Chapter 26: Troubling Situations

November 14, 1994, Greater Cincinnati, Ohio

“Steve?! What are you doing here?”

“I need your help,” I said. “It was serious enough that I decided to drive down this morning.”

“I have a 2:00pm, but I can see you at 3:00pm. The rest of the afternoon after that is free. Are you OK to wait an hour? No thoughts of harming yourself? Or of running away?”

“I’m OK to wait,” I agreed, then shook my head. “And no thoughts like that.”

“OK. Have a seat and relax.”

I went to sit in a chair in the corner of Doctor Mercer’s waiting room. I took out my laptop and began writing in my journal trying to make heads or tails of what had happened. Driving to Milford had been the end result of several conversations, though with one exception, they’d all disagreed with my decision. As usual, Kara supported me, and said she trusted me not to do anything foolish. I was still writing when Doctor Mercer called me into her office.

“You should have called,” she said.

I nodded, “You’re right, I should have.”

“What’s troubling you?”

“Severe depression brought on by recent events.”

“You know I’m not a psychiatrist and can’t prescribe drugs.”

I nodded, “And you know I won’t take psychoactive drugs, prescription or otherwise.”

“Did you speak to your physician?”

“I spoke with Doctor Barton at UofC. He’s managing my case.”

“The Head of Emergency Medicine?”

“I’m a science project for him and Doctor Ross at the Mayo Clinic. You aren’t up to speed but they suspect a congenital defect in my hypothalamus that causes a strange hormonal imbalance, and is likely responsible for my odd carbohydrate metabolism and my bipolar disorder. It’s not treatable, only manageable. I do have a brand new budding doctor who made me her life’s work at my request.”

Doctor Mercer was scribbling furiously in her notebook and I waited while she caught up.

“So what happened?”

“What should have been a man’s ultimate fantasy turned to ashes in my mouth.”

“You had a bad sexual experience?”

“I had a glorious sexual experience! I also had an emotional break over it because it was, perhaps for the first time in my life, completely meaningless sex, devoid of anything except physical pleasure. When I finished, I basically broke down in depression. What I wrote in my journal was that I felt like Lady Macbeth unable to get her hands clean.”

“This may take more than a couple of hours today.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m here until you can help me figure out what to do.”

“Where are you staying?”

“Over in Colerain Township with a friend.”

“A friend?” she asked with an arched eyebrow.

“A married friend, her husband, two kids, and grandmother.”

“Good. That kind of self-medication would be disastrous at the moment.”

“I have no desire. I told my wives yesterday that the whole thing was getting old and I just couldn’t go on the way I was.”

“And that’s when you started your freefall?”

I nodded, “Yes.”

“Well, let’s start with this encounter. Or do you need to start before then?”

“Before. Long before. February of ‘89, according to my journal. I had a conversation with my friend Jorge, God rest his soul, about the exact thing. Let me read it to you. I used to turn to this guy for very serious help with problems, to the point where I called him ‘Lucy’ when he asked for 5¢ at the end of the conversation I’m going to read to you. He actually helped a lot more than some professionals.”

“So you let, in effect, an amateur psychologist treat you?”

“Even I’m not that dumb, though ‘Lucy’ might say I was worse, but he was a very good friend who had very good insight into my thinking. This is Jorge, or ‘Lucy’ and me.”

I found the correct place in my journal that I’d marked. I read the conversation I’d had with Jorge, leaving out unimportant parts.

“And you agree with your friend? He died?”

I nodded, “His death is what brought Jessica back from our most recent estrangement. As lousy as this sounds, No greater love has a man, than he lay down his life for his friends. In the end, that’s what Jorge did, despite dying in a stupid accident caused by a drunk driver. Jess was injured, but recovered. And no, she wasn’t the drunk. I had a severe syncopal episode then, and the end result was Jessica coming home. But that happened much, much later. Almost exactly a year ago, so five years after that conversation I just read you.”

“OK, what next?”

“A girl, a devout, innocent, young girl came into my life at about the same time another, slightly younger woman came into my life. The first one, Michelle, caused me to question just about everything in my life, but in the end, I justified my behavior to myself. The second one, Samantha, carried serious baggage, and I saw in her father, what I might become. Later, three young Japanese women taught me a lot about how I was behaving, and, finally, on a trip to Europe I learned some other lessons. I failed to put those into practice properly, and what you see is the result.”

“I take it from you clicking around you have something else to read to me?”

“I do. This is Michelle and me, in February of 1992.”

“You weren’t involved with this young woman?”

“I was more intimate with her than anyone except perhaps Anala, though at that point, Michelle and I were not lovers.”

“But you were later?”

I nodded, “At her request, before she decided to become an Orthodox nun.”

Doctor Mercer was scribbling again, and I waited until she finished.

“So she’s out of your life?”

I shook my head, “It’s never THAT easy. She came back a year later, with a request to be my lover. We were, until she finally couldn’t take how I was treating her and broke up with me. She still lives at the house, and works for me.”

Doctor Mercer shook her head, “I could write a shelf-full of books! What was the problem?”

“That I still saw her as a devout little girl and couldn’t get past it. She was right.”

“And this other young woman?”

“Samantha,” I replied. “We met and really hit it off, despite a twelve-year age gap. She was very mature in some ways, and very immature in others. She’s personally worth better than half-a-billion dollars at this point.”

