Girl Friday - Part One

Girl Friday - Part One

'Prim and proper.' There was no other way to describe her. Here she came; marching towards me in her sensible shoes, dark brown slacks with razor-sharp creases, tweed jacket with all the buttons buttoned, peering at me through wire-rimmed glasses, her hair pulled back severely in a bun. If I looked in the dictionary under 'prim', there her picture would be. At the end of the listing of definitions, it would say, "see also, 'proper.'" And when you turned to 'proper', I thought, there her picture would be also.
Her arm was outstretched. I was surprised words could emerge from between lips pressed together so hard they were colorless, but out they came: "Dr. Anderson?" I nodded, taking her hand. As I expected, it was cool, but surprisingly calloused. "They're expecting you," she said, tonelessly. "Follow me."
She was a study in control; ramrod straight, arms swinging almost mechanically, head facing straight ahead; motionless on our walk from the lobby to the boardroom-with one exception-she turned it slightly only once to see that I was still behind her.
Her pace seemed unusually even, as if she was making some effort to make each step she took exactly the same length as the one before. It seemed incongruous that her feet turned out at nearly a forty-five degree angle, and I was reminded of Degas' ballerinas. But there was nothing as soft as that Impressionist's renderings of dancers about this woman-she was all business. She could have just as easily been leading me to the place against a wall where I was to be executed by a firing squad as to a meeting with the heads of the departments of the State University Medical School.
A hundred yards later, we were at the boardroom door. She knocked three times. Even her knock is prim and proper, I thought. "Come!" I recognized the Dean's voice. She took one measured step back and motioned me in. I sniffed deeply when I stepped past her, hoping for some trace of fragrance, hoping that there would be something other than 'prim and proper' about this woman. But there was no scent. Odorless, colorless, tasteless.
But, there was some slight softening in her steel-blue eyes when I passed her-or so I thought. I couldn't be sure. Damn those reflections in the lenses of her glasses!
"David!" Arthur Carmony's voice boomed. He never seemed to appreciate the fact that his listeners weren't as hearing impaired as he. "Good to see you!" He shook my hand like he was priming the pump on the well of his family farm in Nebraska. "God damn, Dave! How long has it been, anyway?"
"A month, I think," I said, nearly yelling. The other department heads roared with laughter.
"Have a seat!" Arthur shouted, motioning to the chair on his right. "I see you've met Helen Montague, my girl Friday!" He gestured expansively to Ms. Prim and Proper, who was standing at the door. She seemed uncertain whether she should stay or go.
"God damn, girl," he yelled, have a seat over here!" My old friend pounded the seat of the chair on his left. She properly closed the door and took her seat, folding her cool hands precisely on the table in front of her. I was glad Arthur had positioned her across from me-I suspected her buttoned down presentation was a façade, and I was determined to find the glitch in it. The title of a journal article came to me: Frigidity: Does it Exist in the Twenty-First Century? A Brief Analysis of a Prim and Proper Woman. I nearly laughed out loud.
It would be a very brief analysis-Arthur Carmony liked to work as quickly as he was hard of hearing-he had given the department heads only a half hour to have a go at me. After that, I would be on my way, and that would be the end of my study of Helen Montague-or so I thought.
"Arthur, fellow physicians, and Helen," I said, nodding in her direction. A blotch appeared on her neck. "Thank you for giving me the opportunity of fielding your questions about my proposal for a mandatory rotation at the analytic institute for every resident-regardless of specialty. You've all read my proposal, I'm sure. I'll take your questions now."
A half hour later, the heads of the departments had all had their turn. I had answered every question smoothly, I thought, and with conviction. I had the feeling that we all were there at the right time for all the right reasons. Arthur Carmony addressed them. "If there are no more questions for Doctor Anderson, we will take his proposal under consideration." He looked at me and winked. He stood and offered his hand. "Thanks for coming, Dave…"
"Doctor Carmony?" It was Helen. I knew she wanted to ask a question of her own.
He seemed as surprised as I that his "girl Friday" would have dared made a sound of any kind in a meeting of that import, let alone act as if she wanted to address me.
"Yes! Don't be shy, girl! Speak up!" Carmony was a brilliant surgeon, but about as sensitive as a toilet seat. I was embarrassed for her.
Her neck was covered with blotches. She tried to make eye contact with me. "Doctor, with all due respect…" Her voice caught in her throat. She looked as if she was about to have a panic attack.
Her vocal-motor apparatus seemed to be paralyzed. In my most soothing tones, I said, "Go on, Helen; tell me what's on your mind. I'm just as interested in what you have to ask as what the others have asked."
Her blotches began to fade. She cleared her throat and re-folded her hands. "With all due respect, isn't analysis considered an anachronism these days? What I mean to say is, if antidepressants treat depression, and anxiolytics treat anxiety, what makes you think that simply listening to someone talk will accomplish anything?"
"What did she say?" It was Carmony again.
Someone shouted from the end of the conference table. "She said she thinks psychoanalysis is a crock!" It was Harry Simmons, the chief of orthopedics. He had been a patient of mine for years, and had gotten to the point where he could challenge me in public. I winked at him, and he winked back. You're about ready to terminate, Harry. If you can act as my equal, you don't need me any more.
Hers was a question I had heard many times before. I had learned long ago that professed skepticism regarding the efficacy of analysis always disguised a fear of revealing a closely-guarded secret, and the secret was very often a forbidden sexual idea. For that reason, I was always very careful about how I framed my response.
"I don't deny that chemical intervention has relieved the suffering of millions, Helen. But there's more to it than 'misbehaving molecules', if I may put it that way. Analysis gives the patient an opportunity to tell a non-judgmental listener something they may never have told anyone before. And if that 'something' is heard with understanding and compassion, a great sense of relief follows the telling.
"Would-be physicians have secrets too, Helen, and that's the point of my proposal-a doctor who has been analyzed is a better doctor because being analyzed makes a person a better listener." I looked at Simmons. He was nodding, preoccupied.
Helen's blotches were redder than before. "I see," she squeaked.

