My new shrink

Dan left for New York this morning, so he couldn’t really check up on whether I’d gone for my appointment with the analyst. I decided to go anyway.

Dr Butler is a stern, slim woman with straw coloured hair done up neatly in a ponytail.

I asked her whether I could call her by her first name.

“It’s Sue,” she replies. “But I prefer it if my patients call me Dr Butler.”

She rarely smiles. She is also very attractive, with delicate wrists and narrow knees. Exceptionally finely turned ankles.

There are times during our session when I would have liked to take her bare feet in my lap and stroke them. There are also times when I would have liked to peel away her silk blouse and pull down her bra straps and take her nipples, one by one, in my mouth. To finger her softly, then harder, harder, until she grabbed my palm and ground herself against it, as she jerked and bucked and climaxed against it.

But I don’t tell her that. I don’t think she’d be too impressed.

Instead, we talk about my childhood.

I tell her my memories of when my father died. I was very young when he was killed in a car accident. We were living in Kenya, where he was a diplomat. And when his body was laid out in the coffin, I recall these bright blue butterflies, that settled on his face. I giggled, and was told to be quiet.

The butterflies were shooed away by my mother, the young widow, all in black, her white blonde hair hanging in tendrils around her cheeks. Her face ashen grey, blue eyes sparkling with tears.

I tell her how this event has invaded my dreams. The same dream, that repeats itself over and over. In the dream, my father sits up, brushes the butterflies away himself and beckons me into the coffin. While the gathered crowd gasps and looks at him in horror, I hoist myself up and climb in eagerly.

My mother runs up to me, grabs the hem of my dress, which rips. I clutch onto the warm body of my father, as the lid of the coffin snaps shut. Now we are breathing together, breathing shallowly in the hot, breathless air. No one can touch us now. I stroke his hair, his soft wavy brown hair.

“I have never felt happier than that, when I am in the coffin with my father,” I say.

“What happens then?” asks Dr Butler.

“I wake up.”

I leave the session feeling lighter than I have for a while, go to the nearest department store and buy a pair of silver grey high heeled shoes. Well, have you any idea how difficult it is to steal shoes, unless you happen to be someone one-legged. Then you can just lift the left shoe from the display stand.

I suppose I shouldn’t joke about these things. Dr Butler would disapprove.