Thursday, April 3, 1997
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4:00 pm. Thirty-Sixth Session with Anna Green. Anna told me a long story out of some science fiction book that she read once which was almost an allegory for her feelings about her relationship with Martin. A man crashes on a distant planet and is taken inside a giant female pod plant creature. Communicating by telepathy, the plant saves the man and they develop an inter-species romance. To reproduce, the pod needs to be split open by a sharp object and she is able to prevail upon the initially reluctant man to treat her in this way and thus enable her to fulfill her reproductive destiny. Anna told this story to Martin, and Martin said that it was very similar to S&M because S&M is also about love. Martin tried to describe the experience of being whipped to Anna as one of letting go and completely trusting another person. Anna is interested in trying it. She has formed a friendship with Kathy, the woman from the adult bookstore. Kathy is into S&M, although apparently not with the intensity which characterizes Martin. Anna's friendship with Kathy is apparently strong enough that Anna is considering asking Kathy to whip her so that she can understand what Martin desires to experience. Actually, Anna is quite clear that what she likes is fantasy and role-playing rather than actual S&M scenes. I urged her to communicate this clearly to Martin, and after some hesitation, she said that she would.
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Thursday, April 10, 1997
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4 pm. Thirty-Seventh Session with Anna Green. Anna is determined to go and get whipped. She thinks it is necessary for her to experience the pleasures of being a bottom if she is going to make an effective top for Martin. I practically begged her to not do this, but she laughed off my concerns. She has a safe word! How can she get hurt? In fact, she said that without my counseling over these past months, she would never have had the ability to try this. Great! Is this the beginning of years of therapy for Anna? I don't know which way to root, actually. Am I hoping that her "whip-master from the Far East" is going to really give her a great experience, turning her into a confirmed masochist? Or would it ultimately be better if she has a really horrendous experience which convinces her that the S&M world is not for her? Anna pretends this is about gaining power, but I believe it is another example of her subverting her own needs and desires for those of her partner.
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Thursday, April 17, 1997
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4 pm. Thirty-Eighth Session with Anna Green. I was completely unprofessional during the beginning of my session today with Anna. Her submission to being whipped has really preyed upon my mind. If I felt that she was a genuine masochist being introduced to the pleasures of submission, I'd probably cheer. But I don't. She's found this "whip-master" who is going to put her under the lash tomorrow at 9 o'clock in the confines of his personal dungeon. Anna is grateful to him for taking time out of his busy schedule to lash her. Anyway, I've clearly lost a lot of my objectivity over this issue. I've got to pull back and help Anna through whatever it is that she needs to go through right now. Anna finds herself sexually attracted to Gray and his commanding presence. It's funny. Previously, I was imagining someone with a magnetic personality and a commanding presence when I was trying to picture this expert in whipping techniques. But Anna was not. She was expecting him to be nondescript looking, and was surprised when he turned out to be more like my stereotype. Anyway, although she has Martin's permission and support in her experimentation into the pleasures of the lash, she felt it best not to go into the degree of sexual attraction she finds for Gray. I wonder if Anna is feeling a little guilty for experiencing this degree of eroticism with someone other than Martin. Just before she left, Anna showed me another one of Martin's drawings. This one is an art deco whip-wielding female character with robot parts, somewhat reminiscent of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis."
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Thursday, April 24, 1997
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4 pm. Thirty-Ninth Session with Anna Green. Anna came in with a neck brace and a large contusion on her forehead, and I nearly had a fit! I was expecting her to be a bit sore after her run-in with the whip-master, but I wasn't prepared for her to be crippled by the experience. But she told me that the neck brace and the contusion were her fault--ultimately I learned that she had been in a car accident--so I calmed myself down and listened to her story. She arrived a bit late for her session with Gray, who used it as a pretext to abase her, forcing her to strip naked and then leading her upstairs to his attic "dungeon." There, he tied her standing to a pole, tied her legs spread-eagle to rings in the floor, and proceeded to whip her. Anna said that it hurt a great deal more than she was expecting it to, but she also found a part of it pleasurable. She seemed to particularly like being helpless and completely at this man's mercy, which isn't completely unexpected given her previous history. She also said that she was completely caught off guard by the intensity of the emotions that she experienced. After whipping her, Gray demanded that she commit oral copulation on him and Anna willingly complied. I'm not certain whether they had intercourse. But Anna left very sore and feeling guilty for having cheated on Martin. She thinks of herself as the kind of person who would never cheat on a lover, and here she found herself a willing participant to an act of infidelity. That made her very angry with Martin. When she called and told Martin what had happened, he expressed no great displeasure. Apparently, he was not adverse to the idea that she might sleep with other men. If Martin had gotten angry--yelled and screamed and said that he was going to break up with her--she probably would have stayed with him. But his calm acceptance was exactly the wrong tack to take. It made Anna angrier and she took it as a sign that he really didn't care very much about her. So she told him that they were through. Of course, that's just an initial reaction and things could easily change in a week. Anna's other injuries came about through the car accident. Because of the discomfort that she felt sitting down, or having her back pressed against the car seat, she was trying to navigate through San Francisco's streets while perched, half standing, on the edge of the seat. She wasn't very successful. She hit a lamp pole with the car and the windshield with her forehead. When she was thrown back in her seat, she also injured her neck. Anna was kind enough to strip to the waist in my office and display her injuries to me. Of course, she wasn't wearing a bra. The straps would have hurt too much. I guess I should have been thankful that she didn't remove her pants as well. She had clearly undergone a whipping--about 7 or 8 marks crisscrossed her back, but it did look as though the whip had been expertly applied. While there were bruises, none appeared to have broken the skin and all were applied to the upper back so as not to damage her internal organs. My guess is that the marks will completely disappear in a week or so. I'm not so sure that the emotional scars will heal so quickly. Frankly, my greatest fear after worrying about Anna's physical safety, is that she will find herself unduly attracted to this form of sexual interaction. I believe that for Anna, a lifestyle as a masochist would be a mistake.
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Thursday, May 1, 1997
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4 pm. Fortieth Session with Anna Green. I hope I didn't cross the line, but Anna was feeling so dejected after her S&M encounter that I felt that I had to reach her on a personal level perhaps overstepping my role as her therapist. Anna experienced something that I've heard referred to by S&M adherents as the "morning after" effect. It's a delayed depression which could start sometimes months after a person's first S&M encounter. Usually, it's characterized by a severe sense of guilt--experienced by both dominants and submissives--shame and feelings of worthlessness. A woman who has allowing herself to be treated as a submissive often feels that she has violated a great many societal taboos. She may feel that she has betrayed her sex and also some part of herself as a person. Usually, these feelings resolve themselves, although some people worry about it for years especially if they stay within the S&M community and continue to practice. The strong emotional responses that S&M undeniably coaxes from its practitioners can be very difficult to integrate into a person's world view. And there is a conflict--on one hand there is the strong sexual and emotional response and on the other is the knowledge that the act is unacceptable to the community they live in and sometimes to the individual's sense of self. I worked with Anna and tried to explore her feelings on this subject. She told me that she felt shamed and somehow branded--as if every stranger on the street knew that she was inferior, so that she had to step aside as she walked the street, ceding the right of way to those around her. And now she's suffering from sleeping difficulties, having bad dreams--she told me one which was just an image of being with her mother while realizing that they had both just eaten contaminated meat--and awaking frequently. She's also feeling dirty and unclean. I presume that she didn't sleep well in anticipation of her session with Gray, and that afterwards, she has been suffering from pain caused by him and by the car accident. So I assume that sleep deprivation combined with her breaking up with a man she really liked has contributed to her depression. I urged her to start taking melatonin again, which seemed to work well for her before. If her sleep doesn't improve by next week, I'll consider a short-term prescription to aid her sleep. And finally, I suggested that she go spend time with her parents. She always seems to find her emotional center with them.
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Thursday, May 8, 1997
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4 pm. Forty-First Session with Anna Green. Last week, Anna really had me worried. I thought she was exhibiting the beginning of a really serious depression. But Anna told me this week that she has been taking Vicodin as a pain killer. They were prescribed for her at the emergency room for her neck after her car accident. I hate that drug. Patients, at risk for depression anyway because of pain, always feel terrible while taking it. I think that's why practitioners like it. There's little risk of anyone becoming addicted to Vicodin because it makes patients feel so lousy. It clearly had a large effect on Anna. She's tapered down to about one a day now and it shows. She's improved in her mood and seems to have gained some perspective on her experience with Gray. I urged her to try to eliminate the Vicodins altogether and try ibuprofen instead. Anna went to see her parents and stayed there with Kathy, the girl from the adult book store. They shared a bed in her parent's house. While they were going to sleep, Anna told her about the dreams that she's been having about being dominated by a gigantic shadowy figure who has her in restraints and frustrates her attempts to reach orgasm. Anna told me that after hearing the dreams, Kathy uncovered herself to allow Anna to watch, and started to masturbate in the bed with her. Kathy is either extremely uninhibited about her sexuality or she was trying to seduce Anna. If seduction was her intent, Anna was completely clueless. Anna's been getting a number of messages from Martin and is conflicted by them. On the one hand, she cheated on him, so she feels bad, but on the other, he pushed her to it, so she feels anger. In any case, she doesn't want to talk to him.
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Thursday, May 15, 1997
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4 pm. Forty-Second Session with Anna Green. Anna is having a hard time reconciling her sexual desires--playing the submissive to a dominating man--with her sense of the equality of women generally. We talked about the difference between sexual activity and the rest of a relationship--women who are submissive in the bedroom are not necessarily submissive in the conduct of daily life. We also talked about the difference between the acts of consenting adults and those between real torturers and their victims. The basic rule I gave to Anna was that if a person is free to walk away, then it's about pleasure and not about abuse. Anna's difficulties reconciling her sexual interests with her feminist sensibilities are not unique. I've talked to many women who had elaborate rape fantasies and felt extraordinarily guilty about them. They all expressed the thought that by fantasizing about being raped, it was as if they gave permission to all the men who really attacked and raped women. Anna is experiencing something similar. If she wants to continue with her submissive adventures in the bedroom, she will have to come to terms with her guilt or it will ruin her experiences. Anna's one-time best friend Caren is getting married and Anna learned of her engagement only when Caren sent Anna an invitation. Anna and Caren had always promised that they would be each other's maid or matron of honor, but because they've drifted apart, that promise hasn't been realized. But more than feeling slighted by not being asked to be in Carin's wedding party, I believe that Anna is comparing her life to Caren's and coming up the loser in her estimation. Caren is going down a predictable path with her boyfriend and soon-to-be husband. Anna, on the other hand, is venturing to explore the depths of her own sexuality and experimenting with alternative sexual pleasures. But Anna essentially sees her current exploration as a distraction from what she had always expected--that she would settle down with one man and get married.
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Thursday, May 22, 1997
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4 pm. Forty-Third Session with Anna Green. It was a very interesting session with Anna today. She went to an S&M party--it was just a barbecue in the park, like an old-fashioned social. Although she liked a number of the people she met, she felt that they defined themselves in relation to their sexual preference. I know what she means. A number of the homosexuals that I've treated have seen themselves first as homosexuals and secondly in terms of their professions or interest. My parents--Jews from Russia--also thought of themselves as Jews first in a way that I never do. Perhaps it is a common theme among persecuted minorities--to band together and define themselves with reference to their shared bond. Of course, Anna also went to a S&M social where the only thing that these people had in common was their interest in S&M. If she had gone to a picnic of model airplane enthusiasts, she might have come away with the same impression. But I thought her insights were important, nevertheless. Anna is still receiving a number of phone messages from Martin. Even though she doesn't answer the calls, he still leaves messages without knowing whether she even listens to them. But she does listen to them. Though he has no way of knowing that it's working, Martin is successfully creating a bond with Anna. He keeps her up to date with everything that is happening in his life, including his ostracism--because of Anna's incident with the police--from the Michigan S&M community. And for the first time in many sessions, we talked about Bill. Anna still runs into him frequently at work and she desires to create an impression that she is a lot happier and more satisfied with her life in general than she ever was when she was with him. It is still important to Anna that he be jealous, and sorry, I suppose, that he ever terminated their relationship. After so many months, Anna can't really relax because her past is right there, working on the same floor. You can't leave your past behind you when you find your lovers from amongst the people you work with. I remember my Dad expressed it somewhat crudely: "Don't shit where you eat." At the end of the session, Anna asked if I would tie down a woman that I was making love to if she asked me to. I had to end the session right there, even though it gave me something to think about.
