23
January 2017
Alex, Robert
“Last time, when I said that I might be bisexual,” Alex began, almost as soon as the door to the office had closed, “I was being totally serious. I’m terrified at the thought, I don’t understand myself. I genuinely love women, I love loving them. All those beautiful bodies, their scents, their tastes. But I have this burning interest in men that I don’t get with women. It’s the thought of the male body, so different from a woman’s body, unfamiliar, but known down to the tiniest of details, it’s an itch in my head that never leaves me, day or night. I like looking at men in the gym or in bars, I like it when a handsome guy shakes my hand and smiles, I like it when, playing some sport, my opponent’s hot body accidentally touches mine. I like gay porn. But does that mean that I’m gay?”
Robert answered with a question:
“You’re afraid that you might be homosexual?”
“I don’t know,” replied Alex. “I guess so, it scares me.”
“Why? What or who are you afraid of, Alex?” Robert continued with his questions.
“I guess I’m afraid of it turning out that my life has been a lie, and that for all of my thirty-four years I’ve completely misunderstood myself,” he said sadly. “Although maybe it’s all normal?” Alex tussled his hair. “David Fincher once said that after thirty-five there’s no truth left. Just various degrees of lying.”
“Alex,” Robert said in his beautiful, low voice, “people who were lucky enough in a good – in psychological terms - family, as a rule, gain an understanding of their sexuality when they’re adolescents, but even with them that’s not always the case. A lot of people only gain an understanding of their desires as adults, and that happens, as a rule, during very stressful periods in their lives. Some people, like you, find it too hard to free themselves of a despotic mother who’s been absorbed into your brain like vinegar into a sponge, along with all of her dubious conceptions of life and manipulative behavior. Of course, it’s difficult for you to work it out. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
Robert paused for a while and then continued.
“Psychology is a fairly young field. The psychology of human sexual relations, in comparison, is still a babe in arms. Freud tried to influence sexual self-identification with the aid of electricity and surgical intervention, and his followers tried to cure Alan Turing of homosexuality using hormones. Fifty years later, the scientific community finally established that representatives of sexual minorities aren’t people that have been gripped by horrifying mental illnesses, or victims of fashion or perverted upbringings. They established that people are born with a certain system of desires that allows them to love beings of the opposite sex and their own sex, and they may be subject to various sexual deviations. So, I’m afraid, Alex, that the only real way, in my view, to find out who you are is to allow yourself to experiment.”
Robert fell silent. Alex also kept the silence, thinking about what had been said.
“Have you got a girlfriend?” asked Robert.
“Yes, Vickey, she’s wonderful, but I can’t understand how she can love me after all the shit I’ve done,” said Alex. “I’ve cheated on her. Many times. And I know that she knows and that it hurts her, she’s torn up by jealousy and the damage to her confidence inside. But she doesn’t say anything. I’ve never admitted that I love her, just kept it to touching names for her. If you could’ve seen her eyes when I said that I would send her off to get an abortion if I got her pregnant. There were oceans of tears that hadn’t been cried, not from the hurt I’d done to her, but from the pity she felt for me. Pity. Despite everything, she loves me. She’ll come whenever I call.”
“You think you’re not worthy of that kind of love?” asked Robert.
“Unworthy? That’s a very precise definition, Doctor!” said Alex. “I’m not worthy of her love – that’s the perfect way of putting it! I do her too much damage by trying to work myself out, and she forgives me. But can I forgive myself?”
“The only real way to find something out,” repeated Robert, “is to allow yourself to try.”
“
Viam supervadet vadens,” said Alex, deep in thought. “The walker will master any road.”
“Correct,” said Robert.
They were silent for a while.
“You wanted to tell me about Rachel,” said Robert.
Alex glanced at the doctor.
“Yes,” he said. “I wanted to know if I’ve fallen all the way. Can I get any lower in disgrace.”
Robert waited to be sure that Alex had finished before speaking.
“I’m listening, Alex.”
