I sensed early on the day's end was a pipe of O.

Helen passed me in the hall, smiling at her coffee. Does she imagine I'm hurt? I shall invite her round, show her my collection, have her understand the depth of my tolerance.

Neil has lost his confidence, and now his clients. I cannot begin to care.

Gareth's fevered imagination finally succumbed, to flu. I planned to send him a Dali card and yet, as my very famous client fell into the frozen waters of another anecdote, I decided to send the postcard to my son, instead. A small decision, perhaps, and yet enough of those, in time, could redeem a life.

And so for no obvious reason I went home, stuffed the pipe, took a bath, and reclined to a late Beethoven quartet, trying to ward off with O the shred of flesh in that final movement.

The death of Anthony Clare was reported this morning and so, stuck in bed, I was unwittingly cast back twenty years to a celebrity lecture on sexual abuse and schizophrenia that I attended one frosty morning in north London. I recall leaving the lecture hall with the impression of a man in dialogue less with his profession and more with the media. I then recalled my excitement as this passing observation incited a rather frightened blonde into arguing Clare's defence. I bought her coffee that day and before the working week was over, we'd slept together. I remember her as training in psychiatry and having, in particular, an intense interest in sexual abuse and mental illness that made me wonder, as I held her spasmodic back in my hands, that perhaps she had decided, in a somewhat tragic manner, that random sex was both a symptom and the salvation to her condition, as underwritten by the towering authority of the little Dubliner. A year later I bumped her into her at a Jung symposia and noted, with quiet gratification, that she did not recognise me.

Mmmm...

When he speaks, Neil will find the most considered, defensive position and sit there until the world ends. However, prior to engaging his huge superego, Neil does a good line in grunts. And it's on this level we understand each other. And so it was at the front door, I exchanged a grunt with Neil before seeing Gareth speed off into the kitchen. Every few weeks, Gareth will have the look of a man who has accumulated all the evidence he requires against me, even a momentary air of pity will cross his brow at the knowledge he's acquired, yet, finally, all the intuitions, all the chat with Helen in the kitchen, all the childhood scenarios come into fevered play, and I am then his errant father exposed, at last. Oh, Gareth will have his day, certainly. But not, alas, with me. It was this greedy, oedipal Gareth I saw rush into the kitchen this morning and so, certain that the only outstanding gossip related to the 1 day workshop in sexual feelings in the consulting room, I decided to check the balance of play with Helen.

And so it was at the moment of letting myself into her room, the penny dropped. While intending a general briefing, entering her room felt like a widening knowledge, and seeing her now so complete, so absorbed in her administration, the words came from the very back of my head, an unconscious compulsion. It's you going to that workshop! Helen smiled, gently. Clearly, there was no need to elaborate, but I had yet to contain the look on my face and Helen, despairingly for us both, fell into explaining herself. Yes, I am having these feelings in sessions on a regular basis and, well, even with different clients. She sounded measured yet I understood her as trying to appease me and so, standing with my hand on the door, I withdrew to a sense memory that went, via Rubens, to the debauchery of my early twenties where, for a while, it seemed as if every man was fucking every woman, every day, every night, and from there to the Bosch whose Garden of Earthly Delights hung on my wall at the time. I returned to Helen and she blinked, heavily. She was hardly the Bacchae incarnate, yet expressing her news had clearly sent her own projections ricocheting off the walls. We stared at each other, blinking furiously, trying to draw some lines under the furies and trying, but failing, to stay in the present. I departed, leaving her to stare at the door.

Oh, dad.

Like any man at home with cruelty, my father has a sentimental side and so it was this morning, looking for some music for my 5 am ablution, I trawled through his collection of musicals and, finally, chanced upon a Brahms. It was years old, a Christmas edition with a celebrity fiddler. Had Karen bought it for him? The memory returned of Christmas shopping in a record store and Karen waving this cd at me, will he like this? My dad had no interest in classical music but for Karen, I welcomed her misguided assumption that father was like son, and heartily assented. Shopping with my lithe, my undeniably sexy wife, it felt then as if my father could like the Brahms, should like it, and I was pleased then with the slightly cruel, coercive feeling it lent me. Oh, dad. I put the cd on and entered the bathroom. There is nothing in here. He is waiting for death, planning to do it with no inconvenience to anyone else, having cleared the house of unnecessary furniture. Even the bathroom is empty. I hear the strains of Brahms under the door, matching them with my own. And then, in passing, my father behind the door, what the hell you playing that for? And with that truth, our truth, forever inherent in his tone, I evacuated in seconds.

