The Backwoods

you kept your distance from Agan’s Point, the depression would not recur. I presumed this theory worked, because I never heard from you again. Am I wrong?”

“It did work,” she said. “I felt fine after that and have for the last five years. But for the last few—”

“Where are you right now, exactly?” he interrupted.

“Agan’s Point,” she slowly admitted. “This time for a funeral—my sister’s husband.”

Dr. Sallee’s voice came after a long pause. “That’s regrettable. So your depression has recurred. . . .”

“No, that’s the surprising part. It’s almost the opposite. For the days I’ve been back in Agan’s Point, I haven’t felt depressed at all. I’ve felt great; I’ve felt enthused.”

“Strange,” the doctor said, “but considerable.”

Now Patricia mulled over words in her mind, trying to choose the right ones. “I don’t really know how to say it, but—”

“Just say it,” Dr. Sallee suggested.

The words leaked out slowly: “Something about coming back has made me feel more sexual than I’ve felt in years. It’s actually scaring me, and I’m beginning to feel out of control.” In spite of the miles between them, her face reddened. “I’m . . . masturbating much more than normal, and every night I have very intense sexual dreams, which is unusual for me—”

“Sexual dreams? Masturbation? There’s nothing abnormal about that,” the doctor told her. “This is all an aspect of passive sexuality. There’s nothing out of control about it.”

Passive sexuality, she thought. She was even more embarrassed to tell him the rest. Her throat choked up. “I’m almost ashamed to continue. . . .”

“Patricia”—he chuckled—“I’m your counselor. We’re essentially strangers, not to mention the fact that everything you say to me is in professional confidence. My rates are high, so you might as well get your money’s worth. Make me work for it. I can’t help you unless you tell me everything that leads you to think you’re out of control.”

It made perfect sense. So she said it: “I almost cheated on my husband about an hour ago. That’s never happened before. And I was going to do it. . . .”

Dr. Sallee didn’t seemed the least bit fazed. “Is there trouble in the marriage?”

“None,” she said. “It’s the best marriage any woman could ever ask for. I’ve never not been sexually fulfilled with my husband. We’re perfectly compatible in every way, even sexually—especially sexually.”

“Was the person you almost cheated with a stranger?”

“No. A boy—er, I should say a man my age—whom I grew up with. We were best friends since childhood.”

“Any sexual experiences with him in the past, before your marriage? A high school romance, perhaps, experimentation when you were younger—playing doctor, and the like?”

“No. I know he wanted that, but I was never interested back in those days. I was always very goal-oriented as an adolescent, and even through college.” Ernie, Ernie, Ernie, she thought. I never really noticed you over all those years. So why now? “I’ve seen him maybe three times since I left Agan’s Point over twenty years ago. But this time, when I came back for the funeral . . . something happened. I just all of a sudden find him very attractive.”

“Hmm,” came the counselor’s response. “From a clinical standpoint—so far, at least—this all sounds very good.”

The-remark astonished her. “Good? I’m in total turmoil!”

“I said from a clinical standpoint. In the past, whenever you returned to Agan’s Point, you’d become clinically depressed. Today you’ve returned to Agan’s Point, but you’re not depressed at all. You feel great—to use your own words of a moment ago. You feel enthused. Your depression is gone, so that’s a good thing.”

Now she saw his point, but he still wasn’t seeing hers. “Yes, I feel enthused, but I also feel very, very sexual—”

“To the point that you nearly committed an infidelity,” he added, “and this is what’s bothering you now.”

“Exactly. It doesn’t make sense. It makes me feel like I must be sick or something, because—”

“Because,” he kept finishing for her, “it doesn’t seem right for you to feel sexual in the very place that has always reminded you of the worst trauma of your life, which just so happened to be a sexual trauma.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” she said, sighing in relief that he’d made it easier for her.

His voice almost sounded bored as he continued. “In my job, I’ve had many patients who were victims of sexual abuse, multiple rape, sexual torture, and worse. You’d be surprised how many women, for instance, will go years or even decades without ever telling anyone—even their counselors—that they experienced orgasms during their trauma, because in their minds it seems wrong, it seems shameful, it seems sick to experience pleasure during a revolting ordeal. In truth, quite a considerable percentage of rape victims experience a sexual release, and it doesn’t mean they’re sick at all. It’s just their body reacting to a primordial function. It’s not sick, it’s not shameful, and its not abnormal.”

Patricia calculated this with a reserved interest. She, too, had experienced orgasm during her rape—the first orgasm of her life—and she’d never told anyone for the same reasons the doctor had just cited. I never even told Dr. Sallee, she realized, and now I guess I know why he never asked.

Suddenly there was a tear in her eye, but it was a quietly joyous one. “You have no idea how good that makes me feel.”

“I’m glad,” the doctor said. “And you should be glad, too, of a lot of things—at least based on what you’re telling me today. Most rape aftercare revolves not so much around psychotherapy, medication, and group counseling, but around the evolvement of the individual, coming to terms and dealing with it. It’s clear to me that you’ve done this.”

This was good to know, but it still didn’t solve her problem. “It’s like the old problem is gone, but now there’s a new one.”

“But is it a grievous one?” he asked, already knowing the answer. “Is it a debilitating one? No. In fact, it’s got nothing whatever to do with your trauma of so many years ago. Let me allegorize. Are you computer literate?”

She frowned at the question. “I think so. We have a network at the office, and I do all right.”

“Good, then I’ll use my favorite comparison on you.” He chuckled. “Lawyers tend to be objective thinkers; they deal in black-and-white terms. But this is not a black-and-white issue, is it? The human brain is the most sophisticated ‘thing’ in the world. Ten trillion brain cells, one hundred trillion synaptic connections. . Think of it as a computer. That computer is programed by the experiences of life, good and bad. Well, sometimes the files glitch; sometimes they get viruses and have to be cleansed. A rape, for instance, can be thought of as an infected file, a file gone bad, a file that’s no longer functioning in synchronicity with the other files it’s been programmed to operate with. When we can’t delete a bad file, we try to quarantine it, and sometimes we can’t even do that because the file is so out of sorts. Your rape experience is a bad file, Patricia. You’ve been quarantining it for years, which has worked, but now the computer is appending that file, to make it more serviceable to the system—rewriting the file. This is a sophomoric analogy, but it might help you understand. As far as your rape is concerned, the file has been rewritten; it no longer has a negative effect on the system.”

Dr. Sallee’s simile did let her see the problem in a clearer light. “But what about—”

“An unexplained heightened sexuality in a nonsexual setting?” he finished for her yet again. “Same thing, different program. Only in this case there was never a bad file. Think of it, instead, as a scheduled maintenance activation. The way a calendar program will flash reminders on your screen at a preset time?” Another chuckle. “You’re approaching your mid-forties, Patricia, which is the actual sexual peak for most women. Consciously, you’ve been groomed by your social and professional environment—a very specific environment. You’ve never wanted children, for instance, because it doesn’t suit the course you’ve chosen for your life, and part of the reason you chose your mate is because he doesn’t want children, either. Some people simply don’t, but all people—all mammals, in fact—have an inborn instinct to reproduce. It’s in our genes whether we like it or not. It’s in our brains, our computers, so to speak-it’s one of the operations programs. . As we