Simmons walked me to my car. "She's quite a case, eh, Dave?" I nodded. "I don't mean just psychologically, but orthopaedically as well," he said.
"Oh?"
"Did you notice her gait and habitus?"
"Yes, I did. She's rather stiff, I'd say."
Simmons laughed. "What do you think accounts for that?"
"I think she's neurotic, of course. Obsessive-compulsive type."
"Yes, but…" Simmons' tones were suddenly hushed, conspiratorial. "I know I'm breaking confidentiality here, but I must tell you something about Helen."
"Tell."
"Last winter, she slipped on the ice in the parking lot, and I examined her emergently."
"And?"
"She is one of the most startlingly muscled individuals I've ever seen in my life."
He suddenly had my undivided attention. "Really?"
"Yes. She has the body of a gymnast. I estimated her body fat percentage at less than five, if you can imagine!"
"Really! Incredible!" I began to wish I had seen what Simmons had.
He went on. "I've never seen such definition. She's not burgeoned, you understand-she's more, well, 'illustrative of muscular anatomy', if you see what I'm saying!"
"Like the drawings in Gray's, you mean."
"Yes, exactly."
"Did you share your observations with her?"
"Yes. She told me she had in fact been a gymnast beginning at age five and continuing through college, and still trained at home. She said she had a basement full of equipment. Said she worked out three hours a night, and from the looks of her, I believe it!"
"Hm."
"Anyway, she hadn't broken anything, and I told her it was probably because she was in such good shape…and then she said the strangest thing."
"What?"
"She made me promise I wouldn't tell anyone what she looked like. She said that she was both proud and ashamed of the way she looked; that she made a conscious effort to wear clothes that concealed her body. And then she cried-right there on the table. I didn't know what to say!"
"What did you say?"
"I told her I didn't see anything wrong with the way she looked."
"And?"
"She took my hand and said, 'Thank you, Doctor Simmons.'"
"You did good, Harry."
He looked at his feet. "I feel guilty for betraying her secret."
I put my hand on his shoulder. "I'm your analyst, Harry. Don't worry about it."

