And so finding myself in good time for my afternoon appointment I spent a few minutes in an anteroom, waiting for Madame C to appear. An elderly coffee table carried an array of disappointing pornography so I closed my eyes and shifted my focus inward. I quickly sensed that I wasn't here for my upper thighs or to reawaken my regressions, but simply to clutch any woman's arse and bury my head in her cunt. And so it was, exuding a nonchalent benevolence, I renegotiated with Madame C and she agreed to an extended oral, the price unchanged. I spent an hour working on the thighs, the clitoris and the vagina of madame C and, aside from straying to the nipples, ensured a concentration of purpose and, assuredly, as she writhed towards her several ends, I knew that I had summoned and wrangled and, finally, mastered the mess of all my guilts and regret over Helen. I heaved a deep breath and, as Madame C lay below me, eternally realised, I felt like the priest of her and all women and, in keeping, sought no reciprocation and felt, in fact, quite indifferent as Madame C laboured with my dick. I kissed her hand and put it away.

Oh, George.

What farce our middle years. After a week of various hysteria, including my own in a public park, I decided to spend the day alone. I boiled up a mug of Burdock tea (is there nothing I will not do for my bowels), and browsed my eighteenth century copy of Ficino and yet, while curious to know what my Renaissance master has to say on the nature of grief, I was also aware of my breath, shallow and slight, a state I increasingly felt could only be resolved by a thrashing on the back of my upper thighs. I was aware that Helen's uncertain health lent her an unwarranted power and, therefore, hoping to balance this and resolve the tension in my lungs, I lay aside my Ficino and put in a few calls, finally making an appointment for myself tomorrow, along the coast, with a mistress who, if I remember correctly, used to work in a pet shop. She had a voice as hard as diamond.

I called Thom. We discussed his physics homework and after, on a whim, I projected, as fathers and sons tend to, all our dilemmas onto the astronomical and, thereby, asked what he knew of how the planets revolve around the sun. His answer nearly made me cry. So, lifting us onto firmer ground we then made plans to travel to Arsenal for monday night. Yet it was later, in the supermarket, seeing George and his new girlfriend in the alcohol aisle, that the uncertain emotion in my chest cohered into an obscene and horrible guffaw as I saw George's girlfriend was hardly more than a teenager, a Thai bride, in fact, and the innocence on the face of my friend as he pottered around with his girl was so profound, I had to depart the shop and unsure if it was misery for us both or admiration for him, I could do nothing but stagger home, breathing deeply, laughing like a loon.

Oh, George.

Are they spying on me, are they?

I pay my professional body sixty pounds a year for the privilege of practising my trade and now, in gratitude, they spy upon me. And so it was, searching for Canto XXV of Dante's Inferno on my car stereo, I left for work reflecting that paranoia is, indeed, the most tiresome of all defence mechanisms and yet how else can I explain my new client, Colin. What a prick, is Colin. He has come to me to explore his depression. Normally, I would approve the humility of this and yet something in his tone wanted me to understand, rather desperately, that in this exploration we were equals. It soon transpired, of course, that Colin is a counsellor himself. He failed to reveal who recommended me and, aside from admiring his absolute baldness, I spent a fair portion of the session wondering if he was a plant, a spy, and if not from the BACP then perhaps a friend of Gareth's? He was clearly gay. Also, like many contemporary men, he is an expert on his feelings but knows nothing of soul. Of course, his access to his feelings allows us the semblance of a therapeutic session and yet I grew tired of his quick and felt discriminations for they are always temporary, without the reach of soul. It was a deeply superficial session but Colin seem to like it. It occurred to me that Colin, in his choice of career, may have wasted his entire life and I began to rather hope that he was a spy, a plant, if only for his sake. I shall send out some feelers, but if Gareth is behind this then I shall break his spine.

Am I not done mourning?

Oh, mother.

I've had nearly forty years of nothing else. What have I been playing at?

Well what, then?

Oh a fake, certainly a fake, please god, yes.