The blinds, as usual, were drawn. Robert looked at Alex, interested. Robert always divided his clients into those with whom he worked purely for the money, and those who raised his interest with something more than financial remuneration. Robert found Alex fascinating. He’d very rarely met Alex’s type. He combined so many mutually contradictory elements that he couldn’t fail to raise the interest of a practicing and thinking psychiatrist like Robert.
“We worked together. I was the editor-in-chief. Rachel was running a glossy insert,” said Alex.
“Describe her,” said Robert.
“Tall, slender, she looked totally unapproachable.”
“Beautiful?”
“Yes. Very. And she had an ideal figure.”
“All right.”
“Yes,” said Alex. “She had a short haircut. It looked very stylish.”
“How did she dress?” asked Robert.
“Well, that’s a whole subject in itself,” grinned Alex. “Rachel was dressed incredibly. And she looked incredible.”
Alex made himself a little more comfortable in his seat.
“There was a photograph in a beautiful frame on her table,” he continued. “She was with her husband in the photograph. They’d got married ten years earlier, when they were eighteen. They didn’t have any children. Twenty-eight years old, a happy girl. She said she was thinking of having children. Every Monday a courier brought a big bouquet of flowers from her husband. The girls were all incredibly envious.”
Robert noted something down in pad.
“I don’t remember how I worked out that her family life wasn’t happy,” continued Alex. “I’m a writer, so I have to notice things that other people don’t notice.”
Alex sat back in his armchair, and it seemed to Robert that he was relaxing.
“One day we were sent to a meeting together,” continued Alex. “After we’d finished up, we took a cab home. We were sitting very close to one another. Our hands were almost touching. I don’t remember what led me to ask her. Perhaps I had a slight hangover so I didn’t care. I asked her why she hid the fact that her family life was coming apart. At first, she looked at me as if she couldn’t understand what I was talking about. Then she tried to say that someone was inventing stories about her. Then she asked who’d told me. It all looked very sad, or very stupid. I said that I could just see it. I could just see.
“And she started crying. Right there. In the taxi. We were driving around Regent’s Park. I asked the driver to stop. We got out and sat on a bench. I phoned the office and said that we were in a café working on the strategy for a new PR campaign and that there was no point in us coming back to the office, it would be a waste of time. Rachel was grateful for me having got us off work for the day. I asked her if she’d like to go to a bar nearby. She looked at me and said: ‘Let’s go to yours.’ Very simple, very clear. She didn’t have any doubts about me accepting. Firstly, she’d noticed that I love adventures, and, secondly, she really was stunning. And she knew it.
“When I came, I realized that I hadn’t sensed her orgasm. I asked her. I told you that this is a very painful issue for me. This is a very difficult subject for me.”
“I remember,” Robert said quietly.
“She looked into my eyes and whispered: ‘I’ve never had an orgasm’,” said Alex. “It was if I’d been whacked over the head with a massive bottle. Again? I remember that question cropping up in my head. At first I wanted to get her out of my apartment. But something stopped me. Her words. ‘I’m tired of pretending. I’m probably to blame for everything. I want to change. I don’t want to be cold’.”
Alex took in a deep breath. He seemed to be nodding to himself. To his thoughts that should now be offered up to the doctor.
“She really let rip,” said Alex. “And she let rip in every way imaginable.” He again fell deep into thought for a few more moments. “At first, we just fucked. But I very quickly realized that that was only making me worse. I was just scratching at the old wounds from my first love, when Maria couldn’t orgasm and she came to dislike the whole idea of sex.”
Alex ran his hand through his hair, tussling it.
“Rachel sensed that and, apparently not wanting to break off our relations, suggested that we go further. She suggested we go to swinger’s clubs. I’d somehow missed out on all of that, so I was interested.”
“Did you feel sorry for Rachel?” asked Robert.
“No,” Alex answered quickly. “She had her own life. We all go our own way. We both understood that we were only going to be in the same carriage of the same train for a time.”
“She found it interesting to be with you, no doubt?” suggested Robert.
“Possibly,” answered Alex. “But the main thing is that she didn’t want to be alone.”
“Like you?” asked the doctor.
“Maybe,” answered Alex.
“Did you match her intellectual level?” Robert suggested.
