I have no use for stress. No, I can't be doing with it. It's a failure of priority and, frankly, I have never failed to put myself first. And so it was with some surprise that I woke this morning to find that yesterday's concern for Helen had translated into a rash upon my arm. Following a wonderfully ordinary shit to a rather overrated Krommer concerto, I decided to refrain from a medical intervention, preferring to explore my dermatological issues more directly. Sitting neatly at her desk, Helen was reading a novel. Her bare arm and thin, pale wrist aroused me quickly, but I was annoyed by the novel, aware that until I knew what she reading, I would be unable to concentrate on seducing her. This is undeniably a delicate business. To secretly discover the title would enhance my desire, whereas a literary discussion would destroy it. She closed the book and seeing it was the latest Ian McEwan I was undisturbed, if slightly disappointed. I was aware that in trying to seduce Helen I was trying to resolve for myself the matter of her health. My deluded idea was that if she acquiesced, she was fine. If she didn't, it was very likely cancer. She spoke first, saying she hadn't missed me. I took this as an invitation to touch her breast. I eased my hand into her bra, holding her nipple, aware I could easily slip my hand between her thighs and under her skirt. The memory came of Axel's party and the several hundred breasts I saw that night and, remembering it, drew me closer to Helen. I felt her breath on my arm and the wholeness of that moment stilled us. I went to scratch the rash on my other arm and realised, woefully late, that testing her in this ridiculous way was serving my own, ancient wounds. My own dead mother and me, aged nine, had entered the room. Helen saved us both, saying she had a client coming. And I was freed for the bliss of scratching my arm to bits.

So, with one of Ammerbach's rather more florid and, possibly, lesser known works dancing in my ears, I left for work this morning with an air of dreaminess that I sensed could turn, in an instant, into a wayward and relentless cruelty. I decided to nurture the dreaminess, keep it close and, when it turned, ensure Gareth was in sight. Within minutes I was in the kitchen, joyfully making him coffee. We spoke of his Humanistic supervisor and we bonded over his stupidity while I invented an acquaintance of similar disposition and, sharing, we denigrated them both. It was delightful. However, I was aware of Gareth simply dying to inform me of something terrible. I also sensed he was torn between the pleasure of hurting me, and maintaining his joy over my ignorance. I could feel the ecstasy of finding the balance between the two was clearly a fulcrum he played with as a child. Always disastrously intrusive, forever grabbing his father's dick, or hiding under his mother's skirts. And it was then, picturing the boy Gareth, that I imagined the horror of what he was aching to say. I suddenly understood it could relate to Helen and, quite possibly, her health. I could see the psychological ecstasy for Gareth in telling me that Helen, his maternal imago was, in fact, dying and that I, her ostensible partner, am so unnecessary as to be barely worth informing. I could see Gareth had waited his whole life to say this. Holding his mug, and opening his mouth, he lunged toward me. Using my coffee to stall him, I stepped forward and swinging my elbows, propelled myself out of the room. Helen was off today so I spent a couple of hours trying to contact her. For lunch, I threw open the window, lit a pipe of O and promptly forgot about them both.

And when, precisely, when was it that my son, a mere ten, took control? When did the change occur? Or was it only this morning, in the hush as we heaved on our boots for the morning walk that he had promised me? Like that, the tables were turned. In the quiet of a moment I imagined was mine, he had me floored. Am I to understand he no longer enjoys our walks, that he is indulging me? Am I not authority enough? There is no manoeuvre left me now, only the absurd and overweening position of the specialist. Should I wow him with a little ornithology? Some soil science as we amble? Some folk astronomy? No, it's hopeless and so it was, impotent and waywardly bored, I dropped Thom off with his mother and invited myself over to George with a bottle of brandy. Luckily, the new girlfriend was not there but, as George tried to show me a photo of her, I feigned interest in some rubbish Picasso. I think she's blonde.

