Therapy

When we were seated she startled me by asking if I had been tested for HIV. I said no, it hadn’t seemed necessary, because I had always been faithful to my wife. “So Louise told me,” Stella said. “What about your wife? Has she been faithful to you?” I said I now believed that she had been, and asked her what she would like to eat. “I’ll have a Caesar salad and filet mignon, very rare. You don’t mind my asking you these questions, Tubby?” “Oh no,” I said politely. “Only in my experience it’s best to get these things outa the way at the beginning. Then we can both relax. How about since your wife walked out? You been with anybody else?” “Just once,” I said. “Avery old friend.” “You used a condom, of course?” “Oh yes, of course,” I lied. Actually Amy had used a diaphragm. I think Stella could tell I was lying. “You have some with you?” she said, when they had brought us the Caesar salad. “Well, not on me,” I said. “I meant, in your room.” “Well, there may be some in the minibar,” I quipped, “it seems to have everything else.” “It doesn’t matter, I have some in my purse,” Stella said without cracking a smile. When she started talking about latex gloves and dental dams over the filet mignon, I panicked. If she was so concerned about safe sex, I thought to myself, she must have reason to be. For the first time in my life I simulated acute internal derangement of the knee, writhing about in my seat in, though I says it myself, a very convincing impression of unbearable pain. The guests at neighbouring tables were quite concerned. The maître d’ flashed a signal to the waiters and two of them carried me out into the lobby. I apologized to Stella, excused myself and retired to bed alone. Stella asked me to call her the next day, but the next day I was on the first plane out of LAX to Heathrow.
     
    It was somewhere over the polar icecap that Samantha rose before my inward eye like a vision of sexual promise. Why hadn’t I thought of her before? She was young, desirable, and had gone out of her way to cultivate my acquaintance. Furthermore she exuded health and hygiene, and was extremely smart. You couldn’t imagine Samantha taking any risks with unsafe sex. Yes, she was obviously my best chance of proving to myself I was still a man. I could hardly wait to land in Heathrow. Red-eyed, soiled and unshaven, I jumped into a cab and went straight to the studio, where I knew I would find Samantha at rehearsal.
    It wasn’t surprising that my first clumsy attempt at seduction failed, especially with Signora Gabrielli doing her best to fuck it up. But when, a few days later, Ollie suggested assigning a script editor to work with me I saw my opportunity and insisted on Samantha. She understood very well what a favour I had done her, and was clearly prepared to pay for it in time-honoured showbiz style. My fatal mistake, fatal from the philandering point of view I mean, was to stage the seduction in Copenhagen, trying to kill two birds with one stone: combining a little Kierkegaard research with the long-desired, long-frustrated illicit fuck, in a luxury hotel far, but not inconvenientky far, from anywhere we were likely to be recognized. I should have known that the two missions wouldn’t mix. I should have reckoned with the effect of walking the pavements that Kierkegaard walked a century and a half ago, seeing the actual streets, squares and buildings that were just names in print before, Nytorv, Nørregade, the Borgerdydskole, and examining the poignant, homely mementos of S.K. in the Bymuseum: his pipes, his purse, his magnifying glass and the case Regine made for it; the cruel caricature in the Corsair, and the portrait of Regine, bonny, buxom and with a smile just about to part her full lips, obviously painted in her happy days before Kierkegaard broke off their engagement. And then to stand at Kierkegaard’s very desk and write on it! I had the most extraordinary feeling that he was present somehow in the room, hovering at my shoulder.
    In consequence I found myself curiously and embarrassingly reluctant to pursue the amorous objective of the trip, and when the beautiful Samantha shamelessly offered me all the delights of her sumptuous body, I couldn’t take advantage of it. Something held me back, and it wasn’t the fear of impotence, or of aggravating my knee injury. Call it conscience. Call it Kierkegaard. They have become one and the same thing. I