“So you’re angry at your boyfriend because he’s still an out-of-towner.”
Wendy blinked, betraying a hint of a smile, and I suddenly felt unfaithful. Boyfriend-bashing is fine if restricted to certain topics, but this was pushing the envelope. You’re supposed to be able to say anything about anybody in therapy, but I felt guilty. Admitting that he’s geographically unhip to the point of clueless! A good girlfriend doesn’t speak derisively about a guy who is so…invested in her.
“Where is Matt from, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Connecticut.”
“Irish-Catholic?”
“No, some kind of part-time Protestant. His mother came from one of those Hudson Valley Huguenot families. But he’s not very interested in his ancestors. Or his religion. He’s…” I smiled and blushed. “Very keen on the present and the future.”
“Yes?” Wendy looked quizzical. “You had a pleasurable thought.”
“Oh, nothing. He’s so cute,” I sighed. “Sometimes, I just want us to keep dating. I’d like to stop time and be old enough to know better and young enough to play the game and…be pursued by this up-and-coming guy for the rest of my life. I guess I’m like one of those clients—those men who keep holding back because they don’t want to come. They don’t want their session to end, and they just keep prolonging it.”
“And how do you feel about those men?”
“I used to hate them! But now I’m used to it. I know how to pace myself, how to hurry them along—gently, of course. But nobody feels upbeat about getting a difficult customer.”
“So if you’re a difficult customer, what does this new apartment signify? The end of an ‘exciting session’?”
“Look, any normal woman would be thrilled. It’s really a very nice place. It’s close to Wall Street, so it’s perfect for Matt, but it’s miles away from everything I do. Does he expect me to give up my home, my neighborhood, my entire life? Just like that?”
“To be fair, I don’t think Matt has any idea what you’ll be giving up if you move in with him.”
“No kidding! If I move in with him, I’ll—I’ll be reduced to doing outcalls.” (What else? Rent Jasmine’s bedroom by the hour? The bulk of my business today is in my apartment.) “He doesn’t understand how I support myself. I think he thinks I’m getting money from my family.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“Um, no. I just sort of let him think it. I mean, there’s no way I could dress the way I do and live where I live if I really made my entire living as a freelance copy editor.”
“Interesting. Why did you get engaged?” Dr. Wendy asked in a quieter voice.
Tears of self-pity began to pour down my cheeks. Fortunately, Dr. Wendy’s office and my bedroom are two places where you never have to hunt around for a tissue!
I blew my nose and explained, “It was totally unprofessional of me—I didn’t think it through! I accepted his ring. I was too dazzled to think—disoriented, afraid—”
“What were you afraid of?”
“He came over to pick up his keys.” I pointed to the keys on the table. “We had broken up a few days before, and he was acting strange. I started thinking he was going to assault me.”
“Has he assaulted you before?” Wendy was alarmed.
“Of course not!” Matt smacking a girl—that’s unthinkable. But you can’t even joke about such matters these days. Everybody, even your shrink who has known you for half a decade, will suspect that you’re protecting a social monster. “It was a misunderstanding,” I assured her. “I was disoriented. I felt so distant from him at first, and he seemed like a stranger to me, and I didn’t know why he was there. We weren’t seeing each other anymore. But he said he needed his keys because he was locked out of his apartment. And then my mind flashed on this terrible thing that happened when I was sixteen!”
“Yes?”
“A john who waved a gun in my face. I was terrified. And when I started screaming my head off, the client got so scared of the racket I was making, he begged me to leave.”
“He did?” Wendy sat up straighter. “You weren’t afraid to express your feelings. Your emotions saved your life! I think that’s something to be proud of. Especially at sixteen.”
“Well,” I sniffled, “I ran out of his apartment and I tripped on my own pants—I was wearing harem pants with those cords at the ankles, but they were loose—and when I tripped, I slid down the stairs on my back in my high heels.”
Wendy was now gripping the arms of her chair. “My god. At sixteen?”
“Oh.” I stopped crying. “I was fine. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I was kind of shocked, but I wasn’t hurt.”
“You could have broken your neck! Or your back!”
“But I didn’t. I got right up, buttoned my blouse, found a cab, and went back to the escort agency. I was so relieved that none of the neighbors saw me.” I had just started working for Jeannie’s Dream Dates, an outcall service owned by a madam named Mary. She ran it from a midtown studio apartment, advertised in the Yellow Pages (and some other publications I prefer not to think about), and felt that Mary was a terrible name for a madam. So she called herself Jeannie.
Wendy took a deep breath. “So this is what was going through your mind when Matt proposed? A narrow escape from a gun-toting john. Did that happen in New York?”
“Yes.” I laughed briefly. “In a very nice town house right off Park Avenue in Murray Hill. Too much coke. The client was upset because I couldn’t make him come and his hour was up.”
Maybe my flexible teenaged body saved me when I tumbled down those stairs. But the point is, I’ve gotten away with so much—how much longer can it go on? I’m not a teenager anymore.
“And Matt’s proposal—was it really a surprise?”
“God, yes. I never imagined…”
Wendy jutted her chin forward—her Listening Gesture.
“I had broken up with him and I was ready to devote myself to my business. I decided to swear off boyfriends. Then Matt called. He made up that story about the keys, which I believed.
Wendy nodded.
“When he grabbed my hand, I got nervous. He was so much stronger. And suddenly, I remembered that guy with the gun. I thought: I’ve come this far, I have my own clients, I don’t have to work for some sleazy escort service, I’m well-connected and go to the best hotels. My clients are the movers and shakers of the universe. They run Manhattan. But my own boyfriend turns out to be a random nutcase just like that guy! I’ve allowed a maniac into my home! At least, when I was sixteen, that guy didn’t enter my life—I could leave his apartment! For a minute I wasn’t really a success after all. Women who get killed by guys they don’t understand are, by definition, failures. Right?”
There was a pause. Dr. Wendy doesn’t like to call anyone