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Thursday, May 29, 1997
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4 pm. Forty-Fourth Session with Anna Green. Anna believes that Martin may be back in town. She saw someone who could have been Martin on Saturday but she wasn't sure because she was too busy trying to avoid being recognized herself. I was about to dismiss this as just someone who looked like Martin. But then she said that this morning, there was a large chalk drawing in Martin's style outside her building--a headless female figure with pubic hair and a nipple tied to the rail of the steps going up to her door. That certainly sounds like Martin. The man that she saw on Saturday was probably just a look-alike. I can't imagine that Martin would be in town for five days without making any contact with Anna before this morning. I'm sure Anna has seen over a dozen people whom she momentarily believed to be Martin--this one just took on added significance after the chalk drawing. Anna thinks that she is weak--although she doesn't want to go out with Martin, she might not be strong enough to refuse his advances. Anna believes, based on the information that Martin has been feeding her over the answering machine, that Martin has a graduation ceremony to attend. But she has no way to check, and Martin may have his own motivations to give her false information. Anna wanted to hide out by staying with me tonight--a situation which was clearly untenable. I urged her to stay with a friend, and she finally chose Kathy. She hurried away at the end of the session to try to reach her. I have to say that I'm worried that Anna is pliant enough to be taken advantage of by Martin, if he can get a hold of her.
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Thursday, June 12, 1997
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4 pm. Forty-Fifth Session with Anna Green. Anna discovered that Martin has not only moved to San Francisco, but that he has taken a job with SII as well. So now Anna is faced with having to see Anna where she works. Anna's support system has swung into action to try to protect her from Martin. She spent some time with her parents in Davis, she's renewed her ties to Caren and Greg, and she's enlisted Jules, her boss, to check out Martin. Anna is prepared to change her life--quit SII and move--to avoid Martin. Actually, though, I'm afraid that she may be encouraging Martin to try harder to get to her--Anna is making this into a pursuit game. So I encouraged her to talk with Martin and try to explain to him that she is not interested in a relationship with him.
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Thursday, June 19, 1997
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4 pm. Forty-Sixth Session with Anna Green. Against my advice, Anna is back with Martin. He had a conversation with her and oiled his way back into her good graces. I have such a strong reaction against him that it's palpable in the sessions--even Anna can tell. But I can't help it. I feel that he is pushing her in a direction that she is willing to go, but that will ultimately not be good for her. But for right now, Anna is very happy. I knew that she still had vestiges of feelings left for Martin, and her strong reaction to the possibility of having a conversation with Martin clued me in on how easily she could be swayed to his purposes. But I really thought that she would be able to resist him. Apparently, I was wrong. Martin's argument to Anna was that what Gray did was despicable within the S&M community. I didn't know, but apparently consummating a session with sex has to be explicitly negotiated and consented to prior to commencing a scene. Failing to do so, and having sex with someone who has consented to "play" but nothing more, is considered very bad form--akin to taking advantage of a woman while she's drunk. She might say yes, but it cannot be considered a truly voluntary consent. Martin told Anna that he had no idea that she hadn't consented in advance to having sex with Gray, so that he assumed that's what she wanted. Anna ate all this up. She really just needed a good excuse to forgive him. And so she has. Martin said that he's willing to partake of "vanilla" sex every once in a while to appease Anna. What a concession! Martin told Anna that now that the constraints of time and distance have been eliminated, they can take their relationship very slowly. As comforting as that sounds, I'm quite afraid that this will end badly.
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Thursday, June 26, 1997
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4 pm. Forty-Seventh Session with Anna Green. Martin and Anna are working to try to forge a new relationship together. Although they haven't consummated it yet, they are talking about how to bridge the difference between their sexual desires. Anna feels that she is approaching this relationship in an extremely grown-up fashion. Anna noticed that her friend Kathy reacted with disproportionate negativity when Anna gushed about Martin. Kathy was upset and left crying. Kathy also accused Anna of not spending any time with her anymore. While it is common that friends get somewhat abandoned in the beginning of new relationships--I think I've even talked to Anna about it before in connection with Caren--Kathy's reaction seemed irrational to Anna. But I think that Kathy has sexual designs upon Anna and desires an intimate relationship--and I told Anna as much. Anna reacted strangely. She denied it, at first, but then as she thought about it, she seemed to come to believe that it was true. But she wasn't disgusted or angry by the notion. I couldn't quite put my finger on her reaction, but it was almost as if she was amused. Anna said that she would talk to Kathy, but I wonder how that conversation will go and I have my suspicions. Anna is going to miss next week's session--she's taking Martin up to meet the parents. They've never met one of the men that Anna has dated as an adult, so they are probably going to have a whole set of inflated expectations for Anna's and Martin's relationship. I tried to warn her about it, but she tossed them off with an offhand comment about how she told her mother that she wasn't ready for marriage yet.
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Thursday, July 10, 1997
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4 pm. Forty-Eighth Session with Anna Green. Anna wanted to introduce Martin to her parents, so she asked them to invite Martin up for the Fourth of July weekend. Her parents were thrilled--Anna said that she thought her mother was going to start shopping for baby clothes. Martin and Anna arrived late the first night, and Martin made a favorable initial impression. The second morning, Martin and Anna's father hit it off discussing the Pathfinder mission. Everything was idyllic until some mysterious event turned her parents, as Anna put it, into apparent victims of the body snatchers. All their warmth towards Martin suddenly evaporated. It turned out that Kathy, in a fit of jealous pique, decided to alert Anna's parents to Martin's sexual proclivities. She even faxed them a copy of Martin's first whip-wielding, headless drawing of Anna. When Anna finally was confronted about this by her mother, Anna utilized her considerable powers of fabrication and told her mother that Kathy was a paranoid woman who had been recently ill-used by men and that the drawing she faxed was actually an illustration to a science fiction story that Martin and she had read together. Anna's mother bought it and she explained Anna's version to her father. Although things improved, however, much of the earlier warmth Anna's parents had expressed towards Martin disappeared. Meanwhile, Anna feels betrayed by Kathy. Martin says that he understands Kathy's obsessive jealousy, because he said that he felt jealous of Kathy's relationship with Anna just a few weeks ago. Anna is amused by the ironic twists of fate which seem to quickly reverse her life's circumstances.
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Thursday, July 24, 1997
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4 pm. Forty-Ninth Session with Anna Green. Anna apparently felt the lack of our session last week, which I canceled. She questioned me about it and I detected a note of jealousy at the thought that I might have a personal life--she quickly reversed herself when I explained that my father is ill. Anna is also displaying jealousy towards Martin's newfound friendship with Kathy. While Kathy was initially unwilling even to be introduced to Martin, he sought her out at the adult bookstore and was able to convert her into a friend. Anna feels excluded from their friendship, however. Kathy and Martin spend a lot of time together without Anna, partly because Anna hasn't made up with Kathy yet. Anna doesn't want to be bullied into making up and doesn't much appreciate Martin's diplomatic mission to save the friendship, if that's what it is. While Anna originally wanted Kathy and Martin to be friends, she wanted them to be like the spokes of a wheel with her at the center. She wasn't much interested in them being friends independent of her. We talked about her relationship with Martin. Anna likes that Martin and she have many things in common--a compatibility in their tastes in movies, music, books, and food. But it's Martin's sexual orientation and desires that strain the relationship. Apparently, although they sleep in the same bed, they are not engaging in any sexual activity. Anna did say that they had decided to put off sex until they were sure of the foundation underpinning their relationship. But she was a bit disturbed to find further evidence of Martin's strong foot fetish--he licks her toes when she comes out of the shower, and she caught him masturbating on the floor of her closet with her shoes over him. While Anna knows about Martin's predilections, she purposefully forgets about them as if hoping that they will just go away. When evidence that they are not is thrust forcibly upon her, she reacts with surprise all over again. Anna refuses to allow me to say anything against Martin. She really wants to try and make the relationship work and she recognizes my antipathy towards him in relation to her. And what I found particularly disturbing at the end of the session was that Anna was making a special effort to make her relationship work with Martin because she views her previous relationships as failures. When this relationship fails, as it must, she will think that the failure of the relationship is part of a pattern of failures and will blame herself for it.
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Thursday, July 31, 1997
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4 pm. Fiftieth Session with Anna Green. If you take two programmers and you make them into lovers with a need to resolve their interpersonal and sexual difficulties, perhaps they'll come up with a similar solution to Anna's and Martin's. Anna told me that Martin and she are taking all of their difficulties relating to the differences in their sexual desires, and reducing them to sets of numbers purportedly designed to equalize their respective needs for sexual satisfaction. They've devised a database of sexual acts and have subjectively rated each of those acts on three scales: the amount of sexual pleasure that each derives from the act, the time that the act requires (including set up time), and the difficulty of the act. They have a form of sexual currency so that if one partner becomes sexually indebted to the other, that partner will have to perform a series of sexual acts of the other's choosing until the debt is paid. Anna was very proud of her sexual barter system and recommended it for me to use with other patients. While a system like this might work for dividing household chores, I believe that Anna has underestimated the emotional content of her sexual life with Martin. Does Anna believe that an algorithmic approach to her sexual fulfillment is really going to work? I certainly don't think it will. Given my experience with Anna, I think it likely that Martin will end up getting what he needs out of the relationship, but that Anna will ultimately end up with her emotional needs unsatisfied. Sex in a relationship is about communication between two people who love each other, and if one partner is just going to engage in an act in order to earn points, it's just not going to work. The picture of an evening of passion preceded by the two of them making calculations on a wall chart of sexual acts does not mesh well with an image of an emotionally healthy relationship. Given both of their sexual tendencies, I can imagine Martin negotiating with Anna: "If you spank me, honey, I'll let you give me a blow job." Given their professional predilections, I wouldn't be surprised if all of this data ends up in computer program somewhere which keeps their sexual scores straight. We also discussed the relationship between Martin and Kathy which makes Anna jealous, mostly because she wants to be at the center of their interactions with each other. But my take is that she is basically overreacting to Martin's efforts to befriend Kathy. Anna and Kathy made the initial moves towards making up, with an apologetic conversation on the telephone, but they haven't seen each other in person since before the disastrous July 4th barbecue and Anna wants Kathy to grovel a bit. Anna was quite sick with a cold during our session, so we cut it short.
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Thursday, August 7, 1997
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4 pm. Fifty-First Session with Anna Green. In previous sessions, Anna complained that Martin's friendship with Kathy seemed to exclude her. Although she said that she wanted them to be friends with each other, it was always her desire to be in the center of the friendship. Apparently, things are now arranged much more to her liking. When she was sick last week, Martin transported Anna back to his large apartment where Martin and Kathy took turns nursing and waiting on her. All three spent the weekend living there, with Martin and Kathy sharing a fold-away bed. Anna was happily ensconced as the object of both of their affections. She enjoyed a happy little fantasy of Martin and Kathy going to sleep in the same bed with each other, with each of them turned on--but over Anna. And while Anna recognizes that Kathy is sexually attracted to her, Anna considers it merely an innocent flirtation when she parades around naked in front of her or otherwise attempts to stimulate Kathy's sexual interest in her. I pointed out to Anna that she was handling fire, and that she was setting up a situation where both Martin and Kathy could easily come to the conclusion that what Anna desires is a three-way sexual relationship. Anna insists that it could never happen. She believes that Martin feels too tenuous in his position to jeopardize his relationship with her by suggesting a ménage à trois and that since Anna herself is not gay, she will easily be able to fend off any of Kathy's advances. Given what I know about Anna's pliant nature when it comes to fulfilling others' sexual desires, I believe that it may be possible that Anna, in the heat of circumstances, may be induced to enter into a three-way sexual relationship which would ultimately not be of her choosing. She'll just fall into it. I probed to discover just how far the situation had progressed in that direction. Indeed, what Anna told me about that weekend could easily lead Anna and Kathy to believe that Anna was interested in sleeping with both of them.
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Thursday, August 14, 1997
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4 pm. Fifty-Second Session with Anna Green. Anna proudly reported to me that she spent the week not being sexually provocative to Kathy--she said that she kept her underwear on the entire week. But the reality is that Anna's sexual experimentation with both Martin and Kathy continues. The three of them went to an S&M club together and Anna found herself volunteered to be the paddler in a seminar on proper paddling technique with Kathy as her submissive. At the club, Anna also saw Kathy engaged with Martin in a public dominant/submissive scene, before Kathy went off to play in private with her "beating buddy." Although Anna realizes that both Martin and Kathy get sexual enjoyment out of such a scene, she feels that it is somehow different from "real sex"--when I probed that attitude, she responded that her bright line rule is that there should be no "flesh to flesh" contact. I think that Anna is deluding herself, but I stayed silent. Anna continues on her course of trying to fulfill everyone's sexual needs and desires before her own. She finds herself warming to the idea of having a three-way relationship with Martin and Kathy. Although she's concerned about some of the practical negative consequences, she claims that she can see much to recommend itself in such a relationship. Primarily, she imagines that Martin and Kathy can fulfill each other's S&M needs, and leave her free to enjoy a more ordinary sexual relationship with Martin. While Anna believes that the decision of whether to enter into a three-way relationship is still somewhere in the future, I believe that she's slipping into it even without her realization: Anna has paddled Kathy, Kathy has paddled Martin, and Martin and Anna are engaging in some sexual activities. The reality is that a three-way relationship is already upon Anna.
