Get Me Out of Here (32 page)

“But Dr. Padgett,” I begin to sit up, overwhelmed by the pleasure, afraid of where this might lead, “should we be doing this?”

“Relax,” he says. “Just enjoy. Nothing bad will happen. Just sit back and feel the pleasure.”

He continues stroking my breasts, his hands so gentle, the warmth of his soft fingertips touching my hard nipples through the cotton dress, the erotic pleasure seemingly infinite
.

As the session ends, I explode into climax. Satisfied, content, I prepare to leave, already anxiously awaiting the next session
.

“You are a beautiful woman,” he says as I walk out the door. “Exquisitely feminine.”

“Aren't you supposed to be meeting a client at nine?” I saw Tim standing above me, already dressed for work in a blue suit and tie.

I looked at the clock. Eight o'clock in the morning. How long had I been dreaming? I could feel the wetness between my legs, the vestiges of the dream. I was embarrassed and more than a little guilt-ridden that I had been dreaming about another man yet resentful that Tim had tried to wake me up. “It's been a bitch getting you up this morning,” Tim said. “But you looked so content I didn't want to wake you up any earlier than I absolutely had to. It must have been a good dream.”

I was usually very open with Tim about my dreams and about what happened in sessions. But I could not bring myself to tell him about this erotic dream with Dr. Padgett, especially when Tim had been so patient about my complete lack of sexual desire in our marriage.

I was relieved when he left. The arousal of the dream stubbornly lingered, so distracting that I masturbated myself to climax in the shower, guilty at having done so. Tim was the one who deserved the pleasure, not me.

Reluctant as I was, I knew I was going to have to tell Dr. Padgett about this dream.

I regretted that I had agreed to reduce the number of weekly sessions. Financially it had been a good idea, and I had been able to devote more time to my business. But now it was hell having to wait an extra day to discuss what I knew I needed to discuss.

On Wednesday night I was gripped by the same dream, awakening to find Tim already gone to an early breakfast appointment. This time I chose not to masturbate. I walked into session frustrated, overwhelmed by my arousal, dreading having to tell Dr. Padgett that he had indeed been right about my sexual feelings toward him.

By the time I took my place in the chair, I could barely stand it as I burned with the desire to masturbate right then and there, my back slightly arched, my pulse racing, my breathing quick.

I'd often wondered during the past two years where the sexual desires that used to be unquenchable had gone. Had I turned irrevocably frigid? As embarrassed as I was to be feeling like this, a part of me was pleased that my ability to feel sexual pleasure was not dead.

“I had a dream last night,” I started, and told Dr. Padgett the details. As the story went on, I realized I was embellishing it somewhat, savoring it, taking on the vernacular of airbrushed erotica, a woman's poetic version of a
Penthouse
story. My already burning desire was increasing as I noticed my hips subtly moving back and forth, my legs crossed and rubbing slightly, stimulating myself even further.

The guilt was gone. I didn't want to hold myself back. I didn't want it to stop. Dr. Padgett listened intently, interested, but not giving any visible reaction.

“I guess you were right,” I concluded, a bit surprised at the sultry and seductive tone of my voice but still not wanting to stop it.

“What are your feelings about this?” he asked, cautiously objective.

“Oh God,” I said, the subtle rock of my hips becoming increasingly less subtle. “I forgot just how incredible it feels to be this turned on. I'm not frigid anymore. I'm
really
not frigid!”

He listened silently with still no visible reaction. Then again, he wasn't stopping me either. My back began to arch more; my head was slightly back; I could feel my eyelids droop a bit, forming the classic bedroom eyes of seduction.

My God, Rachel! You're playing with fire. You're not just sharing your feelings, you're trying to seduce the man
.

“You wouldn't believe how badly I used to need sex,” I continued, my voice even huskier, my breasts thrust out slightly. “All the time. I couldn't go a day without it. When I'd go to a party, it was all I could think about. It consumed me—like I feel right now. I could do anything right now, you know, anything. I need it right now. God, do I need sex right now!”

No comment from Dr. Padgett. Was he turned on and hiding it? Was he disgusted and hiding it? I couldn't tell from his facial expression. Discreetly I glanced at his crotch to see if he was aroused as well. I couldn't tell unless I stared, and I wasn't about to stare. Even sexually he was a blank screen.

“Dr. Padgett,” I said a bit timidly, “I'm afraid I might have an orgasm.”

“It's okay, Rachel. I won't judge you if you do or you don't.”

“You know,” I said. “I am really good in bed.”

The text of the personality profile flashed in my mind. Seductive. Yes, I was seductive. A seductive borderline. Nymphomaniac by pathology.

A part of me knew this was getting out of hand, but I figured that since Dr. Padgett had been the one to bring up sex in the first place, he was getting what he asked for. After all I was a mental patient. What did he expect?

