It was Friday night and the phone rang. I picked it up and was surprised to hear that it was my wife's therapist. I knew about him, of course, but had never met or even spoken to him. He knew Sue was out of town for the week, so I was really caught off guard, and immediately worried by his call.
"Ken? This is John Everett. I think Sue has told you about me?"
"Yes. Is everything okay?"
"Oh sure, sorry to alarm you. I ..I just have something that I need to see you about."
His voice sounded strange, maybe even like he was a little drunk, but not having spoken to him before, it was hard to tell.
"Well. Sure. I guess I can come see you sometime next week, if you like?"
"Are you available tomorrow evening?"
This was really strange. Appointments had always been hard for my wife to schedule with him because he doesn't have any evening hours, never mind evening weekend hours. I was somewhere between really alarmed and totally taken aback. "Are you sure everything is okay? I guess I can meet with you tomorrow."
"Really. Everything is fine. It's just that I've been working with Sue for a while and I think that I really need to work some things out with you before I can help her any more. I'm just at home thinking about those things tonight and I think it's best for all of us if we get right to it. I think these are things that we might want to work out while Sue is away and we can have some privacy without other people around at the office."
"I guess. Well, I'll meet you at the office tomorrow. What time?"
"8pm. There's an intercom in the entryway, let me know when you get there and I'll buzz the door for you to get in."
I hung up and stared at the phone as if it might have the answers to my confusion. What the hell was all that about? Sue has a number of anxiety issues stemming from some things in her past and had been in and out of therapy for a number of years. She'd been seeing this one for a couple of years and seemed to make pretty good progress with him. She and I have had our issues over the years, but things were generally good between us. I didn't really know how much time she spent talking to him about our relationship and always assumed that they mostly worked on her personal issues, rather than relationship issues. My mind whirred and now I wondered if he wanted to talk to me about things that Sue had brought up about us or if he was concerned about something else she'd told him, or what. It seems like he might have told me if he was worried about her, so I tried to dismiss it and just wait until tomorrow.
I arrived just prior to eight and pushed the button for the intercom. "Ken?" came the reply.
"Yes," and the door buzzed.
I opened the door and started up the stairs and as I approached the top, I saw a man step from one of the doorways. He smiled and extended his hand, "Hi. I'm John."
"Ken. Good to meet you."
"Come on in Ken."
I could swear that I could smell alcohol on his breathe when we greeted each other. This whole situation was really strange. We went through a small, neat reception area and into an office with a desk in the corner, and a sitting area with a small couch and with two chairs facing the couch. "Have a seat on the couch please," he said as he took a seat in one of the chairs.
He started right in, "In the time that I've been working with Sue, the issue of trust and security in your relationship keeps coming up and I think it's related to one issue."
"Really, I'm not sure what you mean?"
"Sue is quite concerned that you're bisexual and fears that you might even be gay."
I felt as if I'd been kicked in the gut. All the air rushed out of me and I froze. Time froze and his words hung in the air. "What the fuck? Why would she say that?"
"Well, frankly I understand her concern."
"What the hell do you mean?" I felt trapped. I was in a panic, more than angry.
"Well, Sue told me about your fantasies and the stories that you've written."
Oh god. My heart raced. "What do you mean?" All I could think to do was to play dumb and deny.
"I think you know what I mean."
Now I felt more on the run than ever. I was defensive. "Big deal. So I have a little fantasy about another guy once in a while. That doesn't make me bi." I couldn't even think, never mind say, gay.
"Well, when Sue told me about the stories, that's what I told her. After a while, she couldn't seem to let it go and we started to talk about them in a little more detail and I began to see where her concerns were based. When she told me about how she found out, the feedback with your author name, I decided to find the stories and have a read for myself."
As soon as he said this, humiliation and embarrassment washed over me. I'd been having same sex fantasies since my early teens and later, started writing them down. Before my wife and I had met and even occasionally since we'd been together, I'd submitted them to Literotica. Sue had apparently found some of the feedback emails and looked up the stories by the author name that I'd been using. I couldn't believe that she'd read these stories. No wonder she'd wondered about me. I was certainly distracted by the idea that my wife knew about these stories, but that didn't keep me from the panic of knowing that I was sitting in front of a man that had read them too. My fantasies had always been pretty hardcore and my writing quite graphic, but I'd never done any of these things! They were just fantasies. I blurted these things and a stream of denials and explanations at him as he sat passively and listened. "I'm not gay! They're just fantasies!"
I'd nearly exhausted myself with my pleas and he just looked at me.
"Why do you suppose that you have these fantasies, if you're not gay?"
"I don't know, I guess it's just the taboo part of it, maybe it just turns me on to think about doing something "bad""
I felt as if I was desperately trying to explain something away.
"Maybe, but I've read these stories," as if I needed him to remind me right now, "and they're really quite graphic. Don't you think they're rather extreme for someone that's just doing something a little taboo?"
"I don't know," I mumbled.
