TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Sometimes if it's at 7% or it can be as high as 12% and it will just shut off.

CLIENT: You might have a bad battery. [ ] (inaudible at 00:00:21) and they'll give you a new one.

THERAPIST: I'm going to go down there.

CLIENT: Yeah, you should do that.

THERAPIST: Really?

CLIENT: Yeah. Always. Apple extends your warranty for three years. Inside that warranty they'll fix anything as long as you're not being a douche. You can't throw it at the wall.

THERAPIST: Can't make any promises.

CLIENT: Do what you can. Just do what you can. [00:00:56] The answer to the question "how did I sleep?" is "like a baby" for about four hours and then I woke up. That's nice. It's not my fault though. I had gotten home from a board game night with some friends and checked online and my buddies Charles and Rich were like, "Yeah. We're playing Neverwinter," which is a new free-to-play. You download it for free and log in for free and play it for free.

THERAPIST: What's it called?

CLIENT: Neverwinter. It's based on the Neverwinter Nights IP Dungeons and Dragons universe. I'm like a wizard running around after fire and ice and things. So we played that for a few hours and I was like, "I need to be up in five hours. I'd better get on that." This morning with the alarm going off for some reason it switched from buzzer to the radio. I freaked out when I woke up. "What's that soft mumbling? Oh, crap. Time to get up." It had been 16 minutes that I'd been sleeping and it was on. [00:02:10]

THERAPIST: Oh with the sound.

CLIENT: Yeah. Crap. I took the dogs out and brought them back in. Pepper (sp?) did not want to stay in the crate. Then I bent down to give her the treat and she's already scooted past me and she's up and over the bed. She's lying on the bed and I'm like, "No. This is not going to work." She falls over on her back and is like, "Arrrrgh." I move her and she flips around and she's on her back "Arrrgh." She nips at me. No. I'm not having this. Maybe she needs to go outside again. Maybe that's what she needs. So she runs downstairs and jumps up on the back of the couch in the sunbeam. She's like done. This is what I'm doing. I'm like, "No. You can't do that. We're going upstairs." "Arrrgh." So I pick her up and put her in the crate. She looks at me like, "Fuck you." "Fuck you, too, bitch." I close the door and give her a treat, of course. [00:03:00] Hank is like, "I get it. You give me a treat if I go in the crate. That's the deal. How would we deviate? I don't even know."

THERAPIST: He goes along with the plan. He's on board.

CLIENT: He's picked up that Ginny lies about it most of the time, so he actually makes her show him the treat before he'll get in the crate. He just looks at her. She gets the treat. Now he's even watching her hand to make sure she's actually going to give it to him. (chuckles) But he still falls for it. This is a box of treats. "Hank, this is a box of treats." "Oh, fuck. A whole box of treats." He gets in there and you close the door.

THERAPIST: If you run out of treats he'll fight you.

CLIENT: If you're out of treats you can be like, "Hank, you want this?" That's literally all you need to do. And he'll be like "Oh, cool. Well, of course I do want that." Great. Whatever. "Refrigerator." He comes running. He's dumb. He's a dumb dog. He's a good boy. [00:04:04]

THERAPIST: He's a good boy, yeah. Pepper will do what she wants.

CLIENT: She's ten years old so she's like, "I'm [ ] (inaudible at 00:04:13) dog."

THERAPIST: I just want to be out of my cage.

CLIENT: Yeah, exactly. I would leave her out of the cage except as soon as I go out the front door she will howl.

THERAPIST: Is that right?

CLIENT: Yeah. She'll just howl. And then Hank, he's upstairs and he's like, "Pepper's howling. I'd better get in on this." He's a beagle well, he's half beagle so he can really, really travel with that. If you put them both in their crates and leave they're like, "Okay. I guess I'm in charge of this space and that's all I'm going to worry about." It's like, "I'm in charge of the entire house? Aw, fuck. Bigger dogs. Bigger dogs. Quick. Come here, bigger dogs." That's what barking is, apparently. It's like, "Get bigger dogs. Come here. We need bigger dogs." Even bigger dogs [ ] (inaudible at 00:04:59), assuming there is a bigger dog. It's interesting. We don't always assume that there's someone bigger than us. Dogs just assume so. [ ] (inaudible at 00:05:15) There must be something bigger than us. Why? Why must that be true? There's something bigger than everything. What's bigger than us is the entire planet. It freaks me out to think about the fact that we are just actually part of this planet, literally just a piece of it all in the same chemical world. It's all part of it, you know? Part of us came from stars and that's because the earth was made of stars first and you're made from those chemicals. It's just one organism, just one giant organism, the entire thing all made of the same stuff, the same stars. [00:06:09]

THERAPIST: I differentiated. It can be a little bit undifferentiated.