By now my body was in complete erotic motion. I'd crossed my arms over my chest, discreetly—but not invisibly—rubbing my left nipple with my right thumb.

“I was a slut, Dr. Padgett,” I told him, the breathlessness of my voice more apparent, “a real nymphomaniac. I ached for it.” I was just on the cusp of an orgasm when he interrupted.

“Rachel,” he said, “you aren't feeling anymore. You're acting out. The adult isn't present anymore. It's the child co-opting the adult's body.”

The climax didn't happen. I was irritated by his interruption, frustrated as my passion ebbed and my impending orgasm retreated.

A flashback from childhood overwhelmed me. I'd been six years old, sitting in Dad's chair, a blanket on my lap, a flashlight in between my legs, rubbing against it, getting lost in the pleasure. Dad had bellowed at me, shocking me out of my bliss.

What the hell are you doing? Shame on you!

A spanking had followed, the sting of his belt against my behind, the pain mixed with the tingling pleasure between my legs. I'd needed to pee but was afraid of what would happen if I did. Agony. Ecstasy.

Banished to my bedroom by my father later that evening, I'd replayed the entire scene in my mind, silently gasping as I rubbed myself to relief in the darkness, deeply ashamed but unable to stop.

“Rachel,” Dr. Padgett said gently, “these are the child's feelings, not the adult's. You have to remember that. As a small child, your sexual feelings were as intense as an adult's, but you didn't know what sex was. There's no shame in that. It's important to remember that these aren't the feelings of the grown married woman but the little girl within.”

I uncrossed my arms and dropped them to my side. Sheepishly I uncrossed my legs as well. Dr. Padgett had to have known what I was doing but found a way to stop me without scolding me. The intensity of the arousal faded, then dissipated.

“It's natural for a young girl to have sexual feelings for her father. It's nothing to be ashamed of. A good father can handle these feelings without shaming his daughter, without making her feel rejected, while still realizing that he is the adult, the one who has to be in control of himself and trustworthy. It's all a part of growing up, of a little girl's feelings of love for her father that grow into maturity as she does.

“Unfortunately you never had the opportunity to experience this naturally and safely, without shame.”

He was right, and I knew it. The adult part of me knew the ramifications of having sex with a therapist. I was married. He was married. As he was a surrogate father of sorts, it would be like incest; it would shatter me. My intense arousal, my attempts at seduction, were those of the child within, a child residing in a body that was no longer hers to control.

I was still curious about what it would be like to make love to him but relieved that he hadn't exploited the situation.

In the crescendo of the moment, had he chosen to take advantage of the circumstances of my arousal, he easily could have done so. But he hadn't. Still there was a vague feeling of rejection.

“Dr. Padgett,” I asked him. “I want you to be honest about one thing. Do you find me, the adult, attractive?”

“I'm a normal, healthy man,” he answered carefully. “I see what everyone else sees. As you've already said, there have always been men who've been attracted to you. Why would I see anything differently than they do?”

It was an indirect answer, not quite the of-course-you're-attractive response I'd been looking for, yet an answer nonetheless. And I knew why he had to answer the question as he had.

“Do you think I'm feminine?” I asked.

“Do you think you're feminine?” he asked in response.

I thought about it for a minute.

“Yes, I do.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I think that maybe, someday, I could come to like it,” I answered sincerely.

He smiled at me, looking into my eyes as I beamed back. We sat like that for a few moments, neither of us saying a word. Neither of us had to. I had let down one of the last barriers, had let go, and trusted him.

And true to his promise, I had emerged feeling neither exploited nor rejected. My heart was filled with the same passionate intensity that had flooded my erogenous zones earlier in the session. So this was what letting go felt like.

“That's about time for today,” he broke the silence.

On the way out the door, I stopped one last time to look in his eyes, to drink in the pleasure of feeling safe and connected.

I had walked, blindfolded, off the plank of trust and landed safely.

We would devote more sessions to discussing sexuality, acceptance of my own feminine body image, the self-destructive legacy, and my regrets about the promiscuity of my past. But the door to sexual issues had been opened wide now, a great fear overcome.

The little girl was growing up.

There'd been many a teenage boy in my high school days, many a steamy night inside a car on a dimly lit street. I remembered a teenage boy in the struggle of his desires against my own ambivalent resistance.
C'mon, you know you like it. I can't have sex before I'm married; it just isn't right. Then you shouldn't have led me on like that!

We would abruptly release from heated embrace, he'd turn the key hastily in the ignition, and the car would fill with the smoldering silence of his anger and my guilt as we would drive home wordlessly.

