Therapy

practised in China and Egypt yonks ago. But, like everything else, nowadays it’s computerized. When I go to see Dudley I tell him my symptoms, and he writes them into his personally devised aromatherapy programme, called PHEW (no, I made that up, the filename is ATP), presses a key, and the computer comes up with a list of suggested essential oils — juniper, jasmine, peppermint or whatever. Then Dudley lets me sniff them and makes up a cocktail of the ones I like best, using a vegetable “carrier oil” as a base.
    I didn’t feel the same inhibition about discussing sexual matters with Dudley as I did last week with Miss Wu, so when he asked me how I’d been since the last treatment, I mentioned the non-ejaculation incident. He said that the ability to have sexual congress without ejaculating was highly prized by oriental mystics. I said they were welcome to it. He tapped away at his Apple Mac for a few moments and it came up with bergamot, ylang-ylang and rose otto. “Didn’t you give me rose for depression, last time?” I said, with a hint of suspicion in my voice. “It’s a very versatile oil,” said Dudley suavely. “It’s used against impotence and frigidity as well as depression. Also grief and the menopause.” I asked him if that included the male menopause, and he laughed without answering.
     
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    Saturday, 27th Feb. Well, it worked, up to a point. We made love last night and I came. I don’t think Sally did, but she wasn’t really in the mood, and seemed surprised when I suggested it. I can’t say the earth moved for me, either, but at least I had an ejaculation. So the old essential oil of rose did the trick, as far as impotence is concerned. But not as far as depression, grief and the male menopause are concerned. I woke at 3.05 with my brain churning like a cement-mixer, anxieties like sharp pebbles in a general grey sludge of Dread, and spent the next few hours in a shallow dozing state, dropping off and waking again with the fleeting sensation of having been in a dream without being able to remember what it was. My dreams are like silvery fish: I grab at their tails, but they wriggle from my grasp, and shimmy down into the dark depths. I wake gasping for breath, my heart pounding, like a diver surfacing. Eventually I dropped a sleeping tablet and lapsed into a dreamless coma from which I woke, in an empty bed, at nine-thirty, sullen and dry-mouthed.
    Sally had left a note to say she’d gone to Sainsbury’s. I had some errands to do myself, so walked to the High Street. I was standing impatiently in line at the Post Office when I heard a woman’s voice say at my shoulder, “Are you desperate?” I swivelled round, thinking she was addressing me, but it was a mother talking to her little boy. “Can’t you wait till we get home?” she said. The little boy shook his head miserably and pressed his knees closer together.
     
    Later. I was desperate enough to give old Kierkegaard another go, and had better luck this time. I dipped into Either/Or, because the title intrigued me. A socking great book, in two volumes, and very confusingly written, a dog’s breakfast of essays, stories, letters etc., written by two fictitious characters called A and B, and edited by a third called Victor Eremitus, all aliases for Kierkegaard I presume. What particularly caught my eye was a short piece in the first volume called “The Unhappiest Man”. As I read it, I felt like I did when I first saw the list of Kierkegaard’s book titles, that he was speaking directly to my condition.
    According to K., the unhappy man is “always absent to himself, never present to himself.” My first reaction was: no, wrong, Søren old son — I never stop thinking about myself, that’s the trouble. But then I thought, thinking about yourself isn’t the same as being present to yourself. Sally is present to herself, because she takes herself for granted, she never doubts herself — or at least not for long. She coincides with herself. Whereas I’m like one of those cartoon characters in a cheap comic, the kind where the colour doesn’t quite fit the outline of the drawing: there’s a gap or overlap between the two, a kind of blur. That’s me: Desperate Dan with his blue chin sticking out but not quite coinciding with his jawline.
    Kierkegaard explains that the unhappy man is never present to himself because he’s always living in the past or the future. He’s always