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Thursday, August 21, 1997
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4 pm. Fifty-Third Session with Anna Green. Anna realizes that she's at a decision point in her relationship with Kathy and Martin. In the most natural way, Kathy has moved into Martin's apartment, and Anna is spending all her time there as well. So the three of them are living together, and even Anna--who usually requires a ton of bricks to hit her before she's sensitive to such things--feels the sexual tension. Anna is actually thinking if that's what she really wants for herself. Martin and Anna went to a play together and she saw herself reflected in the characters. The play is about a woman who confronts herself at different ages in her life. The twenty-six year old version doesn't much like what she sees in her older selves. Anna started to wonder whether she would like the person who was involved in a three-way relationship. She looks at her parents, who presumably haven't strayed so far from the norm, and feels that they can hold their heads high. She wonders if this is something that she'll be ashamed of in the years to come. At the end of our session, Anna tried to dismiss everything as the result of being tired, but I think that her concerns are genuine and central to her decision-making process.
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Thursday, August 28, 1997
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4 pm. Fifty-fourth session with Anna Green. Anna went into some detail about the dynamics of her relationship with Martin and Kathy. Although it hasn't slipped into a full-on three-way sexual relationship, it's pretty clear that Anna is flirting with a polygamous lifestyle. She said that Kathy has acted as a kind of lubricant, reducing the friction between Anna and Martin. Anna is upset at Martin's naturally slovenly habits, but Kathy quietly and efficiently fills in the gaps, doing the necessary housework without complaint. Anna said that it is as if Kathy fulfills the need that both she and Martin have for a "wife." But again, I cautioned Anna against just slipping into the relationship without having made a decision in her own mind as to what she really wants. She's clearly going in that direction, but if she's going to end up in a three-way relationship, I want it to be as a result of Anna's conscious choice.
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Thursday, September 4, 1997
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4 pm. Fifty-Fifth Session with Anna Green. Anna was sick so our session was brief. We spent the time talking mostly about Kathy's reaction to Princess Diana's death. Apparently Kathy was a devoted fan, and was rocked by the news. She reacted as if a family member was involved. So many have been moved so much by this tragedy--something about her life being covered like a soap opera has made her into a figure whom everyone feels like they know. Diana seemed like a genuinely good woman who cared deeply about a number of philanthropic causes, but Mother Theresa's death caused much less of a stir. I don't think that people grieve the loss of a good samaritan as much as they are the loss of a woman who seemed to have overcome a life of emotional hardships. I have to say that I spent a fair amount of time watching the TV coverage of the accident and the aftermath. But Anna didn't understand Kathy's fantatical reaction. To Anna, it was sad that she died and that her two boys had lost their mother. But to Kathy, it was a cataclysmic event in her life. They used the occassion to host a "death party" which apparently was less morbid than it sounds. It was almost like a wake, with about 50 participants swaying and singing and holding candles. It made Kathy feel better. I asked Anna if she had thought more about her relationship, and she told me that she hadn't had time to devote to it. But at the end of the session, when I asked Anna to find the time, she contradicted herself and tried to assure me that she had spent time thinking about it.
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Thursday, September 11, 1997
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4 pm. Fifty-Sixth Session with Anna Green. Kathy is tired of waiting for Anna to make up her mind about a three-way relationship. She feels as if she is being kept on ice, waiting for Anna's decision. It's quite clear that if Kathy tries to force Anna's hand, Anna will take flight. And Martin has made it clear that he is willing to go either way, but that his relationship with Anna is paramount. So Kathy is reduced to tears of frustration as she waits to see whether Anna wants her as a sexual partner. Anna is aware of her own ambivilance and isn't sure that it's fair to embark on a relationship with someone when she doesn't have very strong romantic feelings towards them. She's reminded of her own experience with men who have sensed her interest in them and have replaced a genuine interest in Anna as a partner with their own stirrings of lust. Anna criticized Martin for not pushing for Kathy, if that is what he wants. She's afraid that he would like to sleep with the two of them, but that he doesn't have any great commitment to a relationship with Kathy. It appears that the longer Anna delays making a firm decision one way or the other, the more likely she is to hurt Kathy, regardless of Anna's good intentions.
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Thursday, September 25, 1997
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4 pm. Fifty-Seventh Session with Anna Green. Screwed up another life, just another day as a psychiatrist. Anna has consummated her three-way relationship and she couldn't be happier, she says. And she tells me that it's all due to me. She thanked me for giving her the freedom to be able to make the choices that she's made. Somewhere inside, I kept hoping that Anna would decide that she wasn't interested in a three-way relationship, but I was fooling myself. Anna is easily led into sexual situations which she doesn't truly desire. She has the ability to convince herself in retrospect that it was all her idea. It's as if Anna soaks up the desires of those around her and turns them into her own desires. She bubbled about how happy she was and the terrific honeymoon that the three of them had in some hotel up the coast, and I suddenly got a splitting headache. I just had to end the session early.
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Thursday, October 9, 1997
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4 pm. Fifty-Eighth Session with Anna Green. I questioned Anna closely about the sexual permutations of her relationship with Kathy and Martin. Given Anna's history, I was concerned that she was going to be pressured into performing sexual acts with which she was not comfortable. Anna had previously told me that she was uncomfortable with the idea of performing homosexual acts, so I was curious how she would reconcile those feelings with the reality of her current three-way relationship. I was somewhat surprised to learn that, although Kathy has performed cunnilingus on Anna, Anna has not reciprocated. Predictably, Anna feels quite guilty over this, and I assume that she will soon revert to her previous patterns and find herself performing sexual acts solely to please another. Interestingly, it became apparent during our session that, although Anna believes otherwise, Kathy is not truly a full member of this trio. Martin and Anna are the couple, and Kathy is an adjunct. She sleeps in a separate bedroom and apparently only engages in sexual activity with Martin while Anna is present--unlike Martin's & Anna's sexual practices with each other. It doesn't take much ability at prognostication to realize that the current situation is not very stable.
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Thursday, October 16, 1997
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3:54 pm. Telephone Call with Anna Green. Anna called me to cancel her appointment. Apparently, she and Martin have to cover for Kathy's employment duties in her adult bookstore while Kathy travels out of town to deal with a sick aunt. So Anna finds herself dispensing advice about dildos and lubricants to the needy members of the adult book scene. Anna is looking forward to seeing what it is like to live just with Martin--she says this weekend is her first opportunity since they officially began to live together, although I'm not sure that the distinction between this time and the previous times is particularly significant.
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Thursday, October 23, 1997
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4 pm. Fifty-Ninth Session with Anna Green. Anna, who was substituting for Kathy at the adult books store, described being the mistress of that environment. She played the part to the hilt, making it into a kind of S&M theater with Martin as the willing customer/slave. They created quite a stir as Anna ordered him around the store and forced him to lick her boots before an assembled audience of sex merchandise consumers. It must have been a scene. My previous experience with adult book stores led me to believe that people want to be left alone to find the erotica that interests them and to buy it as inconspicuously as possible. But Anna and Martin turned that notion on its ear, with Martin even allowing himself to be paddled by other customers looking to try out the merchandise. When Kathy came back, she complained that now her customers are going to be looking for repeat performances. But the difficulty of doing both Kathy's job and their own left Anna and Martin little time to experience what it was like just being a couple instead of a threesome. Anna plans to take Kathy and Martin to the Exotic Erotic Halloween Ball, each on leashes. She seems to be warming to her role as dominatrix, although I know that it is just because she has sublimated her own sexual desires to those of Martin's and Kathy's.
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Thursday, October 30, 1997
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4 pm. Sixtieth Session with Anna Green. We first talked about the infliction of pain through body mutilation: ritualistic scarification, branding, cutting, piercing, and even rib removal. I've heard of cases, which I didn't share with Anna, of people having metal plates implanted in their heads so that they can screw in horns. When Kathy first came to San Francisco, she was apparently in a live sex show which involved her being branded on the left shoulder before a paying audience. Anna has a strong negative reaction to body mutilation. At the Exotic Erotic Halloween Ball which Anna attended, there were apparently some examples of this type of practice which left Anna a bit sickened. She referred to the event as the Exotic Neurotic Ball. Anna told me that there are doctors who are also practitioners of S&M and whose practice caters to members of the community. I never thought about it before, but I can see how it might be desirable to be able to go to a doctor who wouldn't view the marks left by a whipping, for example, as proof of domestic abuse. Anna said that a number of S&M devotees who are also parents are worried about the state removing their children out of a belief that if the parents are involved with S&M, they must be abusing their children. The most interesting part of the session came at the very end. Anna came home early one day and found Martin and Kathy making love together. She recognizes that their three-way arrangement permits such pairing off without her explicit consent, but it bothered her quite a lot regardless. She recounted other instances where Martin and Kathy had made love without her being present, but they were always situations where she had given her explicit permission. Now, since she didn't know about it and they didn't seek her permission, she feels quite differently about it. And Anna still hasn't told me how she is avoiding reciprocating Kathy's oral ministrations. I see a few cracks forming in Anna's three-way relationship.
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Thursday, November 6, 1997
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4 pm. Sixty-First Session with Anna Green. I pushed Anna on the different feelings that Anna, Martin, and Kathy each have for the other. Anna responded by telling me about the color red. See, there's purple-red and there's orange-red, but they're both red. Anna didn't explain whether she felt purple-red or orange-red for Kathy or which red she felt for Martin, but it was pretty clear by the end of the session that Kathy is just a plaything for Martin and Anna to share together before they move their relationship to a more serious plane. I tried to point out the hypocrisy of that attitude, but Anna insisted on not seeing the long view. She put off her concern all to being premenstrual and inappropriately jealous when she "caught" Martin and Kathy making love alone with each other without her specific consent last week. Anna is not getting the key issue that Kathy is going to be dumped on in this relationship, and it's going to be emotionally ugly for all concerned. And Anna neatly bypassed the touchy issue of her reluctance to perform homosexual acts with Kathy.
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Thursday, November 13, 1997
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4 pm. Sixty-Second Session with Anna Green. Anna was in a very bad mood during our session today, so I let a lot of things slide that I otherwise would have been quick to follow up on. Her body language was cold and forbidding--her arms remained defensively folded across her chest during most of the session. Anna started by telling me, through the use of an elaborate metaphor, about how I had spoiled the relaxing benefits of our last therapy session by interrogating her and bringing up painful issues about her relationship with Kathy. She likened therapy to a mud bath--the relaxation that the sessions brings helps her to cope with her problems. Although I have a different view of the significance of our sessions together, I decided not to directly challenge Anna on her views. Instead, I decided to press onwards. Martin is leaving town for a week--Lloyd Major likes him and has personally selected Martin to talk to some technologists at MIT. That leaves Anna alone with Kathy all week, and Anna already said that Kathy believes Anna is acting strangely towards her. Apparently, Kathy thinks that Anna is still mad because of Anna's feelings after catching Kathy making love to Martin. I was under the impression that Anna had just told me about her feelings that day and had hidden those feelings from Martin and Kathy. Apparently, not so. Anna tried to explain away her behavior by ascribing it to PMS--since Anna just started taking some new birth control pills, she believes they understood. Anna didn't really want to talk about Kathy with me, but I pressed. Anna is clearly not looking forward to spending a week alone with Kathy. She said, "Licking my clit is Kathy's way of saying, 'I love you.' " Anna is clearly expected to have sex with Kathy alone, without Martin's involvement. Anna is also clearly apprehensive about the prospect.
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Thursday, November 20, 1997
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4 pm. Sixty-Third Session with Anna Green. Anna was clearly agitated during this session. She is upset by the events of this past week. And more than being upset, she is clearly angry at Kathy for forcing her into a situation where she had to reciprocate Kathy's oral ministrations. While Martin was away, the pressure on Anna to reciprocate Kathy's sexual advances was intensified. Anna tried to avoid it by claiming the press of work to stay away from the apartment, but Kathy forced the issue by buying Anna an elaborate leather "Xena Warrior Princess" outfit. Anna said that she felt like she owed her and had no choice. Of course I pointed out that she always has a choice, but Anna felt the cost of exercising that choice was too great. So she allowed Kathy to play out her sexual fantasy with her. She said that she faked an orgasm to bring Kathy's lingual attentions to an end, and then it was her turn. She tied Kathy to the bed--the bondage was part of Kathy's fantasy--and tried to stimulate Kathy with as little oral-genital contact as possible. It didn't work. Anna said that the taste of Kathy's vaginal fluids sickened her and that she had to run from the room to avoid throwing up. When she returned, Kathy said that she had managed to achieve orgasm without any additional help from Anna and, since she was tied to the bed, without any manual stimulation. Anna tried to cover by saying that she got a hair in her throat. I asked if Kathy believed that Anna enjoyed the experience and Anna, surprisingly, responded that she didn't care what Kathy believed. Now, she's angry because she never got a chance to be alone with Martin since his return, and she believes that Martin and Kathy are going to be making love when she returns home. An additional complication is that Anna's parents are expecting Anna and Martin for Thanksgiving dinner, but Kathy is not invited. I assume that Kathy is going to be unhappy about that arrangement.
