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.