CLIENT: Yeah, when you look at it that way. A 19-year-old kid built a nuclear fission reactor in his garage when he was 14 years old. [His dad] (ph?) works on fission reactors, small ones, modular ones. With timing he can bury them under the ground and they could produce 2,000 megawatts for 30 years. The way he describes it is it's enough to power 27,000 homes and it's much safer to proliferate because you bury it under the fucking ground. Thirty years of power before you have to refuel it. We can put it anywhere in the world. We can put it anywhere. He says we can put it on spaceships and we can watch it cold and turn it on in space. Now you can propel yourself. They have 50 times more power than our current spaceships get. [00:07:11]

THERAPIST: Is that right?

CLIENT: Yeah. Current spaceships get like one to two megawatts and, apparently, that's a huge deal as he describes it in his tech talk.

THERAPIST: How old is he?

CLIENT: Nineteen. He started his own company right out of high school for doing nuclear fission technology and working on spaceships and these nuclear fission reactors.

THERAPIST: Oh, my God.

CLIENT: Yeah. How about that, indeed? You can sit and watch this thing in space in a rocket ship and use it to propel the spaceship to Mars. Once you get to Mars you take it out of the spaceship and it will power your Martian community. That's great.

THERAPIST: Wow.

CLIENT: Yeah. You know people are going to Mars, right? You know about the mission? [00:08:02]

THERAPIST: I didn't know.

CLIENT: Yeah. It starts this year. They're going to fund it by documenting it and then running ads for it, but this year you apply. You're like, "I want to fucking go to Mars." You train for ten years and then they send you to Mars in waves and it's a one-way trip.

THERAPIST: Is that right?

CLIENT: And then you go in these spaceships. You land and you set them up and this is the habitat.

THERAPIST: What did it sound like to you?

CLIENT: It sounds amazing. I would never fucking go but . . .

THERAPIST: You wouldn't?

CLIENT: No. Fuck no. No. It's a long way. I hate going places I cannot leave, you know?

THERAPIST: Something about that a one-way ticket.

CLIENT: Yeah. You go. It's like we're going to the new world. Good-bye. It's a six-month journey with a boat. You'll probably never make it back. If I was around for the second return boat, who knows?

THERAPIST: But you're not coming back.

CLIENT: You're not coming back. It's literally a new world now. [00:09:01] Someday, of course, you'll look back at that with laughter because space will be like, "Yeah, yeah. We went to the new world." Really? [ ] (inaudible at 00:09:08) universe is that's what was actually important.

THERAPIST: Yeah, but it must be similar to that, going to some far, far away . . .

CLIENT: Yeah. Now the difference is that they'll be able to communicate with us wirelessly and with the radio technology. We'll be able to talk and have discussions like, "Hey, how is Mars going?" "Oh, you know. Not bad. It's Mars. It's red."

THERAPIST: How far is the trip?

CLIENT: I have no idea. But I still wouldn't do it, especially on a spaceship with a [nuclear fission rack there.] (ph?)

THERAPIST: This guy's reactor is going to be part of this?

CLIENT: Yeah. That's the build. That's what he wants to do. Is it going to be part of this program? Probably. [00:10:03] It hasn't been discussed, but it's there. He'll do it. Yeah, you train for ten years and then you go and start a Martian colony. This is a private company.

THERAPIST: And it's going to be funded through advertising?

CLIENT: Yeah. They're going to have a TV show about the training program.

THERAPIST: They should have a TV show about their lives.

CLIENT: Yeah. Exactly. We could all watch it. We all watched some dude step around the moon, right? Think of what we'd do if it was, "Hi. I'm living on the planet Mars. Super boring. (laughs) But here we are." Stranger in a Strange Land begins that way. Send a team of six or eight to Mars and they all go through intense personality screenings, psychological screenings to make sure that they'd be a compatible eight-person group because once they get to Mars who knows how long before they can get back. [00:11:10] But they don't kill each other. What happens is they get to Mars and . . .

THERAPIST: They all destroy it.

CLIENT: There's infidelity in one of the couples. One of the women sleeps with one of the other men and becomes pregnant and then jealousy erupts and fighting and they can't survive. The baby is saved by the Martians that live there and they raise the baby and the baby gets sent back to earth. That's Kevin as a stranger in a strange land. And, of course, he has all these different ways of looking at things.

THERAPIST: What did you say? It's Kevin?

CLIENT: Kevin is the name of the guy, the character. (pause) [00:12:03] It's a good book, Stranger in a Strange Land. One of the top three.

