The Sex Therapist

She sat with her legs crossed, half turned away from me, and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.   "I don't know why I am crying.  It has been over for years," she said.  We sat through a few moments of silence.  "He used to loan me out," she finally said.

"Loan you out?" I asked.

"To other men," she said.  "He liked me to be available to his friends.  I didn't mind," she said, gathering the tissue in her hand.  "It was better than sitting home all alone, day after day.  Then when he left, I started hooking.  It was money, and I didn't have.... well, I don't have any.... "

"Skills?" I said.

"Yes, I don't have any skills, except... well, sex," she said with an embarrassed grin.

She sat across from me in pants and a jacket over a white blouse, not the outfit you'd see on a hooker, more like a a retired kindergarten teacher.   Her hair was cut short, just over her ears, and her shoes were ones nurses would wear: sensible, for comfort, shoes you would stand to work in.  Her makeup was conservative, again, not what you would expect from a 'working girl,' more like a PTA member or a former police officer.  Her face was small, even cute, with large, inquisitive eyes and a soft mouth.  She did not look like a woman coming to talk to a therapist about being a sex worker, but rather a grandmother here to ask about why her daughter's kids were having trouble in school.

"What do you want to get out of seeing me here today?" I asked.

"Well, I guess I just want to talk to someone.  More than anything, to just have someone listen to me.   You know, to hear what I have gone through and not judge me as a person.  I just... "  She hesitated.   "I just want to know I am not.. "

"Yes?" I said.

"An awful person," she said.  "I guess I want someone to say I am not a wicked woman just because I had sex with men for a living."

"Do you think you are an awful person?" I asked.  

She simply shook her head.  Neither of us spoke for nearly a minute, then she said, "I have sex for money."

"Do you think that makes you a bad person?" I asked.

"They arrest you and put people in jail for that," she said.

"Yes they do, but there is a difference between being evil and going to jail," I said.  "Having sex is not evil.  Charging money for it is illegal, but not everywhere."

"I know.  I worked in Las Vegas for a while," she said, obviously aware of the different legal boundaries.

"Do you believe selling sex is wrong, that it makes you a bad person if you do it?" I asked.  She shook her head and looked away.

"No," she said.  "It's just sex.  Not hurting people.  I don't think sex is bad," she said.  "I don't hurt anyone."

"Do you enjoy sex?" I asked.  She smiled and nodded.  "Then you are doing something you enjoy.  Most people don't get to do that.  I am not here to judge you.  I just hope you take precautions," I said.

"I do," she said. "I am very careful.  I have the customers wear condoms, and I get checked and have my girls examined regularly," she said.  "I like what I do."

"Then why are you here?" I asked.

"To have you tell me I am okay," she said.  "When my husband shared me with other men, I actually liked it.   I started to feel, however, maybe I was a slut.   Maybe I am the horrible one.  I don't know."

"Do you think what you do is horrible?"

"I don't know," she said.  "So many people do.  People like sex, but they don't like people who do it for money, and who really like it.   I do like to give men pleasure.  I like to make them come," she said blushing.   "I like giving oral sex.  I like when they do it to me.  I like what I do," she said unapologetically.

I asked her if she intended to continue working as a call girl.  She looked at me like I had asked her why she killed kittens.   "Of course," she said, horrified I would ask such a thing.   "But I am a paid escort, not a call girl."

I decided to change course.  "Do you remember how old you were when you first had sex?" I asked.

"Of course," she said.  "I was twenty-one, the night I got married.   I didn't like it at first.  It hurt.   But soon I began to like it, and when I did I really got pleasure it.  From the very start my husband was too rough for me to like it, he was brutish and demanding, but then he insisted I have sex with his friends and I liked that more than with him.  His friends were gentle and kind, and they made me feel good, like a woman should.  I liked it with them, but I didn't ever enjoy it with him, never.  

"I had sex with all of them on a regular basis, being with a different man every night.  Eventually, he stopped demanding it from me, I think he had his own whores, but I didn't mind being with other men, and some of them started paying me, taking care of me, and seeing to it I had what I needed. Soon I was selling it to other men and taking in quite a lot of money.   When he died I opened my own business, and I kept the house and worked out of it.  Soon I hired three other girls and business was booming.

"I have businessmen coming for our services, politicians, constables, and a member of a royal family.  Four of us was not enough, so I hired two more ladies and we provide for maybe fifty men a week.  I am on the planning board for the county and run three charities.  Business is good.  I am not here to asked for your approval.  I guess I have come to advertise the business, sort of.

"I can offer you the lady of your choice without charge, and all you have to do is mention us to your clients," she said.

"That would not be ethical," I said.  "I could not be intimate with a patient or assist your business."

"Oh, I was not offering me.  But you are not seeing the other girls.  They're not your patients.  To have sex with me would not be acceptable, but any of the other girls..."

"Thank you for the offer," I said, "but... "

"Just think about it," she replied with a smile.  "Unless you think I am a 'bad person,'" she added with a sly grin. 

I had never wondered why she came all the way from Santa Barbara to see me.  We live nearly sixty miles apart, and there are many therapists close to where she lives.   It then occurred to me it may not have been a coincidence that she picked me.  She was not asking for any long term treatment, even said she intended only a few sessions.  That seemed strange at the time, but it was not that unusual, so I dismissed it. 