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Thursday, December 4, 1997
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4 pm. Sixty-Fourth Session with Anna Green. Anna's complicated threesome just got more complex. The fundamental change seems to be that Anna is no longer at the apex of the triangle. Now it's Martin. Anna and Kathy are both vying for his attentions. It's as if there has been a paradigm shift. The relationship is clearly crumbling. I suspect that Anna's obvious distaste for a pure lesbian relationship was painfully obvious to Kathy. In Kathy's calculus, she can't see a situation where she will end up paired off with Anna and Martin will be cut loose. So in the relationship, it's either Anna or Kathy that will be set adrift. And each is determined it will be the other that will be sloughed off. Kathy has begun her battle using emotional manipulation and blackmail, and Anna is trying to win by using what she believes is her greater leverage over Martin's affections. But the upshot is that, with both women tugging on him in different directions, Martin ended up staying home with Kathy during Thanksgiving. Round one goes to emotional manipulation! For the first time, Anna is seriously talking about Martin as her prospective husband, and she sees Kathy as an impediment. At Thanksgiving dinner, Anna was busy explaining to her parents why Martin decided to stay home with their roommate. While Anna tried to outwardly dismiss her father's intimations that something of a sexual nature might be going on between Martin and Kathy, Anna knew that they were, indeed, actively engaging in sexual activity. She came back from the dinner as mad as a hornet and told Martin that it was either Kathy or her. She seems to believe that Martin will do exactly what she tells him to do, although I am not so sure. I'm quite concerned that Kathy has actually threatened suicide, although Anna believes that it is merely an idle threat. I've never met Kathy so I have no idea, but I told Anna that Kathy should get some help. I'm also concerned that as the stakes rise higher in this game, that Anna might commit to more of a future with Martin than she otherwise would. Will Anna marry Martin just to keep him out of Kathy's hands?
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Thursday, December 18, 1997
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4 pm. Sixty-Fifth Session with Anna Green. Anna announced victory in her war with Kathy--she and Martin are planning on getting married in the summer. They have yet to inform Kathy of the news. Martin, concerned about Kathy's mental stability, wants to delay the announcement until after the holidays. Martin suggested that Anna's parents come over to their apartment to celebrate Christmas. Martin sees it as a way to avoid abandoning Kathy during Christmas and still fulfill his obligations to his future in-laws. Anna also welcomes it as an opportunity for her parents to see how domestic Anna and Martin are together. Although I was concerned that Kathy's interest was not going to be in facilitating a happy familial scene, Anna assured me that she plans to tell her parents, in great detail, about how Kathy is a mentally deranged psycho bitch from hell--in effect, attempting to dilute the effectiveness of anything Kathy might say or do. At the beginning of the session, Anna showed me an image that Martin drew of Kathy. Anna had torn the image into pieces; I taped it together for my records. I thought it interesting that it depicted Kathy's head. Martin always drew headless women representing Anna--never showing her face, only her body. In the image, Kathy looks mean--probably evocative of the dominant role that she frequently adopts in her relationship with Martin. Anna was upset over the triviality that Martin hasn't drawn any images of her for over six months and now he is drawing Kathy. I'm concerned that Anna might be underestimating the severity of Kathy's mental problems--she's very glib about ascribing both the threats of suicide and Kathy's frequent vomiting all to Kathy's attempt to manipulate Martin and her. But I'm not so sure. It sounds like a credible suicide threat and I urged Anna to take it more seriously. I also wonder if Anna would have agreed to marry Martin were it not for the competition she felt from Kathy.
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Friday, December 26, 1997
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10:15 am. Sixty-Sixth Session with Anna Green. Anna called me in crisis and asked me to see her. When I got to my office, she was huddled outside, clearly underdressed for the cold weather, with a large contusion on her right temple. I got her inside and tried to make her comfortable while she told me about the calamitous Christmas Dinner she spent with her parents, Martin, and Kathy. Kathy took that opportunity to announce that she was pregnant with Martin's child. Obviously, all hell broke loose. To make it even worse, it appears that Martin knew about it in advance--at the same time as he was telling Anna to wait until after the holidays to announce their wedding plans, he was apparently telling Kathy to wait until after the holidays to announce her pregnancy. I don't know what the guy was thinking--perhaps he was hoping that he'd be hit by a bus between then and now. Anna described her physical state immediately following Kathy's revelation, and it sounded like she went into shock. Despite her dizziness, nausea, and her inability to control her muscles, she ran from the apartment, eluded her parents, and spent the night alone in a park, purposefully putting herself in danger. She described having a revenge fantasy, hoping that she would be murdered; she composed her own obituary and fantasized about how sorry everyone would be when they read it. But I don't think Anna is actually suicidal. I insisted that we go to the hospital to check for concussion, although I did a brief neurological exam in my office and believed that Anna wasn't suffering from a neurological deficit. The hospital confirmed my diagnosis, although Anna clearly had a bad contusion and was getting a bad cold. I ended up spending half the day in the emergency room with Anna--she spent most of her time asleep. Anna believes that she still has a chance with Martin. When I asked her what her plans were, she said that she wants to go home, evict Kathy from her apartment, and force Martin to make a choice between them.
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Thursday, January 8, 1998
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4 pm. Sixty-Seventh Session with Anna Green. Anna confirmed that Kathy is indeed pregnant. All three of them went to Kathy's OBGYN appointment and saw an ultrasound of the fetus. Anna wanted nothing more than the fetus to die, and Martin acted pale and shaky--enough to make the obstetrician concerned. Martin told Anna that he is still in love with her and doesn't want to lose her, and he apparently hinted to Kathy that she might consider an abortion, but Kathy is having none of it. Anna is furious with Kathy for getting pregnant and she's angry about the power that the pregnancy gives her in their current struggle. Beyond that, Anna is clearly delusional. Anna has concocted a fantasy about marrying Martin and then wresting custody of the child away from Kathy. Anna first said that Martin was going to go along with this plan and then she admitted that she was thinking for the two of them right now. I didn't even challenge Anna's delusion at this point. Things will play themselves out and end up in some painful mishmash. Anna hates this child and would make a wretched mother, given her current attitude. I had just an idle thought during the session, and I realize it's completely unthinkable ethically, but I might be doing Anna a service by expressing an interest in a romantic relationship with her. We would have an affair and she would dump Martin--I believe she would--and allow Kathy and Martin to fade away. Then I could redirect her affections towards a more appropriate mate. I could be a transitional love object. Reading that over, it sounds like the rationalization of some quack up before the medical license board arguing why his license shouldn't be suspended--"it was sex therapy." Obviously, I have no intention of acting on that unethical thought.
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Thursday, February 5, 1998
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4 pm. Sixty-Eighth Session with Anna Green. Anna had the Sydney Flu last week and she's malingering just a bit because the flu had the effect of driving Kathy from the apartment, at least temporarily. Kathy is afraid of getting her baby sick, so Anna has wielded the flu like a sword. With Kathy out of the apartment, Anna feels that she can really talk to Martin, although he is having to cover for Kathy at the store while she is in Sacramento with her aunt. I can tell that Anna is having thoughts about abandoning Martin to his fate, but she feels guilty just walking out on him. She thinks that Martin does not love Kathy, and in fact may hate her. Kathy has apparently been hinting that she will abuse the child, in a manner similar to the way she was herself abused, if Martin abandons her. But Anna also sees Kathy using the baby as her ticket to the good life. Greg and Caren have come back into Anna's life and they have spread the story around SII about how Martin, affianced to Anna, knocked up their roommate. Anna is being treated with sympathy by her co-workers and Martin is being treated with disgust. I can see that it is giving Anna a certain type of satisfaction. Anna appears to have been a bit more honest with her father, surprisingly. She apparently even hinted to him that they had been "experimenting"--presumably so that she still has the possibility of repairing the relationship between Martin and her parents if she is successful in marrying him. At the end of the session, Anna chided me on not having taking her up on her offer of having a relationship--she pointed out obliquely that she wouldn't be having these problems if I had. Unfortunately, I'm somewhat sympathetic to that argument, but I have to realize that it's my own self interest that motivates me to think in that direction. It's amazing that the psychiatrists who've been caught in trysts with their patients, and have ascribed their sexual involvement to some sort of therapeutic motive, only adopt that form of therapy with patients who were sexually appealing. Apparently that form of direct "therapeutic" sexual involvement doesn't work with the ugly or the unappealing. I may wish to whisk Anna away from Martin and into my bed, but I must ardently resist those selfish impulses and not fall into the trap of rationalizing my desires as really in Anna's interest.
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Thursday, February 12, 1998
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4 pm. Sixty-Ninth Session with Anna Green. Anna came in today with Martin. I had always pictured him as kind of tall and thin, but actually, he's a little short and chunky. Well, perhaps average height--five foot seven? He has a dark complexion and black hair, but piercing blue eyes. He is clearly of a mixed ethnic background but it's not clear what--perhaps a bit of Indian or Burmese ancestry. He's not particularly good looking, but he's not unattractive. He was clearly uncomfortable being here, and Anna tried to totally dominate both him and the conversation. He was barely able to get a word in without Anna jumping in and expressing his opinions for him. Actually, when Martin could speak, he was fairly consistent--he's unwilling to abandon his child and Kathy, however much Anna wishes for him to do so. I didn't perceive a great affection towards Kathy from Martin, but he seems resigned to his fate. Frankly, I didn't sense all that much affection from him towards Anna either. Several times during the session, he told her that he would understand it if she left him, that he wasn't expecting her to wait for him, and so on. I got the impression that, although he had a lot of affection for Anna in the past, he might welcome it if Anna left. Given his new circumstances, and with Anna's continual hostility towards Kathy, I got the feeling that Martin views Anna as merely an encumbrance. Martin did indicate that Kathy might have some psychological difficulties that could lead her to abuse the child--this wasn't just Anna's perception. However, Martin didn't think Kathy was likely to do anything immediately, and he discussed alleviating some of those problems by moving Kathy, the baby, and himself in with his parents. To me, that sounded a lot like he is planning on marrying Kathy. Kathy is apparently suffering from severe morning sickness. Anna said that Kathy is probably faking it, because she's at fourteen weeks and morning sickness usually ends by the twelfth week. I told Anna that many women suffer from vomiting during pregnancy well past the fourteenth week. Anna took that as evidence that I wasn't on her side. Kathy also quit her job at the adult book store, which Anna took as further evidence that Kathy is looking to Martin as her meal ticket. At the end of the session, Anna stormed out, and Martin ran after her, promising to take her out for a nice dinner--as if that's going to solve these problems.
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Thursday, February 19, 1998
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4 pm. Seventieth Session with Anna Green. Kathy had a prenatal test which revealed the possibility that her baby has Down's syndrome. Martin has fled the apartment, saying that he needs time alone. Ironically, Anna was left to comfort Kathy, who seemingly vacillates between hysteria and a determination to have the child come what may. Kathy has expressed the sentiment that a Down's syndrome baby will always love and need her--a notion that appalls Anna. Martin and Anna are both urging Kathy to have an abortion, but Kathy will not. Anna, too, has had a change of heart about Martin. Although it's obviously causing her a lot of guilt, Anna isn't interested in becoming the mother to a child who has Down's syndrome and who isn't hers. She seems to feel that Martin has too many deficits right now to continue on in her quest to win him away from Kathy. Last week, Martin said that he gave Anna her freedom, and this week Anna seems inclined to take him up on it.
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Thursday, February 26, 1998
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4 pm. Seventy-First Session with Anna Green. Although Kathy went to take the test to determine if her fetus has Down's syndrome last Monday, Anna doesn't know the results yet. And it's not for lack of trying. Kathy won't come up with a straight answer and the clinic won't divulge the information to anyone except the patient. Anna got a call from Kathy's Aunt Helen and, assuming that she knew all about the pregnancy, Anna told her that she didn't yet know whether the baby has Down's syndrome. But Helen knew nothing about Kathy's pregnancy and found out only as Anna was telling her about a possible birth defect. Helen insisted on driving out from Sacramento. Kathy did not seem to welcome Helen's presence, and with Martin still in hiding, Anna found herself having to cope with Helen. But Anna has learned quite a bit of interesting information about Kathy's past from Helen, much of it completely at odds with the stories which Kathy has told. Kathy is about ten years older than she represented herself to be, and she was never sexually molested by her father, or indeed any male relation. Her mother did not die of breast cancer, as Kathy previously maintained. Her parents were both killed in a car accident along with her uncle when she was about five years old, and she was raised by her Aunt Helen. The landlady that wouldn't fix her leaky roof--giving rise to the necessity of her "rescue" by Martin and Anna--turns out to be her great aunt, a woman with whom she lived for almost twenty years. Although Helen couldn't recall the exact diagnosis, she told Anna that Kathy had been diagnosed previously as suffering from some sort of personality disorder. I've never met Kathy, but I suspect a cluster B personality disorder. When Helen asked if Martin was going to marry Kathy, Anna said that she didn't know. Helen could see that Martin's clothes were in Anna's room, and Anna feels that she figured out, more or less, something about the relationships between the three of them. Helen asked Anna if she was in love with Martin, and Anna froze, but then responded that she wasn't. Her response is probably truer than she thinks. Anna feels that the situation is spinning out of her control--a realization that I'm surprised has taken her this long to reach. Anna said something odd about Kathy. All this time, Anna has maintained that Kathy would never consider an abortion, and that Kathy felt the baby was what gave her bargaining power in her relationship with Martin. But Anna thinks that Kathy believes that Helen could just take the baby away from her and raise it herself. Anna now thinks that it's conceivable that Kathy could get an abortion. And I got the sense that Anna would not welcome that turn of events, even though it was clearly what she wanted just a week ago. Maybe Anna is realizing that the baby is her ticket out of this relationship.
