Pavlovian Reaction

She went over to the other side of the room, the dimly lit one, and said, "Since you are a few minutes early, I have time to still be unprofessional and offer to make us some coffee if you're in the mood for it?" She turned around with a slightly raised eyebrow, I nodded, and told her to add a bit of sugar if she didn't mind. She turned around again, putting the water to boil in a kettle, and opening one of the cupboards to get the mugs. She didn't seem to mind the lack of light there, but I supposed that she was familiar enough with where everything was.

"How did your 'college-related obligations' go this morning? I was told that the first appointment I had planned and asked the secretary to book was replaced with my afternoon one," she said with her back to me. "Whatever it was must have been important. Given that it made you give up your hard-earned right to the first appointment to Priscilla." I could feel my face burn when she mentioned Pris. How the fuck did she manage to take my appointment? We had the exact same mandatory test that morning. I could feel Vallory smile even without seeing her face, unaware of my annoyance with Pris. I supposed that this was her way of breaking the ice and getting me talking.

"It went well, I think. It's one of those mandatory, one-chance-only tests that my college seems to value more than anything else. You basically get one chance to get those marks and that's it. If you don't show up or don't feel like studying that particular thing at that particular time, tough luck. That should motivate me more to study for them, but I still don't."

She was stirring the coffee by now, the kettle worked quickly, the water was ready before I was half done with my reply. I waited a bit for her to ask me something else, or for me to think of something to ask her. Nothing came to mind, and I was sure that me asking her questions wasn't exactly how these things went.

When she didn't speak in that 8 second time frame I gave her, I decided to continue. "It would be fine if we had some privileges, like less to study for the exam if we did well on those tests at least, but it's not like that. There's no advantage to those tests as far as most students are concerned and- " She was coming back to where I was sitting now, carrying the two mugs, handing me mine and placing hers on the table, next to the notebook. "-they just stress you out for no reason." I started to hope that she wasn't the type to pick up that notebook and write stuff in it while we talked. That was a sure way to make me not want to open up in the least. She didn't pick it up though, she just sat down, crossed her legs and held her knee with both hands, just like a few days ago.

The light from both lamps shone from the side, and I could see her better now. Her facial features were small, her lips thin, but not stern, her nose small and slightly pointy. I couldn't see the color of her eyes from where I was sitting, but they were certainly of a darker color, at least not blue, and above them eyebrows the same color as the not-highlighted part of her hair, neat and thin. It seemed to me that she was more beautiful now, than when she was younger. She had light wrinkles around her eyes, on her forehead, the aforementioned longer ones around her mouth, but they somehow fit in perfectly with her behavior. Apart from the wrinkles, her skin seemed perfect, there wasn't a hint of blemish anywhere.

Now, I wouldn't be much of a lesbian if I didn't look at her nails and although they were very short and neat, she didn't seem like the type of woman who'd have long nails even if she wasn't hindered by the limits of lesbian sex. Her hands were not as veiny as most older women's are, and her forearms, as far I could tell, were hairless. It felt odd, looking at her, realizing that she had a lifetime of experience more than me, and there we were, sitting and chatting with coffee, pretending that this wasn't something called "an appointment."

I continued talking about how the tests weren't fair in a noncommittal manner, filling up the time it took her to sit and get comfortable. I held my coffee in both of my hands, and realized how defensive I actually looked. I was leaned forward, sure, and that should be a sign of openness, but I held that mug as if I was ready to use it as a weapon. I placed it on the table, still talking, and intertwined my fingers again. Now I just looked like I had a shield in front of me, but oh well, better than a weapon. The coffee was too hot to drink anyway, I usually just gulped it down as soon as it was cold enough. I finished my sad story about how the tests weren't fair, and didn't have to wait long for her to reply saying that she agreed with what I said, and she gave a few suggestions about how it should be done, I agreed with her in turn, and the topic was closed.

