Chapter 2

Case Study # 3: Katie T.

Each “Case Study” involves something illegal. Incest of course. Underage sex. Juvenile corruption.

But legality is sometimes less important than the health and welfare of the participants. It’s sometimes a tightrope, sometimes a messy quandary. Underage sex can be a fuzzy concept. Age of consent laws vary from locale to locale. A 14 year old can be more mature, more ready for sex than a 21 year old.

The impact of legal prosecution is even more murky. The justice system can sometimes do far more harm to the participants than if they were left alone.

So for me, it’s a case by case judgement call. It’s a tough part of my work, deciding who to leave alone, who to report to the authorities. I developed a system, imperfect of course, but it guides me as I consider my legal responsibilities.

Just as attorneys shop for sympathetic judges, I look for intelligent, experienced professionals to make up my ad hoc advisory teams. I have one such volunteer committee in San Francisco, a second one in L A.

Each team includes a social worker experienced in childhood trauma. A police officer who works with family dynamics. And someone in the judicial system. In San Francisco it’s a prosecutor. Los Angeles, a defense attorney.

Each of the six professionals is a woman.

We meet informally once a month to discuss some of my incest cases. What’s happening, what might happen, what I plan to do. By the mere fact of listening, they are placing themselves in legal jeopardy if they don’t report the activities I discuss with them.

No one takes her role casually, they all realize that we’re talking about real people in potentially dire circumstances.

When it is clear that I can not allow certain behavior to continue, I give, in this case the mother, one chance to cease and desist.

Katie T. is one mother who slipped through the cracks on me. She lied. I didn’t learn the truth of what was going on between her son and her sister until years after the fact.

My San Francisco advisory team agreed with me. No good would now come from turning her in. Potentially more damage than good would occur.

My office locations are important to me. Not just from a real estate perspective, but for my patients’ comfort level. The neighborhood must, first of all, be safe. And feel safe, be perceived as safe.

Discreet entrance and exits. A small brass sign that says Dr. Preston Stafford, but doesn’t indicate that I’m a psychologist.

I avoid crowded downtown locations as well as areas that are mostly residential. A mix of low rise offices, restaurants, shops, works well. And I prefer there to be enough foot traffic so that my patients don’t stand out.

With Katie however, my office could be in a water tower. She lives in her own trippy world.

I was the third therapist that Katie tried. We clicked and we’re now in our fourth year together. Katie lives in Berkeley and should live in Berkeley. They mirror each other in so many freewheeling ways.

Her husband is a “Brilliant professor of philosophy. Jefferson.”

Katie and her family live in the Berkeley Flats neighborhood, close enough to the University for Jefferson to walk. Leaving the Volvo for Katie to drive on her daily errands.

Among other interests, she is on the board of a food cooperative. They purchase items such as cheese and vegetables in bulk for their co-op members. Katie is a vegetarian of course. Except for tacos. She remains blasé about her weakness, “I never claimed to be perfect.”

I became used to seeing her continually pushing her blue-tinted Ben Franklin eyeglasses back up her nose as she gushed about her latest enthusiasms. She doesn’t shave her legs, her armpits. I assume, but don’t know, that she doesn’t trim her pubic hair.

I expected her to ask me for a marijuana script which I prescribe for some patients through a medical doctor. But I learned that Katie and Jefferson grew their own outside of town.

Katie and Jefferson have always smoked dope around their son and younger daughter. Nudity is common at home. Although the flower child still inside Katie is often clothed in ankle length tie-dyed dresses and tee shirts. Quite obviously braless, no matter what the outfit.

She’s sometimes barefoot for our sessions. Or Birkenstock clogs. Sandals. Hippies aren’t usually slaves to a clock, but Katie enjoys our sessions so much that she shows up early for each appointment. She often wore a bandana for a headband.

Katie’s mother was born and raised in an Oregon commune. Katie too. Katie inherited many of her mother’s traits. Dope. Folk music. A casualness about sex. “Jefferson could be their father. Probably is.”

Katie wasn’t precisely sure who had impregnated her. Either time.

But she had been sure about getting her son some pussy. “Mama told me it’d be easy to get him laid at Sunburst.” The Oregon commune. But Katie was impatient, “Adam can already dry cum.”