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Thursday, March 12, 1998
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4 pm. Seventy-Second Session with Anna Green. Apparently Kathy's baby tested positive for Down's syndrome, because Kathy had a surprise abortion. Anna doesn't know why Kathy changed her mind. Kathy had been missing for three days. She came home with Martin, who serendipitously found her at the clinic and was able to help her through the emotional ordeal of the abortion. During the three days that Kathy was missing, Anna and Kathy's Aunt Helen underwent convulsions of worry. They imagined that she committed suicide and they pictured themselves being called by the police to identify the body. They filed a missing persons report and Anna even went to an S&M club that Kathy frequents with Aunt Helen in tow. There, they learned that Kathy was performing acts of self-mutilation again on stage--apparently there's an extra kick if the performer is pregnant. At the dungeon, they also ran across Martin, who was trying to hide. He wasn't alone. He was under the domination of a woman whom Anna believes had an air of ownership about her which she could only have adopted if Martin had been her slave for some time. I gather Anna believes that's where he's been spending his last few weeks. Anna found a picture in Martin's inimitable style of this woman and showed it to me. Although unsigned, the work is clearly Martin's. The interesting thing is that Anna wasn't at all disturbed by Martin's activities. I think she is continuing the process of distancing herself emotionally from him, although Anna hasn't admitted to herself that she is about to leave Martin. I think it's obvious that Anna is planning on splitting up with Martin. But Anna was in such a degree of worry while she was at the dungeon that she just didn't have the emotional energy for jealousy. I found Anna more jumbled in her thoughts during this session than she's been in a long time. She reminded me somewhat of the Anna that I first saw in these sessions, over a year and a half ago. Then she had just broken up with her boyfriend and was having troubles at her job, which is similar to the complaints that she has now. She is worried about how they are perceiving her at work lately, but she didn't talk about diminished work performance. Rather, it was the embarrassment of having to bring Aunt Helen with her because Helen was too worried about Kathy to be left alone. Anna has given herself four weeks to untangle her life. She picked a duration of four weeks because it was the longest period that she felt that she could stand, and it seemed long enough to resolve certain things. But when I pressed her on what untangling meant, she really couldn't tell me. She doesn't know what she really wants. All through the session, there seemed to be hints of her past attachment to me. I am Anna's fall back love interest, and when her relationships get rocky, she turns back to her fantasy about a romantic involvement with her psychiatrist. At the end of the session, Anna acted like a young girl, almost walking out petulantly and then finally requesting permission to leave.
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Thursday, March 19, 1998
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4 pm. Seventy-Third Session with Anna Green. While overtaxed at work with the demands of a big project, Anna is also trying to deal with the emotional tidal waves at home from both Martin and Kathy. It turns out that the test for Down's syndrome came back as negative. Kathy didn't abort the child because of a birth defect, as everyone suspected. Whatever her reasons are, they are not obvious. Anna had always maintained that it was the fact of her pregnancy which gave Kathy leverage in the relationship. Now, Martin confesses to having a murderous rage towards Kathy. He is adopting the conceit that he would have liked to have the baby if it wasn't defective. I'm not sure that's true, but perhaps Martin is using the fact of the abortion as an excuse to separate himself from the relationship. Anna believes that Kathy is interested in harming herself and desires to manipulate things in such a way as to end her life as a victim by Martin's hand. I'm not sure whether Anna really believes that's true, but she certainly feels that there is very little hope for their relationship, even though Martin is outwardly pretending that everything is fine and they are all just a happy little threesome. It sounds like Kathy has them both hostage--both Martin and Anna are afraid to leave because they worry about her reaction. Anna still maintains that her "four week resolution" is holding firm and that she plans to leave in three weeks if she can stand it that long. I worry about Anna and I really hope that she'll be able to keep her resolve and get out of this situation before something bad happens. I told her that I probably could find a good intervention program for Kathy if it becomes necessary.
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Thursday, March 26, 1998
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4 pm. Seventy-Fourth Session with Anna Green. Anna is still determined to end her relationship with Martin and Kathy in two weeks time. Although she's formed an intention to leave, she really hasn't taken any of the necessary steps--like informing Martin and Kathy, finding an alternative place to live, packing, or even making many of the emotional shifts that she'll need to make in her own psyche. She has been absorbed in some big, secret project at work which has enabled her to duck any real involvement with Martin and Kathy over the past week. Freedom through work--it sounds like a socialist slogan. Anna has been using her absorption in work to avoid even thinking about these issues. Anna said that if she thinks about leaving too much that she'll "flip out," and when I suggested that she might accelerate her time table, she expressed disbelief--that would mean that she would have to deal with these issues sooner rather than later. In some ways, Anna is living in fear. She describes having the symptoms of a panic reaction to hearing her telephone ring at work when she thinks it's a call from Kathy. But two weeks is almost upon us. She has this magic sense that somehow things will be better in two weeks. It felt more true, perhaps, when it was four weeks. I wonder if she'll start to panic by next week. Anna would like to keep her apartment and get Martin and Kathy to both move out, but she realizes that isn't likely. More important than keeping the apartment is ending the relationship, so Anna's promised to start looking for an alternative place to live. Anna told me that David, a programmer from work, expressed an interest in S&M, so she took him to a dungeon party. Apparently, David gets around. I think he was briefly involved with Sylvia Bows, if I'm not mistaken. But Anna's move was calculated, in a way, to get back to Martin. Here she was taking another man to an event in a community to which Martin belongs. He's bound to find out about it. Perhaps Anna felt that it was fair turnabout for Martin's supposed infidelities, but when she got to the dungeon party, she realized that the woman in the Martin's portrait that she showed me last week was a submissive and not a dominant. Clearly, Martin was not having sex with her, even if he might have stayed with her while trying to avoid Kathy. I was hoping that after the relationship with Martin broke up, Anna would separate herself from the S&M community completely. But it sounds like Anna has found that there's something there which she wants to experience more fully. Anna described experiencing a sexual charge derived from feeling like she has no control. I worry that when Anna is single again, she might seek out the dungeon scene as a social venue and as a way of feeling sexually desired. It's one thing for a woman who is sure of her own sexuality to explore S&M if that is what she desires. But Anna is sexually malleable and could easily be taken advantage of by an unscrupulous dominant. Martin protected Anna from much of this because they were a couple. If she is single and becomes part of the S&M scene as a submissive, she may be swallowed up whole.
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Thursday, April 2, 1998
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4 pm. Seventy-Fifth Session with Anna Green. Anna found that David wasn't a discrete confidant. He told everyone in her department about Anna's membership in the S&M club. Now Anna feels like she is considered the resident expert on whippings, body mutilation, and pleasure through pain. Her boss even had a concerned conversation with her and told her that he really didn't think that she should go in for that "I tie you up and have my way with you sex stuff." Anna is continuing with her plan to extricate herself from her relationship with Martin and Kathy. Although she hasn't told either of them about her plan, they both can tell that something is up. She told me that she feels that Kathy, in some strange way, is more upset about her leaving than Martin is. I would have expected Kathy to feel a sense of victory over her rival, but I remember that it was really Anna whom Kathy was sexually attracted to in the first place. It wasn't until Anna made it plain to Kathy that she wasn't interested in a homosexual relationship with her, that Kathy decided to compete with Anna for Martin. Now Anna is quite sanguine about Kathy's apparent victory. Except for a twinge of regret that Martin is able to say goodbye without really fighting for her, Anna is ready to cede the field to Kathy and wish them both the best, although she doesn't know if Martin and Kathy will stay together after she's gone.
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Thursday, April 16, 1998
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4 pm. Seventy-Sixth Session with Anna Green. Anna successfully moved out of the apartment leaving Martin and Kathy there by themselves. Her father hooked her up with a professor who was leaving on sabbatical to Europe for a semester and needed someone to housesit. So Anna is living in a nice house in Pacific Heights, rent free. The professor and his wife turned out to be a couple whom Anna knew from her S&M club. After he was assured that she wouldn't blow his cover, he showed Anna the dungeon which he has built into an in-law unit. Although I was hoping that Anna's experimentation with S&M would end once she broke up with Martin, she has no intention to stop and is looking forward to using her private dungeon. The move out itself was fairly uneventful. Martin was courteous, helpful, and emotionally cool. Anna was upset with his coolness and even fantasied about puncturing it somehow, which she was prevented from doing by the strategic presence of Carin and Greg. Kathy was very upset when Anna announced that she was moving out, but dealt with it by curling up in a fetal position and going catatonic, as Anna puts it. Anna doesn't even want Kathy to know her new address. Anna missed last week's session because she had a company paid vacation as a bonus for her work on the millennium bug program. She told me that she's become the resident expert on S&M and has the attention of the rest of the programming group, who are all male. Some of that attention, no doubt, has to do with the fact that Anna's S&M seminars are being held in a hot tub where they're all naked together. I'm sure all that rapt attention from the males that she works with is Anna's self-prescribed remedy for the emotional loss she feels after breaking up with her boyfriend. Now that she's single again, Anna offered to show me her breasts. She's reverting back to her pattern of expressing sexual interest in me whenever she is between serious love interests. My romantic feelings towards Anna, however, have never abated and are not variable, and I find myself continually fantasizing about consummating a physical relationship with her. Of course, I realize that it's only a fantasy ambition and can never be realized.
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Thursday, April 23, 1998
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4 pm. Seventy-Seventh Session with Anna Green. Anna, housesitting for her father's friend, is having difficulty making the house her own. She feels guilty if she moves a chair or rearranges the kitchen gadgets, but she feels resentful if she doesn't. I told her to go ahead and make the home hers--remembering that she can set things back the way they used to be when the owner's come back from Europe. She seemed to be looking for permission to do just that. Anna also has started to have imaginary conversations in her head again. When she first came to see me, it was soon after her breakup with Bill. Then, she was troubled with long-running imaginary conversations where she imagined Bill begging for forgiveness. Now, surprisingly, it isn't Martin who she's internalized in that manner. Rather, it's Kathy. I asked her about the tone of these conversations and Anna said that they are both confrontational and explanatory. Anna feels like she said everything that she had to say to Martin. Now, her relationship with Kathy is the one that doesn't feel like it's resolved. I suggested that Anna is using these imaginary conversations to help resolve this relationship. It is hard to remember that Kathy was a very important friend to Anna, prior to the time that they found themselves competing with each other for Martin's affections. Now that Martin is no longer an obstacle between them, Anna is somehow troubled by the loss of her friend. But Anna seems to be quickly forgetting all the agony that Kathy put her through. And I think it is interesting how little importance Anna really places on the loss of her relationship with Martin. He was always a lightweight in her affections, although the competition with Kathy gave him a great deal more importance than he deserved. Although Anna's sexual experiments with Kathy were disasterous, the emotional relationship with Kathy was really the paramount one in the three-way relationship they shared with Martin.
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Thursday, April 30, 1998
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4 pm. Seventy-Eighth Session with Anna Green. Anna discussed her difficulty in making the Professor's home her own. She seems to be having a great deal of trouble living in an environment that she can't fully control. That's somewhat surprising, because I never heard her complain about losing control in her apartment when she shared it with Martin and Kathy. Martin was a slob and Kathy obsessively cleaned so the apartment must have been in constant flux. Perhaps there, she ruled. She took my advice and had her parents for dinner at her new place--they stayed the night, in fact. While her father tried to run interference with her mother for Anna's benefit, her mother is anxious for Anna to get into another relationship quickly. Anna feels that her mother is disappointed in her. Her mother had certain expectations of how Anna's life was going to unfold, and those expectations haven't been met. At work, Anna is busy but not challenged. She was on the team that produced the SIIMole product, and now she is on the team responsible for customizing the application for every large corporation that wants a site license. She says that she's guaranteed work until she's eighty, but that she won't get to do anything fun ever again. Anna is still having imaginary conversations with Kathy, but she clearly didn't want to talk about them. She has had no closure with Kathy, and it is eating at her. She went back to Kathy's adult book store, half in hopes of seeing her there, I believe. She didn't. She went there nominally to buy a primer videotape on S&M that she could play at her dungeon party. She invited a group of the men she works with at SII to come to her dungeon and witness a paddling demonstration on David. David enthusiastically cooperated. It wasn't about S&M as much as it was about Anna's enjoyment of taking center stage. I think she really enjoys the shock value of S&M as much as any of the pain that she either inflicts or receives. But overall, Anna seemed lonely and a little depressed. She even hinted again at a relationship between us, which she only does when quite moody.
