Hypnothe Rapist Starr Scores Ch 02

To every gentleman in need of female companionship and affection...your dream doctor. Literally.

*The Hypnothe-Rapist*

STARR SCORES II: "The Impotence Strikes Back"

***

February 12th, 4:02 p.m.

Angela put the finishing updates on the file of her 2:00 returning patient, deposited it in the appropriate section of her cabinet, shut it, and pushed herself off it to roll her chair back across the office to her desk.

She held down the intercom button. "Hi Paula! One more today, right?"

Paula's voice crackled through. "Hi Doc! Yeah, I've got a Kevin Grant right here for 4:00, but he hasn't shown up yet."

"Oh," said Angela. "All right, well, let's give him a few minutes."

"10-4," Paula confirmed. Click.

Paula kept the appointment book right on her desk in front of her. The sign-in sheet was on a clipboard just outside the front receptionist window, with a pen chained to it. The waiting room was empty. Having completed the daily patient billing and rescheduling of appointments, Paula consulted her mental list of down-time activities to carry out while they waited on their tardy patient. She looked at the shelf on the left wall. No files were out of order. Nothing was amiss or askew in the rest of her window. Her desk drawer was as organized as could be.

All right, Solitaire time

, she thought, popping open the computer application. Solitaire was where Paula went when absolutely everything else was done and nothing more was sitting in her in-box. Fortunately, Angela knew how gifted a receptionist Paula was, so whenever she might wander in on her playing Solitaire, she trusted all was well and didn't say a word. Paula never let her down.

Two hands in, her eyes fell on the bottom right-hand corner of her screen. It was 4:10. She stood up and poked her head outside the receptionist window and looked out one of the building windows. The part of the parking lot she could see remained empty.

Paula hit

her

intercom button. "Hey, Starr. Mr. Grant still hasn't arrived just yet."

Angela responded after a beat. "Oh, gosh, I hope nothing happened."

Paula heard the concern in her voice. "Ange, you are the most caring, sensitive, considerate person I know."

"Tell me something of which I'm

not

aware," Angela repeated. She chuckled benevolently. "Well, he has been informed of the lateness rules, yes?"

"That he has."

"Good woman."

"You know, Angie," said Paula, "That's really understanding of you not to charge late or absence fees. The last doctor I worked for had a late fee after fifteen minutes of $25, and after a half hour it was

$100

."

"Heaven's sake," said Angela. "Well, yeah, I mean, you never know what might've happened to someone."

Click. Paula spent her down time at work playing Solitaire when everything else was finished. Angela spent hers reviewing old patient files, either hard copies or digital. On her laptop she could organize her database spreadsheet according to chronology, patient names, or first-timers versus returning. Apart from her family members and loved ones, her patients were the most important and beloved people in the world to her. And because 98% of them were gents, she had developed an enormous affection for men in general, having met and worked her magic on all different kinds of them. Understandably, the feeling was pretty mutual. For the most part, the men were really rather charmed by her and her heart of gold as well.

One of the free-time activities she enjoyed most was having a laptop feature of hers choose a random business day in her database, scrolling through it and reliving that given day. Sometimes it was five years ago, sometimes it was the previous month. It didn't matter a patient's age or ethnicity or issues or other characteristics; she loved them all. Occasionally, it was true, a fellow she saw would behave inappropriately, coming on to her, making an unwelcome comment or innuendo or such, but even should one not conduct himself in a gentlemanly manner, she was very tolerant and forgiving, her philosophy remained that the patient is priority number one, and she had never once refused to see a client a second time. She simply didn't have it in her. Besides, the vast majority of them were perfectly nice, decent gentlemen who regarded her with the same courtesy and professionalism she did them. Really all most of them wanted, be their issues behavioral, physical or mental, was just to be able to confidentially and privately share their feelings with someone who genuinely wanted to listen. And then they would undergo the hypnosis.

At 4:14, a car zoomed into a parking space with a screeching sound, and a young man jumped out and ran to the building. He made it into the waiting room, panting his way up to Paula's window. He had a small coffee stain on his fortunately dark-colored pants, a loose necktie and his white work shirt was partially untucked and stained with random drops of perspiration.

"Hi," he breathed, reaching for his wallet. "I'm

so

sorry I'm late."