I arrived with twelve litres of cranberry juice, a desperate and rearguard attempt to soften his cancerous pancreas. Oh god, how we staggered last night. His bloated legs. The stains on his jumper. How we laughed, as he clutched at my greying hair. And was there a moment, as we lunged toward the bathroom that we were not, in fact, taking him for a hopeless shit but returned, in the push and pull of our bodies, to forty years earlier, wrestling on the carpet, both of us the winner, always. I saw his claw hand open, his eyes waiting to haul me to the floor. Finally, on the can, he spoke of the district nurse. He had no grievances but, equally, he had no lewd comment to make either and this, beyond all the obvious, concerned me considerably. It's over forty years since I saw my father defecate and yet, as I stood at the bathroom door, it felt almost natural and it was only later, studying the Zichy print, that the memory came of myself aged three, on the toilet, chatting away to my father as he waited at the door, ready to wipe me. I took a quarter pipe and decided to spend the weekend at his house, perhaps get a better picture of all his needs and take, too, the only gift he can give, that of retrieval.

Client R.

Sex, of course, is the most florid, quick, most satisfying way of ending client R.'s transference of feeling onto me and this is, perhaps, one of the less obvious reasons for disreputable behaviour in my profession. I hadn't ruled it out. Yet today, I opted for something more surreal. I rolled up one trouser leg to the knee and sat in my room, waiting. She entered and sat down, smoothing her skirt. She didn't laugh or register any emotion and I understood the depth of her transference in this quiet acceptance of my ridiculous pose. So I decided to say one true thing about me. I took a breath and summoned a boy, the fearful, blonde boy who couldn't speak for shame, and madness. I'm a bedwetter, I am. I am seven and I wet my bed. I repeated this, and trouser leg, ad infinitum until her face crumpled and, trying to wipe a tear away, she gave in and buckled over. Of course, if I were a therapist in the seventeenth century, god knows, I could have released her from this transference in slowly, but surely, pinching her nipples till she screamed. Yet in enacting my regression and seeing me as a child, indeed, a pathetic one, client R. had experienced an equal, if not greater brutality. And so as I saw her, doubled over, filled with her new loss, I almost forgot to reflect that I was never, in fact, a bedwetter, not once, and that I had told her nothing true of myself. Falsehood, as ever, had served equally, if not better than the truth. Who cares for the truth? It's a shabby thing. And yet, as client R. sat up and we stared at each other, two animals alone in their bodies, I understood the falsehood as more interesting, viable, more powerful than the truth because I always felt like a bedwetter, yes I did, all day long as a child, little bedwetter. And so, finally, the session ended and client R. left, forgetting to smooth her skirt and grateful to be alone with herself, at last, as she always had been.

My famous client.

I wonder at him. Like Elvis, he is the gatekeeper to his mother's bedroom. And all that, the fame, the hysteria, and somewhere far down the line, the music, all of it the desperate noise of a little boy trying to distract you from the delights of his mummy.

Oh, these errant fathers.

The celebrity they could have spared us.

'A Deflowering', 1911. The Zichy print arrived this morning. I shall invite George for supper.

10 am, Thom's house.

Within seconds, I was questioning my own motives for the visit because, instinctively, all I focused on were the most painful, intimate things: Thom's bowl of cereal from this morning and, on the floor, the novel I'd posted the week before. Everywhere I looked was a reminder of the reality of his life, all that I'd lost. I was also aware, to some degree, of polishing this pain upon my sleeve, and quite unsure why. Karen entered the kitchen and, dressed casually, continued the theme of life merely humming along. And yet, on closer inspection I wondered at how clean, how artfully casual she seemed and decided, without a doubt, she'd prepared for me. I also became more confident, more aroused, noticing that Karen was observing the protocol of the occasion. We were not talking of, or even mentioning, our son. And so it was we spoke of current plans, parents, mutual friends, all with the temporary, inconclusive air, of opinions and plans that could be entirely different, or even irrelevant, in five minutes time. We were flirting. During this insane dance, I was keenly aware of Karen's lips, the rush of blood, and waited only for a measured calm, as if this were an entirely considered seduction, which, in fact, it was.