I have indulged a deliriously sweet tooth of late and in recognition of this I took a tight, compacted shit this morning, and such was the effort, it arrived with a something of a sheen. I cannot blame Stockhausen. In truth, the piano of Klaiverstucke, rather than expressing a soul, seems to describe the outline of a soul, and is almost doubly moving for doing so. Yet this morning, as I strained, the Stockhausen sounded like an assault and it wasn't until flushing the toilet, then checking my hair, that I felt certain I wasn't about to break down.

There is no such thing as sexual intercourse. Of course, Lacan was talking of language, and being a tease, too. Yet this line, upon which I once wrote an essay, came to haunt me again this morning, ruining my breakfast. And so, done with the late quartets, I left for work, deciding Lacan's line was also rather silly, almost pompous. This, in turn, lent a purpose, a firmness and an unmistakable virility to my stride. My arms swung with a spontaneity, a gusto. I was crushing the face of the great psychiatrist under my feet, and even if my arms could not repeat that spontaneity, I entered work with a pounding ego. Of course Gareth, who has spent his adult life crushing or seducing the male ego, could have destroyed me with a glance, so I swept up the stairs and burst into Helen's room, ready to bury my head into her bosom. And so it is, wars end. However, Helen had called in sick so I slammed her door shut. I spent the rest of the day alone with the residue of my inflation, relieved only by the memory of Tintoretto, a woman revealing her breasts and the relief, therein, to be reminded of the relentless, the unrelenting hydraulics of it.

Perhaps there remains for us/ Some tree on a hillside.

And perhaps not even that.

I have, of late, neglected my Rilke.

Ah yes, a pipe of O to bed and read the elegies. What better.

And yet my working world is nothing if not intimate. Suffused all day long in the anima and yet I've banished it from the home. I return to a hearth of my own calculations. One can no more request anything of the soul than one can of the wind, and yet in an attempt to shake up the hemispheres of my mind I decided, last night, that I would masturbate with my left hand. I cannot claim to have filled myself with the grace of god but, certainly, I slept like a baby and, waking slowly, remembered my dreams. There are far worse ways of trying to enter middle age.

Gareth smiled as we passed in the hall.

Clearly, he has news that he wants me to know I don't know.

Tomorrow I shall tread on his foot.

I woke alone. Tea and toast, alone. In truth, a vague air of unhappiness has plagued me awhile. I have neglected to study the symptoms, aware only of an increasing interest in Couple Having Sex, a Zichy print upon my kitchen wall. Last week, I was late for a client, so engrossed in this picture I have owned over twenty years. This evening, I ignored a call from my father. How quickly life can fall apart. Anyway, the Zichy shows a man lying on his back and the woman lying on top of him, but a facing upwards, covering him. Her arms and legs are splayed open and the man's penis is shown entering her from underneath. But why, why this bliss and abandon bothers me? Clearly, I am jealous of the feminine experience. The sexual pleasure of the woman is wholly, entirely, ontologically other. While the man experiences an intensification, the woman dissolves. Her pleasure is one of receiving, not striving, thereby yielding the grace of sentience. And what of that? If the religious sensibility is anything it is feminine. Clearly, mid life has lent me no favours. I am still as heavy, as male, as material, as dog as ever I was. If only I could paint. And so it was I spent the evening ignoring Helen's calls, honouring my own hormones, then took a late night walk into town, stopping to stare into the window of a kebab shop.

And so it was I entered the new year. I have since heard that Axel and his party have repaired from Athens to a maisonette in Berlin. As for myself, I harbour no revenge upon him. We are friends, after all, as they say. And why betray me, a mere therapist, when he could expose cabinet ministers from nearly every government in Europe? No, I have no fear of Axel, I am just surprised he has access to something as awkward, as crass, as a computer.

In short, I am no longer sure what I am doing here.

Oh, things have happened, course they have. Helen and I are regular. Her office, usually.

