On the way back to his place, he asked me questions about Texas, as if it was an exotic region in outer space.
“It’s flat, hot, and conservative.”
“Any Jews there?”
“A few. My ballet teacher was a French Jew. Why?”
“We Jews are always thinking about our relative numbers.” This was the first I’d heard of the Intern’s religion. I could picture you-know-who’s self-satisfied smile when he realized he’d instructed me to have an orgasm with a Jewish man. Mamaleh, I’m so proud of you.
As the elevator doors in his lobby closed on us, the Intern hooked his fingers into my belt loops and pulled me close. He smelled like clean laundry and something spicy, like cinnamon. He kissed me like he was starving for me, and I matched his intensity when I kissed him back. When his hands cupped my breasts, I groaned with pleasure through my one bra.
I felt so free—like I could feel the air molecules dancing between us, celebrating my liberation. I slipped my hand under his shirt, and he moved closer to me. It felt like magic—a man moving closer to me, a man staying awake for me, a man hungry for me.
“You like that?” he whispered. Each time he touched me another layer melted away. He bit my lip playfully, and it was good-bye to the nuns who said French kissing was a sin because it mirrored the sex act. He touched the small of my back, and the grip of my mother’s edict to save sex for marriage released its hold on my body. He held my face as he kissed me and washed away the stain of my relationship with Jeremy—the hairballs in the drain, the bad blow job, and the constant grinding of my flesh against the stone of his isolation.
When the doors opened with a ping, I tried to pull away, but he held me close. “Don’t we need to get off?” I said. He flicked his tongue in my ear and whispered, “Oh, we’re definitely going to do that.”
We raced down the hall, him ahead of me, reaching back for my hand. Who was this guy who wanted to freebase pleasure and take me with him?
We barely made it to his apartment door before he had unhooked my bra. I’d never been kissed that deeply. Parts of me that had never stirred in the presence of someone else sprung to life. This, this, this, my body sang with pleasure. More, more, more.
He led me to his small, neat bedroom. The light was off, but I could make out a plain gray comforter on the bed, and some law books on the shelf next to a small clock with glowing red numbers. I opened my arms wide and belly-flopped onto his soft, clean bed.
There was nothing between us—no video games, no mental illness, no therapists. He reached for a condom and pulled off his pants. His forehead rested on mine, and I looked into his open, unafraid eyes. I pressed against him and shuddered into my prescription.
When I opened my eyes, his smirk offered a single message: I told you I was good at this. The waves of pleasure rose from between my legs and crested through my entire body. And then, I burst into tears.
“I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m not sad.” I tried to stuff the sobs back into my treacherous heart. The Intern kissed the tears as they slid down my cheeks. He asked what was wrong.
“You’re just so—”
He raised his eyebrows and leaned closer, kissing my neck, chasing the tears that escaped. “What?”
“Clean.” Tears continued to stream down my hot cheeks. “Oh my God,” I whispered, covering my face with both hands.
“It’s kind of hot, actually.” He lifted my chin and kissed me on the lips. “What’s your therapist going to say?”
“I did it, and then I cried.” My afternoon group was rapt. I’d slept through my morning group for the first time in my therapeutic history. Finally. I’d waited three years to be too busy having sex to attend group.
Nan was incredulous. “What did that little white boy do to you?”
Dr. Rosen shook his head, his hands at his temples. “You let him pleasure you, and then you showed him all the feelings you had about it. Do you understand how intimate that was?” He gazed at me with amazement.
“I want to do it again.”
“When’s your next date?”
“Next week.” Thumbs-up from the Good Doctor. “He’s Jewish, by the way.” Exactly as I suspected, Dr. Rosen gasped and held his hands to his heart. “I knew you’d do that.”
“Why do you think I’m reacting like this?”
“So you can insist this is all about you. Like Luther.” Dr. Rosen’s head was bobbing maniacally, and he stuck up his thumbs like I’d gotten the right answer.
“You’re so annoying,” Marnie said to Dr. Rosen with a dismissive wave of her hand.
Dr. Rosen kept his gaze on me. “Do you understand?”
All I understood was that my therapist had a Freudian bug up his ass. Dr. Rosen accurately read my blank look as ignorance.
“If you attach to me—here, in treatment”—he pointed toward his dorky brown shoes—“then you will be able to attach to men out there.” He gestured out the window. “Assuming we have a healthy attachment, you can use it as a foundation for your romantic relationships.”
“Is it working?” I held my palms to my chest.
“Does a bear shit in the woods?”
Once a week, the Intern picked me up in his shiny black car and whisked me away to a trendy bistro where we would pass innuendo back and forth like a basket of tortilla chips. It was hypercharged flirting—him bragging about how he could please me; me hinting I was far hungrier than he imagined. “I’ve been deprived a long time,” I would say. “Nothing I can’t handle,” he would insist. Back at his place, he would hunch over
