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“I didn’t use to go on dates at all,” he confided. “What I didn’t tell you before is that when I was young, my foster mother would touch me wrong. I knew it was wrong, but I worried that if I said anything, I’d go back to the orphanage, which was worse than the touching. So I stayed quiet about it.”
“I’m so sorry,” Isabel told him.
“Yeah, it really confused me a lot,” he continued. “I just kind of shut down that part of me—the love and sex part— because I guess I was scared of it. So I didn’t do any dating at all until recently, like in the last few months. And I just don’t do it right. I don’t know the right things to say because I never practiced. There was one girl I really liked on a date a few weeks ago. Well, it was kind of a date. We were talking at the mall. But then I screwed it up so bad. I want you to fix me so that I can try again with her.”
Isabel nodded in understanding, though she was stymied by the seeming complete lack of romantic social skills he was describing. She didn’t want to add to his pain, but a cardinal rule of her practice was honesty.
"Well, I'm going to be straight with you, Henry, because you deserve that," she said in a polite but firm tone. "While I don't know the particulars of that date, that ship, as they say, may have sailed. Rather than try to get someone who isn't romantically interested to change her mind, which can be difficult under the best of circumstances, you may be better off trying to kindle something special with a new woman. But before that can happen, we need to address the underlying issues that got you to this place. And I suspect a lot of that has to do with your foster mother. Once we address how her abuse impacted you, we can move forward. But trying to enter the dating world before you've come to terms with what was done to you will almost certainly be a recipe for failure."
"But that sounds like it will take a long time," he objected. "I don't want to wait. I want to date now. I want to screw…excuse me, I want to have sex now."
Isabel, while slightly taken aback, did her best to cover.
“Forgive the intimate question, Henry, but have you ever had sex before?”
He shook his head.
“Not unless you count my foster mom, but I don’t because shemademe do it.”
“No, you shouldn’t count that,” Isabel agreed, trying to determine how best to proceed. Henry was almost like a child in the way he discussed these things.
“So you get why I can’t wait around, talking about the bad stuff,” he implored. “I want to get to the good stuff.”
"I understand where you're coming from, Henry, but there are no shortcuts in this kind of therapy. We have to do the hard work in order to get you to the place you want to be.”
Henry stood up, clearly frustrated, and began to pace back and forth across the room. Normally, Isabel would have suggested he sit back down again, but he seemed so agitated that she thought letting him burn off a little steam might help.
“I have an idea,” he suggested as he reached the door of the office, then spun around and walked quickly back in the other direction to the bookshelf behind her desk. “What if you helped me practice?”
"Do you mean dating scenarios, like role playing?" she asked. "I suppose that at some point, we can see if that might be helpful. But right now, I think that's premature—."
"No," he interrupted, "what if you helped me with the sex practice? You're a professional, so you wouldn't laugh at me. And then I wouldn't be so nervous on a date."
For a moment, Isabel was stunned into silence.
“Well, Henry,” she finally said, doing her best not to sound offended or judgmental, “that’s not really part of how I treat patients. If it reaches the point where we think it might be helpful, we can look into the idea of engaging a sexual surrogate for you. But we need to address the root causes of your trauma before pursuing anything like that.”
“No,” he said forcefully, stopping his pacing beside her desk, “I already told you I don’t want to wait!”
A chill ran down her back, which was toward him. Something about his insistence was deeply off-putting. So she turned around in her chair and spoke as calmly as she could under the unusual circumstance.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it, Henry,” she said quietly, “healing can be tough. But I’ve been doing this for a while now and believe I can help. But for that to happen, we have to do things my way. So why don’t you come back over here and take seat so we can get back to that healing thing?”
He looked at her with an expression of disappointment that unexpectedly morphed into irritation, then outright anger. Isabel’s discomfort to turned into something closer to fear.
"We're not doing it your way," he said flatly. "You're going to fix me now so I can start dating and be in love and have sex. You're going to practice with me so that it's easy when I do it for real. I paid you a lot of money to make me better, and I expect you to do your job, or else you'll have to face the music. That's a thing my foster mom used to say: 'time to face the music.'"
Then, without another word, he picked up the long, gold letter opener that was resting on the edge of her desk and took a step toward her.
“Are you going to help me, Dr. Shea?” he asked through gritted teeth. “Are you going to fix me?”
"Yes, okay," she said quickly as she stood up, realizing that the situation had somehow escalated beyond what she could handle. Therapy was a distant memory. Now, all she could focus on was survival.
“Too late,” he replied with a serenity that had been absent up until now. “I don’t believe you. I think you’re just saying what I want to hear because you’re scared now. Be honest.”
“Yes, Henry,” she admitted, “I’m scared. But I also still want to help you. And you have to know that what you’re doing right now won’t help—.”
“Talking time is over,” he said, cutting her off, “at least for you.”
