Francis Levy - Erotomania - A Romance

"I told James that I would be happy to see you folks," Shapiro began. "But 1 won't see you unless you agree to come three times a week."

"Nobody goes to couples counseling three times a week."

"Yes, and according to you nobody has a relationship in which they have very occasional and unmemorable sex."

"I told you, most people I know like to fuck and suck and get fucked in the ass. As someone who is proud of the cum on her face, I'd say that every sexual event is like the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It has historical importance, if you know what I mean."

"1 was trying to show you a different way of looking at things."

"Yeah, and you made it worse. Now sex is better, but it's more complicated because of the museums. Even that picture on your wall is turning me on." It was a reproduction poster of a 1952 Matisse exhibit at the Gallerie Maeght in Paris. "1'd say three days a week, and we're going to have to hold on for dear life. All we need is one more art appreciation tip…."

"Can 1 make a suggestion?"

Monica didn't say anything; nothing she said would have stopped him anyway.

"Can I suggest that you stop looking at art for a while?"

"But you were so sure, so positive and insistent."

"Therapists try different hats on to see if the right one fits." Since General Shapiro was totally bald, he didn't need to try on different hats; his head size was a constant that could easily be measured. Shapiro reached over to get his appointment book. The hunter had his prey. Shapiro's nostrils curled up. He'd finally snagged his two most elusive prizes. Before we knew it he'd have us skinned, stuffed, and mounted on the wall. 1 knew Monica couldn't bear the thought of all the pleasure General Shapiro was going to get from helping us. We were getting fucked by him. You would have thought that someone who loved fucking as much as Monica did would have enjoyed it. But she liked to choose her partners. This was rape.

"I'm very busy. There are lots of openings in Milwaukee, Akron, Toledo, Dayton," Monica said dismissively.

"I thought we were talking about putting art on the backburner," Shapiro countered.

Monica emitted a horrible cackle that sounded like a death rattle. She had many horrible traits, but this expression of her disgust with Shapiro made my blood curdle. "We never said anything. You said it." We were back to step one with Monica finding fault with anything General Shapiro tried to say. Monica had an ability to dissect a person's sentences that would have made her the envy of even the most gifted analytic philosophers. The problem was that she had spent so much of her adult life fucking, she had had little time to develop a well-rounded intellect to match. And most of her comments were about as helpful to a therapeutic encounter as a slasher is to a street whore.

The weeks that followed weren't any more productive. I was earnestly trying to deal with my alcoholism, but Monica seemed more intent on correcting General Shapiro's therapeutic methods than in getting help with the hypergraphia satyriasis that had ravaged her body. When you get so worked-up by abstract expressionist painting, you pay a price. In Monica's case, though the ailment had affected her physically (by making her supernaturally horny), the deleterious results were mostly emotional. Monica was going through a stage where she mounted me whenever 1 was lying down. We didn't have to be in the vicinity of an artwork. The stimulation of the gallery visits spilled over from one day to the next. Her compulsion was so strong that 1 felt she didn't even know I was there, and it brought back the mindlessness of our early encounters. She'd bounce furiously on top of me, roll off, and fall into a sound sleep. When she awakened she started all over again, if I was still there. But it was not only her indifference to my emotions that was the problem; there were times when she was downright destructive towards me. While from a rational point of view she knew it was best that I didn't drink, she found the thought of my staggering in the front door to be such a turn-on that she often pressured me to go out and get wasted. I'd already had a few close calls, prompted by the promise of even more hellishly passionate sex, and 1 began to wonder about her. What was it the two of us really shared? What defined our relationship? How could 1 feel Monica cared about me when she encouraged me to do destructive things to satisfy her own sexual appetite?

"Can 1 make a suggestion?" General Shapiro said during a session when Monica described the thrill she had felt blowing me in front of Duchamp's Nude Descending Staircase, even though it was neither an abstract expressionist work nor an original (it was a reproduction we had spotted in the window of the framing store in town). Monica was talking about the incident as if it were progress. She was hoping to go backwards in art history as a way of combating her addiction. If she could end up getting turned on by an Ingres or even by one of the French academicians, she would be making headway. Pleasure wouldn't be so dependent on fetishes; consequently, I would no longer have to remind her of an alcoholic (either in a sober or inebriated condition) to be attractive to her again. In fact, once the obsession was removed from her, she would undoubtedly go back to her earlier state when the smell of alcohol on my breath was a sickening reminder of her father.

"I have a homework assignment for you."

Monica wasn't going to give Shapiro the pleasure of asking what?

"Abstain from sex."

"What about him?"

"His homework is to lay off the bottle."

"A day at a time," I piped in, though General Shapiro didn't hear me since he immediately asked Monica, "May I make a point?"

When she characteristically didn't give him the respect of answering, he asked again, "May I?"

"Does it matter whether I say yes or no? You're going to make your point anyway"

"I want to hear his point," I interjected. "What's your point?"

"It's really striking how every time I try to help you folks, Monica always tries to stop me."

"This doesn't help me." Monica crossed her arms defiantly.

"I don't think you want to be happy," Shapiro insisted. "It makes you anxious. Then people will be jealous of you."

"Was that your point?" I asked.

"No." Shapiro plainly wasn't interested in what I had to say.

"What was it?" I persisted.

"Monica doesn't want to hear it; it makes her too anxious."

"Would you reassure him that it won't make you too anxious so we can get on with the session," I pleaded. "I mean, we're making more out of this… no point is so earthshaking…."

"That's precisely my point," Shapiro interrupted.

"That was your point?"

"No, that wasn't the point," he said. "It's another point."

"Why did you say `precisely my point' if it wasn't the point?" I said. "It's confusing."

"It's just an expression."

"Maybe you could find some other way of introducing your so-called point that was more palatable to Monica. You might for instance not keep insisting on making your point. Just say what you have to say, and she won't feel you're trying to shove something down her throat. She won't feel you're trying to win."

"I don't mind if he tries to shove something down my throat as long as it's your cock."

That was one session that ended without General Shapiro being able to make his point, and it made me think that somewhere inside of her, Monica had the genes of a segregationist Southern senator circa 1964, filibustering against civil rights legislation.

But something had to crack. We were struggling. Monica and I had never been in each other's company without fucking our brains out. Living together was another matter entirely. We didn't know how to do basic things like stand, talk, read the paper in an armchair, watch television-without having our orifices filled-and despite Monica's seeming resistance, the enjoyment of the more mundane pleasures of romance was something she secretly longed for. Following Shapiro's advice and attempting total abstention turned our lives upside down.