I could never have expected George to bollocks it up. Karen has only briefly met him. George and I bonded over our respective divorces and thereafter the whiff of misery has sustained our friendship. I felt compelled to answer Karen's question respectfully, as if in describing George's crisis, I was being somehow loyal to my own turmoil. And so, as we returned to ourselves, the flirting eased off. And for a while we began to luxuriate in ourselves as mature, responsible citizens. After all, we could continue this another time. I then privately luxuriated in my own sheer luck. I had an exwife who now understood my infidelities. She knew my body, the reach of my desires. I could talk of a Rubens nude without her doubting my integrity. She knew I was professorial about my body, and those of others, accepting me as a man. A man in full. And yet, 0f course, could never live with me again and so, as we kissed goodbye, I held her hip and, present in our standing bodies, allowed the moment to acknowledge, or test, my sheer good luck. I kissed her mouth and was gone.

It is time to name her.

Karen, there.

I arrived at work an hour early with the sole intention of clasping Helen's arse and hoping, in the moment of releasing my fingers, to have protected myself from whatever may or may not pass between myself and Karen, exwife, first thing tomorrow. Of course such an act, in my trade, would be seen as a reflex of control, suggestive of ancient abuse, perhaps, and yet, for all that, it also contains an animal power, almost occult in its knowledge. And besides, we're a long time dead.

And so I entered the kitchen, hoping for a half hour with Helen, before Gareth and his teeth enter the room, casting a toxic light. (His obsession with dentistry being the flipside of his cruelty to insects and, possibly, small animals). Helen made me tea and we spoke of general topics, small matters of housekeeping, and I was aware of her probing, gently, the perimeter, inviting an incisive comment or one to bind us at the expense of another, often Gareth, then swiftly moving on. There was a hint here about practical matters but I chose to take the intimacy as physical, and so took her hand, breathing softly on her neck. She put a finger inside my shirt, a good sign, and in kissing her I was initiating us further, yet also preventing a disclosure. The longer Helen allowed us, the greater the sense of inviting bad news and the awareness of negation ran simultaneous with the warmth of her hands on my chest. I was quickly aroused, yet wanting only to conquer my own arousal and then, to do nothing but render her into my hands. I slide my finger between her buttocks, edging onto her perineum, warm on her sphincter, then felt the whole of her arse in my hands, tight, until she gasped. This was our ecstasy prior to climax. The intercourse, somewhat nonchalant. And so it was we had time to spare before Gareth and Neil arrived. Helen and I spent the day in our separate rooms, sometimes colliding, warm and aware, the physical intimacy stronger, more relevant than whatever she may or may not have disclosed. And yet as I drove home, debating the perversions of monogamy, the Red Queen, and my rendezvous with Karen tomorrow, I wondered if Helen's failure to disclose was entirely matched by my own. After all, the prompt is forever hidden.

Who was the woman who revealed her breasts to me in my dream this morning? Who the hell was that? There was the hint of impatience, of forbearance, as she offered me her right breast, then looked askance. Frankly, it could have been anyone, ranging from the shop assistant to mother, to exwife, to Madame X herself. Of course, the extent to which I woke up and failed to take the nipple is the exact measure of my desperation to name the woman. And it's indicative of the reluctance of my unconscious that, easing from a slovenly morning with a quarter pipe and no lunch, I now decide the woman resembles noone other than Tintoretto's Portrait of a Woman Revealing Her Breasts. While it was not a true likeness, it calmed me to imagine this and so, satisfied, finally, I was able to get on with the rest of my day.

I was glancing at a catalogue of winterwear when George called. Loathing shops, this is my only means of acquiring clothes and I was considering tweed an autumnal rather than winter choice when George invited me round to watch the rugby. We have never spoken of rugby, or any regulated sport whatever, and so, aside from not knowing what he meant, I could only take his invitation as further evidence of his descent into popular culture, by which I mean, in fact, the media. I demurred, gently, but then hastily enquired after the Etty. Did you buy the Etty? My god, for eight thousand? It was George's turn to demure, and he declined to confirm, but we arranged to meet for lunch at his house anyway. And so it was that George's ruse over the rugby, his minor deception, had lifted my spirits and, it was while considering if his mental health were improving that I, easing on the brakes, stopped at a pelican crossing only to sit and watch as Thom and his mother crossed the road. And so it was that I, uplifted by falsehood, stumbled out of the car and threw my arms round them both. I had no idea what I was saying, but only seconds to say it, so I did. Look, I really have to speak to you. What about monday? Make it Tuesday, she said. And so I drove to George, my friend, ready to inspect his new purchase and felt in the evasions, the mild, yet knowing deflections of other people, a tremendous grace, now and forever.