“You’re joking?”

“Nope. She’s not even twenty-one. Her situation at home was terrible, and her dad is now, because she turned him in, doing 40 years for what amounts to fifty counts each of statutory rape and child pornography because he filmed his encounters.”

“You do know if you have underage partners...”

I nodded, “I know. But I haven’t been with anyone who is below the age of consent for a long time, and I certainly never filmed any!”

“OK. Go on.”

“We became lovers, but only after she had a long struggle with whether she wanted me for a father figure or a lover. She chose lover for about a year, then switched for me to be her mentor and close friend. It’s worked out well for both of us. But the whole thing with her dad, and I met him quite a few times before he was arrested, was the way he treated young women. And I was afraid of becoming him. In fact, I was afraid I HAD become him. Ultimately, that led to me limiting who I was with, and winding down some of my relationships. From that point on, there were a few special girls who helped direct me, but ultimately one who had more impact on me than anyone since Anala.”

“When did this feeling start?”

“Around the time I went to Saint Martin with Samantha and her friends. Do I need to draw you a picture?”

Doctor Mercer shook her head and smiled ruefully, “No. It felt empty?”

“Except for one of the girls, yes. But really, it came down to a single girl in Japan named Sakurako.”

“In Japan? When where you there?”

“Over the summer for five weeks. I was training with the most senior karate master in my school. I’m actually going to be back there next month on business.”

“It sounds like you’ll see her, from the tone of voice and the way you perked up.”

I nodded, “I will. And if she’ll have me, we’ll make love again. She did more to explain true intimacy to me than anyone since Anala, and was probably what made what happened yesterday so starkly wrong. After her, there was another girl who had some impact, but not as much. A girl in Holland named Karla. But there was another girl, Magdalena, who I didn’t sleep with and didn’t really think about sleeping with, who also helped. And another one named Jasmine in California. She and Magdalena are just friends; there was no sex involved, nor any planned. And that leads us to the red-headed, green-eyed virginal twins from St. Louis.”

“Which explains why you called it a ‘glorious sexual experience’ earlier. So why did it feel empty?”

“Because it was. I realized when we finished, I felt NOTHING for them and the sex had been mechanical. I felt dirty. I didn’t understand that at first, but for the first time in my life, I felt dirty after sex. And then I contemplated the 125 women I’d been with before them and realized I’d been fooling myself ever since Becky.”

“Hang on a second, please.”

She pulled a notebook from the credenza behind her and flipped through it, reading and nodding.

“February of 1978? Sixteen years ago?”

I nodded, “The girls before her - the older woman, Birgit, Melanie, the Parker Twins, Jennifer, and Mary all made sense if you look at it in the mind of a fifteen-year-old. After that? No.”

“What about Kara?”

“That turned out OK because of her, not me. And Jessica, of course, because we only made love after we married, but that’s been fraught with disaster as well for its own reasons which have little to do with my fucked-up sexuality.”

“That’s an interesting observation.”

I nodded, “And possibly a result of the problems with my hypothalamus and my bipolar disorder. Hyper-sexuality is one symptom.”

“I know. As always, you sound coolly rational.”

“I know,” I sighed. “But there’s a problem. I hate myself and what I’ve done.”

Doctor Mercer smiled wanly, “You do recall what I’ve told you ever since you were fifteen?”

I nodded, “I didn’t listen to you any better than I did anyone else, and now I’ve dug this hole I can’t see a way to climb out of. I’m a sex addict, Doc. There’s no two ways about it. And I just hit rock bottom.”

“Are you having regular sex with your wives?”

I smirked, “As if they’d have it any other way.”

“How does that make you feel, and I’m not looking for one of your usual smart-ass remarks.”

“I don’t know, really. I love them both dearly and I enjoy the closeness. I don’t trust my feelings about anything right now.”

“And this woman in Japan?”

“Young woman. She just turned fifteen.”

“I thought you said no girls under the age of consent?”

“Japanese law is a bit vague on the matter. The official age of consent is thirteen, but the Child Welfare Act made vaginal intercourse illegal before age eighteen. But only vaginal intercourse. There is also an exception for valid romantic relationships with parental consent.”

“And knowing you, you had that.”

I nodded, “I did. It’s a long story, really, and we’ll get there.”

“Even in your current state you want to be with her?”

“She helped. A lot. It’s similar to a girl named Kimmy when Jessica first left us. Look up Debbie V in your notes.”

She flipped around in the notebook.

“Ah, yes. The girl who was comforting and stable and helped you through a very difficult time. So that repeated itself with this girl named Kimmy?”

“Yes. And Sakurako. But this will likely be the last time I see her. I wasn’t going to see her again, but one of my team broke her leg and I have to go to Australia, Singapore, and Japan after Thanksgiving.”

“So if I can sum up, you feel guilty for having sex with 125 women? Well, 127, I guess.”

“Not all of them, but most of them. There were a few exceptions, but the count should be under twenty, not over one-hundred-and-twenty.”

“Do you mind naming the ones you are sure that you don’t feel guilty about?”

“So starting after Becky, which means not talking about Birgit or Jennifer or Becky who are VERY complicated?”

“Sure.”

“Bethany,” I smirked.