Paula started to say, "Oh, sir, that's al—"

"Y'know, I just had a bazillion things to do, and then traffic was a freakin' nightmare, and just..." He fished out his wallet, making a gesture with his other hand that reinforced the nature of his busy day.

"It's okay, Mr. Grant, don't worry about it," said Paula calmly. "We don't close the office until 7:00. It's only a quarter after 4:00, so you're fine." She collected his identification. "So this is your first visit?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it is," said Kevin, as Paula Xeroxed his insurance card and license. He looked around anxiously, mumbling to himself. "W-where...where's my wal—" He remembered he had set his wallet down on the counter to give Paula his info. "Oh—!" he said. He gave himself a light slap on the forehead.

Glancing back at him from the Xerox machine, Paula said, "It's all right, Mr. Grant, really, everything's okay. You're not actually

that

late." Finished scanning, she returned the cards and handed him a personal information form. "Here you are—you don't have to fill this out right this second," she told him, pointing behind her. "You can go and see her right now. Dr. Starr's all the way down the hall and on the left, right across the corner from the restroom."

He thanked her briefly and headed back. When he saw her in her office, he knocked on the open door. Angela turned to see him. She was dressed in one of her long-sleeved ankle-length nightgowns with a light violet-colored robe over it, her bunny slippers, and a fraction of her wavy locks tied back with a large nighttime-blue hair ribbon. One of the dozens of reasons she loved her job was that wearing her jammies at work was not only okay, it was helpful, for the benefit of her patients.

"Oh, hello there," she said, "You must be Mr. Grant?"

He nodded anxiously. "Yup, that's me."

She hopped up from her chair. "Hi!" she greeted in her usual extremely friendly and bubbly manner. She took his hand, gave it a quick peck and proceeded to shake it. "I am so happy to meet you!" she beamed with her trademark charm-'em-every-time smile.

Kevin wasn't exactly prepared for her enthusiasm. "Wow," he said, "Seems like you were particularly expecting me. I mean, I know I made the appointment and all, but..."

Angela knew what he meant. "Oh, I just love people," she proclaimed. "I know it may make me kind of sappy, but I can't help it; I just love people. I love loving people, I love meeting people...I love loving meeting people," she finally said, tying it all together.

Kevin felt a bit taken aback. Nonetheless, he continued, "Hey, listen, I'm

really

sorry about my tardiness."

Angela shrugged, looking at him with a fake bemused face. "What tardiness?" she asked innocently. Then she again smiled cordially with a trustworthy wink. Something about her soft emerald-like green eyes made Kevin suddenly feel very much at ease. He had a feeling he might be comfortable with her—easier said than done, considering the purpose of his presence.

He remembered the form he was holding. "Oh, yeah, and, this here..." he sheepishly started to say.

"Oh!" Angela waved it off. "'S perfectly fine. Since it's your first time, we're going to conduct an introductory interview, and most of the same questions in our interview are on that form. It's really more something for our new patients to do to pass the time while they're in the waiting room. Anyway then..." she welcomed him in with a flourish of the hand. "Bienvenue! Go on, have a seat." She motioned to the sofa bed taking up much of the open space in the middle of her office. It was sitting in sofa form. He did as she said.

Angela sat down in her desk chair and closed the lid on the laptop. "If you or any other patient arrived more than 30 minutes after your appointment was scheduled, we would need to cancel it and schedule again, but no hugie. It's..." She checked her desk clock. "...4:22 right now," as she turned back to Kevin, "And this is our first meeting, so I'm going to give you the full two hours, assuming you want the treatment, and so you'll probably be finished at about 6:30-ish. Maybe a bit later." She slipped on her oval-shaped eyeglasses, picked up her pen and pad and crossed her right leg over her left. "Now, what I normally like to do with patients is give them a quick explanation of my craft, what it is I do, what they can expect from me, et cetera.

"So, Mr. Grant—do you prefer Mr. Grant or Kevin?"

"Oh, Kevin, please."

"Kevin; outstanding. What I do, Kevin, is hypnosis. It's a less conventional but more personal form of therapy in which the patient is very gently and gradually soothed into an unconscious state, commonly known as a trance, at which point I communicate with him through his subconscious." She paused a moment. "Have you ever been hypnotized before, Kevin?"

He shook his head.