Two things seemed clear to me on my drive home: One; Helen Montague needed to be liberated, and two; it wasn't going to be me who liberated her-that had to be someone else's job. I began to think about a woman analyst I could refer her to.
What Simmons had told me about her would make it impossible for me to maintain a neutral stance if she was my patient-I was already having sexual fantasies about her. Seeing her every week lying on the couch in front of me-clothed or not-would provoke me strongly; perhaps past the point of my ability to resist acting out, and that would be the end of my career.
If the med school accepted my proposal, Helen and I might well have an employer-employee relationship-at least in the eyes of the University. In that case, she would be off-limits, ipso facto.

It was midnight, and I was worn out from ruminating about Helen Montague. I went to bed determined only to fantasize about her. In my mind's eye, I imagined what she must have looked like lying on Harry's examining table.

And then as sleep began to overtake me, I imagined what she would be like there in my bed with me. I began to wonder if Harry had been right about her body fat percentage, and wondered if her biceps were bifurcated-I had always liked seeing that on a woman…

Helen was in the bed beside me, then under me, then turning end for end, taking me in her mouth. I took her in mine. Her taste was fresh and yet the exact description of her flavor eluded me.
Simmons was right-she was startlingly muscled. "Make a muscle for me, Helen," I muttered in my sleep. I felt her biceps contract under my palm; felt it swell up and felt it quiver as she kept it balled up for me, and saw it was clearly, remarkably bifurcated.
She slipped me inside her. She was warm and it was good. Her buttocks were solid. I felt them contract as she thrust her hips into me, and I felt her hard stomach push against mine.
Her kisses were long and deep; her well-schooled tongue explored my lips and tongue. Her arms were strong as iron bands, and as she approached orgasmic inevitability, I began to dream of seeing stars and knew I was becoming anoxic and would soon lose consciousness.

My orgasm awakened me. I laughed. "My first wet dream in twenty years!" I said out loud. I pulled up the sheets. "God and Jesus, I need to clean myself!"
Washing caused me to stiffen. I decided then I would take a shower and pretend Helen of the bifurcated biceps was with me. "Come, dear," I said as if she were really there, "let me soap your hard body while the steam billows around us." I imagined she might be pretty-even beautiful-if she would only give in to her natural impulses.
Toweling off, it came to me that I wasn't in the quandary I thought I was regarding Helen Montague. I looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror and said out loud, "For the love of God, Dave, she's not your patient, nor is she your employee-at least not yet-she's a woman whose fantasized image enabled you to have two orgasms in less than twenty minutes! Just ask her out, you dope! The worst that can happen is she will turn you down!"
Having thought that, I went to bed. As sleep came, the name Elizabeth Rosen occurred to me. They will be a perfect fit, I thought.

---

The Dean's 'girl Friday' had been fighting for sleep for hours. Her memory of what Doctor Anderson had said that afternoon was plaguing her. It was as if his words had been put on an endless tape, and the moment she laid her head on the pillow, the recorder began to play. Nothing she did kept his words from her mind.
"Analysis gives the patient an opportunity to tell a non-judgmental listener something they may never have told anyone before," he had said. At the time, she had thought he was talking to her personally, but as she had thought it over later, she realized he was making more of a generic statement. But that wasn't the part that bothered her. It was when he said, "And if that 'something' is heard with understanding and compassion, a great sense of relief follows the telling," that had perplexed and embarrassed her. And she did not understand why it had.
She turned from her back to her belly for the hundredth time that night, and asked her mattress, "Why does that simple idea vex me so?" Then she began to weep. She rolled on her back and the answer came to her as clear as if it had been written on the ceiling. She said it out loud. "It is because Helen Montague has a secret."

