Serena wasn’t usually self-conscious when it came to sitting around with her vagina on view for everyone to see, but there was something intangible about this clinic that unnerved her. No one was being judgemental, in fact it was just the opposite as the nurse and doctor were thoroughly scrupulous in their attitude towards her. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it and the feeling niggled away.
So far she had been subjected to an internal swab and the extraction of a vial full of blood from a troublesome vein. She’d been told the results wouldn’t be available straight away. Even in this era it still took time for an analysis to be carried out, a letter to be typed, printed and posted. The clinic promised to be fast, but it would be days before the assessment dropped through her letterbox and Serena would know whether she was free of sexually-transmitted diseases or not.
It was (literally) a hard fact that Serena had shagged a large number of men. The vast majority of her partners had refused to wear condoms and she hadn’t argued with them because she didn’t like the horrible insensitive things either (or the condoms). However, she wasn’t worried. It’s not that she didn’t care; she simply knew her mind would report on any viral incursions. Besides her intellectual belief, there were no physical telltale signs such as an itch or inflammation and all in all she felt entirely healthy.
However, the adult sex film industry (as it quaintly called itself) had become self-regulating of late. As always seemed to be the way, the problem had first arisen in the United States where an HIV-infected performer had temporarily shut down the lucrative business — the impact on earning potential meant testing and certification of performers became an absolute. No test and no pass meant no work, unless you were prepared to partake in under-the-counter productions which had their own risks. Typically they attracted the really sleazy actors and she absolutely didn’t need to shag that type. There were plenty of bars in Margate where she could pick up far rougher men that had proper drug habits.
The nurse waited for her as she dressed behind a gauze screen. Once fully-clothed she led her through to see Dr Hasp, the only noise the efficient-sounding rap of the nurse’s heels on the tiled floor. When she entered the doctor’s office Serena saw the rear of a wiry, grey-haired man seated at a desk, writing. As she stood uncertainly in the doorway she cast an appraising eye around the rest of the room. Unlike every other practitioner’s surgery she had been into the office was conspicuously tidy. There was no pile of patient records, no tumble of medical magazines, no box of kids’ toys — Serena couldn’t imagine a parent bringing a child somewhere like this.
“Sit down would you, please, Miss, er, Serena.” Hasp indicated an empty leather seat ninety degrees to the desk, his back still to her. Serena blushed slightly at the obvious disbelief the doctor showed in her alias.
He must see loads like me, she thought. Every single day, liar after liar after liar.
Serena sat as bidden and demurely crossed her legs. She reclined slightly, forcing herself to look more relaxed than she actually felt, trying to crush the blush. Finally Hasp shuffled the papers into a neat pile, capped his Cross fountain pen then slipped it into his shirt pocket. He twisted in his chair and took her in with an emotionless expression.
“It’s just Serena, Doctor.”
“How are you feeling Serena?” Hasp asked a second later, steepling his fingers as he awaited her reply.
She paused, momentarily held by Hasp’s eyes, which were wide and unblinking, intense, deep pools which seemed to draw her in, suck her dry. They were bad fucking news. People with secrets didn’t like to be analysed and Serena had plenty she wanted to keep private. She wondered whether the Hippocratic oath extended to sex doctors.
“Fine,” she eventually lied.
“Good, good.” Hasp removed the pen from his shirt pocket and tapped it on the paper atop his OCD-clean desk. “You filled in a questionnaire when you first arrived.”
Serena nodded. She remembered the long list of questions like:
Has sex become the most important thing in your life? Yes.
Do you often find yourself preoccupied with sexual thoughts? Yes.
Do you ever feel bad about your sexual behaviour? Yes.
Have you attempted to stop some parts of your sexual behaviour? No!!!
Has anyone in your family ever been hurt by your sexual behaviour? No (James was away too much to be aware of what was going on...I think).
Do you ever think of your sexual behaviour being stronger than you are? Yes (thankfully).
