseled apart my Cretan sausage, that in having cooked for me, his friend, and being sat here with me, his friend, perhaps George had found an equilibrium. As I sensed no appreciation of this, I felt momentarily bereft. In fact, I even shuddered at the crassness of my own unspoken observation. However, as I opened our fifteen year brandy I began to consider George's symptoms as more psychiatric than psychological and thus heartened I pulled out the print of my beloved Maja and as we meditated on her for a few moments we were then able to part on genial, balanced terms. After, I put the second movement of Gorecki's 3rd on repeat and drove slowly round and round town, waiting for the deep breath that would return me to my own concerns.

You sorted them out yet?

On the drive over to my father's I made a careful note of all the coffee stops, the laybys, the brothels, with half a notion that I'd be making this drive a lot more in the coming months. And so, with the idea of his death reducing me to a series of basic needs, I tried to elevate the journey's end with a new recording of Gotterdammerung and so turned, eventually, into my father's drive almost deliriously out of my head.

You sorted them out?

My father's interest in my work always contains the suggestion that if I simply gave them all a hearty kick up the arse then I'd be free to do something far more productive with my time and while, aged forty seven, I may be coming round to that opinion myself on this occasion the question reminded me of my pale and broody client, R. Have I sorted her out, Dad, have I?

I'm trying, I said.

I do try.

I almost said sorry.

So, sliding into a ludicrous self pity and yet aware of using this to avoid the meaning of my visit, I took a breath and looked the old man up and down. We then looked at each other, briefly, and sensing the finality of myself in this, my body, and seeing, too, an involuntary twitch playing on his uneven mouth, I was able to take charge, step into the kitchen, and put the kettle on.

Was he coping? I glanced around for signs of neglect, unpaid bills, spots of blood, but found nothing. He was always a snappy dresser but my father never wore ties in his retirement and so, aside from the will, the only sign of derangement was this horrible shiny thing round his neck. It was his way of saying he was coping while allowing me to know that, in actual fact, he wasn't. It was the tie that inhibited me. I couldn't bring myself to ask why he'd sent the copy of his will. However, by the time I left it'd come to seem the most natural thing in the world. I drove home without a single thought in my head and yet, on stepping out of the car, aware, at least, that this is how death begins.

Older women.

I had a wank at dawn, rising from bed to a yearning for light croissants, a heavy shit, and one of Arvo Part's better known concertos. It all made for a pleasurable stroll to work and a desire for a therapeutic, perhaps even honest, conversation with Helen. However, as I made a strong coffee in the kitchen, avoided Neil in the hallway, and took the stairs to my room, I finally and firmly rebuked myself for the stupidity of this innocence. Helen is fifty two. How crude to try analyse your sexual relationship with an older woman. The beauty of sex with older women lies in the mutual need for acceptance, confirmation, and not all that tiresome talk of attachment and meaning. While we may both be therapists, there are perhaps, in the violence of biology, things that not improved by discussion. And sex with my menopausal maid is one of those things.

And so, steeling myself for the visit tomorrow to my father, I decided it was best all round to have a friday of unending fucking. So, at three, I entered her room. I saw her back stiffen and her mouth open as I approached and, assuming the gesture, I clasped her breast from behind, kissed her neck, thereby forcing her to admit my interpretation. And so it slid from there to the floor where I understood, again, the occult knowledge within an older women's body. And when we ended I understood, too, that Helen had a deeper and calmer acceptance that we had nothing, really, to talk about.

What a warm and lovely day.

And so, on entering my room I switched on the radiator with the honest intention of making the room even warmer to ensure, of course, that client R., on receiving my lovely welcome, would slowly peel off all her clothes. And yet, as R. arrived wearing only the bare minimum, I felt my hopes had been simultaneously raised, and dashed. Does she not know that it is the slow revelation of flesh, not flesh itself, that excites and returns every man to his tortured playground.

