Client R.

The Zichy print had been preying on my mind. I placed it in the bedroom, but it haunted me this morning while in the kitchen, buttering toast. It preoccupied me on the toilet where I took a silent, unthinking, almost unconscious shit. In depicting a moment of climax, Zichy has shown the most intimate, most literal moment and yet it gave rise to endless abstract speculation, so much so I walked to work resembling nothing more than a breeze of air. I spent an hour trying to return to my body but when client R. entered, not unpretty but heavy, crushed by last week, I wanted to absorb something of her substance, her corporeity, so I clasped her hand and pulled her into the room. Within a second the flare of transference returned to her eyes and she kissed me, quickly, on the lips. What a bollocks. It was as instantaneous for her, as clasping her hand was for me. A right and proper fucking mess. What was I doing? Had I ever been so unthinking, so cruel, in fact? The ambiguity of my behaviour could only lead to madness, suicide, or open the door, perhaps, to a life of servitude to my dick. All three choices vied for attention, until client R. relaxed, and forgave herself the kiss. It was this forgiveness, and therefore the client, R., who did the healing today. The animal warmth of her own good sense filled the room and, inevitably, when she left I had only the awareness of how quickly, how ordinarily, I will invite my own end.