THERAPIST: Who wrote it?

CLIENT: Heinlein, Robert Heinlein, author of Starship Troopers. What you've seen in the movie is a fucking travesty. If you've read the book, it's quite good.

THERAPIST: The book is good?

CLIENT: The book is quite good, yes. The movie is not even the same. But there that is. Speaking of movies, Ironman III tonight; that's where I'll be at 9:30. And then tomorrow at 4:30 there's another viewing. I'll probably go see that. And then Saturday Ginny would like to see it so we'll go see a matinee, so I'm thinking three times will be the right number for this one. [00:13:01] Speaking of that, Ironman, I may have been through this before, but the difference between Ironman and all the superheroes is when you grow up you don't want to be Ironman; you want to be Tony Stark. That's actually the difference. That's what I wanted, to become Tony Stark because he's actually the core driving the machine. I don't mean just the machine; he builds the machine. He's the one who can build the machine. And, of course, he's that billionaire playboy architect. Everybody wants to be a billionaire.

THERAPIST: Yeah, be the smartest guy in the room.

CLIENT: Yeah, the smartest guy in the room. Yeah, fucking little Tony Stark.

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah. Now I can see that.

CLIENT: [ ] (inaudible at 00:13:55) Tony Stark.

THERAPIST: Do you have a sense of Tony Stark being independent of Downy? [00:14:03]

CLIENT: Yeah. I've read all the Ironman issues 1-300.

THERAPIST: Is that right? Like the original?

CLIENT: Yeah. Issue number one. Back when Ironman and Captain America shared the same comic book, the first half was Captain America and the second half was Ironman; and the second half was never as good as the second. Captain America was fine; he was totally fine. I've also ready 1-300 of him. Technically, the actual Captain America starts at 101, whereas Tony Stark had to start over so, technically, it's 1-200, so they both share a comic book until issue 100 and then Captain America got his own. It was 101 and then Ironman got his own as number one. My stepfather collected them for the same number of years, so I read them all. [00:15:02] They're excellent.

THERAPIST: Yeah, it is different. I can't imagine people emulating Ironman. You emulate Tony Stark.

CLIENT: Yeah, Ironman is just a machine that Tony Stark drives around. [ ] (inaudible at 00:15:31) Tony Stark as well. There was this whole series of the [ ] wars in the '80s before the dark age of comics, which was the '90s which some of the worst comics ever created were created in the 1990s because they realized that comics have value so they started trying to make comics that would be valuable and they just devalued everything. [ ] (inaudible at 00:15:56) Tony Stark was in a series called the [Honor Wars] (ph?). [00:16:03] This was in 1980 when Tony Stark was [ ]. Awful.

THERAPIST: Well he's kind of the man with [the talent, I guess.] (ph?)

CLIENT: Yeah. He discovers that his technology has been stolen and that people are incorporating it into other suits and all these other villains have bits of his technology in a suit that's powering them and he's like, "Well, crap. This is my technology and it's really powerful. It's my responsibility to make sure that only I have it." So he starts going around destroying people's suits of armor, fusing the circuits and slagging the entire thing. "You don't have your armor anymore. I'm not going to let you have this." All of the various super-armored supervillains. But at the same time he's also leaking a bunch of his technology to the government and they use it in their warden for the superhero jail, so he's like, "I can't let them have it either. It's not safe." [00:17:08] But they have it and now it's out there, so literally they can't protect it, so he attacks the superhero [business] (ph?) taking out all the suits of armor that they have. The Avengers team is like, "What the fuck, dude? These are good guys." He's like, "Yeah, but I'm doing this thing. There's a problem and I'm fixing it." They're like, "We can't let you do that. You're a bad guy now." But, of course, Tony Stark has always been this guy. People are like, "You're an asshole." He's like, "I'm doing the right thing. I'm doing the correct thing. If you don't like it that's too bad. I'm doing it. I'm fucking Tony Stark. What are you going to do if the [ ] follows through?"

THERAPIST: He stays the same. The lines of right and wrong change around him.

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah. They really do. [00:18:00] He starts the superhero civil war, as well, and a lot of people get hurt and some people die. And then after the whole thing, he's dying. He's like, "Yeah. I need something to bring my body back to life. I've downloaded my brain and made a backup of it, but it's about six months out of date, though, so it's going to be tricky." So they bring him back. He doesn't remember any of the civil wars.

THERAPIST: Is that right?

CLIENT: Yeah, except that he's dying. He starts reading up on newspapers of what happened and all these other things and all this damage he's caused to all these people. Everyone is like, "Yeah, we understand that you haven't done those things. You're Tony before all that." He's like, "No, I would have done exactly the same thing. I know that when I did those things I believed I was making the right choice, so I don't apologize for any of that."

