I settle into my wingback as my last client pokes his head around the door. It’s Henry Nelson. He’s in his early thirties, and he’s fit and chiselled; bright-eyed, happy, good-looking and sure of himself.
On the outside.
I enjoy my appointments with Henry, and I consider this to be because he’s easy to counsel. Straightforward in the sense that he’s not hung up on himself. He’s seeking atonement, pure and simple. He’s a gentle giant. But more than that, I admire him as one of my few clients who does not herald from a cocoon of great means. The government pays for his therapy, or more specifically, the national probation service. Henry is a scrapper and he’s a genuine breath of fresh air. He’s a terrible liar, and this makes him an open book; one I look forward, every week, to reading.
Henry is shut out of the money club. He works hard and owns his own building company, but he pays all of his taxes, without the help of loopholes in the Cayman Islands or the Isle of Man, and he values the cost of things. He understands penalty and prize. He’s not pampered and entitled, just a recovering addict who’s served time for manslaughter.
I’ve worked for the prison service. It wasn’t my thing, but I learned that criminals are uncomplicated.
‘Henry, come in. It’s nice to see you. Please, sit down.’
He’s over six feet tall with the physique of a rugby player; not fat but constructed of solid muscle. A winger, perhaps. He’s got shaggy blond hair, bleached by the sun, and friendly blue eyes. He wears his smile easily and confidently, and chooses a place on the sofa. I need to concentrate to channel my professional demeanour and check my ego, because Henry exudes charm, and sometimes he makes me feel like Eve, if my guard is down, and my garden becomes arid. I’m not a machine, though I am a highly trained academic. I sometimes wonder whether my transferrable skills are more suited to the theatre than to medicine. Keeping a healthy boundary between client and patient takes discipline, and Henry likes to peer behind barriers, I can tell.
Henry sits heavily, filling the space, and fiddles with something he’s carrying. It’s a rolled-up paper bag. His arms are covered in tattoos. His hands are soft.
‘Lunch,’ Henry says, looking at the bag. I appreciate the time he gives up every week to attend his appointments, not just because he has to, but because he comes willing to open up and do the work on himself. It also means that, for an hour or so, he’s not earning.
‘Past tense?’
He nods and smiles.
‘There’s a rubbish bin under the desk.’
Henry gets up and throws away the bag. Sessions with this likeable young man always start in the same way: awkward and staccato, until the ice melts a little and I gain his trust again, or Henry cracks a joke. It wastes about twenty minutes per hour, but that’s the way some sessions go.
‘How are you this week?’
It’s banal but necessary. It kicks things off.
‘I’m good.’
Henry sticks to his gender role stereotype of the closed-up and non-emotional heterosexual male. I wonder what’s bothering him. We’ll get there eventually.
I sit and wait.
I glance at his tattoos, each one representing a period in his life when he hated himself. Each was a symbol of pain, though Henry hadn’t known that at the time, and he’d spent years covering them up. To sit here in my office, in a t-shirt, is a massive leap forward. It’s one reason I cringe every time my son James gets another inking, because I know so many people who scar themselves on purpose to inflict damage on soft skin because they can’t see the original beauty in it.
‘I met someone,’ Henry finally says.
‘Great news, congratulations.’
Here we go. This is what’s behind the guarded behaviour. Henry’s sessions revolve around his sex life because that’s the beast he is. His attachment problems have always been solved through sex. And after a drug session: violence. I don’t believe in fight, freeze or flight as the only trauma responses in my line of work. You can add fucking to that list too.
‘She’s married.’
They usually are.
‘To someone else, I presume?’
Henry laughs. He loosens up. I can’t imagine a ring on that finger.
‘So, we’ve talked about your attachment to unavailable women, haven’t we?’
Henry nods. ‘She’s different.’
Again.
‘How?’
‘She wants to leave her husband.’
‘Ah, and that’s not part of the plan, is it? What will you do?’
He shrugs.
‘I thought it’s what I wanted.’
‘And?’
‘I changed my mind.’
He looks at his hands in shame. He’s moved on already, poor woman, whoever she is.