Chapter 3

Doctor Gurskey had come highly recommended by my HMO, which is the nice way of saying that he was about the only psychiatrist in my area that specialized in sexual dysfunction. Thankfully, he was an older gentleman with kind eyes and a warm smile, and this was actually my second visit. The first had mostly been a handshake, a lot of questionnaires, and permission to transfer all of my recent medical history to his office. He wanted to see my lab results and presumably consult with my physician, if need be, before really getting down to brass tacks.

What made me uncomfortable this second go around was that he’d insisted that my wife come along. Normally, that wouldn’t bother me, but all I knew about shrinks was that they liked getting into a person’s head and start asking some very personal, private questions. I wasn’t certain I wanted to be vulnerable in front of my wife like that. As if I hadn’t been made vulnerable enough already to the one person in the world I wanted to respect me most? That’s what this impotence thing was - a cruel attack on my pride. And I could feel it inside. Like way down deep, but what if that’s where the key to my recovery was hiding - Way down deep?

“Relax,” Kara whispered, squeezing my hand as we sat together in the waiting room. “God. You’re so tense. What’s wrong, honey?”

“Nothing,” I answered. “I’m fine. I just, uh ... I don’t like shrinks.”

“He’s not a shrink.” She rolled her big blue eyes. “He’s a doctor, okay? He probably went to school and everything, so let’s give him a chance.”

“If he asks me about my mother, you have to plug your ears. Okay?”

“What?” She grinned. “You’ve never had any Mommy issues ... Have you?”

“Not that you know of, but one time...”

“Mister Orchard?” a nurse called, smiling and holding a clip board the way they always do.

“Saved by the bell,” I sighed, and my wife pinched me as we stood up together.

After introductions were made and we were all seated comfortably in that portion of his office which most resembled a living room, Dr. Gurskey began discussing my physical health. My wife and I sat together on a leather sofa and he had taken a matching armchair not quite directly opposite. We were close, but not so much that I felt claustrophobic or anything. I figured the guy had a dozen tricks up his sleeve to make me, and my wife, more relaxed. I was nervous enough to suspect everything was deliberate, put it that way, from the color of his carpeting to the color of his tie.

“So, your test results all looked good. Your bad cholesterol is slightly elevated, but well within norms. Likewise your blood sugar, and you’ll probably need to watch that in twenty or thirty years,” he said, smiling. Funny guy.

He went on to talk about my perfectly normal prostate and my consult with a neurologist, who reported that my odds of having Parkinsons were extremely low. Basically, everything on the physical side looked fine and other than too much coffee, perhaps, and not enough real exercise, I had a clean bill of health.

“Which brings us to the psychological factors,” he said.

“Which brings us here,” I said, somewhat impatiently.

“Exactly,” Dr. Gurskey agreed. “Have you been prescribed Viagra or similar medication?”

“Yeah,” I replied, rather annoyed because that question had been asked by every doctor and every nurse and on every questionnaire...

“And I believe you had no success?”

“If you already knew that...”

My wife squeezed my thigh and cut me off. “No, it didn’t seem to do anything. We tried kind of, uh ... He took two of them once and it just didn’t work.”

“Okay,” he shrugged. “That’s not really bad news. It indicates more of a psychological problem than physical...”

He rambled on, but the truth was that I was getting a little pissed. We already knew the problem was in my head. That’s why we were in his office and this guy just seemed to be rehashing everything my GP had gone over with us the previous week. I wanted to cut to the chase and ask the learned doctor, “Why the fuck did my dick get hard when I started tossing my wife around the bed?”

It had been almost a week since our little argument over pegging and we just hadn’t been able to talk about it, my wife and I. Kara wanted to, and she tried to bring it up, but I worried that if we started to examine that night too closely, we might not like what we found. I can’t explain why, but it scared me. I’d forced my wife to have sex, although she didn’t seem to feel that way at all, but she hadn’t been inside my head at the time either.

So when Doctor Gurskey started talking about how my problems were almost certainly stress related, it was all I could do not to walk out of his office right then and there. Christ! I knew it was stress related. I was impotent, not brain dead.

“Look, how am I supposed to relax when I can’t get it up?” I finally asked him. “It sure as hell seems like a catch-22 to me, ya know?”

“Honey...” Kara sighed.

“I agree with you,” the doctor replied. “It’s a very difficult situation, but there are things I can do to help, and things you and your wife can do at home.”