A mute!

I woke in a jovial, almost giddy mood, and so took a managerial decision to level off a buoyant shit to the monotone of Stockhausen's Stimmung. I strode to work in a chastened, sentient mood, ready to receive my new referral. Client G. is mute. Client G., moreover, is a blonde girl. While at risk of sounding as if she were pulled from the trailer of a B Movie, I should also confess that she has full, pale lips. She is also fifteen. Oh and what sad, blank eyes. All this is true. By and large, I don't like young people. In a word, I prefer sensibility. The bodies of young women are so greedy and aspirational. All their bits point upward, as if seeking first prize. These are bodies with nothing to say, or give. And so as she sat slumped in the chair, staring at the corner of my desk, I reflected that the fetishization of the young is one of the more heinous of capitalism's great crimes, and in this antagonistic vein decided to pursue my own concerns, rather than chase after hers. I stood up and examined the spines of some first editions. With utmost care, I polished my pipe. First and foremost, whatever catatonic, or trauma symptoms may arise, I understood this as a battle of wills, and one she has no chance of winning. She has not spoken for the last six months, (I have a bet with the G.P who referred her that I will have her talking within six weeks) and in this, our first session, I had no intention of abnegating myself by saying or asking anything so after a long, fruitless period of suggestive movement, I then spent twenty minutes trying to summon an enormous fart from the bottom of my bowels. I will try this technique next time but aware, also, that I have only five weeks left.

Client R.

I woke early, unduly alert, and so, finding some Sibelius on the radio, I then felt a nagging need for a little ontological security, and so grabbed my dick. One or two indistinct scenario's vied for attention, but I was drawn by client R. and her transference, oh heck, her love for me and so I toyed with a little counter-transference of my own, and that was good. Of course, in the reality of the clinical setting this afternoon, the feelings were far more perverse than my imaginings (a la Koon, I was inclined to think afterwards). Client R. has a tenacious passion that would test any man's resistance and so, as she articulated yet another defence against herself, suggesting her feelings are not the transference of father issues, but they are present tense, normal and genuine as any feelings can be, I felt overcome with an afternoon lethargy that had a dangerous, decadent edge. I sensed this could only lead to an oral gratification, perhaps followed by cigarettes at the window, so I tried to centre myself with some deep breaths. However, within a few minutes, she was speaking from the throat and I drifted off, dazed by her white stockings and the hint of a ruddy nipple, aware of a decentering somehow related to my own father and the ontological insecurity I felt this morning, only pulling back from this by a mortal fear of wrecking my whole career for the sake of a blowjob.

The Tuesday Group.

Like my father, I prefer dreaming. I know he is a mournful, almost romantic man when alone, or with others, and yet when alone with me it feels like we batter each other in a constant assault of reality, and truth. Then we part and return to our dreaminess, a small relief before the next assault. In recent years, to prepare myself for these encounters, I've often had to partake of some lascivious, kinky, or risque behaviour before seeing him. It lends a film of protection against the present moment. And yet also enacts, in perverse miniature, the experience and the feelings that will arise with my father. Having just undergone the experience, I can feel an illusion of control. And yet today I would have no time for any miniature enactment and so felt somewhat low, oppressed, aware of viewing everyone with an air to fraud or potential misdemeanour. And so it was at tea-time I entered the kitchen and, seeing Helen, grabbed her hand and kissed it all the way to her elbow. In response to my theatrics, she placed her hand, for a split second, over my crotch. A twin sense of shame and lust entered the fractional second and, in expanding it infinitely, I was able to drive to my father's with a modicum of sanity.

Neil was born to tie shoe laces. And so it was I entered work and saw him, hunched over in the hallway, and feeling I had enough momentum to turn on my heel and up the stairs, I sped off without a word. However, the incongruity of a certain detail, surely the unconscious reason for speeding off, had finally rung a bell in my conscious mind. I then yanked myself back in Neil's general direction, checking the purple flyer above his head. It was true. Somone had cut off the reply slip and booked a 1 day course on Sexual Feelings in the Consulting Room. Now who would be doing that? To cover my behaviour I launched a Lovely Day! at Neil, and, in saying the unlovely words, I could feel our toes curling. But who the hell is having sexual feelings in the consulting room? Does Gareth know? Why's he not told everyone? He is paid to be the child of the team. And yet, of course, when it comes to the really important issues, the gossip will always let you down, leaving the last stretch to your own imagination. I entered my room with a huge appetite for nothing in particular so, throwing open the window, I sat on the ledge and lit a quarter pipe.

