PECCAVI

There is nothing more frightening that being caught red-handed dipping your hand in the forbidden sugar bowl. There are many things I do not mind getting caught at because I have a life-saving theory that says that guilt and regret are man’s worst enemies, and as such, should never be given room in any sane life. If you are going to partake in an act of any kind; do it, enjoy it, forget about guilt and live a happy life. But it was now ten in the morning and as I fumbled out of the bed in which I had spent the night, I nearly tripped over the shoes carelessly strewn on the floor. I was nervous and mad, in such a rush to get out of there. I am a very light sleeper and the turning of the keys in the lock of the door had alerted me to the fact that “the room-mate” was back, I had been caught, my party had come to an end, alas reality hit me like the cold November breeze. There was a thick curtain between we, on the bed, and the roommate because, much as we had been enjoying ourselves, we knew that at some point we would have to break up the fun, and so we had erected a veil between us and the world.

As I lay perspiring from my light, albeit short sleep, I could almost hear the astonishment mixed with anger and confusion clouding “the room-mates” cognitive faculties; he was trying to understand what it is that he had walked into. I, on the other hand, pretended to be fast asleep as I planned my future escape; I had to get out of there as soon as possible or I would hate myself forever. As if reading my mind, “the room-mate” dived into the shower and I could hear water running but I was too scared to peel back “our” veil thinking he would spring out at any minute, see my face, and judge me for breaking all of the rules known to man. And so I lay there, and waited, and waited until I felt I could stand it no more, I had to run out of there as fast as possible. It was ten in the morning, the hall ways would be buzzing with dirty, sleepy, sexually frustrated Catholic boys and I did not want to be the focus of their hate. People tend to hate that which they want but can not have, and hating it, they focus so much energy on destroying it thinking that therein lies the solution to their paradox.

As I struggled out of the bed, trying to maneuver my way to the exit, I was polite enough to nudge Prince just to let him know that I was not just stealing out of his bed (which is exactly what I was doing), but running to safety. He was out like a log and the more I shook him, the louder he snored, so I threw on the few clothes that I had miraculous managed to slip off, slip on, and slip off again through out the entire night as I played hard to get, knowing full well that Prince would have in the end, any way he pleased. I dashed about the room collecting any incriminating evidence and trying desperately to leave as little of me as possible, it had been a great night, but I was not willing to dwell on it too much, there was so much involved and the web of intricacy was plain disturbing.

Prince was one of my students, my advisees, one of the kids I usually take under my wing, to nurture help and support. Prince was one of my patients! He came to me when he was dealing with problems in his relationship; the girl did not seem to be responding to his ever eager advances of love and undying faithfulness. She seemed to shun him and he was very depressed. I stayed up nights and weekends, talking him through the act of patience because, as I came to realize, patience was not a word he had heard of and it was going to take me a very long time to instill this virtue in him. But I was willing to do the work if he was willing to take the time to learn. He is one of a kind, Prince, not different from a lot of rich boys who have had the world handed to them on a plate by mummy, daddy, carer, underlings and followers. He is a very wealthy young man who has never had to ask for anything, let alone been refused anything. So, like a little child who cries when he is refused what he deems to be his by divine right, he was frustrated not able to understand why, and how a girl such as his girl friend, would not want to work at their relationship and obey his every command. It was clearly perplexing for him and that is the reason why he came to me; nobody else could stand his gigantic ego centralism, they all seemed to pass him on to the one they thought possessed the most patience…me. I am darn good at my job, saying the right things at the right times, so much so that I scare myself sometimes because I do not know how I got so good, all I know is that I have the gift of the tongue and I like to use it well.

With every emotional problem, ofcourse, there is the underlying issue of where the problem stems from. And with this, I came to find out that Prince did not feel loved by his mother who, he insists dotes on his sisters, and chooses to ignore him. Even though she would buy him the world in a second, he feels like he has been denied the hugs and kisses that his sisters have been endowed. His father, however, does not count in this because we all know that men don’t hug their sons, that is the way it has been since Adam and Eve and we are yet to see a shift in this mentality. With every case of mine, there is the temptation to reveal to my patient something of the traumatic life that I have lived, just to show them that what they are fretting over is nothing but cheesecake. But as every person in my field will admit, this strategy only falls on deaf ears because as long as a person has a problem they are revealing to you, theirs is the only focus in mind and none other; however dire and legitimate your life story, keep it to yourself or write a book or something, because it will not help the poor creature lying on your couch complaining about how bad they have had it. So I listened to Prince and I advised and taught him well, so well so that when I came back to work after taking a month off to enjoy the sunny beaches of San Diego, he seemed to be in better spirits, talking about a girl he was thinking about. It was good to see my work producing some good in a human being.

One thing about my line of work is that you get people coming to you with deep emotional revelations that they would never breath to anyone, trusting you with their lives that sometimes it can get a little unnerving knowing that you hold in your hand, the power to make or destroy someone. These people will spell their lives out to you in clear plain words, as long as you ask the right questions. And getting to their very core, they will open up wide, tear out a fraction of themselves and hand it to you, asking you to hold it, examine it, mend it and make them whole again. It is a very powerful feeling, almost akin to playing God, and hence the reason it calls for great dedication, diplomacy and professionalism. When the only way people can be near you, or be with you is when they are at their most vulnerable, then you have a role to play as a guide and protector, but we know that the world is not perfect and even surgeons do sometimes fall off the pedestal on which we are so eager to place them. I am a novice at what I do and I guess I am learning, and learning fast, about the Do’ and Don’ts of my line of work. I have no one but myself to guide me, hence the constant mishaps that I find myself in, hence the avoidable situations that I mistakenly get stuck in sometimes.