I was aware that some consolidation was required in my work with R.and that, following the release of grief a fortnight ago, we needed to ground her experience and so, deciding to approach this indirectly, we spoke of something else entirely. So, she wants to have a baby. I allowed her a few minutes on this and it gave me, in my stillness, a chance to experience her physicality as she articulated, ruminated, as she talked herself into the space as entire subject while I sat back, a blessed object. I was mildly aroused by one or two signs of imitation but toward the end, as I crossed my legs and she crossed hers, I had already decided I didn't want any more children.

And so, as I left for the day, reflecting on the difficulties of presence and authenticity, the desperate urge to wreck our own peace, I had a sudden desire, or renewed desire, to see Thom's mother. Instead, I played safe with a quarter pipe and my old Mapplethorpe, limited edition.

Gareth says the hypnotist is dead.

In fact, murdered.

With the enticing lure of animal, one always smells Gareth before seeing him and so, greeting his scent in the hallway, I stiffened a little and entered the kitchen where my poise met his pose. He was holding a mug of green tea and staring out the window.

I think he's dead, he said.

Gareth continued to stare into the distance, as if seeing the whole tragedy unfold across the empty street. He was plainly trying to distract me from something. Was there a naked man in the cupboard? Was it Neil? Gareth placed his free hand over the top of the mug, as if concealing a weapon. And so it was I gathered myself into my own room feeling robust, ready to see a very famous client, and also hugely gratified to know there was another guilty conscience in the building.

He feels misunderstood, the poor dear.

Unable to take another second of this vanity, I cut to it. It transpires that even the father of my very famous client misunderstands him, not to mention the entire Anglo-American public. And so as he droned about life on the road, the drugs, the half minute blowjobs, the never ending horizon, I found myself listening not to the detail but the rhythm. This life of transience had stolen his soul, apparently, and left nothing, aside from the stain on a poor girl's skirt. The tenor of this vainglorious whine revealed a continual conflict between ego and his ego ideal and as I heard of yet another lost love I began to see the greatest misunderstanding of this man's life was that he had of himself. He was plainly homosexual.

After he'd gone, pushing aside a fleeting desire to call the tabloids, I decided to double my prices and keep him on. The slow dawning of authentic sexuality will be a pleasure to watch.

The Tuesday Group.

After yesterday had seen the entire trajectory of guilt and punishment, I woke this morning with a certain sadness, an almost seventeenth century melancholia and so, understandably, I had a quick, almost liquid shit to the mellow undertone of a well known Bach. And so it was in this receptive mood that I welcomed the Tuesday Group. Of course, the foolish P. had forgotten to give me his monthly cheque but I bided my time to see if he'd elaborate and, finally, he did.

I think I'm angry with you, he said.

His flaring nostrils, pompous chin. I could have crushed his windpipe. On this day, I smiled and gently made it clear he wont be welcome again if he fails to bring his cheque. As the conversation formed I began to wonder at my violent impulse toward P. and sensed it came from seeing in him, the little weasel, an echo of my own infantilism the day before.

I drifted away and considered how yesterday I had left my father's will upon the grass, his gesture of amnesty, of paternal annulment and the manner of my response, seeking the chastisement of mistress M. over the telephone. And what is masochism if not, in excluding the paternal law and in seeking maternal punishment and therefore, in this, the secret admission of incest. Something was tethering me back to this behaviour.

I looked at client P. What terrible innocence. In fact, I rather hoped he wouldn't return next week. He inhibits the women. They either open their legs or feel sorry for him. I imagined him forcing his ungainly dick on the weak and vulnerable and as our time finished, as they breathed again and left the room, I understood that P. was very likely a danger to women and children. As he passed me by the door, I considered taking a preemptive action, pinning him to the wall and making a citizen's arrest.

Later, I rang my father.

I recognised the handwriting and so, having no early morning clients, I took the post and a small brandy into the garden. I shifted my rickety bench a few inches as some creepers were binding round the backrest, but also the better to view the neighbour who sometime last summer seemed to enjoy pressing her breasts against her bedroom window. I once stood behind her at a checkout, counting the freckles on the back of her neck.