THERAPIST: They kind of don't hold him responsible it, in a way.

CLIENT: Yeah, they want to let him off the hook, like you're not the Tony Stark who did those things. You're six-months before that. He's like, "No, I'm still that Tony Stark. Those are choices I would have made because I believe those were the right choices." [00:19:07] It's almost like you're an asshole, Tony Stark. Yeah, Tony Stark taught me the meaning of [pragmatism]. (ph?)

THERAPIST: What?

CLIENT: To always make the correct choice regardless of the other factors. Let's not get tied up in right and wrong, just what is the correct choice? That's what he did.

THERAPIST: Yeah. I see. Right. Those things are kind of threats to your integrity of yourself. If you can get off the hook you're kind of betraying yourself, in some way. He'd betray himself if he said, "Yeah, I didn't do that stuff. That's not me." [00:20:00]

CLIENT: He's like, "No, that is me. That's exactly what I would have done."

THERAPIST: Ironman is such an interesting metaphor, too.

CLIENT: It's true. It's flawed. He was an alcoholic for a long time and had to fight that, a little demon-in-a-bottle series, as he fights the alcoholism in the '70s. That's when Marvel did a big push against drugs. Spiderman had a whole thing where drugs where bad and you shouldn't do drugs. Ironman had a little alcoholism, like "alcohol can be dangerous." Ironman taught me to be careful with alcohol. (laughs) It helped. That's what I learned from Tony Stark.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Yeah. (pause) Yeah, your comic books and the stories were a lot of use to you.

CLIENT: Yeah, there was a lot of what I learned what to do from those things. [00:21:00] Yeah. Comics, man, in lieu of real-life heroes; the comics will do.

THERAPIST: It's brilliant of you to do that, especially some figure the comic books represented some kind of figure, some sort of . . .

CLIENT: An ideal. Someone I could take [ ] (inaudible at 00:21:30). I read that being a very important concept I think as early as I was nine, I think, I remember actually putting that into those words; such as there was this guy who ran Webelos. Do you know Webelos?

THERAPIST: It sounds familiar. What is it?

CLIENT: It's the step between Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts.

THERAPIST: Oh, okay.

CLIENT: It stands for "we be loyal scouts." You can earn a medal, a little badge called the Arrow of Light in Webelos, if you ace Webelos. It lets you skip the first rank of Boy Scout. I did it. [00:22:05] I fucking nailed it the only one in my whole church troops to get the Arrow of Light.

THERAPIST: Is that right?

CLIENT: Yeah. Because I wanted it. Also when I got to Boy Scouts, I was like, "I don't want any of this. This is dumb. I don't like this." The guys who ran it weren't the guys from Webelos. He was just in town to run Webelos and then he moved away afterwards. I really liked talking to him. He took me out to a movie once. My mom was like, "Would you please take him out to a movie? He respects you so much for your leadership." And we talked about him leaving. He was like, "Yeah, I like you, but I also have to go. I have another thing I have to do." And I remember being like okay, I need to take bits of him that I like and do that. [00:23:00]

THERAPIST: What did you take?

CLIENT: I don't even recall.

THERAPIST: There's something you've taken from him.

CLIENT: Something. Something. Probably the nurturing aspect. That might even be where mentoring started; my ability to be there and be an example for the people might have come from that. Yeah. I took so many things from so many people over the years, it's hard to remember necessarily where that came from, you know? I took the honor code directly from the academy and from [ ] (inaudible at 00:23:40), the headmaster of the academy [ ].

THERAPIST: You took that, kind of to heart?

CLIENT: Yeah, because the academy ran on an honor code. There were no bells; there were no locks on the lockers. It was just . . .

THERAPIST: Is that right?

CLIENT: Yeah. You know when you get to class, it's a class. You get out of one class; you have three minutes to go to the next one. Be on time. [00:24:06] It's not hard.

THERAPIST: We don't need bells.

CLIENT: We don't need bells. We don't need locks. Just go in your locker. Don't go in other people's lockers. Simple. This is your cubby. We're passing out various assignments and keeping snacks in there or whatever. Don't take stuff that's not yours. Simple. This is the library. We had free periods. I don't know if high schools have those, but it's like you don't have a class right now. You're a junior or a senior. Now you have a free period. What do you want to do? I don't know. Just don't leave the school grounds. Just don't do it. Simple. Simple stuff. Don't cheat on tests. Don't do it. They had an honor council. We had three. We had steering council, sports council and honor council. I was in the steering council the first couple of years. It was fucking boring as hell. [00:25:01] It's like how do we spend the entertainment fund? What kind of dances should we have? I got to be on the honor council the last year and that was interesting. The honor council had to represent every class level, five future levels. When someone broke the rules they went before the honor council and we would hear what happened and we'd listen and we'd determine what the appropriate punishment should be.

