Compromising Position

In spite of my misgivings, I am sitting in a Carmel sex therapist’s office listening to a couple discuss their sex life. I have agreed to sit in on a couples pyschotherapy consultation—to observe what goes on during this kind of therapy and to learn about the inner workings of a prominent local couple’s life together. Which is so very, very none of my business. I do this for you, reader, all for you. Plus, who doesn’t like to watch?

Let’s compose ourselves for a moment. All concerned—the therapist, my editor, the couple, and I—have been sweating for months over the ethics of this circumstance, as well as the numerous privacy concerns. What got a little lost was the fact that I would rather be writing about actuarial statistics than mucking about in other people’s intimate lives. I feared it would be icky and disillusioning. And I don’t need any more ick or disillusionment.

Listen, at my age and stage, I understand the odds. It’s one in 3 million to be attracted to a guy on every front (physical spark; brilliant mind; whip-like humor; ability to cook); the odds decrease to one in 16 million that he’s attracted back to you; the odds go down to one in eleventy-seven zillion if both of those conditions are present and the timing is right. My point is, you’re playing in the bonus round if you even have a sex partner. So quit your complaining if it’s not ideal.

Clearly my mindset going into this venture was shot through with envy and bitterness, mixed in with my irrepressible joie de vivre and sunny exuberance, of course. I wondered if I might somehow heal myself and my sad-sack attitude while observing the therapist untangle this couple’s sexual issues.

Waiting for my designated therapy-couple to arrive for their session, I sit with another couple in the darkened waiting room. These people are completely ordinary, nondescript even. I avoid catching their eye, out of respect for them but mainly out of weirdness for me. The magazines in the waiting room are elderly issues of Indianapolis Monthly and Entertainment Weekly. I study a dog bowl on the floor—no, wait, it’s a noise-blocking machine—and then turn my attention to the feel-good wall hangings: “I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing.”