When Prince took me to dinner to thank me for everything that I had done for him, I was quick to explain to him that it was not me that had done the hard grind, it was him that had made the progress and all I did was ask the right guiding questions and slap him a hefty bill. That is really all there was to it; he paid me a lot of money so he could sit on my couch and I would listen to his problems, I could not think of a better life or a better job. Dinner was wonderful and all the while I could not help thinking how unfortunate it was that Prince could not get his “darling girl” to fall in love with him. He was clearly a gentleman, with good manners, spoilt, yes, but a gentleman none the less, and very generous.
Through out dinner we talked about his “intensive feelings” which he thought was his downfall with women. Ever since he was a young boy, Prince has always had such intense love that goes beyond mere like and adoration. He is, as his name resonates, a true Prince in his own right, born to love women and be a pleasure, as well as a companion to the female sex, and he did not have a problem with expressing himself until he came across a girl who seemed to find his endless love-confessions too much to handle. While other men were out trying to conquer as many females as they could lay on, he was trying to find someone to build a relationship with, and it had never crossed his mind that sometimes men like to have women for the sheer pleasure of it, and then kick them out of their lives at the dawn of day. It was very interesting to see the look of open naivety on his face as I revealed the secrets of the male underworld to a man who, I now realized, was only a child, in a great big world. It was endearing to watch and the more he listened, the more I felt a keen empathy for Prince because I could foresee total heartbreak in his future and I was too scared to tell him how dire his prospects were. There was a lot of work to be done and I was determined to teach him, as long as I was still getting paid.

Many, many, many hours later…

My head was pounding as I ran down the stairs jumping three at a time and nearly breaking my knee. I could feel the effects of that second bottle of wine that Prince and I had shared before we decided that we were going to make our own rules and spend the night together. But right ahead of me past the hallway, I could finally see my freedom, and yanking the door to the basement open, praying and begging that I had not been seen by anyone as I was sneaking out of the boys’ dorm, I headed past the dark allets of the basement and made it to the door leading to my salvation, I was back in the girls’ dorm. It was Sunday morning and everyone was sleeping off the effects of the previous night’s recklessness. In my room, I quickly undressed and noticed that I was wearing one of Prince’s shirts and had forgotten my blouse, my coat, and my laptop in his room, so much for not leaving any incriminating evidence to show that I had been there! But I did not have time to dwell on any of that, I had to be at a fund raising brunch in an hour, I would come back and deal with my mistakes later.

There are very few things I do not mind getting caught red-handed at because I have an open mind to a lot of the rules that judge and condition this life great big life. But sleeping with a patient is not one of those things I am very open about, reason being, it is wrong, it is so wrong it is just plain wrong. And what was more disturbing was the fact that this was not the first time it was happening. Good thing I caught this “madness” before any major scandal came to light. It only hit me the other day that Prince was not the first of my students that I was having “relations” with. And to make things even worse, all of these students, or patients if you will, had one thing in common; they all hate their mothers and complain about the lack of love from society. It is a funny thing really because all of this time I never realized that there was a common area here; I just thought that I was a woman with very loose morals, jumping into bed with her would-be-advisees due to uncontrollable urges, yet all this time, these men had this one major conflict in common.

Coming to this realization does not help matters much because now I am perplexed as to why I would feel greater empathy for men who have “trouble” with their mothers and why do I tend to attract to myself men going through this same sorry phase. I would not consider myself more nurturing than the next woman on the street, I do not believe I possess any special ability that sets me apart to be better able to deal with men in this situation; I am not maternal much, I do not possess any psychological attributes that I feel would be great weapons in healing sons and mothers. And you may be curious as to how the relations go…what happens after I leave their beds or they leave mine? Usually they just go back to being the same moody men that they were when I first met them; but this time, they are more immune to the so-called grievances that their mothers throw at them. Actually they come out of it quite renewed, but I am not sure how long this lasts because I am usually too ashamed to keep up with the friendships so I release them out into the world and wish them all the best.

I must get back to the roots of professionalism and as I mentioned before, I have no one to guide me and everything that I do is trial and error. Now I know that I can not accept a dinner invitation from any one of my patients, unless it is a female, this makes things more comfortable and less complicated. I also now know to watch out for the men with mother-son complex; they are trouble for me and my emotions; if I could understand what it is about their situation that makes me want to love them and make love to them, then I could curb this sick sexual transgression. But failing to find the root cause, I must stay away and pass them on to my other colleagues who are more than willing to take on the extra challenge.

And so it turns out the “the room-mate” did figure out that it was me that had spent the night with his once lonely and shy room-mate and the to this day he is unsure how a loner like Prince, could convince the brains as me, to share his life. He believes that Prince took advantage of me after the two bottles of wine, but I convinced him that if any one was taken advantage of, it was Prince and not me. As for the other dorm-boys, they were not as stupid as I thought they were. With the big love-bite on Prince’s neck and the loud-mouth telling of a couple of people that had seen me go into his room at eleven at night, people put two and two together, and everyone has their own version of events, and we shall leave it at that; Prince and I prefer the mystery that shrouds our friendship, we like to leave it to the gossips to fill in the gaps where they see fit.