The elderly impress of the handwriting was my fathers. He explained, in his simpleminded way, that in sending me a copy of his will he didn't intend to cause distress, merely to clear the air. As an only child I hadn't expected difficulty to arise, and a quick check at arms length confirmed, happily, that the dwindling estate was completely mine. Yet I was so resistant to seeing my old Dad crying for attention, that I'd gladly have handed over the whole inheritance to the neighbour, naked or not, just for a quick glimpse, anything to distract me but the demented letter had sent a curl of guilt rising from my belly and so, within seconds, my years of training wholly redundant, I was in the bathroom fastening on my cock ring and making some very pertinent phone calls.

I spent two hundred forty pounds. And in this way, having smothered one guilt with the cloak of another, I got through the day.

As with shadow, you never find in your child what you want to find.

So, Thom and I, to Madrid. Via Goya. No-one's identity, even before September 11th, ever survived an airport. Yet as our plane steadied in the sky, Thom and I managed to assemble a few fears, some concerns, to reassure us of each other. But as we landed I sensed that Thom did have a very real concern. How would he ever explain this trip to his friends? Of course, Thom loved our reckless escapades but was this one, finally, trying his patience? We had a frank chat over a burger and chips and he decided, reasonably enough, to tell his friends he'd checked out Spanish football and Barcelona were simply the best. The sheer finesse of his deception filled me with pride but I was also welling with a terrible pity which even a furious display of arm waving failed to dispel. Nevertheless, my charade got us a taxi and we clambered in. In a desperate attempt to maintain the momentum, I pulled out the print of the Nude Maja and told Thom everything I ever knew about Goya.

We studied the guide. On the way to the Maja, we discussed the possibility of any toilet humour in the paintings of Van Loo and Ranc, and for forms sake we stopped by Las Meninas. Finally, we reached the Goya. I gasped and felt an urge to stamp my feet. And then the union between Thom and I that had lasted the whole journey began to falter. While I was thinking of his mother, naked, closing the curtains on a Sunday morning long ago, Thom seemed to shrink in front of the picture, looking even younger than his nine years. He turned away and a minute later, head lowered, I saw him slowly texting someone. It was probably a friend. Nevertheless, we had come here to see the source, the original, and all we'd found was Thom's mother. As we returned to the hotel, we tried to lift each other. It's a great painting, he said.

Later, he said it again.

Why's it great?

It's her face, he said.

And so, not wanting to disturb the astounding profundity of his remark, I let it hang between us. On the flight back he even thanked me for taking him and I began to wonder what he'd say at school tomorrow. Would he tell them he'd seen Barcelona play a cracker, or would he tell them the simple, glorious truth that he'd seen a fucking great painting and as we tensed up to enter the airport, I felt my entire life would hinge upon the answer.

It was an unremembered dream and led me down the stairs and sat me at my table, half asleep, staring again at the Nude Maja. Within the beneficence of my half consciousness, I saw what I wanted. A woman posed, luxuriating within, the wisp of light rising from the plexus to a blaze of numinosity over her breasts. I was then, as yesterday, as complete as the Maja. But as I made coffee and had an unresolved shit to the wailing of a godawful Stockhausen, the irritant that woke me stirred again. Was she really so numinous as all that? There's a sharpness, a working intelligence in her eyes, a consciousness of self that has no connection whatever with her wonderful, naked body. And yet, as I went back and forth from the print to the toaster, I could never agree on the extent of this duality. It differed every time I looked. So, stuffing the print in my bag, I drove to work and tried to think of Helen instead. And, of course, all of this was very likely about Helen but, frankly, I was now more concerned with Goya and knowing I had rendered my projection, made no difference.

It was hopeless. Between clients I stared and stared again at the print. I heard Helen's footsteps around the house, but failed to imagine her. All day I was lost in the hinterland of that picture, assuming a subjectivity in the Maja, negating it, only to honour it again, negate it again.All the while my dick stirred and I did nothing. No thing. What I did instead was spend four hundred quid on two tickets to the Prado, Madrid. Thom and I fly out in the morning. We'll return to the source, the original, and I'll have done with the duchess who has ruined my peace.