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Thursday, May 7, 1998
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4 pm. Seventy-Ninth Session with Anna Green. Kathy showed up on Anna's doorstep last Monday claiming that she had no other place to go and Anna is allowing her to stay in the house with her. I knew that Anna hadn't escaped all the emotional consequences of her threesome with Martin and Kathy, but I thought she had succeeded in physcially extricating herself from Martin and Kathy. But Kathy is manipulative and Anna is ripe for manipulation. The situation is dismal. Although Anna believes that Kathy is going to move out any day, the truth is that Kathy has no apartment, apparently has no money, and has no employment. Kathy doesn't want to face her family. Anna feels somewhat responsible for Kathy's problems with Martin. Kathy will ruthlessly exploit whatever sympathetic feelings that Anna has towards her. Anna says that Kathy has been having recurring nightmares since the abortion--horrors about dismembered babies. When Kathy sought sympathy from Martin, he was not helpful. But I remember that Martin was furious with Kathy when she had the abortion. He was shocked when he found out that the baby was not suffering from Down's syndrome. As I recall, Martin expressed that he was almost at the point of physical violence towards Kathy. Under those circumstances, Martin would not be likely to be helpful consoling Kathy over the emotional consequences of that particular decision. Anna doesn't like Martin now, and neither does Kathy. Together, in an interesting dynamic, they solidify and amplify each other's negative opinions.
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Thursday, May 14, 1998
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4 pm. Eightieth Session with Anna Green. Today we talked about the underpinnings of Anna's relationship with Kathy and, tangentially, with Martin. Although Kathy is clearly using Anna to help her now financially, Anna is also using Kathy in an attempt to feel superior to her. I pointed out how that's been a recurrent theme in her relationship with Kathy from the beginning--when Anna felt superior, she was able to be generous but when she did not, she had an uncontrollable desire to beat Kathy. Anna even considered marrying Martin merely to win in her battle with Kathy. I think that Anna might have agreed with some of what I said, although she still feels an inexplicable debt to Kathy, somehow. I urged Anna to move beyond this relationship, based as it was on assuaging Anna's generalized feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. At the end of the session, Anna told me that she was enjoying a substantial degree of additional popularity at work, primarily based upon exaggerated rumors of her sex life. She said that she likes the additional attention.
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Thursday, May 21, 1998
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4 pm. Eighty-First Session with Anna Green. Kathy is still living with Anna. Since they are living together, they've had an opportunity to become confidantes. They are close enough, in fact, for Kathy to make a confession to Anna. When Kathy got pregnant, it was not with Martin's child. Kathy confessed to a long-standing sexual relationship with a black man who was a dominant "slave master." Kathy described him as very powerful. After Kathy got involved with Anna and Martin, she decided not to have sex with this man anymore, but would still engage in S&M play with him. Apparently, similar expansions on the normal rules of monogamy are common among the S&M community. Kathy had a session with this guy sometime in late November. As she tells it now, he took her back to his place, and they had what Kathy described as an intense session together. When Kathy told him that she had to go, he wouldn't let her leave. Even though she repeatedly said that she had to go and was tired, he kept pressing her. Kathy said that she couldn't say no to this guy. They ended up with Kathy, terrified, first performing fellatio and then engaging in intercourse. Kathy said that it wasn't her idea, it just happened. Kathy has been avoiding him since. Anna described the incident as a rape, but I'm not sure if it meets a legal definition of rape. It seems a close call to me. Within the S&M community, the norm is that the parties will negotiate in advance the permissible activities within a session, but my understanding of the law respecting rape is that Kathy has to communicate her lack of consent. Since they previously had a sexual relationship, and since Kathy said she couldn't say no to this guy, I think it is possible that he didn't know that he didn't have at least her implicit consent to sex. While perhaps not meeting a legal definition of rape, I think what this guy did was outrageous. He clearly took advantage of Kathy and used her helplessness as his submissive to accomplish these sex acts. At any rate, Kathy had the amnio test and apparently it was fine--there was no indication that the baby had Down's syndrome. But she also found out through the child's blood type that Martin could not have been the father. She knew that the baby's coloration would reveal her infidelity if she gave birth, so she said that the baby had Down's syndrome and had an abortion. When Martin found out that the baby did not have Down's syndrome, he was furious that she had gone ahead with the abortion without consulting him. Kathy couldn't tell him the truth--at least that's what she thought. At the time, I thought Kathy's actions were bizarre--the baby seemed to be her route to power and aborting it when it didn't have Down's syndrome seemed contrary to her interests. Now I understand. Anna doesn't seem to see any need to tell Martin any of this, and Kathy told her about this in confidence. Indeed, Kathy is getting Anna more deeply involved in her mental landscape. Kathy is working on Anna's sympathies. Kathy's pain over the whole issue may be genuine, but the end result is that it will be much more difficult for Anna to separate herself from Kathy.
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Thursday, May 28, 1998
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4 pm. Eighty-Second Session with Anna Green. Kathy is a fixture in the house and is showing no particular interest in leaving. She has a plan to provide out-call dominatrix services, and wants Anna to go with her to her client's home or hotel room and provide security. Although Anna is malleable, I don't think she's likely to be that malleable. In fact, I think she's genuinely upset and doesn't know what to do. She offered to gift Kathy money to get her to move out, but Kathy espoused scruples against taking Anna's money, although she has no problem sponging off of Anna for her room and board. The professor's house that Anna is housesitting has a dungeon as an added feature. Anna came home early one day and found Kathy and a strange man leaving it. Kathy got paid $200 for her services abasing this guy. Anna was furious. The dungeon is supposed to be a secret, but now there are men out there thinking that it's a brothel. I found myself saying to Anna, "I told you so." But I quickly realized that wasn't very helpful. I'm afraid that I really don't have any idea how to get rid of Kathy now that she's so firmly entrenched.
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Thursday, June 4, 1998
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4 pm. Eighty-Third Session with Anna Green. During the last session, Anna was furious with Kathy because Kathy had used Anna's home address as part of her out-call dominatrix business. What Anna didn't realize is that Kathy also gave out her phone number in an advertisement with the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Anna discovered by accident that Kathy had been collecting the answering machine messages and then erasing them before Anna found out about them. Despite all of Anna's assurances to me that she would stay clear of Kathy's out-call dominatrix service, Anna did go when Kathy called her for assistance. Anna said that all she did was watch, but she described Kathy's dominatrix session in some detail. Apparently, Kathy went on a call and instead of the one man that she expected, she discovered a group of five. She got scared and called Anna to come and make sure that things didn't get out of control. Anna told me that Kathy was very good at what she did. By the time Anna arrived, Kathy had everyone tied up and was very much in charge of the situation. I was interested in what Anna's take on the S&M session would be. Anna was previously adamant about how dangerous and close to prostitution this business seemed to her. But Anna changed her tone considerably and talked about the session as if it was simply a private S&M party. Anna even said that she completely understood why some people would call for the services of a professional dominatrix instead of joining an S&M club--there's more privacy this way. Anna's attitude towards Kathy's work has fundamentally changed. She no longer sees it in the bad light of prostitution and female degradation. I can tell that she's intrigued by the business. I urged her to try to get Kathy out of her house and her life as soon as possible. Anna can be sucked under by someone like Kathy. Despite Anna's protestations that she's not that malleable, that's precisely the right adjective to describe her. Anna bends with the wind. Anna's parents want to come for a visit. Perhaps that event can serve as a deadline for Kathy's departure.
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Thursday, June 11, 1998
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4 pm. Eighty-Fourth Session with Anna Green. Kathy took the profits from her S&M out-call business and, without asking Anna, used it to buy a car. Anna points out that Kathy needs a car for her line of work, but I think it's outrageous that Kathy, who is supposed to be saving to afford a place to live on her own, would force Anna to subsidize her purchase in that manner. Kathy is clinging to Anna, and she isn't good for her. Anna is upset that Martin has taken up with a new girl--a secretary at SII. While Anna doesn't care who Martin is sleeping with, she feels jealous of the fact that he's back on his feet romantically while she isn't yet. We spent most of the session talking about how lonely Anna is. Anna is unable to kick-start her romantic life because Kathy is there, and Kathy is an influence towards S&M, which I don't think is what Anna needs right now. But Anna is considering "playing" with strangers in an S&M club just as a sexual outlet. I think it's really a mistake, but Anna assures me that she is mostly interested in passive voyeurism. Apparently, Anna found herself sexually excited by watching Kathy work over those five men. At the end of the session, I had a feeling that she had developed a plan that she is suppressing because she knows I won't like it. That has left me somewhat uneasy.
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Thursday, June 25, 1998
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4 pm. Eighty-Fifth Session with Anna Green. The saga with Kathy continues. Now Kathy is staying out all night and leaving Anna to wait for her in panic, fearful that she's been raped or murdered. When Kathy does come back, Anna thinks that she's in "bottom space"--distinctly different from her attitude when she comes back from a professional dominatrix session. Kathy denies it. Kathy always says that she understands and that, next time, she'll call before staying out all night. But she never does. Although Anna told me that Kathy was never an effective dominatrix for her, Kathy still prominently features in Anna's sexual adventures. Anna said that she went to an S&M club by herself, but she felt the uneasiness that goes with being the only gazelle amongst a pride of lions. She had the presence of mind to get out of there. Anna said that she was able to fulfill some of her S&M yearnings by accompanying Kathy to a session where she was hired to dominate four women simultaneously. Anna was just there to watch and masturbate. Too much of Anna's life revolves around Kathy. When Kathy moved in, it started as a violation of her physical space. Then Kathy started using Anna's house as her place of business. Kathy started getting Anna to act as security for some of her out-calls. Now, Anna is actually seeking sexual fulfillment using Kathy's professional activities as an outlet. Anna's unique ability to mold her sexuality to fit her circumstances seems to be prominently featured in her current life circumstances yet again.
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Thursday, July 2, 1998
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4 pm. Eighty-Sixth Session with Anna Green. A young man of about 18 named Peter, who was one of Kathy's regular customers, killed himself on Saturday. Kathy had seen him on Monday and had run through a dominance script of Peter's creation pursuant to his standing instructions. Kathy thought Peter was depressed generally and, several weeks before, she had refused to service him. But during the last session, she felt that nothing much was out of the ordinary. She debased him, he paid her, and she left. Five days later, he's dead. He wrote a note to his parents and then threw himself off the building in which he lived. The police called Kathy, presumably because they found her number among his personal effects, and they interviewed both Kathy and Anna. Anna was very straightforward in her interview, withheld nothing, and told them what she knew. Anna is Kathy's alibi for the actual time of Peter's death. The police seemed satisfied and they left. Although Anna describes Kathy as "freaked," she defends Kathy's activities and says that Kathy has no plans to quit. But I'm amazed at the blithe way in which people like Kathy ply through the deepest emotional waters. Kathy has no substantial understanding of the tremendous emotions which can be unleashed while someone is in "bottom space." I've heard of submissives who erupt in a murderous rage or become catatonic because of a crushing depression. Kathy is unequipped to assist her clients through these strong emotions. Primarily, she's in it for the money. I'd expect having a client commit suicide would serve as a wake-up call, but Kathy isn't answering the phone. Anna went to another of Kathy's sessions--this time as a videographer. A couple hired Kathy to dominate them and force them to have sex with each other while Anna recorded the session on video. Anna enjoyed it and said that she is able to satisfy most of her sexual needs by acting as a passive observer. However, she still wants to feel powerless during sex--she just says that she's waiting for the right guy.
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Wednesday, July 8, 1998
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6:10 pm. Telephone Conversation with Anna Green. Anna told me a grizzly story about Kathy being bound, beaten, and orally raped by one of her tricks. Kathy is currently hospitalized and Anna is shaken. Anna is Kathy's safety net, so when she didn't call after a session, Anna called the hotel front desk. They went to the room and found Kathy unconscious. The hotel called an ambulance and I assume they called the police. Anna saw Kathy at the hospital. Kathy was unintelligible given the extent of injury to her mouth. Anna was given a single dose of Valium at some point during the day's ordeal. She wants to go home and sleep now, but thinks that she should spend tomorrow with Kathy rather than come in for her session. Anna did indicate that the police have taken a strong interest in this case. They seem inclined to try to link it, in some way, with the recent suicide of Kathy's client that Anna told me about last week. Martin was also there and he was also questioned by police.