She never could explain exactly why she was so eager for Adam to have sex. “It’s time.” “Sex is natural.” “I don’t want him to fall behind.” “It’s a new millennium.” “It just feels right.” “Check out his horoscope.”

In any case she turned to her younger sister, Bethany. “Bethie’s cool. I take Excelsior on weekends, Bethie takes Adam. Fucks his brains out too. She doesn’t mind about his cock being on the small side. It’ll grow.”

As I learned recently, Bethany has been fucking her nephew for five years now. She lives in neighboring Oakland. Is into crystals, tarot cards, astrology, Eastern mystics. She’s married to a motorcycle mechanic.

Katie said, “Her husband thinks it’s a hoot. Roger and his buddies watch sometimes. Go Adam!”

“How does Adam feel about an audience?”

“Long as there’s pussy involved, he’s like way cool.”

Why was the genetically laid back Katie in therapy? Life is never about just one thing. Katie isn’t completely comfortable with the way her husband observes their daughter. “I know that look. Even when Moonglow’s wearing clothes, I know that look.”

Katie initially, and ostensibly, sought me out because of her own promiscuity. She purportedly wondered if she should tone things down, sexually. Four years ago she told me she was, “A mother of an 11 year old boy. And an 8 year old girl.”

But her personal sex life didn’t really bother her. She’d been passed around while she grew up in Oregon. She and the other commune kids had been public property. And these days Katie’s husband, Jefferson, wasn’t really the jealous type.

No, Katie wanted reassurances. That she was a good mother. A good person. That she wasn’t a faded cliche, some hippy-dippy from decades past. That she’d been right about giving her son to her sister. That she mattered.

Wanting those human reassurances, needing comforting, was common. Some patients come to therapy thinking it’s about one thing when it’s often another. Sometimes several other things.

Katie, in her own way, is a lot like Alicia M. She simply enjoys the conversations with me. Likes letting her mouth run as free as her mind often does.

Adam is 15 now, still spending a lot of weekends with his Aunt Bethany. Katie is proud, “Good sized cock now.” Roger and his friends aren’t the only ones watching Adam fuck his aunt. As I learned recently, Katie likes to smoke dope, watch her son in action and masturbate.

“Are you nude when you watch Adam?”

“Duh.”

Katie may spend a good part of her time in a hazy fog, but she is alert enough to understand the symbolism of lying next to the woman her son is fucking. Next to and naked. Masturbating. She looks at Adam; he looks at her.

“Do Roger and his friends watch Adam when you’re there?”

This was the first time I’d seen the blithe Katie blush. Then she told me. Her sister’s husband is not only there sometimes, he and his friends fuck Katie. She’s cuckolding her husband in front of her son. With three, four, five men, one after the other.

At first she had admitted only to fucking her brother-in-law. “It’s only fair. Bethie does Adam for me, I do Roger for her.”

But these days Katie is not a careful conversationalist and the details emerged. I wonder what she and Adam talk about on the drive to Oakland. Where he’ll fuck her sister while four or five men will fuck Katie.

I didn’t mention the subject to Katie, no sense in adding to her burden. But sometimes when men fuck the same woman it’s an indicator of suppressed homosexuality. A sort of secondhand actualization.

But that’s another topic for another time.

Sometimes another patient’s pathology is every bit as crude as Katie’s. Like a wife who feels devalued by, say, both her husband and son so she stays in a bathroom giving blowjobs to her male friends at a party. (This woman is a patient of a colleague.)

So far Jefferson has been only looking at Moonglow. But Katie has her eye on him, just in case.

Katie claims she’ll never fuck Adam. I recently learned that when Adam cums in Bethany, he’ll turn his attention to his mother. Masturbating as he watches her being fucked until he’s erect again.

We’ll see.

Case Study # 4: Maggie W.

Compulsions are consistent only to their own logic.

Unlike a few of my colleagues, I’m sometimes riven with doubt. I worry about my most vulnerable of clients. And about the effect my therapy has on them. Occasionally I question my own professionalism, my competence.

So I do what plumbers, teachers, police officers do. I go to work every day, plug away, do my best, and hope for the best. I’m a skilled psychologist, but an imperfect practitioner.

