The Last Collection (16 page)

“I'm not!” Kerner half-shouted, quickly shifting his hands so that they rested on his knees.

“Kerner, Kerner,” the doctor sighed. “I told you in our last session that I know a ball-holder when I see one.”

Kerner shrugged, lowered his head slightly, and said nothing.

“So what is it, Mr. Kerner?”

Kerner looked up for a moment and then quickly lowered his head again.

“Kerner, I'm going to count to five and if you don't start talking by then, you get the wind and the rain; and in case you're wondering, I can also make snow.”

“I'm going to talk. I'm just finding it difficult again.”

“Look, I'm not interested in your problems, Kerner. I just want to know what's on your mind. Now, I'm going to start counting.”

“Okay, okay. I'm going to talk.”

“So talk.”

“Okay. Don't rush me.”

“Talk!” Dr. Lehman yelled, springing up from his seat.

“Okay, okay. I'm talking.”

Dr. Lehman slammed a hand against his forehead.

“Here, look, I'm starting right now,” Kerner said. “Here I go. Okay. Let's see. . . . Okay. It has to do with something that happened after I left here yesterday. I felt a lot better after that session. I felt hopeful, especially because I realized the connection between the start of my craziness and the fact that Estelle Bercowitz . . . left me. Then also, you asked me, if you recall, at the end of the session, how my buying sickness had affected my sex life and I said that I hadn't given it much thought. Do you remember that, Doctor?”

“No,” Dr. Lehman replied.

“But you asked me that question just yesterday.”

“So I forgot; but I'll take your word for it. Now go on,” Dr. Lehman said, leaping down from his seat which had been rising slowly for the last minute or so.

“Well, like I said, after the session ended I felt better; you know . . . hopeful. I really believed that you were going to help me beat this thing.” Kerner paused for a moment as he watched Dr. Lehman move across the room towards the little hut and enter it.

“Keep talking, Mr. Kerner. I'm listening,” he said from inside.

Kerner turned to face the hut. He felt a bit foolish now talking to someone he couldn't see.

“Just talk to the walls,” Dr. Lehman chortled from inside.

“Fuck you,” Kerner muttered under his breath.

“Did you say something, Kerner?”

“I was just clearing my throat,” Kerner replied quickly.

“Is it all clear now?”

“Yes.”

“So continue, please.”

Kerner could hear shuffling sounds coming from inside the hut.

“Well, when I left here, like I said, I felt better, and as I was on my way down to Walton's Art Gallery . . .”

“To where?”

“To Walton's Art Gallery.”

“What were you going there for?”

“To buy something.”

“I thought you said you felt better.”

“Yes, I did, but not that much better.”

“All right, so you were on your way to Walton's.”

“Yes. And while I was running along the street . . .”

“Running! Why were you running?”

“To get there before they closed.”

“I see. All right, go on.”

“While I was running, I began to think about what you had asked me at the end of that session—you know, about how my buying habit affected my sex life—and I realized that it had affected it very much. I had answered you, if you recall, that I hadn't given very much thought to sex lately, but while I was on my way to Walton's, it hit me very clearly that I had been in a kind of daze regarding sex since the start of my buying addiction. As soon as I realized this, I started to feel a bit . . . uh . . . horny.”

Kerner paused, waiting for some comment from Dr. Lehman. The shuffling noises continued inside the hut.

“Don't stop, Mr. Kerner,” the doctor said, still hidden from view. “I'm listening.”

“Well, anyway, after I had made my buy, I decided to find someone to share this suddenly revived feeling with.”

“You mean someone to take it out on.”

“Well, whatever,” Kerner replied in an aggravated tone.

Suddenly Kerner went rigid in his seat as Dr. Lehman came out of the hut wearing a red Speedo swim suit.

“Keep talking, Mr. Kerner. I'm just going to take a little dip in my pond to cool off.”

The doctor approached the edge of the pond and suddenly flung himself racing style into the water. Kerner watched dumbfounded as the psychiatrist did a fast butterfly across the pond. Dr. Lehman stood up, wiped the water from his face and pulled himself up into a sitting position on the stone rim of the pool.

