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.