THERAPIST: It's student determined? Council determined?

CLIENT: Yeah. There was a faculty advisor and when it came down to when the kids were selling acid on school property, that didn't go to us. That was just no, you guys are out. You're gone. But when it came to stuff like that, like okay, you guys were all caught drinking on the ski trip, so now what would we do? They were all in trouble and then it would also go to us for the civil suit, pretty much. What do you owe us now? Because of you we don't have a ski trip anymore. It just doesn't happen. That's too bad. I first gave a woman an orgasm on our ski trip. It was a great time. There was a boy's section and a girl's section. One was supposed to be between them. [ ] (inaudible at 00:26:20) once you follow all the rules you can break the rules whenever you want to because they're not looking for you. I was like no, Fred always follows the rules. It was one of those times when I was like there was a woman over there and she wants me to make out with her so I have to do this. That's what I did. I felt amazing.

THERAPIST: You did?

CLIENT: Yeah. Because I had been reading all these books, Changing Bodies, Changing Lives, this big, fucking tome of puberty. What's happened to you and to women? I'd been reading this and studying this and be like how do women masturbate? [00:27:10] What are the mechanics involved and how does this work? How would I find the clitoris just by touch? How would I do this. And when it came time, I just knew. I just knew how to do it. I was like, "This is the geography. Ahh, okay. If I'm here, then this there we go." I never had a hard time finding the man with the boat, as they say. I've never been [ ] (inaudible at 00:27:36).

THERAPIST: You felt what did you say? Amazing?

CLIENT: Yeah, amazing. I was incredible. I had this ability, this thing I could do that she said other people couldn't do to her. I tell you, her outlook changed after that. It had been very like, "Oh, we should kiss. You can touch my boobs." But as soon as I made her come, that was it. [00:28:01] It was different. She was like, "We should be totally having sex now." Not that we ever did have sex, because that would have been stupid. I must have told you this. We were hanging out naked. I was a junior in high school. She was over and we had the house to ourselves for the day and we were in my room naked and were doing sex stuff to each other. I've got a drawer full of condoms so I put on a condom so we could have sex and be relatively safe. She was on the pill at that time (snickers), even in high school. We're rolling around and I'm above her and she's totally naked and I'm naked. I'm like, "I kind of want to have sex with you." She looks in my eyes so intently, so serious she becomes, and she says, "Make love to me." At that moment I was like, "Nope. Nope." Because I realized and I understood that this is huge. [00:29:03] This is a huge step. There's a lot of responsibility in this step. I was like, "Nope. I'm done. Never mind." Let's just jerk off with each other instead. It's like, "We've been doing masturbation. Let's stick with that. That seems safe."

THERAPIST: Keep the intensity down.

CLIENT: Yeah, down. And a year later she was pregnant. A year later she was pregnant. She called me on my 18th birthday to let me know she was sleeping with this other guy named Harry. Yeah, she got pregnant right afterwards.

THERAPIST: Was it out of spite or something?

CLIENT: I don't know, but she moved in with him, with his family because she had a hard home life and she kept trying to kill herself and she was anorexic. I remember when I broke up with her the last time she tried to kill herself and she went to the hospital again. It was like her third attempt to kill herself. [00:30:05]

THERAPIST: No wonder you must have known something about her.

CLIENT: Probably right. So she was in the hospital and I called her at the hospital and said, "I'm upset. Is this my fault?" and she said, "Yes." And again at that exact moment I'm like, "Ahh. No. This is not my responsibility." I was like, "No. You tried to kill yourself. That's actually not on me. I can't take the blame for this. I won't be assigned the blame for this, just like I won't take responsibility for having sex with you because that's a stupid idea, so let's not do it." I won't let myself feel that you tried to kill yourself because of my actions.

THERAPIST: No, you had some sense that if you did that you might have felt more responsible.

CLIENT: Oh, I would have responsibility. [00:31:04]

THERAPIST: You would have? What do you mean?

CLIENT: Once done it can never be undone, right? You can always kind of walk away. If I get you pregnant I can't walk away. The consequences are bigger than you. [ ] (inaudible at 00:31:23) walk away from that unless there's DNA, for instance, being able to prove very easily who the father is.

THERAPIST: Were you feeling kind of that having sex with her was kind of equal to impregnating her?

