I told him I couldn’t. I kept going back and forth, but I felt a terrible horror. I chickened out. I couldn’t go in.
“Well, if you don’t go alone next Saturday, I’ll go with you next time,” he warned me.
I can imagine the embarrassment it would be to walk in hand in hand with the therapist.
“Richard, let me be honest. If you really want to help me, why don’t we sleep together? Who would take better care of me than the psychiatrist himself?”
“Don’t even think about it. There is an ethics of the therapist that prohibits this kind of thing.”
The following week, I decided to take the plunge.
This time, I took a deep breath and crossed the thres-hold of the door like a death row inmate would. I looked around, searching for monsters and criminals, beings with three eyes and horns, and all I saw were about thirty people who looked normal. I decided to sit in a long armchair near the dance hall and took another breath; I hadn’t even been there for fifteen minutes when a Jewish hippie with blond hair, glasses, and as white as a potato approached me. He told me his name was Larry Lawton and that he was the president of the new organization.