“Perhaps,” said Alex. “You know, going to a swingers’ club with a very attractive girl is a special kind of pleasure. It’s like going into a Porsche dealership with someone else’s credit card, with no limit on the amount you’re allowed to spend. The most attractive couples came over to get acquainted,” Alex smiled. “Suddenly, at your feet, you’ve got the most beautiful, sweet, well-groomed girls in London. Rich, wonderful, sexy, clever. The most incredible couples find out that they get bored in bed. And they start looking. The swingers’ club is there as the best solution to refresh their relationship.”
“Which of you found the swingers’ clubs?” asked Robert.
“London is packed with swingers’ clubs. You don’t need any special connections,” answered Alex. “But one of my clients has a private swingers’ club in his own mansion on Bishop’s Avenue, in the north of London – it’s one of the most expensive streets in the world. It’s on a totally different level. It’s really refined there, no random people, a very delicate crowd. Wonderful cuisine, extremely polite service, beautiful people.”
“Famous people too?” asked the doctor.
“Well, yes,” answered Alex. “Musicians, football players, TV stars. But everyone signs non-disclosure agreements. And anyway, all that passes. He’s famous today, hyped up, and everyone’s forgotten him tomorrow. It’s just noise.”
“But Rachel, no doubt, liked being in that crowd?” asked the doctor.
“I think so,” answered Alex. “It flattered her. But she got used to it pretty fast,” smiled Alex.
“And you like having these beautiful girls without even having to lift a finger?” asked Robert.
“I haven’t really thought about it,” answered Alex. “It’s always been like that. I got something from girls. And gave something. Never really thought about it.”
“So, the swingers’ clubs,” said Robert, returning them to the subject of Rachel.
“Yes,” said Alex. “It was really great at first. But it got pretty boring pretty quickly. Our hearts were thumping for the first few times when we drove up to that house on Bishop’s Avenue, but after a couple of months those meetings stopped getting your imagination going.”
“Then what happened?” asked Robert. “Why do you highlight Rachel in your long list of lovers?”
Alex looked at the doctor long and hard.
“She asked me to beat her,” said Alex, looking the doctor right in the eye.
Alex got the impression that Robert was ready for such a twist in the narrative. The doctor didn’t even raise an eyebrow.
“How did it happen the first time?” asked Robert.
“We were in my apartment. We were both fairly drunk,” said Alex. “I told her that we should think about a beautiful end to our relationship. That I was hurting. It was just hurting me to be with her.”
“How did she respond?”
“Rachel said that she’d understood everything from the very start. And that she would only ask one thing of me,” said Alex, and then fell silent.
Robert patiently waited for the story to be continued.
Alex took another deep breath.
“That I hit her,” he said. “In the face.”
“Did she explain why she wanted that?” asked the doctor.
“I didn’t ask,” answered Alex. “But my guess is that she wanted to fall all the way to the bottom. So that there was nowhere lower to go. So that it couldn’t be any more painful. She wasn’t worried about us splitting up. Rachel, with my help, wanted to come back to life, to get back in the game as card players put it once they’ve lost all their money and return to the table with money that they’ve borrowed. That was the way it seemed to me, at least. I think that she wanted to fall right to the bottom so that from that point onwards the road would only lead upwards. Rachel had tried a lot of things and she didn’t see any other way out. She said that her husband had taken her to the top psychiatrists who’d tried to provide her with the real essence of female nature, the joy of intimacy and orgasms. But nothing had worked. And so she’d reached this unusual decision.”
“Did you hit her?” asked Robert.
“Yes,” answered Alex. “Not very hard at first. But she demanded more. And I got a taste for it. I hit her. Really swung at her. At a certain point I caught myself thinking that I was taking my anger out on Rachel, the anger of my first love, my love for Maria.”
“Did you start to like beating Rachel?”
“Yes,” answered Alex. “But only her. I started to play her game. But with my own sack of grievances over my shoulder.”
“Was that the end of it?” asked the doctor.
“No,” Alex answered quickly. “Rachel had another request. A final request. She promised it was.”
“What was it?” asked Robert.
“By then we were no longer working in the firm where we’d met,” said Alex. “You couldn’t do what we were doing and make it to work every day on time,” Alex laughed.