I glimpsed Thom in the lounge, bent over a joystick, but followed his mother into the kitchen. Without speaking she reached for a cupboard, changed her mind, then filled the kettle instead. On top of the million little details I was processing, I wondered if she were reaching for alcohol in that cupboard and sensed, in the calm of her negation, that she had decided to make me suffer for any pleasure I might find here. To make matters worse, I felt it necessary to maintain my demented persona and only felt able to do that by saying nothing. She turned towards me and I wished myself to hell and back. However, instead of folding her arms she let them fall to her side, relaxed. Clearly, she had no more idea what to do or say than me and, seeing that, I rolled up my sleeves and sat myself at the kitchen table.

Do you remember Versailles?

I asked, as if the unresolved memory of a holiday in France had stopped me moving on with life.

You really do want sex, don't you?

Yes, I only suggest a little historical foreplay...

And felt a certain pity for myself, aware that my unbidden memory of Versailles was important and worthy of discussion and, quite suddenly, it then became a fleeting symbol of our disharmony, containing all the ambiguities within. I was desperate to speak of this as X arched her back as she sat opposite, showing well preserved breasts plus a hollow of shadow to her buttocks. And it was another fleeting symbol, too, that I did not speak of what I wanted, and of X that she would not relax to allow the past in. It was all happening all over again. We would not be having sex. These few minutes had exhausted us both so we sat there, calm and ironic, ready now to talk of Thom, the week ahead, the future. We were good people, done with anger, making the best of it. Sure we were. For ourselves, and him. And so we waited for Thom to come bounding into the kitchen, each second of silence like a pinprick on my palm.

Drunk with David Hockney.

I spent the morning trying to recollect the night I spent drinking with Hockney and remembering the slowly dawning shame at seeing how, as we quaffed our thirty year brandy, the artist, stubborn when sober, yes, perhaps truculent, how quickly he became an incredible bore. I even remember noting a certain retardation in his character. The shame then revisits me now like a pain in my lungs. It was a letter from a Dr. R. L, requesting she read the letters Hockney sent me in the early 1990's, that prompted the memory. I was heartened to observe that the subsequent letters we exchanged has not sweetened the memory of that first meeting and so, my mental health thereby confirmed, I turned to the question of whether to an accept Axel Von Raffenstein's invite to his party after the Erotica exhibition at the Barbican. The exotic creatures he gathers would certainly be a rare tonic to the somewhat homespun, laundry girls I currently desire. I decided to attend and, at the moment of decision, emboldened with a daring, a vanity, a peripheral awareness of my charm as I crossed the lounge, I also decided I really would make a pass at Thom's mother.

Yesterday, my aim was to ascertain if a man had entered her and therefore Thom's life. This afternoon, my intention had warped, or perhaps consolidated into one of sheer prowess. And so I went to see them at four, the idling hour, and arrived with the sense this would only work if my confidence were at the hilt, as hard and tight as mineral. In fact, psychotic. I stood on the doorstep, figured a statement, not a question, was more effective. She opened the door.

I would like to have...

I paused a few seconds, suggestive of unending personal, cultural pursuits, but then, as if veering into a sudden, impulsive understanding of core family values:

Like to have sex with you.

Ok, she said. And then, to cover herself, You'd better come in, I mean. And so, with the hint of mental illness, as if allowing me in were making the community a safer place, I entered the family home for the first time in five years.

Bruckner's 8th.

Expecting difficulty, I put on the very slow 3rd movement, but I surprised myself by taking a quick, almost female, ten second shit and this moment of physical surprise was to play out later in the day, whereupon I also softened the instinct with Bruckner's difficult, overlong masterpiece. The moment occurred as I drove home and, on impulse, swerved back in the direction of Thom and his mother. I hadn't planned or wanted, nor even dreamt this happening. The light was fading. It was the twitching hour. And so, wincing with the delight of self punishment, I put on Bruckner's 3rd movement and sat in my car outside their house, waiting for proof. Of course, aside from the perilous state of my son's soul, I had no evidence of another man. I skipped to the 4th movement, reflecting that all things are only waiting to be proven true, yet this was not nearly proximate to the news in my marrow, or, after Lowell, the sound of each sobbing blood cell. I pictured the new lover as having a large, mis-shapen head, the face of an unsuccessful comedian. But all I saw were the bobbing features of a mother and her son so I soon tired and decided there were other, more sophisticated, perhaps even sexual ways of discovering the truth. I would make a pass at her. I would wind down my window and lean out, leering. It would have to be a punchy, all american, no nonsense offer. All smiles, no regret. Certainly, her response will be noted, but it isn't admissible evidence. Instead I will scrutinise the extent of her pupil dilation, thereby the force of her involuntary desire and, thereupon, I'll have my answer. I'll do it tomorrow, late afternoon, the idling hour. And so it was, I was able to deny the horror of my feelings and drive home a regular, positive, cheerful sort of man.