“It's deeper than you thought, eh?” he asked.

Kerner nodded, gape mouthed.

“Next year I may rent the apartment directly below so I can make the pool about ten or twelve feet deeper. Then I'll be able to set up a diving board and I'll also be able to do some scuba diving. Pretty good, eh?”

Kerner nodded dazedly.

“Anyways, keep talking, Mr. Kerner.”

Kerner tried to recollect where he had left off, feeling a sudden dissociative flash such as had occurred on his first visit to the doctor's office.

“So I picked up a girl.”

“A girl?”

“Yes.”

“You mean, like ten or eleven years old?”

“Of course not! I'm not a pervert!” Kerner said angrily.

“That's a matter of opinion; but in any case, what I meant was, be specific when you talk. You meant to say, you picked up a woman, isn't that right?”

“Yes,” Kerner replied. “She was probably about thirty. . . . So she came back to my . . .”

“Hold it! Hold it!”

Kerner looked up at the doctor who was now jogging around the pond.

“How exactly did you pick her up? What was your technique?”

“I don't see the importance of that.”

“It's not important. I'm just curious.”

“Well, I used my standard method,” Kerner replied.

“Yes?” Dr. Lehman said, now running in place next to the hut.

“I just walked up to her and asked her if she felt like fucking.”

The doctor stopped running. “And she said yes?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Kerner, you make me sick,” the doctor said, disappearing into the little hut.

“Look, it's a good technique. It saves a lot of talk and I've had a lot of success with it.”

“Okay, so you took her home. Get to the good part already,” the doctor said angrily.

“Well, we were in the bed and . . .”

“What did she look like?”

“Very nice.”

“I don't mean very nice. I mean, give me some details.”

“Like what?”

“You know what I mean,” the doctor shouted from inside the hut.

“Well, she had a big pair of tits.”

“Yes?”

“And a beautiful ass.”

“Yes?”

“And a beautiful face.”

“All right, continue.”

“Well, anyway . . .” Kerner began, and then hesitated.

“Go on.”

“This is very hard for me,” Kerner replied.

“It will be even harder if a thunderstorm should descend on you. I have a set of controls in here as well, Mr. Kerner.”

“Okay. I couldn't get it up!” Kerner shouted.

“Aha!” the doctor yelled, bursting out of the hut, naked and clutching a towel. “You see! We've come full circle, haven't we? If you remember, I suggested in our first session that you had a problem getting it up, but you lied and said you didn't.”

“I didn't lie,” Kerner protested. “At that time I didn't have this particular problem,” he said vehemently.

“Well, in any event, you have it now, and it's just another part of the overall syndrome. Now tell me exactly what happened.”

“Nothing happened. I was completely impotent. The only way I could have gotten it in was to have stuffed it in like a piece of soft putty. It wouldn't get hard.”

“I can make mine hard in sixty seconds flat,” the doctor said matter-of-factly.

Kerner ignored the remark.

The doctor went back inside the hut. A moment later music began emanating from the various speakers located all about the room. Kerner recognized the song as “Ba Mir Bist du Shane,” sung by the Andrews Sisters.

“Go on with your story, Mr. Kerner,” the doctor called from inside. “What did you do next?”

“Well, finally I told her that I had to go to the bathroom. I went in there and tried to . . . well, you know . . . to fantasize about some particularly erotic situation. I mean, I was terrified. That was the first time in my life that I was completely impotent and what was worse was that the girl was the type I had always found the most stimulating. I racked my brain to try and visualize one girl from all my experiences over the years who had been especially good. I'd had hundreds of girls, but as I tried to picture just one of them in my mind, I found I couldn't. I couldn't distinguish one face or one body from another. They were all one huge mass of . . . of flesh.

“Then finally I remembered back to when I was about fourteen or so and. . . . There's no sense in me telling you the rest, it's not really important.”