"Do you and Priscilla study at the same college?"

I nodded, and added that we attended exactly the same classes together, and that "attended" was a term that should be taken loosely. I thought that she brought Pris up in order to start the topic of me coming to the meeting the other day, so I continued along that line. I told her how we were friends, how I spent more time with her than anyone else, and how I came to the meeting because of some random teasing of hers (I omitted the fact that that teasing was related to Vallory).

"I could guess as much. She complained of something similar this morning, only she said that she finished the test in twenty minutes and left. At least your displeasure is unanimous." She smiled. She looked directly at me while either of us spoke, not looking around the room or at some random point just next to my face and nodding her head as I spoke. She was listening to me, or if she wasn't, she was really good at pretending to listen. I made another joke about how "attentive" Pris and I were when it came to college.

She lifted one of her eyebrows before saying, "And who, exactly, do you want to impress with that behavior? Your friends or your parents?" She paused here briefly. "Do you think they wouldn't realize how smart you were if you didn't point it out to them by skipping class?"

This made my cheeks burn. Out of embarrassment, not anger. One of the reasons I didn't go to class was that people would notice that I did well without attending them. A weird self-worth issue I had been battling with for as long as I can remember. I didn't know how to answer her, and I supposed that my obvious embarrassment was enough of an answer. I expected her to ask me about that again, when I hadn't replied for a noticeably long time.

However, she looked at her mug briefly before she started the next sentence, then back up at me. "So, excuse me if I'm being too intrusive too quickly, but can I ask where your aversion towards my profession comes from?"

I felt no hesitation to tell her, it wasn't something that I hid from people, even though it was very traumatizing for me at the time. So I told her, in detail, why I thought they were a bunch of haughty, ignorant morons.

I don't think that event is particularly important to this story, so while I told her everything that I could remember about it, I will summarize it here. I was about twelve years old when my family moved to the capital city, where we live now, from a very small town. I was suddenly without friends or any acquaintances, and even family was scarce. My parents focused all their attention on my sickly brother and our new apartment, and I was left alone with myself and my thoughts. As an added bonus, at that time I started to realize that I liked girls in the way that I should have liked boys. I also noticed that girls that like girls got a lot of attention from other people, and attention was what I craved. So I did the stupidest and most childish thing I could. I slowly made it known in school that I was gay, and that brought a lot of teasing and bullying along with it, but I didn't mind. I was just happy to receive the attention and felt as if it wasn't me that was being bullied. I made up some lies along with that regarding a teacher from my previous school, namely how she was a lesbian too and how she filmed some movies for adults. It wasn't long before I was sent to the school psychologist.

Instead of actually talking to me, and seeing what situation I was in, she decided to believe all the audacious lies I made up and call my parents. In a few days I had to come to school, with both my parents, and attend a meeting with the school headmistress, her deputy, the psychologist, the department chair, and the teacher that was assigned as head of my class. A very, very uncomfortable conversation followed where the psychologist said everything she heard from me to my parents, and everyone else that was present.

I am fairly certain that I had a nervous breakdown at some point during that meeting.

Vallory furrowed her eyebrows occasionally as I spoke, never breaking eye contact. Besides that movement, she did not react to anything I said. I kept looking at her, trying to see her reactions, to see if something annoyed her, if she believed me, if she thought I was exaggerating, or overreacting. I couldn't see anything in particular, aside from the occasional eyebrow furrowing.

After I had finished, I shrugged my shoulders and said, "That's it I suppose. I mean, I can understand her partially, she was probably dissatisfied with her job and the last thing she needed in her life was to go through the trouble of trying to actually help me. I was a confused kid, and if she made me admit that I was lying I would have probably stopped doing that. Honestly the thing that pisses me off the most about the whole thing is that she believed me! She honestly believed me. A woman of 50-something years, with who knows how much professional experience believed such outrageous stories that a 12-year-old told her. What does that say about her competence? And someone as utterly incompetent as her is working with children! Yeah, maybe 10 to 14-year-olds and their issues aren't taken seriously in any sphere of life, but for fuck's sake. When you have one job to do, why the fuck don't you do it? My parents sent me to another moron of a woman a few years later, that did almost the exact same thing." My head was turned angrily to the side, but I could see that she was still looking at me, though now with a slightly softer countenance than her usual firm-but-gentle combo.