Thom wants The Heartbreak Kid.

Clearly, he was upset about something but his film was a 15 certificate, so we had no chance of that. The air conditioning was sucking the life from me but a vigorous, if selfish, intercourse with Helen in the afternoon had steadied me for the day, so, unable to make a case for preferring Extinction, I tried to think of ways I could smuggle Thom into The Heartbreak Kid. There were three cashiers and so, choosing the one with least self esteem, we entered the queue. I was concerned about Thom's reticence. His choice of film was a way of expressing his upset, yet I was aware of my own reluctance to hear the cause, for Thom and I share a fear, and I smelt it now, a fear that reaches to the depth of our own, or the other's, soul. What if Mummy's met another man? And so it was we reached the front of the queue and I reached for my wallet, stopping quickly, as if remembering to introduce a figure of high royalty. This is my son, I said, conveying an air of sadness and piety, of growth disease, of long nights toiling over the latest clinical trials. Before giving her time to speak, I held her gaze and silently intoned, from my solar plexus and through my eyes into hers and into the shallows of her self esteem, I intoned this message: You are pretty! Something subterranean had been conveyed, for she blushed, and what is that if not introjected delight? We got our tickets, and no question asked. We saw our film. I may not have eased, or even heard Thom's suffering, but I was still his hero and we tucked into popcorn like kings.

The Tuesday Group.

I am a day behind myself! Yet I feel more present now than ever, particularly since departing from the most distinguished company of Madame X. And lending rhapsody to my present condition, my horologist in London has repaired and returned my watch. So, synchronous with myself and therefore the world!

I left for work with dread in my belly.

Gareth is on heat. His whole body is, generally, an act of physical innuendo. Yet today, as he threw himself into a long forgotten, but necessary tale of the hypnotist, I was diverted by a purple flyer pinned to the noticeboard behind him. Smilingly, I manoeuvred him aside. Sexual Feelings in the Consulting Room: A one day workshop. Of course, the professional in me knew this was precisely the kind of peer support I required. Another part of me simply yawned. I allowed Gareth to witter on until a mild ache crossed my lung. I began to wonder if half a minute with Gareth was going to undo all of Madame X's good work. With two or three large nods of the head, I trod on his foot and went up the stairs. Yet just as Gareth had seemed out of kilter, now even my room was unfamiliar. My desk, my books, my couch. It was as if a geometric alienation had occurred, as if my room were a Klee. While this was not terribly disturbing it did inspire me to have a quick brandy in the pub and then return for the Tuesday Group, warm with alcohol, aware that meaningful presence will always find it's screaming opposite.

Yesterday, as I climbed the basement steps out of Madame X's chamber, it took a few seconds for my mind to return to my body and when it did, standing at the top, casting a long glance hither and thither, I felt as lithe, as heroic, as any of god's creatures. And what of Madame X, a mere stranger to me? Yet my parting kiss was one of the most tender I have ever bestowed, reminding me now of the first time I ever kissed Thom.

This evening, aware of a desire to be naked, to touch my wounds, wishing to return to that fear of abandonment and heal myself, like playing with a brand new toy, I took a moment to call my father. I would visit tomorrow and implement a care plan. I then called Thom, deciding to see a movie thursday night. I then took off my clothes and lay on the bed, relishing myself like someone new. I stretched out my legs, feeling the length of my forty seven years, and that was good.

I arrived in Kensington with Thom on my mind. I allowed the guilt of not seeing him today swell in my belly, figuring that guilt may play a certain part in my adventures with Madame X. I also spent some time rehearsing my itinerary for the next three hours and while I was aware of precisely the procedures I would ask of her, I also knew that a certain aspects would depend upon her own psychology, her mood, as well as her appearance, and to allow for minor adjustments I intended to ask Madame X that, initially, we spend five minutes in silence. As a prelude it was immensely important, allowing me to smell her strengths and weaknesses without the obfuscation of words, but also, in glorying in the length of her long legs and long, blonde hair, the dark eyes (thank god they were not blue), I was able to silently accept I would submit to her. It's a measure of the liminal power of silence that Madame X understood this, too, for at the moment of reckoning, she ended our silence and so it was, we begun.