And so on, for about fifty questions of an increasingly destructive nature, signifying behaviour on cruising, dogging and prostitution. She found it a little scary. Was this the path she was doomed to follow? She told herself not. But she also knew that addicts were good at kidding themselves, then kidded herself she was nothing of the sort.
“Do you consider yourself an addict, Serena?” Hasp said, taking off his wire-rimmed glasses and putting them on the desk.
“I can’t go a day without coffee,” she joked. Hasp smiled thinly.
“This is what we call the Sexual Addiction Screening Test,” Hasp said, like it was an everyday thing.
“Oh.” Serena inexplicably felt a weight drop inside. All her repressed feelings of guilt and shame from the dubious encounter with Handsome Guy on the train geysered up to the surface again and she felt herself blush anew.
“We use SAST to help in the assessment of sexually compulsive behaviour,” Hasp said. He seemed to favour drip-feeding little titbits of information, like they were hard-to-digest lumps of factual gristle.
Serena shifted in her seat. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“That’s often the trouble,” Hasp replied with a slight tilt of his head. “A high SAST score is a leading indicator of being a sexual addict.”
“Wow.” Serena decided she preferred it when Hasp was being obtuse but now the genie was out of the bottle her head swirled with the implications.
The doctor passed over her score sheet. Serena’s hand shook slightly as she took the pages filled with narrow point text. Right at the top was a chart, the single bar stretched well into the red, which Serena assumed wasn’t good. She rated a 9.0 on the sexual Richter scale, a destructive force to say the least. She flipped through the pages until she reached the last one. It appeared to be a certificate with her name in large, bold characters and underneath the pronunciation:
ADDICT
It felt like a penal (rather than penile) sentence and she shuddered with the implication. She thought she could hear Hasp talking again so she forced herself back to the surface of her consciousness.
Hasp was saying, “…of course this doesn’t mean you are categorically a sex addict.”
Ha! Serena laughed to herself.
“I would like to make a further appointment with you. We have an additional, deeper assessment called SARA, the Sexual Addiction Risk Assessment, which we can undertake.”
“And how will this help me?” Serena was beginning to feel a little bruised with the doctor’s relentless onslaught.
“It’s a personal profile. It identifies your type of addiction and the risks you might be running. From this we can develop a plan of treatment,” Hasp said, handing over his business card. “Give me a call to set something up. But I must warn you, it isn’t a cheap process. I would need to see you on several occasions.”
Money. Everything was always down to fucking money. Serena hardened immediately. She stood quickly.
“May I keep this?” She waved the paper around. She was a bomb primed and ready to go off.
“Of course.” Hasp looked a little taken aback by her sudden shift in demeanour. “It is your analysis after all and with information we become empowered towards change.”
What crap, Serena thought but instead she said, “Good. I’ll see myself out.”
Hasp’s mouth dropped open, but before he could verbalise Serena walked out of the office, swept through reception, past sex fiends waiting patiently to be patronised by Hasp, and outside.
She turned her face to the sun, upset it wasn’t raining. She felt dirtier than ever and didn’t have a clue how to rinse the sensation away.
Jack watched the joggers trot past him. He hated them, the sight of all that wobbling fat made him feel nauseous. He thought they should keep all that blubber hidden away. Or eat less. Or die.
He looked at his watch, made a big show of it. A senior executive at lunch, that was him. Albeit an early lunch. Did that make it brunch? He didn’t know. It was a stupid bloody word anyway. But it was irrelevant because he was waiting for his client (Jack liked that word!).
He picked up the Financial Times. Jack must have tried to read it twenty times at least. Most of it didn’t make the slightest bit of sense, it was gobbledygook. Futures, options, what were they? He didn’t have a clue.
His things were computers and software; now he really understood how they ticked.
“About time,” Jack mumbled to himself as his client strolled into sight. He stood up, waiting to greet him on a level footing because that was what his management books advised he should do.