Since her adolescence, Helen had lived her life in the no-man's land between impulses and guilt. In the evening, she exercised for hours while lurid sexual fantasies raged in her mind. Then, when she could no longer restrain herself, she stripped naked and struck explicitly sexual poses in front of the mirrors which lined the walls of her basement.
She pretended a crowd of men was cheering her on, exhorting her to flex her muscles and urging her to reveal her privatemost places, and finally, to masturbate in front of them. All this she did staring in the mirror where, in her fugue, it seemed there were faces of leering men, where in truth there was only her reflection.

The instant the excitement of her autoerotic fantasy subsided; her guilt came out of the trenches. Seconds after she had her orgasm, shame lay strong upon her, and she felt she would suffocate. Quickly then, she wrapped her lithe body in a robe and hurried upstairs to shower, hoping against hope she could scrub her imagined sins away as easily as she washed away her sweat.
Toweling off, she promised herself she would never, ever do it again. But when she awoke the next morning, the elements of the coming evening's fantasy were already forming in her mind. And so it went.
Living as she did had taken its toll. In order to keep some peace between impulse and defense, she believed she had to deny herself any daytime pleasure, however slight. So she lived an emotionally impoverished life, and was regarded by all who knew her as dry as a stick, as austere as a Calvinist, and as humorless as a winter's day.

All this Helen knew that night, lying on her back, fighting for sleep, praying that her endless recollections of what Doctor Anderson had said that day would stop playing in her mind.
Then at last, sleep was suddenly upon her. As it took her, a question came into her mind: I wonder if I shared my secret with someone who would not judge me if I would be relieved, as he said? And as she brought her knees up to her chest and drifted off, Helen Montague wondered if David Anderson was the one she should tell.

---

The light of day had a way of exposing my baser inclinations, and as I sat having breakfast the following morning, the sun summarized them for me as clearly as if they were a headline printed in 12-point type:

"NOTED ANALYST RECRUITS COLLEAGUE FOR IMMORAL PURPOSES"

It was true, I thought. In my sexual excitement, I had fantasized I could enlist the aid of my colleague, Elizabeth Rosen, to ready the neurotic but wonderfully muscled Helen Montague for my personal use.
I was sickened by my recollection of what I had thought in the middle of the night. I'm no better than a predatory sociopath! But having thought that, I reconsidered, and responded as if I were my own patient. "We are all of us driven by our impulses. Go easy on yourself, man," I said out loud.
I would not seriously consider doing what had seemed like such a good idea at three o'clock in the morning, but what Harry Simmons had told me had done more than simply piqued my clinical interest-it had awakened my fetish for muscular women, and the impulses which accompanied my fetish were growing stronger by the minute.
I had long ago recognized the function my fetish for muscular women served, and just as I urged my patients to enjoy their sexuality via their fetishes, so I knew I must mine…within limits. The safest way to proceed at this point, I thought, is by calling her. Perhaps in that way I will get a clearer read regarding her accessibility. Perhaps she is not as uptight as she seemed. Perhaps, my dream might soon be a reality.
Perhaps I should see what time it is. I looked at my watch. "Seven o'clock! Shit! My first appointment is in fifteen minutes!" I was out the door. I was late, thanks to my ruminations about Helen Montague.

A message from my eleven o'clock was on my recorder. Her son was home sick from school and she needed to re-schedule, she said. That was fine with me. Eleven o'clock would be an ideal time to call Helen.
At 10:50, I announced, "We have to stop for today." As many of my patients did, Tom hesitated at the door.
"Will you be in town over the weekend?" he asked.
"Yes. I have no plans to be away. Call me if you need to."
He nodded and went out. I dialed Arthur Carmony's office the moment Tom closed the door behind him. One ring, then another. "Hello, this is Doctor Carmony's office, Helen Montague speaking. How may I help you?" Her voice was crisp. Perfect enunciation. No discernible dialect.
"This is David Anderson calling," I said. I heard a gasp, then an unmistakably nervous cough and a clearing of the throat.
"Doctor Carmony is in surgery right now, Doctor Anderson." She cleared her throat again, unnecessarily, I thought. "Is this an urgent matter?" You have no idea, Helen. I was hard as a pole, just listening to her.
My inner voice prompted me. Ask her now, Dave.
"It's not Doctor Carmony I wanted to speak with, Helen," I said. I heard her take a long breath.
"Its not?"
"No. I wanted to talk to you."
"Why me?"
"So I could ask you to come with me to the ballet tonight. Will you?" Seconds that seemed like minutes went by. Finally, she cleared her throat, again unnecessarily, I thought. Then she agreed.
"Yes, Doctor Anderson, I'd like to. Thanks very much for asking."
"I'm glad you said 'yes', Helen. By the way, please call me 'David'. Now, tell me where you live and I'll pick you up at 7:30."