"All right. I've been practicing in hypnotherapy for five years. And I do not consider it immodest to say that I am very skilled at what I do, because what I do is improve the quality of my patients' lives. Some patients can be cured within as little as one to two sessions, but I can't guarantee that, so you shouldn't expect it. Some patients require multiple sessions, and some patients have been coming to me regularly for several months. It all depends. Now, were you referred to me by...?" she let the question float out.

"Oh, the Yellow Pages," he said. "Although...I...don't know if I should've come, honestly. It's really pretty embarrassing, actually."

"Aw," said Angela sympathetically, "My friend, if it helps, you needn't feel embarrassed with me at all. 'Tis not in my job description to humiliate clients. 'S bad for business. And if you don't feel the treatment is working for you, the decision shall always be no one's except yours whether you would like to continue with your sessions, although I've agreed with all patients whom I'm no longer seeing that their progress has become sufficient to go on without me."

He nodded. "Okay..."

"Okay. And hypnotherapy is extremely gentle and soothing, and while not a 100% miracle cure, is nonetheless quite effective, but you will need to know, this process is more intimate than traditional therapy is. There is a degree of physical contact involved."

"So..." he said, "There's...touching?"

"Yes," she nodded. "If you choose to undergo my procedure, I will be physically touching you. Yes."

"How?" he inquired.

"Well," she put down the pad and pen for a moment, opened one of her desk drawers and took out a small tube of hypoallergenic lotion. She squirted a bit out and gave her hands a little covering with it. "First of all, with very soft, warm hands," she went on, indicating the lotion, "And the opening step, once I would have begun relaxing you is monitoring your pulse and your heartbeat. Once they are constantly where I want them to be, I would be

very

, very lightly smoothing my fingertips over your skin, which is helpful to patients in order to relax any tense muscles and nerve endings—

but

, oh, which reminds me," she said, "Are there any spots on your body that are particularly VERY ticklish? Or cannot be touched without stimulating you, rather than relaxing you?"

He lifted one of his eyebrows. "How ticklish?"

"Ex

treme

ly ticklish. I mean, level of ticklishness where you would involuntarily snatch the person's hands, smack them away, anything to get them to immediately stop.

That

ticklish. Less than that, you shouldn't be adversely affected."

Kevin thought a second. "Probably the only part of my body that sensitive is my feet."

"Well, you won't have to worry then," smiled Angela. "No touching of feet involved. And, if you at any point decide you want me to stop, or you do not want to continue or commence the hypnotherapy in any given session, say the word and you will be allowed to depart with a refund. If you wish to stay and simply talk, that's fine as well. I want my patients to be fully aware of all their options."

Kevin nodded again. "Gotcha...so, do I have to watch a swinging watch, or something?"

Angela laughed. "No, no, no sir. I don't do watches. I also don't do any kind of 'look into my eyes' shtick, or anything like that. I have my own method, on which I'll fill you in as we go along. Sound good?"

"Sounds good."

"Terrific." She picked up the pad and pen again. "Now—and remember, please try not to feel embarrassed, I will

not

laugh at ANYthing you say—unless it's clearly meant as a humorous joke. So what brings you here? What is the nature of your problem?"

Kevin broke eye contact with her. He looked at the floor, the walls, anything around the rest of the office. "Oh, boy..." he said, idly scratching the back of his neck. "All right, uh..." He hesitated. "How much time do I have?"

"Oh!" Angela turned the desk clock to the back of both of them. She emphatically told him, "

Don't

worry about the time. I promise, I'll give you all the time that's necessary. Even if we go past 7:00, hey, it's my clinic—it can't be closed and locked with us in it. So in here, time doesn't exist, and you're fine. Go right ahead. And also, anything you say in here is confidential and goes no further than the two of us, so you just tell me as much as you want, and you don't have to disclose anything you're not comfortable with."

"Hmm..." mused Kevin, trying to think of how to broach the subject. "Well, this is gonna be difficult..."

"I'll make it as easy on you as I possibly can, Kevin. I would

never

judge anything a patient told me."

He sighed, blowing out some breath. "A'right, well, here goes," he muttered. He covered his mouth, rubbing his chin, cleared his throat and said, "Uhmuhputuh."

Angela leaned a little closer to him. "I'm sorry, Kevin?"

He sighed again. He figured he might as well just say it.

"I'm impotent," he croaked out loud, holding his breath.

She nodded in revelation, straight-faced. What came out of her mouth was, "AH." What went through her mind was,

OH, dear

.