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Thursday, July 16, 1998
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4 pm. Eighty-Seventh Session with Anna Green. Anna was very tired and confused today. She feels that everyone is angry with her. While Kathy's Aunt Helen appears to understand what really happened between Kathy and Anna, Kathy's grandmother apparently is on a vendetta against Anna. She feels that Anna, to get her debt repaid, forced Kathy into working as an out call dominatrix. She had a vicious fight with Anna in the hospital, and now Anna feels that the doctors and nurses there believe that she is Kathy's pimp. Anna is not free to visit Kathy at the hospital any more. And the police are apparently investigating along similar lines: they keep asking Anna questions about whether or not she had a percentage of Kathy's business. The police know that Anna went along with Kathy to two sessions. They keep pressing Anna on whether or not she became sexually aroused while watching. I can't imagine what any of that has to do with an investigation purportedly trying to determine the identity of Kathy's assailant. It seems that the police are using this incident as a way to pry open a window into the S&M community in San Francisco. They probably view Anna and Kathy as key players--it doesn't help that Anna is living in a house with a built-in dungeon. I'm sure the professor is not going to be pleased when he gets back from Europe and finds the police so interested in his house's special features. The police have asked Anna to go with an undercover officer to some S&M event that is happening in an alley in San Francisco on July 26th. Apparently, the police feel that Anna will be more readily able than they to get information about the assailant from the S&M community. Anna is unsure and I urged her not to make a decision one way or the other until our session next week. Kathy herself is not doing anything to allay suspicions against Anna. She's acting rather ambivalently, not as Anna's champion in any way. She wrote Anna that she should be happy because at last she has what she wants--Kathy has moved out. While this might not have been the best circumstance to result in Kathy's exit, I'm very happy that she's gone from the house. Anna is unable to sleep and I think she hasn't eaten. I urged her to go home and do both.
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Thursday, July 23, 1998
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4 pm. Eighty-Eighth Session with Anna Green. Anna was a lot more focused than she was during our last session. I think that she used the week to get some sleep and gain some perspective on her current situation. However, she's clearly not out of the woods yet. She's lost weight and she seems to be using work as a means to exhaust herself into sleep. She has returned to work after a long conversation with her boss, Julian. He seemed understanding and apparently met Anna's revelations with humor. Kathy has been released from the hospital and has given several statements to the police. Anna doesn't know what Kathy said, but she suspects that Kathy did nothing to try to clear her--the police searched her house again--this time taking the fetishistic shoes Martin gave her--and they've subjected Anna to withering interrogation. I suggested that Anna seek the advice of an attorney, but Anna rejected the suggestion. She said that if she got an attorney, the police would think she was guilty of something. I suspect that attitude helps the police obtain many of the confessions they secure. Anna is frightened. She's scared of the police and scared of the S&M community. She dreads the assignment that's been thrust on her of trying to pump information out of the S&M community during the Dore Alley event this Sunday. I told her that she could refuse to go, but Anna feels that, by cooperating with the police at this event, she can resolve the sense of guilt she feels towards what happened to Kathy. She's also hoping to put to rest some of the police suspicion that she's under. Anna said that she may have told the police quite a lot about the seamier side of SII's corporate culture, including the now forbidden practice of programmers renting porno movies and playing them in the office late at night. She also told the police about the S&M outing she arranged for the men in her department and the nocturnal sexual activity that sometimes occurs in the programmers' lounge. I have to say that the picture is somewhat grim from an outsider's point of view, although I can't imagine why the police would be particularly interested in any of this, or in investigating the S&M community as a whole rather than in connection with a particular crime.
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Thursday, August 6, 1998
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4 pm. Eighty-Ninth Session with Anna Green. Anna didn't show up last week because of a business trip to New York that she thought she'd told me about. A week ago Sunday, she went to the Dore Alley event with a couple of detectives dressed in leather pants with open bottoms. Anna was supposed to be seen with these guys playing the part of their slave, so that later they would be accepted as a legitimate part of the S&M community. She only went to the event for about an hour. She described the Dore Alley event as a somewhat tame social venue, except for the dress and the props of the participants. Anna also had a conversation with her father which was heavily edited for his consumption. But the upshot is that her father views her as a hero for befriending Kathy in her hour of need and then for assisting the police in their investigation. Her father's view of Anna's actions are in sharp contrast to the opinion of Anna held by Kathy's grandmother. It's interesting that the same basic facts lead to two totally divergent views. Her father hooked her up with a friend who's a lawyer. The three of them spoke in a conversation that, since her father was present, probably wasn't covered by attorney-client privilege. But Anna told the lawyer less than she told her father--and she's told the police everything already, anyway. The lawyer recommended that she not allow herself to be pressured by the police, and if anything made her uncomfortable, to request an attorney. Anna was touched by her father's concern and she likes that he has cast her in the role of a hero.
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Thursday, August 13, 1998
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4 pm. Ninetieth Session with Anna Green. Anna has been suffering from difficulty in initiating sleep. Apparently, it's been going on for some time and she looks physically exhausted. She's also becoming depressed and somewhat despondent because she isn't currently in a relationship and has been functionally celibate for the last seven months. Anna was asked to participate in a police line-up. She thought she recognized two of the participants from S&M events. While the police have been quite close-lipped to Anna herself, her father seems to be getting more information. He was told about the incident in late June where a young man committed suicide about a week after a session where Kathy played the dominatrix for money. Apparently, the police suspect that Kathy's assailant may be the young man's father. Although I didn't speak to Anna about any of this, I find that theory somewhat unlikely, unless the grieving father was predisposed to sex crimes generally. A simple assault or even murder would be more likely than the crime Kathy suffered, if revenge and anger were the motive. Although rapists' motivations are complex and not easily generalized, rape is not often a crime of anger or revenge. Although Anna has been less than fully truthful with her father, he has now taken on a very active role, which Anna welcomes. He is communicating with the police regarding the investigation, and he has notified his friend, the professor, who owns the house that Anna is living in, about recent events in his home. Anna told me that most of the professor's prized collection of S&M paraphernalia has been confiscated by the police. The professor and his wife have decided to extend their European tour to avoid coming back in the middle of the police's investigation. Anna fell back on her old habit of making sexual overtures towards me when she feels unhappy with her current romantic situation. But they were half-hearted. Given her current situation, Anna is unlikely to make a connection with a man who'd be particularly good for her. Although I offered to prescribe some sleeping aid, Anna refused.
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Thursday, August 20, 1998
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4 pm. Ninety-First Session with Anna Green. Anna had a long conversation with Martin about their relationship. Although I don't trust his motives, it seemed to be good for Anna. As Anna sees it, Martin was trying to apologize. That kind of closure is very important to her. She didn't have it with Bill, and when she first came to see me, she was having endless imaginary conversations with him. I think that her opportunity to do a post mortem on her relationship with Martin will diminish her need to obsess about what happened in that relationship later. Anna said that she now understands that it would never have worked out between Martin and herself, even without Kathy's destructive influence. However, I'm not sure she's really internalized that concept and I'm quite sure that she hasn't communicated that thought to Martin. He's working in the Future Technology department of SII on some Brave New World project involving implanting electronic identity tags into employees for the purpose of triggering electronic devices, and opening doors. I hope I don't betray a certain distaste for technology in general by revealing that I instinctively dislike the idea. But Anna would like to work on that project and Martin is holding out the prospect of a transfer to his department like it was a carrot. Anna told me that Martin didn't initiate the post-relationship conversation until after he broke up with his latest girlfriend. I'm not sure what his aim is, but I suspect that it has to do with getting back together with her.
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Thursday, September 10, 1998
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4 pm. Ninety-Second Session with Anna Green. Will it never end? Just when I thought Kathy was finally out of Anna's life forever, the saga of Kathy continues. Kathy had been staying at her Aunt Helen's house. She was there at breakfast, but by lunchtime she had vanished. That wouldn't be all that strange if it weren't for the fact that the window to Kathy's bedroom had been forced from the outside. So Kathy is gone, although the room is immaculate. No note, no nothing. The police believe that she may have been abducted, and Anna thinks that she may be next. To make matters more emotionally volatile, Martin has moved in with Anna for "protection." Anna is a wreck. She's sucking down incredible quantities of caffeine and sugar and then dealing with her inability to sleep by smoking marijuana at night. She's also compulsively twitching and picking--her cuticles are a bloody mess. Her father tried to get the police to watch Anna's house for protection, and they refused. Either they are remarkably unresponsive, or they are watching the house anyway, but don't want Anna to know about it. Perhaps they're using Anna as bait in a trap. Either way, I'm unhappy about it. I'd really like Anna to get away from Martin and the house and go stay with a friend--perhaps Carin and Greg would take her in. Anna was also spooked by my absence over the last couple of weeks. When I told her it was necessitated by my father's stroke, she felt guilty for lashing out at me. Anna also told me that she got the transfer she sought at work into Martin's department. Now Anna is working with the futurists at SII.
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Thursday, September 24, 1998
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4 pm. Ninety-Third Session with Anna Green. Kathy is still missing, and no one has any idea where she's gone. Anna has lost quite a bit of weight and seems to be getting sick with increasing frequency. I'm worried and I told her so. She just shrugged off my concerns. Anna told me about her new work in the Futurist department at SII. Apparently, there is a very laissez faire attitude towards sex in her new department--the notion is that a high intellect somehow trumps old fashioned notions of conventional morality. They are taking a voyeuristic field trip to a motel in Oakland where the custom, when engaging in sexual activity in one of the rooms, is to leave the blinds up for the entertainment of the other guests. And Anna was apparently well briefed on the story of Sylvia Bows which is now common knowledge, apparently. She gave me quite an accurate rundown on the bare facts, including a little positive review on Sylvia's sexual prowess. Actually, most of what Anna told me about the Futurist Department revolved around a recreation that they share--spreading false rumors on the Internet for fun. Apparently, Lloyd is actively involved and encourages this. So they've made up a plausible yet fictional story which has Hillary Clinton seeking a form of perverse revenge against her husband because of his repeated infidelities and lies to her. Their story is that after Bill told Hillary that he hadn't done anything improper with either Paula Jones or Monica Lewinsky, Hillary forced Bill deeper into the morass by vigorously encouraging him to repeat his denials to the American people and in his deposition testimony, even though she knew he would be commiting perjury. Anna went into great detail about how Hillary controlled Bill's legal team and could decide not to settle with Paula Jones, etc. I couldn't see how any of this had anything to do with Anna herself, but she was captivated by the story and wouldn't be detered from telling it. Near the end of the session, Anna disturbed me by volunteering information about her new relationship with Martin. Although they're not currently having sex, he's living with her in an intimate way and it seems likely that they'll soon renew their relationship. He's cleverly avoiding pressing the issue, but I'm fairly confident that Anna's reservations about getting back together with Martin will soon be breached. Obviously, I'm not thrilled by that prospect.
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Thursday, October 1, 1998
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4 pm. Ninety-Fourth Session with Anna Green. Anna went with the SII Futurists group to a sexually-oriented motel catering to voyeurs and exhibitionists. It sounded like a strip club with a participatory bent. Anna found it erotic and said that she would like to go back with a lover. She's been sick and is taking antibiotics which have triggered a yeast infection. We segued from a conversation about her gynecological problems into the revelation that she's having sex with Martin. She says that she's not back together with him, they're just having sex with each other to take the edge off. Anna argued that this was a good move for her--she said that she can now approach other relationships calmly without jumping into bed with the wrong man just because she was starved for sex. Of course, I think that her renewed intimacy with Martin is going to get her right back into that relationship. I don't think that Martin is there to provide protection any longer--she's no longer really afraid Kathy's abductor is also seeking her--she's just using safety as an excuse to keep Martin around. I'm disappointed, but there's not much I can really do--Anna already attributes my negative reaction towards Martin as an expression of jealousy. Although I'm quite convinced that Martin is not the man for her, I'm not certain that she's completely wrong about me.
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Thursday, October 8, 1998
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4 pm. Ninety-Fifth Session with Anna Green. Anna's father hired a detective to watch Anna's house and the detective had little to report except for the fact that Martin was living there. I remember, when Anna was trying to convince me that it was a good idea for Martin to live with her, Anna told me that her father approved of the arrangement. Apparently, Anna overstated his position. Her father thought she should take in a roommate. Anna neglected to tell him which roommate she'd chosen. Anna's father blames Martin for much of what happened, and so when he found out that Martin was staying with Anna, he was very upset. He came down, surprised them late at night, and forced Martin out. He stayed the weekend to be sure that he was really gone. Anna told me how she felt it was for the best, and how she was ready to move on with her life...but it all sounded a bit rehearsed. I called her on it, and she admitted that she had practiced the session in her head. I think that she feels it necessary to justify her actions to her father and to me, and she's not above telling us what she thinks is necessary to win our approval.