But a buffoon I am not and yet, this morning, after a few songs by the hearty, if oververrated, Wolkenstein, I was ready to go to work and extinquish Gareth with an indifference that was so complete it was almost, in fact, religious. And yet, barely on the perimeter of the park, I felt a hot, oily ache. Initially, it reminded me of a certain insane lust, yet quickly I felt the need for the ground, for earth. The hot ache, like a ball, was roiling around my chest and I yearned for a place to lie down and clutch, or comfort myself. Quickly, the sobbing came. I imagined myself returning home and breaking down in front of the Nude Maja. It felt a vain and stupid thing to do and, rebuking myself, I was then distracted sufficiently to swallow the sobbing. So, having made no scene in my local, public park and, finally, pretending I had lost something, I made an exasperated, sweeping gesture and continued on my way. The charade, as ever, was entirely accurate for I had, indeed, lost something. If only the grief I have so long coveted. And so it was, I entered work in a broken and, it occured to me, a very modern state, desperate, as I was, to process something that not yet happened. And aware, too, of Gareth's voice in the kitchen.

Well, he doesn't make it easy, does he, St. John? If my soul is made of anything it's wet and mud and steaming horseshit, and so it was I put down St. John of the Cross's Ascent and lifted the phone to call my own dear Helen whereupon I learnt, at last, that she has, in fact, found a lump. I may have thwarted Gareth but god, this was no consolation. A lump? And so, forever calculating, my second consideration was to wonder why I hadn't found the lump on friday. Had we not groped? My sense of occassion was failing me but, within the whirr of my defences, I was aware that I would have to deal with this in a physical way. I imagined diving off the pier and swimming to France. Helen mentioned a six week waiting for a mammogram and I found myself on firmer ground, lambasting the health service and offering to pay for private care. She made it clear she could fund her own needs, a statement I felt was sexual, as well as financial. And besides, the waiting was based on medical grounds. I could feel myself turning, sensing the involvment of unknown others, as well as Gareth. And it could, after all, just be a lump. Before signing off I had already decided to take a pipe of O to the bath, the better to explore the crushing failure of my instincts as well as, what I can only describe as, my position.

Oh, I am grown old for this town.

I should move, no I should. It's a town for children, it really is. Everything here aspires to the condition of the infant, adoring of both innocence and incontinence. Oh, oh, an example. I was taking a quick brandy with an antiquarian friend when I spotted a flyer for an Ibsen play. Having a weakness for the Norwegian's cruel determinism I decided to go but, once again, it was another fusion of dance, jazz and camp, a mix of everything and therefore nothing, all, obviously, in the manner of Ibsen. I was appalled at this dissolution of a text into an onanistic showcase. The town is known for its liberality but it tends to extend this into a celebration of any personal expression whatsoever. It is such a gullible place. You could chew a piece of gum and it would draw a crowd. No I have to leave, I really do. One could make a postmodern apologia for the place, but no. It has an unbearable innocence and, under that, an inevitable pit of despair, depression and drugs. Yet it relentlessly celebrates youth and youth alone. And, of course, the old come here to be youthful, too. But they are missing a trick. Assuredly, one of the deep pleasures of life is accepting the age you are. No, I have to go. I shall ring George and tell him.

Later, after the show, I sat with an Australian girl. We spoke of nothing. However, I noticed her thighs and, after that, sat there, admiring her conversational skills.

This place will be the death of me.

I was in a mournful mood and, rather pathetically, reading St. John of the Cross, when Gareth knocked. I had no desire for either good or bad news so I held my breath and said nothing. He didn't try the door and, always seeking rejection, I soon heard him walk away. Soon after that, to confuse him further, I made a racket as I left for lunch. Aside from a brief urge to throw my pork pie at the head of a deathly teenager, there was no reason to expect the surge of lust that overcame me in the queue at the cashpoint. If not for the efficiency of the machine, my behaviour may have turned criminal. But how ungainly, the way my femme snatched her money. Surely that, the discourteous consummation, would have put me off? I sat on a bench and tried to summon a little mentalese. Plainly, my relationship with Helen, while containing tenderness, is almost exclusively physical and yet I have grown so accustomed to liasons of this nature I sometimes forget that verbal intimacy is even an option. Inevitably, the silence is filled with something, usually my horrors. So, clearly, just because Helen and I don't talk much, it doesn't mean she is dying. And so, having confirmed the value of logic, I swept back into the house, ready to see my very famous client.