Page 15 of The Therapist

“Are you trying to find something wrong with him?” he asks.

“Not at all. Just trying to get the big picture so we can work on you accurately.” I lean back, cross my legs, and rest my pad on my knee. Cooper licks his lips.

“Have you ever stopped to wonder about your actions? The price you’ll have to pay if your proclivities come to light?”

His eyes narrow slightly. “I didn’t, until you.”

“You mean until now,” I say.

“That’s what I said.” His head is cocked, eyes roaming my body. Not in a lewd manner, more… genuinely curious, in a memorizing-me kind of way. His posture relaxed, I’d say he’s even content. After you gain someone’s trust and confidence, you have to then exhibit enormous patience with them. I believe he’s hiding something. Leaving a piece of the story out on purpose. I bookmark the thought, I just need to keep him talking.

I take a sip of water from the glass on my side table. It’s warm and does little to scare off the itch in my throat, the heat in my cheeks or the tightness coiling low in my belly.

“Let’s regroup. I’d like to talk more about your current situation. How do you watch people?”

The color drains from his face slightly, and I think, Ah-ha! Now we’re cooking. But he schools his expression quickly—like a pro.

“How I watch doesn’t matter.” His mouth barely moves as he grits the words out.

My pen hovers over the page. Making eye contact, I ask, “Then what does?”

He tilts his head backward, exposing his throat. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “When the people I watch are intimate…it’s…fascinating. A carnal dance of pleasure and pain.”

I lick my lips. “Cooper, are you a virgin?”

“No, are you?” His response is quick and flippant. A defense tactic. I clear my throat.

“Continue please.” I choose to keep the modicum of trust I’ve established and let that comment slide—for now.

“Have you ever watched anyone before?” I shake my head. “It’s not like pornography.”

“Do you watch a lot of that?”

“I did before I watched people. I thought maybe that’s all I wanted. Was to see sex. But it’s so much more. A couple, for instance, just last week. They didn’t do anything remarkable. They simply shared a room together. Talked about their children. The man, the way he rubbed the woman’s arm so tenderly, while they talked. It was an act of worship. He had nothing to prove to anyone but her, and in private he did just that. But I saw them in public, and he was standoffish toward her, almost cruel. To be privy to that tenderness it’s exhilarating. Or even the woman who brought a stranger home, to watch the performance she put on, so calculated and practiced, to entice him into bed with her. Fascinating.”

“Do you masturbate while you watch?” I ask.

“Sometimes. Not always, and not all that often. There are some that I watch whose passion is so arresting that I can’t help myself. I want to participate but can’t, and that is the easiest way to achieve the desired effect.”

“You mean when you watch people have intercourse?”

He nods. He is not blushing. His shoulders are not slumped. He is not ashamed of admitting this.

“How often do you watch people? How do you pick them?”

“Almost nightly. Sometimes I’m busy and can’t watch, but on weeknights, almost nightly.”

“Did your old therapist discuss sexual addiction with you?”

“No.”

I make a mental note to reach out to his other therapist. Cooper is cunning and clever and she might have good insight for me. I use the capped end of my pen to itch my forearm.

“Take you, for instance,” he says.

My eyes snap to him instantly. I shift in my seat, ready to stand and have him leave if this escalates to a place I’m not comfortable.

“When you go home at night, in your house, do you do things that you wouldn’t do in public in the light of day?”

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