Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis [47]
The couples counseling had started due to the lack of sex in our marriage. This was, admittedly, my problem, and the guilt I felt led me to follow Jayne to Dr. Faheida. Even when I first arrived in July we were having sex only once a week, though Jayne kept trying to initiate it more regularly. But she was being turned down so often that she soon quit trying. And I couldn’t figure out where this lack of interest on my part was coming from. Jayne—whom I was once so highly attracted to that she’d complained about the frequency of sex—resembled something new to me now, something other than the hot girlfriend. She was the wife, the mother, my savior. But how did that begin to constitute a celibate relationship? (“Ah yes, how indeed?” the dark voice in the back of my mind whispered frequently.) I simply blamed it on whatever convenient lie I came up with when we were lying in the massive bed in the darkened bedroom, the door locked, the curtains drawn, my softened penis lying immobile against my thigh: exhaustion, stress, the novel, the natural ebb and flow of desire, the antidepressants I was on; I even hinted about sexual scars from my childhood. She kept checking her resentment. I held in my shame but not enough to make her feel guiltless about questioning my manhood, to the point where she felt bad about forcing the issue. She kept asking if I still found her attractive—which I did, I kept assuring her. I was proud to have Jayne Dennis as my wife. Millions of men found her image magnetically sexual. She was a young and popular movie star. Yet, mysteriously, sex had become mundane and increasingly rare between us. I no longer had the hard-on for her that I once did, and tried to soothe her with vague generalities I’d picked up on Oprah. “Is sex more important than our kids or our careers, Jayne?” I asked one night. “I think we have it pretty good.” She sighed in the darkness. “Just because the sex isn’t here now doesn’t mean you aren’t,” I said gently (that was the first night I slept in the guest room). And so in counseling with our “marriage educator,” theories were tossed around. Maybe it was the deterioration of my testosterone levels. But I was tested and the levels were normal. I started taking daily herbal supplements. We opted out on Viagra since I had a mitral valve prolapse—a slight heart condition that the drug could agitate. Other options included Levitra and Cialis—But I’m not impotent! I wanted to scream. However I was “value neutral.” I couldn’t grasp “shared commitment.” I was the master of “negative communication.” I had helped create an “unstable union.” I needed to develop “collaborative alliances.” I only offered “counterproposals.” I was accused of “cutting deals.” (Jayne was the one intent on “separation avoidance,” even though she admitted to having a problem with “self-differentiation.”) We were told to get a babysitter, leave provocative notes for each other, pretend we were still dating, check into a hotel, plan for intimacy, schedule intercourse. But by the end of September our sexual relationship was in major gridlock, and that was when I realized why. The thing that was causing it now had a name: Aimee Light. According to Jayne, the “most amazingly sad aspect” of our marriage was that she still loved me.
I breathed in deeply and walked into Dr. Kim’s office. Her door was open and she was scanning the New York Review of Books while waiting for me. She looked up—her small, brown, inquiring face creased with a tight smile.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said, closing the door behind me, flopping into the armchair across from her. That the office was serenely anonymous always helped me relax before we began the sessions, but today she jumped right in, and her increasing worry about my “abuse problems” was soon dominating the conversation. This probably due to the Kleenex I kept reaching for and the bloody ropes of snot I kept blowing from my sore and damaged nose. Then she wanted to talk about Robby and if I was still resentful of him, and next it lurched to Jayne and