I turned back to her, shrugged, and waited for her to say something. I noticed that her eyebrows had remained slightly furrowed, that she didn't relax them back into their usual position. She then lapsed into a short review of her opinion on the subject, she didn't seem to be picking her words, but everything she said was eloquent and soothing to me. I actually felt like she supported me and understood how I felt when I was twelve, and how I felt when I had told her the story. I also got the feeling that she wanted to say more on the subject, but held back, probably because of the whole "this is about the patient, not me" thing, which I respected but didn't think was necessary. I was more than happy to spend this hour in fair and equal conversation, instead of as a "patient". Without thinking I went ahead and told her that.

She smiled again, this time wider, actually showing her teeth. I wondered why she didn't smile like that more often, concluded that she seemed more passive and unassuming that way, and said "huh" internally as I realized that. After that wide smile came a slight, cocked nod; and she said, "If you keep talking as passionately about things, I just might feel tempted to have an actual discussion with you about them. However, do try and keep my opinion out of the equation."

I rolled my eyes, openly, and wanted to say something along the lines of "I know I study Math but I am really bad with equations." Instead I just shrugged in a "as you wish" manner.

We talked about all sorts of things after that. Well, I talked and she listened, only giving her opinion when I insisted on it. We talked about how things were at home after the whole psychologist incident, what I thought about my mother, my father, my brothers, how I felt about them, what my ambitions were. Given that my replies were long and honest, we didn't get to talk about much more than that. I was dimly aware that we hadn't mentioned my sexuality almost at all, even though the whole incident with the psychologist revolved around it. I just mentioned it when talking about my mother and father. I lingered much more on my mother. She could notice that it wasn't pleasant for me to talk about my relationship with her and what perpetual feeling of guilt I had as far as she was concerned. She made no comment that could in any way be connected to me being gay, and I wondered whether she was deliberately avoiding it.

I felt tempted to mention it more directly, and I was sure that I was going to, when Vallory looked at a clock behind my head, and said "It seems we've exceeded our time limit a bit." I turned around to look at the clock, even though my phone was right there in my pocket, with the sound turned off, as if I thought time worked differently in this room. It wasn't exactly "a bit", we'd talked for 20 minutes longer than we should have. I immediately asked her whether she had another appointment after mine and apologized for rambling on for so long.

She dismissed the apology with a hand motion, and said that she always left some leeway between appointments for this reason. She added, "Which doesn't mean that my 'patients' " - she air-quoted that word, she probably didn't consider people with who she worked for free to be 'patients' -"are to blame for the delay. I enjoy doing my work, and sometimes my interlocutor is especially interesting." There was a deliberate pause here, and she smiled, all of a sudden playful, as if the fact that the appointment was over now meant that she could behave informally.

It's a good thing that it didn't cross my mind that this was low-key flirting, because I probably wouldn't have known what to say. This way I just smiled, said something about how it's rarely a good thing to be interesting to a psychologist, and got up to leave. I became painfully aware of the lack of physical contact between us, realizing that the initial handshake was all there was. I extended my hand toward her when she stood up, thanking her for her time, and she shook it. I already said how I could over-sexualize a handshake, so there's no reason to linger on that. She let go of my hand, but placed her other one slightly above my elbow.

She looked at me, in that particular way of hers, still without a hint of that look being anything more than friendly and sympathetic, and said that I shouldn't feel as guilty as I do, regarding my mother. She of course must have said it in a more eloquent and slightly around-the-bush way, but that was the point. Given that the feeling of guilt and my mother were connected to me being gay, I wondered whether the fact that the appointment was now over somehow made it alright for her to talk about it.