Kevin was looking at the floor again, covering his eyes and shaking his head. Angela automatically felt very sorry for him. "Oh, Kevin...oh,

please

try not to feel ashamed or embarrassed about that." She put as much empathy into her voice as she could. "It's norm—Kevin? Kevin, look at me." He looked up at her compassionate countenance. "It's NORMAL," she affably assured him. "Erectile dysfunction is really quite

normal

. You'd be surprised how common it is. Do you know what the percentage is?"

He looked back down to the floor again.

"Almost fifty percent! Honest to goodness, Kevin, almost fifty percent—almost half of all men at some point in their life experience ED. Be

lieve

me, Kevin, if you're worried at all that you're alone in this, that's the LAST thing you could be. But also, and more importantly, please don't let that affect your self-confidence. Or make you feel that you're any 'less'..." she finger-quoted, "...of a man, because that attitude's just absurd and nonsensical—not to mention thoughtlessly callous. It's your identity, inside, as a grown male person,

that

's what makes you a man. Not being able to stiffen your...self, every single time someone snaps their fingers."

Kevin abruptly stood up from the sofa and started pacing the office back and forth.

Angela tried to calm him down. "Kevin, there are

dozens

of factors that can minorly or majorly influence a man's performance. Like...age, for instance. Or—"

Kevin stopped pacing. He tossed up his hands. "That's the most humiliating part!" he lamented. "I'm

25!

"

Angela did have to admit to trying to keep her eyebrows from jumping at this information. Kevin went on, "I mean, who gets ED at twenty-freaking-five??"

Angela tried harder. "Okay, okay, Kevin, easy, take it easy. Age is only one factor! Like I said, there are dozens of others. Like, here's another one: February! We're in the middle of winter! We

all

lose a little of that drive and will to perform in the wintertime, and cold weather's been known to decrease a man's...Kevin?"

Kevin was pacing again. He was looking more panicked. Angela tossed down her pad and pen, got up and took Kevin gently and ladylike by the arms and started to caress him. "Kevin, please calm down. It's okay. You're okay. Everything's okay. Come on now, we're

just

talking about this. You can trust me. Okay? I'm...your...

friend

. I can't overemphasize that. Your pure, unconditional friend. I wouldn't do anything to harm you in the slightest way. All I want to do is make you feel better. Y'know what, in fact, for a minute, just...forget about the money. Forget the office, forget the time, don't even think of this as a session. For right now, I'm not even Dr. Angela Starr, I'm just...Angie. Your pal, Angie! Your buddy girl! Just imagine we're two friends, Kevin and Angie, shooting the breeze. And that's it. Okay?...Kevin?" He was still having trouble maintaining eye contact.

"Kevin, look at me, please."

He returned his eyes to hers again. Her expression was supportive and affectionate, without a hint of mal-intent. She really did have two of the loveliest, gentlest eyes he had ever seen. She actually

could

hypnotize someone with those eyes, he thought. He could see himself just getting lost in those two shiny emeralds.

She let go of his arms and held his hands. "We're gonna work this out, together," she declared. Kevin still did not look very relaxed.

"You want a hug? Would a hug help right now?"

He shrugged. "Couldn't hurt, I guess."

She gave him one. When it was finished, she said, "So why don't you go ahead and sit back down. Or lie down, if you want. Get comfy, kick off your shoes." She sat him down on the sofa. "Or—oh, even better," she said, "You want some pajamas?" She slid open the door to the closet on the other side of the room, showing him her impressive array of sleepwear.

Kevin thought a second. "Couldn't hurt either."

"Fantastic!" said Angela, always excited when someone accepted the pajama offer. It made the session felt like a miniature slumber party. "These are loose and comfy and generously sized; they're basically one size fits all. And they're fresh. They go in the laundry every morning. What do you like? Any favorite colors? You like stripes? Plaids? Hearts? Animals?"

In a few more moments, Kevin had dropped into the office's private bathroom for a bit and come out wearing a pair of the pajamas. His clothes were going to be hung up, but as there was a coffee spot on the right-leg pocket of his trousers, Angela asked him if he'd rather have her wash them, so he said sure, why not. He laid down.

"Good man," praised Angela, sitting in her chair. "That's gotta feel better, huh? Now we can get on with the interview." She returned to her classic sitting position, pen and pad in hands, flipping one leg over the other like Sharon Stone. "So...how long has this situation been going on?"