He went on to talk about changes to my diet and drinking less coffee, less alcohol, more water. I’d heard all of this before. Get your rest. Eat better, I got it. Exercise, too. Once a week just wasn’t enough. He suggested a short jog every morning before work as it would not only help with stress, but kick start my metabolism and boost my energy far better than another cup of coffee. And breathing exercises, which Kara seemed to think was just marvelous!

“Oh, we can do those together!” she exclaimed as Dr. Gurskey went into breathing techniques used in meditation.

I wasn’t so sure about that stuff, but he’d struck gold with my wife. I could tell that she was already setting aside a little time for us every evening, just to sit on the floor and breathe. Yep, that was gonna put the wood back in my pants. Right.

And there were other things as well. I mean, this guy was just full of great ideas when it came to reducing stress. At one point in the middle of his rambling, I whispered to Kara, “He should be Doctor Google, not Gurskey.”

She didn’t laugh.

“Now, John, I’d like to ask if you’re at all familiar with hypnotherapy.”

“You want to hypnotize me??” I asked. Beside me, Kara actually giggled.

“It’s not what you think, probably,” Dr. Gurskey said. “Hypnotherapy is a tool much like the breathing exercises and meditation that I discussed earlier. I’m not a licensed hypnotherapist, but I can recommend a very good one, right here in town. If you’d like, I can give you her card, or my office can set up an appointment for you.”

“Uhhh...” I started shaking my head, but I should have known better.

“Oh, that sounds great!” Kara said. “I have some friends in my yoga class that do self-hypnosis and they say it’s amazing.”

“Well, that will probably be one of the first things Dr. Carter will want to teach you,” he said. “Self-hypnosis and the various exercises you can do at home or through video-conference. She’s very good.”

“Doctor Carter?” Kara seemed to recognize that name the way her shoulders stiffened with a sharp jerk of her head.

“What?” I mouthed, but she ignored me.

“Well, uh ... If you can set up an appointment for us, uh...” Kara looked at me, sounding noticeably less enthusiastic. “Next week?”

“Sure,” I sighed. I believed in hypnotism about as much as I believed in Santa Claus.

“Let me get that started,” he said. “Excuse me for just a second.”

Doctor Gurskey used the phone on his desk to get his staff to call this Dr. Carter person’s office and make an appointment. I used that time to ask my wife if everything was okay.

“Yeah, it’s nothing,” she said, smiling. “I think I’m just getting a little hungry. How about you?”

“Didn’t you hear the shrink,” I said. “I’m not allowed to get hungry anymore. Too much stress.”

“Oh stop,” she said. “You’ve been a complete bore. He’s just trying to help and I think we’ve got some great ideas here. We just have to work a little harder, that’s all.”

“Work harder.” I grinned, sarcastically. “Good one, baby.”

“Shut up.”

A minute later Dr. Gurskey was sitting with us again. “We don’t have a lot of time left, so I’d like to see you guys again a week from today, if that’s alright.”

“See us again?” I narrowed my eyes.

“It’s an ongoing process and, frankly, I think we need to explore some of the causes of your stress.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, and my wife nodded in agreement. She wasn’t quite following either.

“I’m talking about your work, and perhaps more importantly, your home life,” he replied. “I’d like to talk to both of you about your relationship.”

“Oh.” Kara sat back in the sofa, pursing her lips.

“I think we can do the next session in about an hour,” he continued. “Twenty minutes with each of you separately, and then speak with both of you, together. I think it would be a good idea and we can see what develops.”

“I guess so.” Kara shrugged, looking at me.

“Yeah, I guess,” I agreed, although I wasn’t very keen on the idea. I’d sort of expected us to be discussing our relationship during this visit, so maybe I was just resigned to the idea.

“What’s this?” I asked, exiting the bathroom after my shower and finding Kara sitting naked on the bed.

That wasn’t usual, but not entirely unheard of either. She wasn’t exactly shy around me after three years together and we were both fairly comfortable in our skin, so to speak. I’m not sure either of us would want to visit a nude beach, but if we had to ... Yeah, we’d be pretty okay. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about getting an unwanted erection, right?

Fuck.

My wife looked so hot just sitting there, leaning slightly backward on straight arms. Her breasts were full and upturned, and wonderfully firm. Her sweet nipples were dark and stiff and begging for a kiss. I always admired her pale, creamy complexion, her flat tummy and wonderfully toned legs. She stared at me with her bright blues and bit her bottom lip like a little girl, teasing me with a careless toss of her thick blonde hair.