CLIENT: Not necessarily, but there was a possibility. Yeah. I just weighed it and all the possibility scenarios and ways it could go wrong flashed in my head and I was like, "No. This is it." My uncle was so grumpy about the whole thing because he made sure I had condoms. I was living with my uncle the entire year. [00:32:03] He made sure I had condoms and made sure I had the various books on sex. I had The Joy of Sex. I had The Sensual Man. I had a lot of porn. He got me a subscription to Playboy and everything. He made sure that I had access to that sort of stuff, which was really useful. All of it was really useful. So when I got to college although I hadn't actually serious sexual relationships, I was good at what I was doing because I had done research. I had looked at the mechanics of it. I knew how everything worked. I was a quick study, too. A quick study. Every woman was different. Every human is different. Every lover is different. They all need to be manipulated in their own way, so it's a matter of learning that. But knowing the language, knowing the mechanics made it very easy to do that and very quickly. [00:33:04] So I was popular for those reasons.

THERAPIST: Did you feel that kind of exhilaration, the feeling of . . .

CLIENT: Yeah, it's power, isn't it? It's powerful to be able to make people do that.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Yeah.

CLIENT: It's just another way people love you. Be smart, be funny, be charming, be good in bed and you get pretty much anything you want at that point along with the safety. I always wanted someplace to sleep that wasn't my bed and I mostly had that. I did the math once. I think in seven years, six years actually, being in college there, not counting the summer that I was gone, there were only six months where I had to sleep alone, where I didn't have the option. [00:34:13]

THERAPIST: The total?

CLIENT: Yeah, where I didn't have the option of sleeping with somebody.

THERAPIST: Sleeping alone what about that?

CLIENT: Well, I was always in some relationship with someone. Sleeping alone was just you know lonely.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: I sleep better when Ginny is in the house. We don't sleep in the same bed anymore because it didn't work that way. She can't sleep and I push. I like sleep. I snore very loudly and I push.

THERAPIST: Push her?

CLIENT: Yes. I take the blankets. I like she says cocoon. I wrap and roll. In the course of the night I roll all over the place until all the blankets are around me. [00:35:00]

THERAPIST: It sounds like you're trying to just establish space, your own cocoon.

CLIENT: Yeah. So now I sleep in the big bed and she sleeps in her bed, which is full sized. I sleep in a queen size. Her bed is a [ ] (inaudible at 00:35:12) bed. It's an Amish bed antique. She sleeps in her room and I sleep in the bedroom. I've got my own office. She has her bedroom; it's her office. We have our own space and it works out really well.

THERAPIST: And when she's gone, you'll know?

CLIENT: Yeah, when she's not home or she's gone for the evening like on the weekend, I sleep on the couch downstairs with the stairway light on. It sort of casts some light. So I sleep with a nightlight, essentially, when she's gone.

THERAPIST: It sounds like it brings up some fear.

CLIENT: Well, yeah. I sleep on the bottom floor near the door.

THERAPIST: Is it to leave or is it to protect the place? [00:35:59]

CLIENT: It's both. There is the [fierce logic that I don't need to be] (ph?) anxious to get out of the house, regardless of who else is in their house. It's sad, but if someone was to have your child with a knife to their throat and said, "Stop or I'll kill your child." Well they were going to kill your child, so either they're going to do it slowly while you watched or they're going to do it quickly while you're out of the house going to get the cops. They were going to kill your child anyway. When somebody breaks into your house when you're there, the only reason is to kill you slowly. That's the only reason.

THERAPIST: Yeah, you want to just get the hell out.

CLIENT: Yeah, you just get out. You just get out. Yeah. Don't track through the house after intruders yourself with a gun because when the cops come they will use five police officers with body armor working in concert to clear your house of one shooter. [00:36:58]

THERAPIST: Yeah. The thing, too, is it sounds like just Ginny's presence is almost a psychological protection in a way. You feel like you're not invaded by all that terror and all that stuff.

CLIENT: She'll hear it if someone comes to the house, too.

THERAPIST: She'd hear it before you?

CLIENT: She's a very light sleeper. (pause)

THERAPIST: Is there a loneliness that hits you, too?

CLIENT: No. That's actually really nice to a degree. When she's not there it's nice that this is the house now. This is mine. I kind of move into the living room for the most part. I order pizza and rent movies, hang out on the couch, stretch out into the house.

THERAPIST: Be a dude.