Home alone afterward, I would feel ashamed, not because I had let a boy bring me past the heat of passion, but because the boy had been
right
to chastise me. I had led him on. I hadn't been fair. I had tortured him.

The truth was that longing wasn't sexual. I wanted to be the entire focus of any person I was obsessed with. My incessant hunger for attention had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember. The burning heartache of emptiness obsessed me even when my peers had been taken with Barbie dolls and coloring books. I knew even then that these constant feelings were not normal. I had been deeply ashamed of them, not daring to breathe them to another soul, particularly to the objects of my longing.

As the years passed, my longings had taken on a sexual component. Perhaps in the seventies era of free love and the
Cosmopolitan
woman, they'd been easier to accept. On a far deeper level, I thought my desire to be the center of attention, usually from an older man, was worse than sexual promiscuity.

When the object of my longing—the teacher, the coach, the boss—was present in a room, I geared everything to that person. I contrived every word, action, inflection, and facial expression for him.
Does he see me laughing? Does he see how funny everybody thinks I am?

Now Dr. Padgett was, undoubtedly, the most compelling and long-lasting object of my fantasies in my entire lifetime. In many ways my relationship with him was a dream come true. For the fifty minutes I was with him in a given session, I was the center of attention with all others excluded. Everything focused on me. I did not have to wonder, as I had with the others, if he could see my every expression, could hear my every word, was paying attention. I knew without a doubt that he was. Indeed such intense focus on all aspects of my feelings and emotions were the means and purpose of therapy.

With Dr. Padgett, as with the others, I attempted to give the message that I didn't care what he thought and had tried every possible venue of rebellion. Yet he had refused to be driven away. He wished to probe even deeper, to know more about me than I wanted to reveal. In ways it had been easier to maintain my fantasies from a distance. The secret longing for attention was becoming harder to sustain.

Finally it became obvious to me what Dr. Padgett meant by “letting go.” The sexual aspects were secondary. Window dressing. They were a distraction from the real dilemma that faced me—allowing him to know just how much I needed him, just how much he consumed my thoughts and fantasies.

To be open with my feelings, I would have to abandon the cloak of secrecy and to trust him with my vulnerability. I would have to have faith that he would not reject or ridicule my intense longing nor parallel it with a needy vulnerability of his own—one I could not handle.

Revealing my sexual feelings was easy in comparison.

It took a few sessions and much internal debate before I could share my newfound revelations with him. The frustrations of withholding them outweighed my fear of vulnerability until I couldn't bear the emotional battle any longer.

It was a snowy day in mid-December, just one week before his scheduled vacation. My hands were shaking as I shared my painfully embarrassing secret, revealing the cowering little girl behind the I-don't-give-a-shit facade, my lifetime of fantasy objects who never knew of my obsessions.

“It's the same thing with you,” I concluded. “Only worse. I've never felt it this intensely in my life before. I hate it.”

“It's worse to feel love than hatred?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

“But this isn't love, Dr. Padgett. Can't you understand?” I pleaded. “This is obsession, plain and simple. It's more than infatuation. It's not normal. I've always known it's not normal. It's downright pathological!”

“And it bothers you because you don't think it's normal?”

“Of course it does. It always has. It's embarrassing, don't you see? It's sick. Normal kids never felt the way I felt. I know they never did. And normal adults
never
feel this way.”

“They're
feelings
, Rachel. That's all. Just feelings. You may be ashamed of them, but I'm not.”

“Well, then you should be! You should be very ashamed of them!”

“Why? Because you are? We've already uncovered a lot of your feelings that you've been ashamed of and shown you've had no reason to be ashamed of them. Because your parents would be ashamed of them? We've been down that road too. Those are distorted yardsticks. We can't rely on them.”

“I don't care,” I insisted. “Those have been about
other
feelings. Maybe I've been wrong about them, or maybe my parents were wrong. But this is different. Some things are still shameful. Some things are just plain wrong.”

“And what is it that you see as so shameful and wrong?”

I breathed deeply and swallowed hard. True confessions once again.

“Wanting to be the center of attention. Underneath it all that's what all of this is about, being the center of attention.”

There. I said it. The ball was in his court. How could he defend this one?

“So you think there's something inherently wrong, inherently bad and shameful about wanting to be the center of attention?”

He might as well have asked me what was so wrong about being an ax murderer.

“Do I think there's something inherently wrong and bad about it? What kind of question is that? Of course there is! My God, Dr. Padgett, I've just confessed a mortal sin, and you're sitting there like I haven't said a thing.”

“This isn't a confessional, Rachel,” he sighed. “And, in any event, I just don't see the sin.”

“The sin is being totally self-centered. The sin is thinking I'm the only person in the world.”

“The sin, in your eyes,” he said slowly, “is being like a child.”