I began to think of reasons she would want to come to me.   She was about the age my mother would be, had she not left when I was just a baby.  The more I thought about it, the more I wondered who this strange woman really was.  

I had been fairly active sexually in college, gotten interested in human sexuality as a student, although I followed the strict guidelines between doctor and patient, never strayed over the line, but I have been with dozens of women over the years.   She couldn't have known that, but the reason she came to me bewildered me the more I thought about it.

For a while in my youth I was with a different woman every night, even often visiting brothels and hookers because I couldn't get enough.  I always avoided long term relationships, preferring to go from bed to bed, from woman to woman.   Although I never had sex with a patient.  One reason I knew about human sexuality, was that I had so much experience with it personally.  I studied sexual deviancy because it interested me, and I tried each libertine and kinky variation.  I liked them all, and therefore was an expert in the different varieties of provocative sex.   

I have been with two women at one time, have tried every type of sexual variation, and I loved them all.  I knew I was a good sex therapist because I knew the subject so very well.   Intimately, as it were, and I didn't judge.  I knew the patient's compulsions because they were always mine.  None of them, I knew for sure, had not done anything I had not done many times.  

In college I also was a paid escort for frustrated married women who needed an outlet other than their husbands, and that got me through college without much trouble.  Where other students struggled with finances, I always had enough because there was never a short supply of dissatisfied young brides to put money in the bank and fine food on my table. 

I did not regret my sexual activities because I knew it gave me an advantage.   Would the therapist board think a sex counsellor should be fucking sexually frustrated women for money, most likely not, but I knew it gave me an edge.  I knew the allure of anal because I had done so much of it and liked it so, even perhaps preferring the tight and safety of the anus.  I knew the excitement of a double penetration because I had felt the existence of the other man's penis in her rectum or her vagina as I used the other portal.  

I knew the value of sex toys because I'd used them all.  I had inserted  Ben Wa Balls, utilized dildos and vibrators on untold numbers of vaginas, and enjoyed every fetish known to the human species.  Sex was my trade and I celebrated the field.  I knew bisexuality because I had felt the pleasure of it.  Expressly, I love sex, and this is simply why I am a sex therapist.  I know the field because I have been in the field literally all my life.

When I thought back to Marta, I completely understood why, when her husband shared her with friends, she preferred them over his brutish mating approach.  I understood the cuckold because I had seen it, felt it, and studied it.   I knew sexual obsession because I had felt it and lived with it.   I understood sexual addiction because I was so fixated myself.   I appreciated pornography because I loved watching and collecting it.  My personal inventory was extensive and numbered in the hundreds: films, books, photos, videos, magazines, playing cards, and other collectables. 

I had never looked into a patient's background before, but I went on the internet and wrote in Marta Carpenter.  There were a few and for a fee I could find the correct one and look into her in more detail.  I typed in my credit card number and went to the site, narrowed down the search until I focussed on a location and specifics. 

There was a Marta Jane Carpenter in Santa Barbara who had some arrests for solicitation and prostitution.  She was born in Omaha and grew up in Los Angeles, and she had given birth to a son in 1973, which was the year I was born.  Her married name was Culver, which was the name on my birth certificate before I was adopted by the Martins in 1980.   Her husband's name was Harold Culver, but he died in 1985.   Marta's maiden name was Carpenter, so she had gone back to that after divorcing Harold.   Her occupation was listed as social worker, but no employer was listed.   

Her address was given as in Santa Barbara, which was the address Marta had given on the paper work for our sessions.  She had given me the address for her residence when she invited me to enjoy her services at her residence in Montecito, an upscale community just south of Santa Barbara.  I wondered if her neighbors knew what 'business' she conducted behind the gates of her estate in Montecito. 

On Friday night, after my last patient left, I drove north to Santa Barbara and put the address of her residence into my GPS.  When I pulled up in front, there was a speaker at the gate and I pulled my car up next to it.   "Dr. Grant Martin," I said into the speaker.   "Here as a guest of Mrs. Carpenter," I said.  

The gate opened and I drove in.  I parked my Mercedes in the parking lot off to the right of the entryway.  At the door I was greeted by a tall older man in an expensive suit with the bearing of a butler at a southern mansion.   I followed him down a long elegant hallway, then through a door.  

Marta Carpenter sat behind a large mahogany desk, dressed as you would expect a madam to be.  Instead of short hair, she was clearly wearing a Dolly Parton wig and it made her look less like a kindergarten teacher and more like the Madam she was.  "So glad you decided to come," she said with a see-anything-you-like smile.

"How did you find me?" I asked.

"Google is such a wonderful thing," she said.

"Nice performance, Mother," I said.   I sat down in a large plush chair across from her.  "So you  really didn't think you were a bad person?"  She shook her head.

"Do you prefer blonds, brunettes, or redheads," she asked with that same grin.

"You probably already know I like them all," I said.  "You pick."   She spoke into an intercom and nodded, then smiled as if she was ordering the very best in the house.   

"I hope you enjoy your time with us," she said.  "Welcome to Culver Manor, son.   Glad to finally get to know you, Grant."