CLIENT: Yeah, be a dude. I revert. I go feral almost immediately. A wild boar. A pig is a wild boar. There's a difference between pigs and wild boars. Pigs are domesticated and wild boar are wild. [00:38:06] This is the interesting thing I learned on the Discovery Channel. If you release a pig into the wild, it becomes a wild boar. It grows hair; it grows tusks; its DNA activates. It's like literally there are genes you weren't using. Let's turn those on and it grows tusks and it grows hair. It becomes a wild boar. Two different animals, essentially. A pig becomes that. We don't do that. Ancient DNA doesn't awaken in us if you put us in the woods. We just die. We don't become a creature that can survive in the woods. We just become another [ ] (inaudible at 00:38:48) in the woods. People who have training can do it, but like dogs. Dogs don't do that. They don't even become a dog that can survive in the wild. They just become a stupid dog. [00:39:01] [ ] (inaudible at 00:39:01) that they can't possibly understand.

THERAPIST: Once you're domesticated, you lose it.

CLIENT: Close. That's why I look at these prostitutes and I'm like "no." I keep having these dreams where I have this really close relationship with a woman. It's always different. One was a zombie apocalypse. There was a post-zombie apocalypse trying to find a place to live and there was this gated community and a there were a bunch of people in the group that were like, "Oh, great. We can move in with those people in the gated community." I'm like, "That's a good zombie snack-fest right there just waiting to happen. That's not safe. There are a bunch of people in one location."

THERAPIST: Oh, because they'd want to eat everybody there?

CLIENT: Yeah. There's this woman that I was with. We held hands [ ] (inaudible at 00:39:52) we spoke to each other. [ ] [00:40:03] They've been pretty frequent lately, these dreams of this close physical contact with a woman. And she's always someone really important to me. She's always some long-term relationship.

THERAPIST: What about her? Is there anything about her?

CLIENT: I don't know. It's a different woman each time, but it's the same sort of closeness. There's this importance in her touch, you know? The most recent one I was trying to figure out how I was going to tell Ginny. I was like, "This is something I need to do. I love you and you're my wife, but she's a part of my life now. This girl is a part of my life."

THERAPIST: In the dream you're thinking that?

CLIENT: Yeah. [ ] (inaudible at 00:40:51) so we need to find a way to make this work. I don't want you to be mad or upset, but she's part of the deal now. [00:41:04]

THERAPIST: It's got somewhat of a parallel to the chat room, the woman what was her name?

CLIENT: Helen. Helen.

THERAPIST: Helen, yeah. There was something really important about the sexual, but it wasn't purely sexual, clearly. It was something that was going on there.

CLIENT: Yeah, there was some kind of connection.

THERAPIST: And something that you find is missing with Ginny in that way.

CLIENT: Yeah, we talked about that. I'm not [ ] (inaudible at 00:41:36) it seems like there is always some reason that we don't have sex that often. There's always some reason. She's like, "But how will you know that you're desired and I want you?" I'm like, "Well, you could act on those things." She's like, "So what about right now when I physically can't because of this yeast infection?" I'm like, "Well, did you ever go to the doctor?" She's like, "No." I'm like you need to get on it.

THERAPIST: She still hasn't gone? [00:42:02]

CLIENT: She has one lined up now. Her friend, Darcy, has this doctor and she's really good, but that should be for her. If what you're saying is true and you really mean it and you're not just saying it because you want me to hear it, then you should do that. I was thinking to myself that if I had enough money I would really consider paying for sex.

THERAPIST: You're not getting any sex?

CLIENT: No. I mean there's some but still . . .

THERAPIST: How much has it been lately for you?

CLIENT: If it's four times a month, that's a good month.

THERAPIST: And what has that been like for you?

CLIENT: How has it been? It starts out fine and then it kind of feels so one-sided I feel like a pervert. I'm like, "No, it's just me, huh?" [00:42:57]

THERAPIST: You're not seeing her there in it, huh?

CLIENT: Yeah, I'm not connecting. If I just want orgasms, that's fine. I can do that on my own.

THERAPIST: With somebody who wants to be there.

CLIENT: Yeah, exactly.

THERAPIST: Helen.

CLIENT: Well, she had to be because she was being paid for it, but still she was happy enough to . . .

THERAPIST: That doesn't mean she didn't want to be there.

CLIENT: Yeah, that's true. She did enjoy the time so great. That's nice.

THERAPIST: No, you picked her because you knew she wanted to be there.

CLIENT: Yeah, that's true. Out of all the various women that were around. She's irreplaceable, you know? It can't be done. I've fucked around and it's just awful. Like, "Oh, you are a great man." And I'm like, "Okay, just stop. Just stop. You're embarrassing yourself."

THERAPIST: Too solicitous. It's not genuine.