Thom's first day back.

I insisted on driving him to school and on the way we had another of our legendary conversations on the existence of god. Finding myself, as always, personally rebuked by his atheism, I tried to invoke Pascal and Kierkegaard to my side, to no avail. So I stood at the gates, relinquishing him to the protocol of boys, and began to wonder at my own need for pathos, and bad luck. I would be a better man if I saw him more.

And so, as if demanding explanation or perhaps expiation from all of this, I drove to work and went straight to Helen's room. She was bent over a book and careful not to attend me quickly. I went straight to her window, as before, and while I intended to seduce her I was crippled by a prior and nagging need to find out what she was reading. This was a mere symptom of my impossible position so when she then said,

I have a client in-

I heaved a display of hurt and was out the room before she finished. Seconds later, relieved but still pretending to smart, I was standing at my own window when she entered the room. Taken over by a libidinal trance and unspeakable need, she repeated herself as our lips met. And so as she put a hand in my shirt (I knew that only my passivity would prolong this embrace) and circled lower with her fingers, I tried to contain my own desire, absorbing her. It was within this containment that I began to wonder, again, the title of the book she was reading and so, to banish this line of enquiry, I clutched her arse with one hand, her breast with the other, and bit her neck. I worked my fingers between her buttocks and as she sighed, allowing me my desire, we broke off because, indeed, she did have a client in a few minutes time. We had understood enough to know we would continue later on, and we did.

What a fascinating body.

As I watched Helen and Gareth from my window, noting with pleasure her unusual reserve with him, I saw Gareth's ridiculous body as if for the first time. Their silent motioning and gestures suggested another over weening, over articulated point that Helen, for all her general agreement, could not wholly consent to. But it was Gareth's body that captivated me. His little belly hanging over stumpy legs is only barely capable of holding his huge, bald head. And yet it is a measure of his presence and, perhaps, his therapeutic journey, that one is rarely aware of his ridiculous shape. I hauled up my window to clear the smoke and, like startled birds, they both scuttled inside.

My very famous client.

While known to millions, he feels a mystery to himself and so he spoke of his image and how betrayed he felt by this perception but as he wittered on I began to sense the public have it about right. Why did I take him on? This man'll need years of work. Wasn't I rude enough to him last week? I'll have to hike my prices or wednesdays'll be ruinous.

The Goya came. So, sat at my table with Nude Maja, content and alone in her perfect body, I sat alone and content in mine, entranced.

The Tuesday Group.

After the confessions and revelations of last week the group was a wounded thing and so, a little healing required, I dryly informed them that I was interviewing for a new group member. The cruelty of introducing an outsider, a monster, soon had them talking and within minutes B. felt able to explore her reference to sexual abuse and, in turn, the group felt able to listen. As they all bonded over her violations, I drifted off and considered again the occasional feeling that if I had been born in another time, another place, I'd very likely have landed up a rapist.

I went home, took my dinner in the garden, lit a quarter pipe and with barely a day off in the last ten, was soon asleep.

Ah, Helen.

What is she doing across the way? Hitching her skirts? Or sharpening her pencils? It is a measure of my desire that both images please me. Yet I awoke this morning with an irritability that even a heavy shit and a lesser known Arvo Part concerto failed to alleviate. It is sometimes the case that ill defined irritations can swerve into sheer insanity and such was the case this morning as I took my breakfast with the latest copy of Neuropsychologia and read an article on the surprising similarities of the male and female orgasm. What is wrong with these people? Have they never had vaginal orgasms? I can testify that with the proper toys and utensils, plus a city and guilds in gynaecology, a woman's vaginal orgasm can shake trees from the earth. But time. Who has the time? And so it was in this wayward state that I entered work and immediately tripped over Helen in the kitchen, clutching her waist for support. The sudden contact loosened her and, for a moment, I saw the longing in her mouth. However, she turned away and delivered her lines. Telling me she did not want that to happen again, I took a serious breath and nodded with purpose. However, having spoken with her back to me and in the most brittle of voices, I left the kitchen with the certain knowledge that Helen meant exactly the opposite. So, feeling lighter and the irritability nearly gone, I really fancied bumping into Gareth and talking some drivel about the hypnotist. However, unable to find him, I went to my room and drafted a letter to the enfeebled editors of Neuropsychologia.