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Thursday, October 22, 1998
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4 pm. Ninety-Sixth Session with Anna Green. Anna is still seeing Martin, although she insists that he's just a friend. They're going to a Halloween party tonight--the Exotic Erotic Ball--and again next week. The one next week is at the S&M club that she used to frequent with Martin and Kathy. Anna says that she's going because it turns her on. Anna told me that she's angry at her father because he broke his promise to her and told her mother everything that the detective learned. Her mother called in tears, and now Anna feels that she has to travel to Davis to mollify her. We spoke quite a bit about Anna's changing needs in a romantic partner. She feels pressure to get married from her parents, her friends and, when she's being honest, from herself. Anna feels that she's getting old, now that she's approaching thirty, and that she sizes up each male acquaintance to see what kind of husband they'd make.
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Thursday, November 5, 1998
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4 pm. Ninety-Seventh Session with Anna Green. Anna told me that she went to the S&M Halloween party with Martin and saw Gray there. Gray was the "whip master" who Kathy introduced to Anna when Anna was seeking to learn the "pleasures of pain." I was very upset at the time, and as I recall, Gray took advantage of Anna's submission and got her to perform sexual acts on him for which she hadn't bargained. But Gray, apparently, still holds some form of power over Anna. She describes feeling that power just by having him look at her. She reluctantly watched a scene that Gray put on at the S&M club which involved three submissives. Although one bound, bald, and masked woman seemed familiar, it wasn't until Martin joined her and recognized Kathy that Anna also placed her. Anna thinks that Kathy might have been living as Gray's sex slave for the past six months, and she also thinks that Gray might have been the person who assaulted her in the hotel room, although that would mean that Kathy would have lied about not recognizing her assailant. Neither Martin nor Anna approached Kathy or Gray at the party. Both are afraid of Gray. But after they went home, they called the detective investigating Kathy's disappearance. He wanted evidence, which they didn't have, and he wanted information on Gray's whereabouts, which they also didn't have. The detective had Martin and Kathy go to a series of S&M Halloween gatherings looking for a repeat appearance by Gray and his slaves, but they didn't see them again. I certainly don't think it's in Anna's best interest to come in contact with either Kathy or Gray again.
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Thursday, November 12, 1998
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4 pm. Ninety-Eighth Session with Anna Green. Anna complained of a persistent headache that she got by going to loud S&M clubs this week. She's going at the request of the San Francisco Police, posing as a submissive to Officer Trevor's dominant. Apparently, they're continuing their investigation into Kathy's disappearance and they now believe that she's with Gray, as Martin and Anna reported earlier. I'm not sure why they are continuing to investigate--I would expect the police to assume that Kathy's there of her own free will and let it go at that. The police got Lloyd Major's permission for Anna to be involved in their investigation, and he immediately pumped Anna for information about the details. Apparently, the fact that Anna is assisting the police in an investigation into her ex-roommates disappearance is now common knowledge around SII. Anna went into some detail about the seamy underbelly of the S&M haunts which she's been frequenting. Her role, apparently, is to provide window-dressing to allow Trevor to be convincing in his undercover identity as a top.
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Thursday, November 19, 1998
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6:30 pm. Telephone Conversation with Anna Green. Anna didn't show up for her session and then she called me later and wanted to talk. She told me that she engaged in S&M play with Trevor because the circumstances of their stake-out work demanded it. They were in a small S&M group with Gray, who was alone. Gray asked Trevor for permission to play with Anna, which Trevor denied, thank god. But Anna believes that it would have been awkward for them to just sit and watch the others. So they had to put on a show. Anna found herself trussed up with Trevor whipping her lightly--too lightly for Gray's taste. But I was surprised when Anna confessed that she found the situation highly erotic, although also nightmarish. Gray wasn't wearing much, and Anna saw him become erect. The tension between Trevor and Anna afterwards was extreme. Trevor has tried to apologize for what happened, but Anna is too upset to consider his apology. Anna's primary emotion is embarrassment: she's embarrassed because Trevor must have noticed how excited she became when he whipped her. She doesn't feel that she can work with him again. I urged Anna to spend some time getting some perspective on things. I suspect that Trevor is grateful that Anna didn't blow his cover. Anna's reaction seemed extreme, and she ascribed it to Gray's presence. Perhaps that heightened the tension, but I'm beginning to suspect that Anna's interest in S&M isn't solely in response to the desires of others as I had previously believed. But, in some respects, this is the ideal "play acting" S&M scene for Anna--playing the submissive to a dominant who really wasn't and who knew that she was playing a part. All of that was heightened by a receptive audience leering at her. We'll have to sort her true feelings out. I don't want her to believe that she's an S&M devotee, if really she's nothing more than an exhibitionist.
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Thursday, December 3, 1998
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4 pm. Ninety-Ninth Session with Anna Green. Anna is slipping into a relationship with her police officer friend Trevor and she barely notices. It sounds like he's courting her more than currying her favor for a police investigation. He calls her every day and he went up to her parents place to gain their support. Anna said that he made her out to be a hero to runaway minors caught in a web of sexual misconduct, and she said that she liked being portrayed that way to her parents. She said that they are both proud of her now. If Anna is to start a relationship with this policeman, she should do it with her eyes wide open rather than following her customary pattern of slipping into something desired by someone else. Anna told me that she's studying physics as part of her continuing education at the futurists group. She told me something about a theory advanced by a friend of Lloyd's which ended up winning the friend the Nobel Prize in Physics. Anna said that it had something to do with fractional charges on electrons and said that it could help further miniaturize electronic gadgetry. I understood none of it. Apparently, Lloyd is going to Sweden for the medal ceremony.
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Wednesday, December 9, 1998
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4 pm. Telephone Conversation with Ms. Anna Green. Anna called me to cancel her session for both this week and the next. She was calling from Martin's room at the hospital. Apparently, Martin has been suffering from a flu which advanced into a severe middle ear infection. After a painful night, which included rupturing both his eardrums, Anna brought him to the emergency room. He's been placed on IV antibiotics and made comfortable with pain killers. Anna said that she was insisting that Martin be released to her care when he's sent home from the hospital tomorrow. Anna was clearly nervous when talking to me, which I ascribed to her concern about my reaction to what appeared to be another attempt to form a romantic relationship with Martin. But that wasn't it. Instead, Anna is succumbing to the continuous attentions of Officer Trevor. Under the guise of "rehearsing" their S&M routine together, Trevor and Anna reassembled her professor's dungeon and then had a practice session together. During the preparations for the session, Trevor became aroused, and Anna noticed his tumescence. He apologized, but Anna, trying to play it cool, said that it made their performance that much more believable. Anna obviously became sexually aroused during the S&M scene that they played out--I believe more so because Anna knew that Trevor was aroused although he was only playing a part and not a true S&M devotee. Anna is falling into her standard pattern of bending her own desires to the will of a partner, all the while pretending that those desires are her own. Anna was clearly upset that we were not going to have a session together for two months, and so am I. I tried to suggest that we find a way to meet over the next two weeks, but Anna deflected my suggestion. She's going to Tahoe next week with "some friends" and says that she can't come in at all anytime before I leave. The telephone call ended abruptly because Martin's doctor arrived and Anna had to hang up.
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Thursday, February 11, 1999
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4 pm. One Hundredth Session with Anna Green. It was our 100th session together, and although it is just a numeric boundary, it felt significant to me. It also clearly had significance for Anna. She came in bearing a cake, champagne, and balloons in an effort to create a celebratory air. It was good to see her after such a long absence, and she seemed glad to see me as well. But the celebratory mood soon took a turn towards the dark side, as Anna asked me about my father and then ruminated about the differences for a child between having a parent suddenly die and watching a parent slowly decline. Not only was this subject particularly painful for me, but I also believed Anna was using it as an excuse to talk about my feelings and problems rather than hers. I told Anna that I was unwilling to continue talking about this, and laid my unwillingness to proceed on my personal sensitivity to the topic. She acquiesced. During Anna's probing, she told me of the transition she felt as she discovered that her father wasn't omnipotent. She made that discovery quite late--at fifteen. Anna also averred that it would be easier for her to lose her mother than her father. Anna was clearly uncomfortable with that realization. We then moved on to Anna's time in Tahoe. She didn't go there with her "friends" as I believe she told me during our last conversation. It was with Trevor. She describes him now as a friend and as a lover. And during that trip--but after he had sexually consummated their relationship--Trevor informed Anna that he loved her but that he was currently married and living with his wife. He also told her that he no longer loved his wife and was planning on separating some time in the near future. Anna was furious with Trevor. But now, after a few months have elapsed, she is finding herself willing to overlook the fact of his marriage. I see Anna falling into her familiar pattern of malleability--in this case, she's willing to remake her own strongly felt moral convictions because someone else wants her to. When Trevor told Anna that he loved her, he pressed the button that triggers Anna's willingness to do back flips to try to remain an object worthy of love. Time and time again, I've seen Anna willing to remake herself so that she met someone else's expectations and desires. And now, it's for Trevor. Anna told me that she has strong feelings for Trevor now, although she's not sure she's in love with him. But if she spends any time with him, his desire for her will spawn a belief within herself that she's in love with him, regardless of whether it's actually true. And, of course, my own feelings for Anna, which have not diminished, have me cuckolded from the sidelines, able to do nothing but jeer at the participants.
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Wednesday, February 17, 1999
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7:30 pm. Telephone Conversation with Anna Green. Anna called me late to tell me that she isn't coming to our session tomorrow. She has been asked to stay late at work. But she also told me that she burned her hands--apparently she absentmindedly tried to pick up a hot roasting pan straight from the oven without using gloves. It sounds like she has second degree burns over at least part of both hands. I told her to go to the emergency room but she declined, so I gave her some first aid tips. She said that Trevor is with her and that he'll take care of her, if need be. I note that Anna seems to have overcome her scruples against the fact that he's a married man.
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Thursday, February 25, 1999
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4 pm. One Hundred and First Session with Anna Green. Anna seemed a bit testy during today's session. Martin has a new hobby: a fashion designer for S&M fashions. Anna, evidently Martin's favorite mannequin, has agreed to be his model at some S&M fashion event. But there wasn't a lot of time to prepare, so Anna went with Martin to hobby and leather shops to buy the materials needed to produce the garments. That raised Trevors' jealousy. Anna feels that it is unreasonable for Trevor to be jealous of Martin because they aren't doing anything inappropriate. She also objects to the apparent double standard, as Trevor goes home to have sex with his wife. Trevor has forbidden Anna to speak about this issue--he says that it just makes it more painful for him. He also has some mysterious reason why he's delaying his promised separation from his wife, and tells Anna that she has to wait a few more months. Anna is jealous, although she's repressed it. She feels guilty at feeling jealous--after all, that's the deal one makes when having an affair with someone who's married. But Trevor is extremely closed-mouthed about the circumstances of his family life. Anna doesn't even know if he has kids. She's rifled his pockets and looked through his wallet without discovering any evidence of kids, if they exist. Anna wasn't interested on my advice about her affair with a married man--she cut me off several times when she thought I was going in that direction. I think Anna's strategy is fundamentally one of denial--to try not to think about it too much.
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Thursday, March 4, 1999
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4 pm. One Hundred and Second Session with Anna Green. After all this time, Kathy called Anna. She told Anna that she hadn't called in the past because she knew that Anna was cooperating in the police investigation, and she also knew that Anna's phone was tapped. I was unaware of that, but Anna confirmed that it had been tapped, with her consent. Kathy was not kidnapped that night from her Aunt's house. In fact, Kathy left notes for Anna and for her Aunt. Anna surmised that Kathy's Aunt destroyed the notes. She wanted the police to find out where Kathy had gone, and realized that if she was an adult "runaway" who voluntarily left, the police would have done nothing. By destroying the notes, she turned Kathy's voluntary departure into a kidnapping. Kathy has been living as Gray's sex slave, and although Anna can't understand it, Kathy says taht she likes living that way. Kathy tried to explain it to Anna--she said that she no longer had to take any responsibility for the details of her life. She said that it felt as if a great burden had been lifted from her shoulders because she is free of worry and responsibility. She describes it as being given a greater freedom than that which she has given up. Anna said that she was upset thinking of Kathy living in that way, and I have to agree. Anna also agreed to keep her conversation with Kathy secret from Trevor and from Martin. She told me that she's been seeing a lot of Martin in preparation for the realization of his ambitions as an S&M fashion designer. That has raised Trevor's jealousy. But Anna retaliates by reminding Trevor of the fact that he's going home to his wife, leaving her alone. Trevor's wife had a painful episode with an ovarian cyst, and Trevor stayed with her and was unwilling to proceed with his plans to separate. Anna realizes that Trevor is unlikely to be so solicitous when it is Anna who requires his attention.
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Notes on Anna Green, 7/15/96 to 3/31/97
Anna Green's Patient File
