My three o’clock appointment shows up clutching a yellow bath towel, and around his finger is the white groove where there should be a wedding ring. The second the door’s locked, he tries to give me the cash. He starts to take off his pants. His name is Jones, he tells me. His first name, Mister.

Guys here for the first time are all the same. I tell him, pay me after. Don’t be in such a rush. Keep all your clothes on. There’s no hurry.

I tell him my appointment book is full of Mister Joneses, Mister Smiths, John Does, and Bob Whites, so he’d better come up with a better alias. I tell him to lie down on the couch. Close the blinds. Dim the lights.

I say, shall we get started?

Even if a guy says he isn’t after sex, I still tell him to bring a towel. You bring a towel. You pay in cash. Don’t ask me to bill you later or bill some insurance company because I just can’t be bothered. You pay me cash, then you file the claim.

You get only 50 minutes. Guys better know what they want.

This means the woman, the positions, the setting, the toys. Don’t spring anything fancy on me at the last minute.

I tell Mister Jones to lie back. Close your eyes.

Allow all the tension in your face to melt away. Your forehead first, let it go slack. Relax the spot between your eyes. Imagine your forehead smooth and relaxed. Then the muscles around your eyes, smooth and relaxed. Then the muscles around your mouth. Smooth and relaxed.

Even if guys say they’re just looking to lose some weight, they want sex. If they want to quit smoking. Manage stress. Quit biting their nails. Cure hiccups. Stop drinking. Clear up their skin. Whatever the issue, it’s because they aren’t getting laid. Whatever they say they want, they get sex here and the problem’s solved.

If I’m a compassionate genius or a slut, you don’t know.

Sex pretty much cures everything.

I’m the best therapist in the business, or I’m a whore that accepts Medicare and Medicaid. I don’t like being so slam-bam with my clients, but I never wanted to earn my living this way.

This kind of session, the sex kind, first happened by accident. A client who wanted to quit smoking, wanted to be regressed to the day he was 11 and took his first puff. So he could remember how bad it tasted. So he could quit by going back and never starting. That was the basic idea.

In his second session, this client wanted to meet his father, who was dead of lung cancer, just to talk. This is still pretty much normal. People want to meet with famous dead people all the time, for guidance, for advice. It was so real that on his third session, the client wanted to meet Cleopatra.

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