To London.

And so on this, our last day, I led my gang into the realm of the transpersonal. Having taken them to the sewers and back, we now throw open the windows and spray a little freshener. I loathe this part and and even now I feel murderous when, spoken with a certain inflection, the word 'spiritual' is used. Nevertheless, I guided them through the visualisations while Eve, alas, was delegated the role of talking them through the mulch that arose. And that was that. A couple of lonely delusionals now felt they could go forth and heal the world, while it is always the masculine, shaking their heads and unable to articulate, who have been most profoundly moved and yet we never hear of that. The feminine, it seems, is innately transpersonal. And it was with this observation that I smoked a cigarette with them in the garden, answered questions, said goodbyes, and watched as all the self-deceptions slowly reassembled themselves and almost cried for a better life, a better world, for my son.

To London.

The needle insert, releasing me from empathy and projection, served me well and I arrived at the station with nothing less than the love of god inside me. And so I took my gang into their shadow selves and watched as they howled and hissed like animals in the half light. Of course, there are always a few who enact what they'd like their shadow to be, rather than what it actually is, and these are always those who have been in therapy the longest. I also suspect that these delusionals have the most erratic sex lives and for this reason I kept a particluar eye on the lithe and tight figure of S. At the break, tunnelling into their liminal silences, I saw S. in the garden, smoking furiously, and imagining myself her cigarette, felt the suction of her mouth upon my dick. When the shadow is so hidden, how tempting abasement.

To London.

And so, with the gloomy weather nothing less than fortuitous, I led my gang toward their shadow. Or rather, I ensured my retiring colleague, Eve, led the meditation for in light of my fervent desire to go play with George, I felt it proper to explore my own caves and so, quietly folding my hands and tightening my sphincter, I surreptitiously did the meditation.

In short, it was no surprise to find I was repressing the jester, all that is fun and playful and while I may release a little of this in the virtual world, I knew I would be releasing a whole lot more in the club tonight.

So, George met me off the train and drove us to a drink and while regaling me with tales of academic fiasco, not once did he question me as to the meaning of our meeting and I began to wonder if he had the same scandalous intentions as I. Since renouncing his status as head of the history department and replacing it with a passion for international cuisine, George has found a measure of peace. While I had no desire to disturb his serenity, I had every intention of exposing it's sexual expression. After all, we may never have engaged in mutual activity, but I had a full understanding, from every angle, of his every proclivity, and I was rather missing all that. Intimacy, that's it.

However, as we supped and reminisced about our x's, the slow dawning of my specific intention revealed itself and I understood, woefully late, that I planned all this to fulfill a desire to have needles pushed into my nipples. And furthermore, that I intended George to administer them. In the cold light of day, listening to his warm, avuncular voice, I knew I would never ask and so, a drink later, I was done and we left.

Still, I went to the club.

Out of duty and decorum, I entered 'Janice'. I wasn't there for the mechanics so when I sensed a man lingering and ready to replace me, I withdrew. I loitered for long stretches, but however many eyes met mine, I discerned no one of whom I could ask my particular request. In short, I felt shy. I considered asking a woman and certainly any one of them would've agreed, but I wasn't brave enough to ask for what I wanted. It had to be a man and I wanted to look into his eyes as he did it. Eventually, tired of prevaricating, I went straight to the top. Within minutes, I was tied to the wheel and the needles, with precision and great care, were being inserted by no one less than A.M, the owner.

Cruxified and calmed, I went home.