The current mini wave of mothers sexually empowering their sons is interesting because it varies from historical patterns. It had been men, often fathers, who introduced pubescent boys to sex. Frequently in the form of whores.

It’s only an untested personal theory, but I believe the involvement of mothers relates somewhat to the rise of feminism. That movement opened eyes, encouraged women to look beyond their traditional roles. Women are every bit as entitled, wink-wink, to be abettors as men.

Maggie is a wannabe sexual enabler for her 14 year old son, Billy. Unlike Katie, Maggie doesn’t have a compliant sister.

Maggie is plump, that’s the first thing that people notice about her. But she’s also cute. A little giggly, pixie haircut, conservative dresser. Giggly and conservative. Plump and cute. Contradictions that are mirrored in her ambivalence about her own children.

She’s been divorced for seven years and lives down on the Peninsula in Atherton. Horse country. My assistant runs the financials on all new patients and Maggie certainly wasn’t hurting.

From what I’ve been able to ascertain, Maggie doesn’t have a sex life except for masturbation. Which could partly explain her fascination with her son’s bedroom activities.

“I think privacy is a ridiculous concept for little boys. And I’ve been proven right.”

“How so?”

“Billy used to be so silly. Fight me for his privacy. I was unwavering, I kept him nude a lot. Most of the time. My two best friends think it’s so cute. We measure his penis size every once in a while.”

Not a good sign, not for Billy. But I’ve learned over the years that it’s not unheard of for mothers to take intimate measurements of their children.

Maggie sought out a San Francisco therapist because her Peninsula friends would “Think I’m crazy.” She made me swear not to tell anyone about her. Silly, but she’s not the only analysand to have that concern.

She attended UCLA for two years, dropped out. She worked for her mother in residential real estate for a year until she married. The marriage didn’t last and she never did go back to work. She has a history of not finishing.

Maggie does an unconscious knee jiggle whenever she talks about her son. Which is most of the session.

It took the 35 year old mother four visits before she began talking about what was really on her mind. “I want to get Billy laid. I don’t mind paying for it, but not his first time.”

We had first had that conversation two years earlier and then she abruptly cancelled her standing biweekly appointments. She called me again four months ago to talk about the exact same subject. And it was obvious that the solution she’d come up with bothered her. Well, that’s what I’m here for.

“I got her touching it. Him. His cock.”

“Sandy?”

“Yeah.”

Sandy is Billy’s younger sister. “He likes it. A lot. Billy. Shit why wouldn’t he? He’s a walking hard-on.”

“I’ll state the obvious, Maggie. Sandy is young, way too young. And it would be incest.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s why I’m here. I mean I love her just fine. But I LOVE Billy, you know? I don’t know why things have to be so fucking complicated.”

I’m not sure who started the myth that mothers don’t have favorite children. They do. And it’s allowed. It’s unnatural, a denial of reality, not to recognize and accept your true feelings.

Maggie said, “I’d like to get her to give him blowjobs. That would be enough. She wouldn’t have to fuck him. Not unless she wanted to.”

“How does Sandy feel about touching him?”

“Nervous. Maybe scared. But excited too. Curious.”

Maggie usually referred to Sandy as she. As her. I countered, calling Sandy by her name. Reminding Maggie that her daughter was a person. Not a toy to be used.

“And you’re there with Sandy?”

“Of course. What kind of mother do you think I am?”

I let that slide. We do that a lot in our work. Don’t comment on the obvious.

I had counseled mothers who knew about, or suspected, incest between their children. Most were shocked, scared. Worried sick. Maggie was my first parent to openly encourage it.

My task was to move her in a different direction. She was my patient, my responsibility was to her. To her happiness. But also to her overall wellbeing.

One path would be to discourage her son’s sexual awakening until he was old enough for it to be age-appropriate. But with Maggie, that seemed an unlikely outcome.

I said, “How about having Billy’s first sexual explorations be with someone who’s experienced? So both parties aren’t going through everything for the first time.”

“I don’t want to pay. Not for his first time. I mean he jacks off. Has wet dreams. But his first time to cum from someone else has to be special.”