It was Thom's tenth! I took him on a tour of the Emirates stadium and now, pride of place in his bedroom, a framed photo of him, me and Arsene Wenger. The Arsenal manager has a grin the size of a boat, clearly in awe of Thom, and rightly so. My son has a mind the size of England.

And George, yes, George has a girlfriend. He would like me to meet her but I fear his motivation and, equally, my own. Clearly, betrayal is on my mind. And what is that, after all, if not the soul spreading it's wings? And yet, as the Russians knew, I must choose my enemy well.

I awoke, in faith, on New Year's Day like a pig in shit. But if I resembled anyone, surely it was the glorious debauch of Rubens' Bacchus, holding aloft his wine, rolling on his haunches, a half naked wench tending him, lovingly. So it was I ushered in the new year. And while knowing I was, indeed, waking up in the Chelsea basement of the mansion owned by my friend, Axel, even I was surprised to find myself stepping over so many breasts, not to say one engorged and, surely, deformed scrotum. Nevertheless, I entered the bathroom with no regrets. I inspected my teeth like a thief, then explored my body for any signs of debauch that I was, perhaps, suppressing but finding none, I blew a kiss to the Sodom at my feet, and departed. And so it was, of course, turning the corner onto Sloane Square tube that I stopped, clutched my knees, and heaved into memory the confession of Axel von Raffenstein, my friend, my host.

While seventy years old, he remains the delinquent son of some fabulous Austro-German industrialists and while undefeated, Axel fears that even his degeneracy has failed to dent his inheritance. And even his homosexuality failed to defend or distinquish him from the largesse of his family money. I will fuck myself to death, he said, twenty years ago. He had boys round the clock but even that didn't happen. Nevertheless, he maintains an exquisite collection of erotica and counts among his friends some of the most compromised people in the capital. And it was in view of the latter that I didn't think to question his invitation to a New Years Party. It was to be held on the third floor of the Barbican in London, currently host to an exhibition of erotic art from antiquity to the present. Yet someone did have the temerity to ask Axel how he had procured the space for his party. I was having an earnest conversation about house prices with a rather young blonde, but I did overhear Axel saying, 'My dear, these exhibits', extending his arms, 'half these exhibits are mine!' It was very likely his finest moment.

The party continued in Chelsea. Axel had themed each room into a particular fetish. Not knowing the rules, a man groped me in the hallway. To get my bearings, I took a brief tour and discovered a dutiful, almost donkey respect for the rules. There was an Anal Play room, a Nipple Clamp room, an Electric room and, in a wave of warmth for my old friend, I found the Kissing room. However, contrary to rumour, for peace and quiet I went to the Fisting room. I spent hours in most of these and certainly I'll write of what happened and, more importantly, what failed to happen. But in the early hours I found myself reclining with the young blonde. Perhaps in respect to our serious conversation at the Barbican about house prices we were unable to perform anything other than missionary position and it was then, or thereabouts, that I felt the cold hand up and down my back. I could hear the low drawl of Axel's voice but it took a long while to associate that with the hand on my back. Oh it was only a joke, for godsake man. Keep it up, that Secret Life thing. I was only playing, for godsake carry on! He said something about the party continuing at his residence in Athens. I smiled at the blonde and, trying to pretend Axel wasn't there, I maintained our embrace, all the while withdrawing slowly.

Ah, now.

Yes, let me sniff this, this air again.

Why end a silence so beautiful, eh? Or proffer my arse again? Why do that? Who needs that?

Of course, I know who revealed me. I met the person who named me as the writer of this blog and who scared me off in that dastardly fashion. He revealed himself on New Year's Eve. For that, later.

I'm fine, of course I'm fine.

The bowels are eager.

My client list is full and varied. Yet while noticing that modern tendency to desire progress and achieve goals, I am neither more nor less bored than ever I was.

George has a girlfriend.

I'm fine, absolutely. My mind.

My faculties, grossly intact. Buttocks firm, if lean.

My belly, the world!

Hah!