Mother died when I was nine. I had, of course, taken on a sense of guilt. Living alone with my father made for an intense, difficult grief, all of which made my overcoming of him the most painful wrench, only fully realised after a few years at university. I understood the terminal decline of my father was informing these feelings, but it was to the guilt over my mother to which I returned. Aged nine, I grieved. I missed her terribly. Yet she was, in truth, a cold woman with a voice that sliced flesh and I sensed that my current oedipal regression, similiar to one at the time of my mother's death, was perhaps a psuedo regression. In fact, a defence mechanism against older, more infantile fears and so as Madame X twisted the nipple clamps harder, then harder, it was the ancient fear of abandonment that I wished to retrieve upon my body.

She did a thorough job of re-awakening the guilt. My scolded arse, back, and chest have raw welts that, even touching now, return a warmth with the pain. Yet it was the chest, lungs, and nipples which I decided were the locus of my terrible coldness, and the necessary site of resexualisation. I gave Madame X a single line to say (improvisation would have been fatal), you will never see me again. It took an hour or so before the line became a serious, terrible thing. I was handcuffed to the slab but would have pulled the world to pieces just to curl up and lie like a baby. Finally, I did. Madame X released me, and, at last, I lay curled on the floor as she gently fondled me.

I spent an hour this morning by the sea. By and large, I prefer the apparatus of social existence, and feel either indifferent or mildly hostile to the sea. I experience all the transpersonal moments I require alone in my rooms, with a pipe of the finest O. Yet this morning I took a baleful coffee by the sea and decided to take stock. It has been clear for sometime that the malaise of recent weeks, the intensified scopophilia and increased use of O, along with periods of high, but temporary obsession, are features of an oedipal regression. My ego position is intact, my faculties grossly so, and the symptoms have only occasionally impacted upon my quality of life. All of this time I have known the cause but refused to work with it, preferring to enjoy the symptoms. It has not, I think, been a case of denial but rather of exploring the stretch, rather than the depth, of the problem. There is a certain vanity to this louche disregard, and I accept that.

I got this far, finished my coffee.

I saw Gareth walk by with his partner.

I finished the last of my biscuits, and taking the opposite direction, decided that I would finalise my plans for the healing of my soul, taking long strides on the promenade as I worked out who was to do what to my body. Later, on the recommendation of a penpal, I picked up the phone and booked a three hour session with Madame X, currently of Kensington. I then spent the evening reading Hardy's love poems to his deceased wife and from there, to thinking of my own mother who died when I was the age my son is now, and from there to bed, before caving in completely. After all, I will require all my strength and weakness tomorrow.

Yes, yes.

I did more than amend my arithmetic. And more, yes. Yes, more than cast my eyes across her thighs. (And yet woke today with a calm that was nearly pathological). The article in Evolution and Human Behaviour had stirred a craving for confirmation of client R.'s menstrual cycle. Although in eighteen years of practice I have never touched a client, please god I spared her that, and the physical stirring while strong was containable, yet as our session closed the yearnings became one, a terrible, intolerable need to satisfy an intellectual curiosity. And so, without the word ever formulating itself in my mind, I was soon at ground level, on the High Street, stalking my client.

I was darting in and out of the crowd, the traffic. Walking is not the word, suggesting a conscious ego, whereas my body was simply moving itself into space, as if the breath of the crowd were inhaling me. I saw her stop at a cash dispenser, waited as the notes entered her palm, spotted the decrease in waist-to-hip ratio as she strode up some steps, indicative of ovulation, saw a unusual increase in facial animation with a mere street vendor, indicative, again, of ovulation, and then stared at her reflection in the window of a boutique for second hand clothes, indicative, again. I was losing my mind.

And yet later, calmed with a brandy and a quarter pipe in my kitchen, having decided I was certain she had not seen me, I sensed the whole meaning of my pursuit lay, less with client R., but in the insatiable need for endings (they that will be the death of us) and, therefore, lay earlier on in the day, at breakfast, in my failure to finish reading that intolerable article in the latest edition of Evolution and Human Behaviour. And so, as the awareness of this seeped from my mind into my body, I threw the journal into the bin, took myself upstairs to bed and slept like a baby.

