Edward Lee Read Online Free PDF Page B

for an hour?”
    “Yeah, but...I can’t charge you anything for that. I wouldn’t feel right.”
    At least she’s got some real character in there somewhere, he thought. “No, I mean now.” He glanced to make sure the barmaid was out of earshot. “I’ll give you five hundred right now, just to listen to me. I just want to talk.”
    Before she could agree, he slipped five bills from his wallet and handed them to her beneath the counter.
    “Wow, I—”
    It was a lark, Flood knew. But what the hell? The only person he’d ever talked to about this was Dr. Untermann. Back in Seattle, and Seattle was a long way away.
    “I want to tell you about this problem I have,” he began.
    “Okay. Sometimes it’s good to talk about a problem with someone you don’t know, and someone you’ll probably never see again. It feels better afterwards, and sometimes a different perspective helps. An anonymous one. You can talk without worrying about what the other person might think of you.”
    “Yes,” Flood said. “I’m hoping so, anyway. And I’ll try not to bore you.” Then he began: “I have a sexual dysfunction which my psychiatrist charmingly refers to as a thematic-erotic inversion with ejaculatory incompetence and sequent erectile failure. How’s that for a diagnosis?”
    “It’s a mouthful, all right.” She popped a shrimp in her mouth, then whispered, “But they have stuff for that now.” Then she held up her wrist purse. “If you need a Viagra, I’ve got ‘em.”
    “It doesn’t work, none of that does.” He tapped his temple. “It’s all psychological. It’s like a toggle-switch in my brain. When I’m with woman, and it gets past a certain point, that sexual switch gets turned off, by a single image, a single memory.”
    “What memory?”
    “My ex-wife. Even after three years, it’s like sabotage.”
    “Do you still love her?”
    “Yes, and I know that’s ridiculous and illogical. She ruined me—lied, cheated, stole, and left me—but after all that, I know deep down, I’d take her back without thinking twice.”
    “Why?”
    He gave an honest shrug. “Because she was the best sex of my life, and now I can never have that again. My psyche’s still obsessed with her; it’s not even a conscious thing, at least that’s what my therapist has told me. And I believe it. What else can I believe?” Flood’s eyes panned over the nearly nude breasts and pubis, all that erotic flesh showing through the net—one of the most erotic images of his life. His penis—and his heart—felt like dead meat. “It’s like I’m being haunted,” he dragged on, lowering his voice. “It doesn’t matter what the circumstance is sexually. Whenever I’m with a woman, right at the moment before I’d...come...I lose my erection, and...no orgasm. As if, right then, right at the moment of my pleasure, the woman I’m with becomes my ex-wife, and all that anger and negativity shoots right into my head, and kills all sexual function.”
    Carol’s eyes blinked as she thought. “Okay, so...what about...”
    “Masturbation? Same thing. Whatever image is in my head...while I’m doing it—whatever beautiful, stimulating woman— changes into her. Felicity.”
    “Maybe there’s something you don’t really know about yourself,” she suggested. “Have you tried to get it on with guys?”
    Flood winced, shaking his head. “No, no, no. I’ve never been attracted to men, never.”
    “What about porn?”
    “Tried it, doesn’t work. Oh, I’ll get hard, I’ll get excited, but—”
    “Right before you’d get off, you lose it.”
    “Yes,” he groaned. His heart had picked up while he’d been telling her, his blood-pressure shooting up. Any reference to Felicity did that, it put him in a state of subdued terror. “Porn, call girls, oils, lubes, herbs, oysters, prescription drugs, even penis-pumps—” He was beginning to blush—“I’ve tried it all, and it all fails. That toggle gets turned off.