“In case you haven't noticed,” I seethed, “I'm not a child. It's high time I grow up.”

“Not exactly true,” he replied. “You know that part of you is still a child. You believe the child exists. The problem is that you can't accept her. You never could. In a lot of ways neither could your parents.”

“Don't you see?” I was exasperated at hearing the same old theories. “This isn't about love—a child's love or anyone else's. This is about clinging. About smothering. About a world centered around myself.”

“Which is a perfectly natural state of childhood.”

“I've read my damned Freud, okay? Spare me the id stuff, will you? It doesn't apply here.”

“It really is sad that you've never been able to accept being a child.”

“Doesn't the word ‘selfish’ mean anything to you? You think being self-centered is honorable or something? Would you tolerate it in your wife? Would you tolerate it in any other relationship? Hell no! And you shouldn't.”

“This isn't like any other relationship for either of us. As a parent, as a wife, you can't be too self-centered. It would be very destructive. And you aren't too self-centered in those relationships. But it's safe here, safe to feel a child's feelings.”

“Safe to be selfish?”

Dr. Padgett sat back for a moment. This track was going nowhere.

“You say you're familiar with Freud,” he said calmly. “Then you know that the id phase is just that, a phase. The child becomes more secure with herself and begins to discover that a world exists beyond her. Then the ego develops, a child's realization that she lives in a world with other people. That she needs to coexist with them in order to meet her own needs. Then comes the superego phase, where the child is not only aware of the existence of others but has some concern for their feelings and needs beyond what directly benefits her.”

“And I'm stuck in the id mode,” I snapped, disgusted with myself. “Doesn't say much for a thirty-one-year-old mother of two, does it?”

“You can't skip a phase, Rachel. You can't go to the ego phase without first going through the id. There are no moral implications to it. A child needs to be self-centered long enough to feel secure before she can move on. Whether you go through it when you're three or thirty-three, it doesn't matter. You have to pass through that phase and feel secure enough to move on. And, most important, the phase can and will pass.”

“How?” I pouted.

“Needs don't just go away on their own. They have to be satisfied. And if they aren't, they just fester beneath the surface and grow even more shameful and frightening. You have an inordinately strong need for attention because you feel, rightly, that you didn't get as much as you needed when you should have. You buried it in shame, which only served to make the need seem more intense until, finally, you became afraid to need because you figured it would overwhelm anyone you let it touch.

“But your need won't overwhelm me, Rachel. It won't drive me away. You don't have to hold it in anymore, and you don't have to be ashamed of it. When you let go—and
only
when you let go—and feel free to feel the need for attention in all its intensity, then it can be satisfied. Until it isn't so important to you anymore.

“Sure, even adults need and deserve some degree of attention. But once you reach this point, it isn't debilitating anymore. It doesn't obsess you.”

“It's scary how much I need you,” I admitted, the tears beginning to surface. “I need you so much it hurts.”

“It isn't all need,” he said softly. “A lot of it is love.”

“Yes,” I replied in a tiny voice. “It is love too. It's really hard for me to say this, Dr. Padgett, but in some ways I love you more than I've ever loved anyone. And the scariest part of that is that I feel this love intensely, and I know that someday I'm going to have to say good-bye. I can hardly bear the thought; it just seems so unfair.”

“When you do say good-bye, which will only be when you decide the time has come, it will be because you've gotten what you needed from this relationship. As painful as it might be at the moment, you need to move on. The love doesn't have to end there. Once you have felt it, it can never be taken away. A part of me will always be with you for the rest of your life.”

The notion was strangely comforting to me as I sat there soaking in his words, astounded that we had been able to approach the topic of termination without the hysterical fear of loss. With the cloak of secrecy shed, the pain of need was giving way to the warmth of love and the security of feeling connected.

I still didn't look forward to his two-week absence for Christmas vacation. Yet I felt a newfound confidence that, despite the pain of missing him, I could make it through the separation.

“Whenever I do decide to leave,” I said, “I know it's going to hurt. I love you like a father. I really do. And I will never ever forget you.”

“I'll never forget you either. The feelings are mutual.”

The object of my love and fantasy had returned my feelings with warm feelings of his own, neither running from my intensity nor demanding his own needs be met in parallel fashion. It was an outcome I never could have anticipated even a year ago. My painfully hidden secret hopes and fantasies had intersected with reality.

The lifelong dream was indeed coming true. I loved him, I had let him know, and he hadn't run away in horror.

The holiday passed quickly and relatively smoothly.

It wasn't until two days after Christmas that I found the time to escape to my room and pull out the pen and legal pad to write. I realized that nearly a week had gone by without writing my thoughts. I literally had to look at the calendar to calculate how many days remained until sessions resumed—a figure I had known during every waking moment of Dr. Padgett's previous vacations.