She wanted sex and my cock should have jumped to attention, but it wasn’t doing a thing. I reached inside the towel wrapped around my waist and fondled my cock and balls, but it was useless. I hadn’t gotten hard since the night my wife had I had argued so painfully over virtually nothing. Well, nothing except my inability to stop feeling sorry for myself, and I’d made a promise: I wasn’t going to do that anymore. No more self-pity; I just wasn’t sure how to go about it.

“What’s this then,” I repeated. “I must have missed the memo.”

“Oh no!” she said, giggling. “We’re going to do some breathing exercises and meditation. Remember?”

“Okay,” I agreed. “But I don’t remember the part about being naked.”

“That’s because it’s my own idea!”

“It’s genius, baby, but...”

“No, you’re not going to be shy,” Kara insisted, knowing exactly what my problem was with being naked in front of her. I’d become painfully shy about exposing my useless dick to her sympathetic gaze.

I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I wasn’t going to feel ashamed anymore.

“So take off your towel and we can sit right up here on the bed,” she told me. “I was looking at some websites that the nurse gave us, and I’ll show you exactly what to do.”

Five minutes later we were both completely naked. The only thing I wore was my wedding ring. Kara had us sitting cross legged, close enough that our knees were practically touching. We kept our backs straight and heads up, eyes closed. I had my hands resting lightly on my thighs, but Kara had moved hers to cover her exposed pussy - because I kept peeking through half-lidded eyes, enjoying the way her labia were plump and glistening, and pulled slightly outward. She’d been back to the waxing place twice over the last month and half, keeping herself smooth as silk, and her arousal was obvious.

My own arousal was probably equal to hers, but the only outward sign of it was my flushed skin. My heavy breathing and palpitating heart. I was still cheating, opening my eyes every twenty or thirty seconds, just to get a peek at my wife. I felt that same intense desire that I’d felt the first night we’d slept together back in college. My emotions were not diminished by time or stress, but my ability to express them ... I pushed the negative thoughts away and I think Kara could sense my frustration.

“Just relax,” she whispered. “Breathe with me, John. Deep breath in ... Exhale slowly ... Don’t think about anything else. Just breathing with me.”

I tried, I really did. Kara had the advantage of her weekly yoga experience, and of course, her body was working just fine. She talked about relaxing and breathing and all that, but I could see how turned on she was. The girl was feverish with desire. I could smell her pussy soaking into the sheets. Her pheremones were in the air. I might not have been able to smell those, but by God I could feel them driving hot blood through my veins. If only my cock would get hard. Oh, how I would have fucked my wife right then!

“Uh!” I jerked with a start as I felt her fingers caress my soft penis.

“Keep your eyes closed,” she whispered. “Inhale now ... Exhale ... Relax ... Let my hands do the work ... Inhale ... Exhale.”

“Ohhh...” I exhaled slowly as she leaned close, massaging my penis with warm, slippery hands. She must have had some kind of lubricant or lotion handy and it felt amazing, but it wasn’t working.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “You don’t have to get hard.”

“It feels good,” I admitted, opening my eyes to see her looking down, concentrating on my massage.

“Yeah,” she agreed, and then caught me. “Eyes closed, honey.”

“Sorry,” I said, exhaling the word.

“I just want to see if this helps you relax or if it just makes it worse.”

“Ummm...” I honestly didn’t know the answer to that.

“I also want to talk about the other night,” she said, gently grasping my balls with one hand and rolling them around. “You haven’t said much about it.”

“I hurt you,” I said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I...”

“You didn’t hurt me,” Kara sighed. “I hurt you that night. I always think I’m right.”

“Well ... Yeah, maybe.” I smiled.

“But we both know we needed to vent a little, right?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, truthfully. “I just don’t want to be that person ever again.”

“Okay.” She seemed to think about that. “But what if, uh ... What if I want you to be a little rough with me sometimes?”

“What do you mean?” I opened my eyes and stared at her.

“We both enjoyed it,” she said. “That’s the part I want to talk about, John. I liked it.”

I didn’t know what to say and we just looked at each other for a long moment. I felt her hands pulling harder and it felt good. Kara’s eyes were fixed on mine and my wife licked her soft lips. Her breasts rose and fell, and I’d fallen easily into her pattern of breathing. I felt calm and relaxed, and yet her words had my heart beating quickly for some reason. She liked it ... Rough?

“I thought I was supposed to be on top,” she whispered, “but what if I was wrong about that, too?”