CLIENT: Right. Totally made up. Totally made up. [00:44:03] That's not useful to me, whereas this one Providence prostitute who was pretty much a hand job chick, she was like, "$300 for a hand job." She called it a hand-trick massage. $300. Yeah, and $400 for a blow job and $500 for sex. That's a good deal. It's a lot of money, but she can't obviously advertise that it's sex. She's like [ ] (inaudible at 00:44:28). She's really slick. "$3,500 once we know each other. We can explore sensual massage. Let our inhibitions go and explore this as two consenting adults."

THERAPIST: But there was something about her that you found . . .

CLIENT: Yeah, she seemed very professional. She seemed invested in it. She seemed to understand. And the idea of Anat, the love priestesses of Anat, back before the oldest god on record was Anat, the love goddess. [00:45:05] Love and sex. The very oldest god we have on record. This is before Judaism. Judaism fucked everything up. Honestly, Judaism fucked everything up. Judaism [ ] (inaudible at 00:45:18) worship and love their gods. Then it was only the patriarch.

THERAPIST: The power of the woman.

CLIENT: That's where it started.

[ ] (crosstalk at 00:45:29)

CLIENT: Thousands of years ago and we're still dealing with that now. Anat was the mother of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is the oldest book we have on record. Gilgamesh was one of the few people who survived after the flood, who traversed the flood. Gilgamesh who raises up Enkidu and can't save him. He does everything he can but cannot save him. Enkidu is of this world and cannot be saved. [00:46:05]

THERAPIST: I'm not familiar with that.

CLIENT: Gilgamesh and Enkidu? Gilgamesh is a child of Anat. He is divine, actually. He is kind of a mortal divine. He a divine mortal half-breed and he's a fucking hero. Gilgamesh kicked ass. He meets this beast man named Enkidu who lives in that house. He gets in there and they wrestle and they fight and everything and they become best friends. It's a very interesting mix between this man who is divine and this man who is a beast. They learn [ ] (inaudible at 00:46:49) and Enkidu becomes more like the [ ]. Enkidu is killed somehow and Gilgamesh has to travel across this river to go get this lotus because if he can bring the lotus back then he can bring Enkidu back to life; but there is some trick to it. [00:47:08] It turns out he was tricked. It turns out the lotus won't actually do it and he fails. He fails to bring Enkidu back to life and so the lesson is that people die. It's like Gilgamesh doesn't die, but people die. No matter what he wants to do he can't change the fact that people die. (pause) He can't fix it. As powerful as he is, he can't fix that. It's a real interesting story. We had to read it in high school.

THERAPIST: And what's the link with Anat?

CLIENT: Anat, the priestesses of Anat, the first prostitutes. You would go and give them offering and they would give you their blessing by sleeping with you.

THERAPIST: Connections.

CLIENT: Yeah. It was a healing art. [00:48:05] It still exists. I don't see why prostitution is illegal. Ginny is like, "Well, you know bad things happen." Yeah, because it's illegal bad things happen. If it were legal, things would be fine. We could monitor it and tax it and it would be okay.

THERAPIST: Yeah, I hear what you're saying about it is listen, there's something very, very important about physical contact. It's both spiritual it's not just physical it's spiritual. It's about your heart. It's about . . .

CLIENT: Really. [ ] (inaudible at 00:48:37) Sex workers exist for this very reason. [ ] The oldest profession they always say.

THERAPIST: The oldest profession. And something important about marriage is that there's a space . . . [00:49:03]

CLIENT: A sexual component. Yeah, certainly. I was telling Ginny early in the beginning of our relationship, "Listen, if we don't have the sexual component, we are just friends. It doesn't mean I'm not going to love you, but without the sexual component this is just friendship." My love involves sex. Romantic love involves sex.

THERAPIST: And a hell of a lot more than that to anybody, but you're saying that you're really aware of the void.

CLIENT: Oh. Acutely aware. Acutely aware. So I totally would pay for sex if I had the money.

THERAPIST: And this woman, the Providence woman, seems to have a kind of . . .

CLIENT: Attitude about it. She gets it. This is a very important thing, which is also like [ ] (inaudible at 00:50:00) relationship. There is this third level, the sex level, the [ ] of your relationship. There has to be an understanding. I'm like ah, great. [00:50:11]

THERAPIST: And it's something that you'd see in her. Not just a one way? You're just a guy kind of "getting off?"

CLIENT: Yeah. I'd masturbate. That's why I'd just go to a strip club and seriously.

THERAPIST: Or watch any porn.

CLIENT: Exactly. That's right. There's plenty of it.

THERAPIST: All right. Next week.

CLIENT: Next week.

END TRANSCRIPT