"Can I ask you something?" I asked. I didn't wait for her to nod, and since she kept her hand above my elbow, I concluded that that was invitation enough to continue. Oh and yeah - I could oversexualize an elbow-hold too. "I'm a bit surprised that you didn't mention or ask me anything regarding my sexuality during our 'talk.' I thought psychologists glued themselves to that as soon as a person mentioned it." She smiled, again wide, squeezed my arm where she held it briefly, and let go, dropping both of her arms to her side.

"You're right. First: psychologists do often give a lot of meaning to someone's sexuality, and that's not entirely without reason. People often push back some of their traumas and they resurface as peculiar sexual tendencies. However, I think that being homosexual -" (I cringed here a little bit, an older woman saying 'homosexual' reminded me way too much of my mother and women similar to her who found the idea disgusting.) "- shouldn't be treated as such a serious thing when looking into someone's personality, even if they are a patient. Unless they insist on it themselves. I didn't get the impression that your sexuality was something you had an issue with and wanted to talk to me about. So I decided not to linger on the subject too much and talk about things you might actually feel the need to share and discuss."

I internally nodded my approval, told her that she was right, and that I was just curious and worried that she was perhaps uncomfortable with me being gay.

"No, not at all, you can be as gay as you like. I would be very bad at my job if I felt uneasy because of that. Either way, I don't want you to hold back because something might be uncomfortable for me. The whole point of this is to make you more comfortable with sharing. I didn't notice you holding back during our conversation, you seemed forthcoming and talkative. So please, if that was the case, proceed in that manner."

I was on my way to the door by the time she started to talk, and by the time she finished I already had my hand on the doorknob and waited for her to finish in order to leave. It wasn't like I was in a hurry to leave; I just didn't want to take any more of her time. Nothing in her manner suggested that she was annoyed with me for staying longer than I should have. However, my insecurity and the shred of good manners that I had convinced me that I should leave the woman alone already.

"Oh and, by the way..." She had followed me to the door as she spoke, so she was standing right next to me when she said, "I, as I've told you, dislike 'wasting' the session by expressing my opinions on a subject in great detail. I do say what I think when I believe that it is relevant to you and your understanding of your own emotions. I do, after all, have more theoretical knowledge than I suppose you do, and it would be a waste if I didn't offer an opinion based on it. However, I do my best to make the session as much about, in this case, you, as possible. Considering that earlier in our conversation today you protested that that wasn't what you wanted, and given that it'd be impracticable for me to change the way I act during an actual session..."

My eyes almost noticeably widened; this felt way too much like it was going to lead to her offering to "give her opinion on things" over coffee or something. Well, we did have coffee together just now, but you know what I mean. It felt like my ribcage was becoming smaller and smaller. I decided not the breathe for a moment, in order to keep myself from making some weird, anxious seal-like sound while trying to. Whatever store of butterflies I had in my stomach now decided to stretch their wings a bit. It was kind of like waiting at the top of the roller coaster drop, knowing that it will come no matter what you do, and wanting and not wanting it to at the same time.

All of this happened in the second part of her sentence. Her countenance was the same as always, nothing in it could help me in guessing what she would say. Even if we did meet for coffee, it's not like it necessarily had to be considered a date or something, women often drank coffee together without wanting to fuck. Well, other women, not me in particular, but I was aware that other women did that regularly.

"I was wondering whether we could meet in a setting that would, well-" she smiled, there might have even been a hint of shyness in it, but I might have just as easily imagined it. I was certain that she could tell how excited and eager I was. "- would allow me to share my opinion more freely. The fact that I can have only one or two of these appointments a day isn't a consequence of me not having free time for more. It's simply that I like to have them in this room, and that's impossible when there's anything else going on in the building."