One of the few pleasures of psychotherapy is that, encountering women on a weekly basis, four times a month, one can thereby begin tracing their menstrual cycles. Of course, evolution does it damnest to hide the signs from men, but the evidence of ovulation, the estrus of desire, is plain for any discerning eye. And so it was, picking a crumb of toast off my latest copy of Evolution and Human Behaviour, I was disgusted to half read an article on the subject by a team of researchers articulating what any teenage girl could have told them. Oh, why don't we just ask, eh? What are we scared of, Professor? With such thoughts, I entered my room and decided to check my log book. I expected client R. to arrive in the calming, centred time following her period but was surprised and delighted to find was she clearly in the bloom of ovulation. Plainly, I had been negligent with my arithmetic. As client R. seated herself, I turned toward my desk, enabling me to glance the length of her thigh, and proceeded to amend my records.

I woke in bullish mood, reflected in the weighty, affirmative shit taken to a recording of Stockhausen's Helikopter- Streichquartett. It looked so healthy I almost took a photo. My ego strength intact, I decided to floss my teeth and it was while polishing my incisors that I received a call from my very famous client. The poor dear had to cancel. He paused, as if waiting for me to enquire further but, curtailing his vanity, I decided the accumulative evidence of his introjected ego, a weakening defence against unknown homosexuality, would serve to fuel my own, more obvious aggression.

I charge double for cancellations.

This palpable, unplanned untruth was, not surprisingly, accepted with almost masochistic delight. Of course, he has enormous buffers against my wayward cruelty and yet, as I ended the call, a grime of regret came over me. I felt manipulated, even seduced into betraying my own rigorous standards. The feeling hovered over the day, redeemed or denied by the nagging desire to burst into Helen's room, revealing her sprawled naked on a chair, very precisely in the manner of Balthus.

I walked home, inhaling slowly, listening out for sites of fetish. And yet, walking over the underpass, another, contrary impulse came to play. It was the desire to lie on my sofa and, without a thought in my head, watch the international news and let it flood over me.

The Tuesday Group.

I entered the room prey to a vigilance. Moments before, passing Helen in the hallway, she greeted me with a lightness, an almost disturbing levity suggestive of other people, other places. I entered the room with my ear to the ground, and made silent plans for Helen.

Within seconds I heard false, discordant notes all around and decided they originated less in this session, or even the previous week, but in the session where client B. had explored the matter of her sexual abuse. She is in her middle years, an unsatisfied grandmother, and the rhythm of her disclosure had an assurance, an acceptance of her past at variance with the tone. She wished to present the matter as her core, unresolved experience and I felt then, as I do now, that she is adept at using the matter of sexual abuse as a cover, perhaps, for more recent events she is unwilling, or unable to disclose. And yet this inauthenticity has sent false notes ricocheting off the walls from everyone else. Unable to counter it, I glanced at my bookshelves, and made further plans for Helen. It was in the moment of formulating the plan to run my hard nails down her back, intending to expel the levity from her upturned mouth and, thereby, return her to me, that I decided precisely what to do with the complex, almost primal inauthenticity of client B. I told her, very gently, that she had a bit of fluff in her eye. She was shattered. And from there, we all took the long road back to ourselves.

What am I, reduced to this? The question of what to cook for George tonight has oppressed me all day. He rang last night, clearly distressed. I took the call in the bath, taking a lathered wank to a memory of a feisty encounter with a shopgirl. To offset the disappointment of the intrusion I then recalled the shopgirl's thighs, picturing them as not unlike the heavier specimen in any Rubens, and with the detumescence I began to get the gist of what George was saying. I followed him as he spoke of ailments and alienations and began to trace a triangular pattern to his woes. He creates a situation, fears vengeance, it doesn't happen. It goes on and on, all of which is underscored, very likely, by nothing less than a midlife crisis. I was naked in the bath so, having no desire for the details, was barely listening but George's saving plan for the rest of the week, the rest of his life, had me thrashing around for a towel. George was about to bid £8,000 for an Etty nude. I was appalled. In a desperate attempt to bring him to his senses, I held a flannel over my dick. With a certain decorum restored, I understood that, in his present mood, voicing my disapproval would surely entice him further. I merely told him to watch his back, there are a good many Etty fakes around. I signed off by inviting him round for supper tonight and today, wholly bored whether he bids or not, the question of what to cook has still ruined my fucking day. And it occurs to me now, in the half light of a quarter pipe, how much of life can be spent in trying not to offend those we most deeply wish to offend.