“Uh, uh, uh! No, no, no, Mr. Kerner. You're not going to stop now, just when you're getting to the good stuff. Just keep talking and let me decide if it's important or not. Okay?”

“All right, but I just don't see . . . all right. So I finally remembered back about this Mrs. Braun. I had the hots for her when I was about fourteen or fifteen. I used to fantasize about her.”

“Why?”

“You know,” Kerner said, angling his head.

“No, I don't know. Explain.”

“You know . . . for uh . . . you know!”

“I don't know.”

“It's very embarrassing.”

“Tough!” Dr. Lehman said, now emerging from the hut fully dressed. He walked over to a small, grass-covered mound beside the pond and sat down.

“All right, Kerner, I'll make it easier for you. You were trying to say that, as a youth, you fantasized about Mrs. Braun for purposes of masturbation. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“The old wankeroo, eh, Kerner?” Dr. Lehman snickered.

Kerner smiled sheepishly.

“So describe the fantasy to me, please.”

“Well, it's nothing much really . . .”

“Kerner, if you hold back now, just as you're getting to the real good stuff, then as far as I'm concerned this will be our last session.”

“Okay, I won't hold back.”

“Good, good,” the doctor said, rubbing his hands together.

“Usually I pictured her coming over to my parents' house to have a friendly chat or something. Of course when she got there, only I would be there. I'd be sitting in the living room. She'd come in and sit down on the couch. I'd be sitting in a chair opposite her. She'd start talking to me about how I was doing in school and bullshit like that. After a few minutes, she'd raise her feet up onto the couch while continuing to talk in a seemingly innocent way.”

Kerner began to giggle nervously. “This is very embarrassing,” he said, blushing.

“Kerner, if you stop now, I'll somehow find a way to have you committed.”

“I'm not stopping. Just give me a chance here, eh? . . . Okay, so she'd be talking and sitting with her legs up and, while she was talking, I would suddenly notice that she wasn't wearing any underpants and I'd see . . .”

“The old snatcheroo?”

Kerner nodded, blushed and laughed nervously.

“What happened then?”

“I don't remember exactly, but not too long after that I would have her with all her clothes off and . . .”

“And?”

“And I would screw her. . . . Sometimes it was in the bathtub, sometimes on the dining room table, sometimes on the floor.”

“But never on the bed?” Dr. Lehman asked.

“No, never on the bed. It was always some place a little out of the ordinary.”

“It looks like you thought of every place but the bed and the kitchen sink.”

“Oh, I thought of the kitchen sink but it didn't really appeal to me.”

Dr. Lehman pursed his lips and gave a few patronizing nods of his head. “Was this sex relatively straight or were there elements of what we might call sado-masochism involved?”

“Well, sometimes I'd whip her a bit when she asked me to. Sometimes I'd tie her up and then I'd have her saying things like, ‘Hurt me, Arthur.'” Kerner began to laugh with embarrassment. “Then also, for some reason, whenever I was giving it to her, I'd always have her on her hands and knees.”

“The old doggie style, eh?” the doctor said with a half-sneer. “Did you have any other positions?”

“Well, occasionally I'd have her being lowered onto my cock by a block and tackle while I sat on a chair and read a comic book.”

“What was her husband doing while all this was going on?” the doctor asked sharply.

“I don't know. He was at work, I guess.”

“You guess! Didn't you know? Weren't you a little worried? He could have killed you if he'd caught you with his wife!”

“Pardon?”

“Weren't you worried about being caught?”

“But, Doctor, I told you this was only a fantasy. It didn't really happen.”

“What? Oh yes! Of course. I was just testing you to see if you could distinguish between reality and your fantasies. Sometimes the two merge in a patient's mind. All right, continue.”

“Well, as I was sitting in the bathroom, I tried to recall these particular fantasies about Mrs. Braun, but they didn't work. In fact, all I could think about was the painting I had bought a few hours earlier. The harder I tried to think of something stimulating, the more I thought about the painting. It just stayed in my mind and finally I told the girl I was sick and sent her home.”