Entering the solemn quiet of the tastefully and expensively furnished lobby, she was greeted by the darting glances of two bespectacled pairs of eyes. Whereas the slightly pregnant receptionist's once-over conveyed only the inscrutable corporate calm indigenous to high-end office culture, the furtiveness of the middle-aged patient's stolen peek betrayed just a hint of sexual interest. While she'd experienced this before, these glances unfailingly surprised her as she had never considered herself a traditional beauty -- a little too plump to seriously venture into the two-piece racks in swimwear, nose too long and skin too alabaster pale to ever approach the standards set by the Photoshop wizards at all the leading beauty magazines. But, as her husband had tried to convince her in her more insecure moments, she was in fact a quite lovely thirty-one-year-old woman -- the pale skin she regretted contrasting wonderfully with her large brown doe-eyes and supple lips, lending her an innocent, quasi-virginal beauty. The baby fat she tried now and then to shed in fact doing her more good than bad, especially in those just-slightly-clingy skirts she wore to work.
"Lauren Kaplan. I'm the four-o'clock."
"Of course Mrs. Kaplan. Down the hallway and the second door on your left. He's ready to see you now."
.....
"Ivan Gladjo, M.D.," gold-plated in Constantia font. Lauren took a deep breath and turned the door handle. Behind a handsome mahogany desk, an intelligent and worldly-looking mid-fiftyish gentleman with a short, salt-flecked beard -- in deference to Freud she presumed - stood up and greeted her with a kind smile.
"Lauren, so nice to meet you."
"Dr. Glow-joe," she smiled.
"Glad-yo, but, please, call me Ivan, he offered in a genial tone spiced with just the hint of an Eastern European accent. "Go ahead and have a seat," shutting the door behind her.
They each settled into plush chairs comfortable enough to sleep in. Lauren relaxed and took in the cozy surroundings -- the yellow wine-light of the late afternoon Friday sun peeking in through the wooden slats of the blinds and coloring the rich chocolate wood of the numerous bookshelves with a lovely gold. Professionally mandatory titles like the DSM-IV and Psychology of the Unconscious offset here and there by literary incongruities -- Anna Karenina, Huxley's Ape and Essence, a slim volume of The Metamorphosis, something called Histoire de Juliette ou les Prospérités du vice...
"I understand you'd like to increase your freedom and openness in the bedroom."
Close. This visit, like the set of seven that had been pre-paid to follow, was in fact the brainchild of her husband. Jimmy was an energetic and generous lover whom she adored making love to, and there was nothing particularly wrong in her mind with the frequency or pleasure of their lovemaking. But she could not orgasm from intercourse alone, and, no matter how many times she had told him that this was in no way unusual, that many women like her were simply not built that way and required oral or manual pleasure, and that orgasm was not to her the sine qua non of sex in any case, it had always slightly bothered him. Her few attempts to fake it for his sake were unconvincing even to Lauren and made her feel duplicitous.
After permanently kicking cigarettes with only two weeks of visits to Dr. Gladjo, Jimmy gotten it into his head that she could be "cured" with just a little therapy from the master. An insulting and annoying request from an otherwise wonderful husband when he first presented it, but when six months had passed and he had still not relinquished the dream, she agreed to do it for his birthday. Under the proviso that if it didn't work, he was never to bother her about it again.
"James is insecure about my inability to orgasm from intercourse alone." Words she once could not have dreamed offering up to even a credentialed stranger, but she had resolved to get through these visits with frank directness, a strategy to dilute the overall awkwardness of the affair. "He thinks this will help."
Ivan sat back. "Well... this is not really a problem necessarily. It's important for your husband to understand that lovemaking is not a contest, and that a fixation on orgasm can, if unrestrained, detract from an otherwise joyous occasion."
Her look suggested total agreement.
"But...," gently stroking his beard, "what I have found, in the couples who seek therapy here, is that, with an enhanced capacity to fully explore themselves and to know themselves as sexual beings comes... a newfound fulfillment in the bedroom, even when they come to me with already satisfactory sex lives. This manifests itself not just in the experiences of the patient, but of his or her partner as well." Smiling at her, "At a minimum, I believe we can make your husband forget all about this orgasm fixation of his through your newfound explorations together."
A small, reserved laugh. "It would be more than I can do."
"Now, just to be clear, you are comfortable receiving therapy from a male practitioner? Rest assured that I will provide the same level of professionalism you would receive from my female colleagues, but that I would understand entirely if you would prefer to meet with someone of your own gender."
Lauren was not, in fact, entirely comfortable with the arrangement. Always a sexually reserved woman, nothing came less natural to her than discussing such matters with a man she barely knew. But she saw no better alternative. With a woman, things would be equally awkward, but in a different way... she would feel judged, she thought. More importantly, she knew Jimmy was absolutely convinced that this doctor was a virtuoso, and if she switched therapists and things didn't work out, she felt like he would continue to press her.
"I'm fine meeting with you, Dr. Gladjo."
"Please, Ivan. Now, in cases like yours where there is, in fact, no real disorder, but merely the desire to spice things up a bit, I find the quickest, most effective method of treatment to be hypnosis. Have you ever been hypnotized, Lauren?"
"No. I'm not even sure I can be hypnotized."