“Quite,” said Robert.
Alex was silent for a while.
“Our life seems insane … for normal people,” said Alex. “But who wants to rot among that lot for your whole life?” he sighed mournfully, looking Robert in the eye.
Robert looked at Alex, his attention focused, and said:
“Let’s get back to Rachel’s final request.”
“I had some savings that we’d burned through. And Rachel would sometimes put some money in the pot too, although I never asked her to do that. I think she was running through the money that she was getting from her ex-husband. I don’t know what deal they made when they split up. She said that he’d remarried, but that he wrote to her the whole time. Normal letters. Written by hand. Can you imagine? He sent them by post.”
It seemed to Robert that Alex was delaying the moment when he would have to talk about the girl’s last request and that he didn’t want Alex to change his mind about telling the whole story.
“All right, what was her final request?” the doctor asked calmly.
“She suggested that we go to a certain establishment in London, find a lonely guy or two … and …” Alex fell into thought for a moment.
“And?” continued Robert.
Robert waited patiently.
“She wanted to feel that she was a slut,” Alex said quietly.
There was a pause.
“She wanted you to sell her like a prostitute?” asked Robert.
“Yes,” Alex answered briefly. “I already told you my suspicions as to why she needed to do that.”
They were silent for a while.
“We went to the Donovan Bar at Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair… The most expensive property on London’s Monopoly board, it helped, but not much,” Alex smiled sadly. “It’s not every day that you do someone a favor like this.”
Alex slumped back in his armchair.
“We sat there for several hours,” he continued, “drinking expensive champagne the whole time, I think it was Veuve Clicquot. She spoke to me the whole time. Saying goodbye. Because we’d decided not to see each other again. She was thanking me.”
“For what?”
“For being with her at a time when she needed me. I don’t know.”
“Do you think that you gave her freedom?”
“That’s a bit too black and white,” said Alex. “Who am I to give someone freedom? Or to take their freedom? I was just in a certain place at a certain time.”
“But Rachel wouldn’t have behaved as she did with you with just anyone.”
“Probably, Doctor,” said Alex. “I tried to avoid any categorical thoughts. I went through too much of that categorical approach as a child thanks to my mother. I’m afraid of stating anything for certain.”
“All right, Rachel said goodbye and thanked you,” said Robert, in order to get Alex back to his story.
“Rachel got drunk and chose herself a man,” continued Alex, “who would pay for all the champagne that we’d drunk and for a night with her. Or rather, for one sexual act. That’s what she decided.”
“She chose?” Robert specified.
“Yes,” said Alex, “of course. She looks like a star. Even the guys who were in the bar with their girlfriends were checking her out.
Alex pursed his lips and shook his head.
“Even for me, with my whole way of life, this was too much,” he said. “But I’d given my word to see it through and I couldn’t leave her on her own. She chose a man just before closing, at about 2 in the morning.”
“How much did the lucky man pay?” asked Robert.
“I can’t say. It’s not my mystery,” answered Alex.
“How did you feel about it?”
“I felt very strange,” said Alex. “I didn’t feel sickened by her, or sorry for her. I did what she asked and that was it, although I’d have preferred not to do it, not to have drunk that wretched Clicquot, and not to have been in Brown’s that night at all.”
He fell silent, and then continued.
“I always felt like an outcast. From my childhood. Mom made a good job of that,” Alex said with bitterness in his voice. “And I felt like an outcast that night as well.”
Alex closed his eyes again, shaking his head from side to side. Then he opened his eyes and looked at the doctor, focused.
“What did I feel, Doctor, at that moment?” he asked, repeating Robert’s question. “I didn’t feel anything. I’d only known Rachel for a month or two. Our relations were strange. I repeat: even for me. I wasn’t planning on digging around in her brain. We were just traveling our own road. And then our paths crossed for a certain amount of time. So, I wasn’t planning on saving her. And she didn’t ask. Who am I to save someone? And who’s going to save me?”
Alex fell silent.
“I hope that I helped her in some way, at least,” continued Alex.
He was silent, and then concluded:
“Keanu Reeves said that sorrow changes its form, but it never ends.”