It had been an avant garde production. Not much to my liking or to Helen's either, as she said later over coffee. "I'm more a fan of the classics," she said. "You know, Swan Lake, for example."
"I'm with you," I said. "Frankly, the meaning of the post-modern stuff escapes me. The anomie of tonight's dance left me, well, cold. Sorry if you were bored." I meant it. She looked miserable, even though her clothes and makeup had transformed her from Carmony's "girl Friday" into a spectacularly sexy woman. I especially liked her little black dress. Simmons had been right-she was remarkably muscled. And, as I had dreamt, her biceps were bifurcated. I hoped she hadn't noticed me sneaking peeks at her arms. I hope too, that she hadn't noticed me rearranging myself during the performance, or if she did, she didn't know I was making room for my tumescent penis.
She sipped her coffee and carefully put her cup down; making sure the handle was at the proper angle. Her concern over the trivial was pathetic. "David," she said. I was silent. I was an analyst, after all, and knew to keep my mouth shut when someone was struggling to say something important. And she was. It was obvious.
"Those girls we saw on stage tonight, you know, the dancers…" I didn't say a word. "Well, do you like girls who look like that, I mean, well, I don't know how to say this exactly, but…" I had been quiet long enough. It was time for me to say something to make it easier for her to say what she was thinking.
"Let me ask you a question, Helen." She started to speak, but I cut her off, gently.
"Please, hear what I have to say." She just nodded. I thought then she looked like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. She was beautiful, but so in need. That's when I determined the course I would take.
"You seem to want to ask me something, but at the same time, you hesitate." She nodded again. "I'm guessing there's a reason you don't want to ask me." Again, her fine head nodded agreement. "First, tell me why you don't want to ask me. That's not the same thing as asking you what it is you want to ask, if you follow me."
"I do." She adjusted the angle of the handle on her coffee cup again.
"OK, now that we've got that settled, why don't you want to ask me whatever it is you want to ask me."
She blurted, "I'm afraid you'll know what my secret is if I ask you if you liked girls' whose bodies looked like those of the dancers we saw tonight!" Then she covered her face with her hands and wept.
When she quieted, I told her point-blank, "Helen, I know someone who can help you tremendously and…" She cut me off.
"David, no," she said. "I'm afraid to tell what's inside me!" She could barely make the words come out.
"I know, but you need to tell someone, Helen. If you don't, you're going to keep on suffering, and you'll never know real freedom." She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes carefully, and adjusted her cup again.
"OK," she said finally. "I know you're right…I knew it when you said what you did in the board room at the med school. I wanted it not to be true, but…" Her voice trailed off again. "I'm tired, David. I'm tired of living like I do. What can I do?"
I took a card from my billfold and wrote Elizabeth Rosen's name and number on it. "I know her well, Helen, and I respect her enormously. Give her a call, will you?" I asked. She nodded and put the card in her purse.
We held hands on the drive to her house, but didn't say a word. I wouldn't take advantage of her neediness, no matter how beautiful she was. It would have been well, predatory, and I was no predator.
Even though we would not make love that night, or that year, or in the next five or ten years, I would dream of her often and wish that she had been free, really free, on the night she agreed to make that call.

click for Girl Friday - Part Two

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