Copyright 1999 Del Edwards (a nom de plume)
The first session was about what I had read it would be. She was taking a history. She sat in a comfortable-looking over-stuffed-chair after motioning me onto the couch. "Since the problem is sexual, we're gonna have to talk about sex. Make sense?" she said. Some of the time she used the matching footstool as a desk for her yellow note pad. Other times she crossed her legs and used her thigh as a desk.
"How often do you masturbate?" she asked locking her eyes onto mine, daring me to lie.
"Couple of times a week," told her.
"How long do you take?" she asked.
"Just a few minutes,' I responded.
"I want you to start taking longer, a lot longer. We'll get back to that in a few minutes. Is it wrong to masturbate, morally wrong?" she continued.
"If it is I've been bad a lot of times for a long time," I told her. She smiled
"Can you differentiate between emotions such as fear and anger, pain and shame?" she asked, again locking her eyes onto mine.
"I think so," I responded. She dropped her yellow pad and pen onto the footstool, rose from the chair and sat next to me on the couch. Her thigh was touching my thigh. She bent forward slightly and my eyes automatically went to the gap at the center of her blouse. She placed her hand in my crotch and asked, "What emotions are you feeling?"
"Ahhh, oh fear maybe ... and someβ¦some..."
"Say it," she urged.
"Shame!" I told her
"And what else?" she insisted, her hand doing spider pushups in my groin
"Anger," I responded flatly.
Anger about what?" she asked.
"That ... that you can put your hands on me and open me up like a can of sardines," I spit at her.
She withdrew her hand, swung her thigh away so there was no contact between us and said, "You're a classic sexually-repressed, seriously damaged twentieth century male." She rose and returned to her chair. With her yellow pad on her thigh and her pen poised she said, "Tell me about your relationships with women, starting with your mother." She asked many questions and filled several pages of her yellow pad with notes. When she put the pad aside I knew we were about to move on to something else.
'Since you're not in a relationship at the moment we will need to address that first," she commented. "There are a couple of ways to deal with that. One is to use a surrogate," she said handing me a double folio of color photographs of an attractive young blond woman. In one photo she was dressed in baby doll pajamas sitting on a straightback chair with one leg tucked up under her. She was smiling directly into the camera. The other photo was more of a closeup showing her in a lacy red see-through garment of some kind, black stockings covering part of her thighs and lower legs pulled close to her chest. There was a come-hither expression on her face and her right nipple was clearly visible under the red lace. "That's the woman I have used several times because she is intelligent and follows directions well. She is also genuinely interested in helping men with their impotence. If you choose to go that route she gets eighty dollars for a fifty minute session."
I blinked and nodded to Judith that I understood what she had just said. I was also aware of the thought that this was going to be more expensive than originally anticipated.
"The other way is to engage me supplementally to perform the surrogate function. There are two advantages to that. First I charge only forty dollars an hour. I am not young and beautiful as she is. I don't have to make a living doing surrogate work so I can charge less. The second advantage is that if I fill both the therapist and surrogate roles I can not only guide the process but also observe your progress first hand. Likely it will go faster because of the integrated functions," she concluded.
Judith was a striking woman in her own right. Maybe a few years older than me, maybe not. Tall and classy, streaks of silver in her radiant almost black hair, just a few pounds too many but they were well distributed on her frame, well spoken, and seemingly knowledgeable about the matter at hand. The idea of having sex with her appealed to me but I was sure that what she would have me doing wasn't even close to the vague fantasy I was having about her.
"You'll need to make a decision about that in the next couple of days and let me know," she said. I nodded. I was taking her clothes off in my imagination, exploring the curves and planes of her body. She knew it. She smiled and a little discomfort moved through her body like a single wave on a calm pond. "One more piece of business for today," she announced. "I want you to lock the door," she said motioning toward her inner office door, take off all your clothes and spend at least twenty minutes masturbating before you ejaculate. Come into a couple of tissues and bring them to me in the waiting -room," she directed. She handed me a bottle of massage oil from her desk drawer and walked out of the room closing the door behind her.
Thirty minutes later I was handing her the semen-wet tissues as she sat on the couch in the waiting room. She sniffed them and nodded her approval. Then she rose from the couch to get a psychologically equal position to me and said, "Do not masturbate or ejaculate until our next session. I want you to come in here primed and ready. Understand?' she said. I nodded.
I saw inspiration light her. She held up her index finger and smiled as she stared at the open door to her office. Her finger came down and pointed toward the door. "Come in and sit down for a minute,' she said, the smile enlarging. She sat in her chair and propped her chin up on her fist. She motioned me into the chair at the end of her desk. "I'm known for being unconventional and getting results with my unorthodox methods. I take a good deal of pride in that." She was looking straight into my eyes. I felt the excitement of her stare and waited for her to finish. "What a coincidence ... would you be willing to interact with another of my clients? There would be specific rules to follow... limitations ... and behaviors that I would direct and require of both of you," she advanced.
I was a bit bewildered by her question. She misread my hesitation and said, "Let me sweeten the deal a little. You two pay one surrogate fee to me to supervise the two of you. In exchange you both sign a release so I can author my improvisation into an article published in a professional journal." She saw that l was even more lost. "Look, I have this female client who has a particular problem that she wants to overcome. I want to match her with you. I believe that you two could aid each other in reaching your objectives," she enthused.
"Well, I suppose..." I said uncertainly.
"This would be a first. Can you agree to follow my directions explicitly," she urged.
"Yes."