The Venus Fix Read Free

glass treated?”
    “No, it’s not.”
    Quickly, he turned around. For a second he looked as if he didn’t know what he was supposed to do next. Stand? Sit? Leave?
    “Bob, you need to come sit back down, or lie down.”
    He nodded and did as I’d asked.
    Silently again on the couch, he clasped his hands in his lap and then stared at his white-gold wedding band.
    “Bob, when you talk about going online, you refer to yourself as a bad boy. Tell me how it feels to be bad?”
    “Horrible. Despicable. Out of control. How else would it feel?”
    “Well, the expression on your face when you said it made me think being bad was exciting. Thrilling, maybe. Is that possible?”
    He seemed startled. “No. That’s crazy. Why would I like breaking rules? Rules, laws, are what separate us from savages.”
    He was disassociating. It wasn’t the first time. His posture had become more rigid. His hands relaxed. He spoke as if he were addressing a group of people, rather than just me, somewhere other than here in my office. I had to bring him back.
    “How do you feel about your wife finding out about you going online?”
    “I didn’t want her to know. I’m not a sadist. You know that, don’t you?” He looked directly at me, imploring me. This was when he reached me, when his childlike need to be acknowledged broke through the professional veneer.
    “No, you’re not a sadist. But let’s get back to the question. Is that the only reason you didn’t want her to know?”
    “Isn’t it enough?”
    “Yes. But I’m not sure it’s the only reason. Think for a minute, Bob. Why didn’t you want her to know?”
    “Why can’t you tell me? I don’t understand what would be so detrimental to the therapy for you to make a suggestion here and there. Use an example about another patient—without names, of course—to illustrate a point?”
    This was something Bob often did, interrupting the therapy to try to understand the theory behind it. Occasionally it was a deadly tactic, but often I knew it was a deep-seated need to understand the precepts of the process. He was highly intelligent, and I’d found that if I answered him, he became more responsive.
    “In this case I don’t have an answer. But something makes me think that even if you aren’t conscious of it, there’s another reason. I need you to find it.”
    He sat. Thought. Seemed to accept my rationale.
    “Okay. Now. Why didn’t you want your wife to know?”
    His brow furrowed and then relaxed. He’d thought of something.
    “Tell me.”
    “Her knowing ruins everything.”
    I nodded but didn’t speak. I waited. I knew there was more. After ten years of being a therapist you learn when the end of a sentence signals more to come, or when the patient has closed up again and you need to find another way in.
    “It’s not mine anymore. Even if it’s hell, it’s been my hell. Something that she wasn’t part of. Now that she knows, she can lie in bed and imagine me watching my pathetic little Web-cam girls, with my dick in my hand and she can laugh at me and my dependency.”
    “Why do you think she’d laugh at you? Has she laughed at you before?”
    “No.” Sharp. Decisive.
    “Then why now?”
    He shook his head.
    “Anything that comes to mind.”
    He shook his head again. We’d get back to that. Or I’d find another way in.
    “What happened after she saw what you were doing?”
    “She smiled at me.” Now he shook his head as if he was trying to shake away the image. “It was crazy. A crazy smile. Like she’d really lost her mind for a second. She just kept smiling. It was horrible. But the worst part was that even though I wanted to get up and hold her and promise her that I’d never do it again, I didn’t. I just sat there.”
    Something was happening to Bob. His eyes were not as intense. His muscles were relaxing into a professional mask again.
    “It couldn’t be more ironic,” he said in a more imperious, less-emotional voice.
    “What