There was the shock and delight that J remembered my story. How did he recall everything, because he did not seem to take notes? Yet he remembered not simply the name of
my friend, or the town I went to school in, but also slipped in minute references as if he knew the fabric of my being intimately. He was like a still-life painter, attending to the strawberry in the bowl of fruit, knowing that it was in the detail that the painting would be brought alive.

I am telling J about my older sister, extolling her prodigious talent, explaining how she was the first person from school to win a place at Cambridge, how she writes for swish magazines, how she is single like me. Like all four children. He utters an extraordinary thing. ‘I am interested in
you.’

‘You’ is articulated with chiselled emphasis. He must not understand. This is a fascinating story, for my sister is gifted, and am I not supposed to keep him interested? I know he encourages, ‘Say what’s in your mind,’ but I want to package witty stories to keep him entertained. When he hears more, he too will be drawn into the glittering world of the brilliant sister. I embark again on my eulogy, in whose voice (my own? another’s?) I do not know. She sings, does Irish dancing, wins the medals I covet, although sometimes we dance together, the two sisters doing their jig. My father adores her. Everyone says they are inseparable. She gets on so well with my mother. Sometimes I have to concentrate to catch his every word.

‘I am not interested in her. I am interested in...’ – pause – ‘you. You are the one who interests me.’

‘You’ fills the room with its knockout punch. He wants to know me. I interest him. Warmth and sadness enter my heart. I surrender to my first experience of crying in shared space. Trust is growing between us. The endless straining to be clever can be suspended as J’s words tuck over me like a blanket. And there is the first dawning in consciousness of how I have felt about myself and the sister complex for time eternal. The speaking can start again when I am ready, and maybe I can reply to his sensitively paced question, ‘What are the tearful thoughts?’

J is curious about my problems, actively engaged in the mutual adventure of analytical enquiry. He wants to create space for the symptoms, to let them breathe a while, with no demand for instant resolution. ‘You don’t have to make sense here,’ he assures me, a glorious relief. His open energy is infectious. A thought constellates: maybe I could be interested in me too. I don’t have to keep on terrorising myself with the punishing thought: that there’s something wrong with me.

Early on he asks quietly, ‘Are you a virgin?’ From the safety of the couch I think, my God, what a
shockingly brave question – one the other counsellor had never asked. I am taken aback, not used to talking about this with anyone, never mind a man. It makes me think: yes, he really does mean it when he keeps reiterating that we can talk about private matters here, include unspeakable secrets
or painful things that I cannot tell other people. Hope is rising. If he is able to broach these matters – cleanly, honestly – to assign straightforward language to the sexual, then perhaps I can respond. I realise from his question that he does not understand the extent of my inexperience.

I summon up the courage. ‘Yes.’ Try to explain. What is the explanation? ‘The thing is...’ Go on, tell him. ‘I’ve never had a boyfriend. Actually...’ It feels like I’m confessing murder, ‘I’ve never kissed anyone.’

My secret is out. My voice is trailing, but he is listening, I know he is. ‘No, I can’t manage that kind of relationship. Honestly, I’m hopeless.’ Talking about a sexual relationship felt like planning a trip
to one of those magical planets beyond Mars; it would never happen anyway, so what was the point of taking the notion seriously? I was sorry that I could not help J do his job properly.
If I had already been in a relationship, there might be significant incidents to explore. I would have something literal, something physical, to offer him; but there was nothing, nothing at all. This dilemma in therapy precisely mirrored my problem in the external world.

‘I couldn’t have a se-... se-... se-...’ – it was hard to get that word out – ‘sexual relationship.’ The reason was obvious, why did I need to add more? J seemed genuinely interested. ‘Because... you see... and then...’ My syllables were slipping down the crevices of anxiety. J retrieved them before they disappeared.

‘You are not finishing your sentences again.’ I had not noticed this, caught up in my own agitation.

‘I’ve nothing to offer a man. I don’t know what to do with a man.’ For one second, a gash was exposed which seemed to run through the whole of my being. It was too excruciating to touch. It needed evasive cloudiness as protection. I hoped he had grasped enough now, that it would all disappear through faith in therapy.

It was such a cruel Catch-22. You see, I told him, you needed some modicum of experience in order to ‘survive’, to be able to ‘cope’. A sexual relationship was something you had to ‘steel yourself for’.

‘Where is the evidence for this? How come you’re sure that sex is painful if you’ve never had sex?’ A piercingly good question, one that momentarily
stopped me in my tracks. Eventually I replied, ‘I don’t know how I know. I just know.’ Then I launched into another chaotic word tangle.

‘Let’s slow everything right down, take one step at a time with this.’ The room discreetly offered itself as a contemplative tabernacle. However, when J used an expression such as ‘sexual intercourse’, the space would immediately freeze over into a voiceless wasteland. My left hand would pat the base of my throat, and the right one would cross over it, hands flapping like a nervous dove. Slowing down was awful because it meant that hidden meaning might sneak out. And I was afraid, immensely afraid of what my own words might mean, even though I was supposedly inviting in that very thing.

Something had to be faced in sex, I kept telling him, although I was not sure what it was. That was why I needed a teacher. J remained calm, because even speaking about these matters frightened me. His poise conveyed that he took my experience seriously, that he was willing to try to help.

‘If you could have worked out this problem on your own, with your logical faculty, you’d already have done so.’ He seemed to know how my weary intellect had battled with this conundrum. This was simply beyond its rational powers. ‘You chose to enter into therapy. That was a most wise thing to do.’ His affirming pragmatism was reassuring. ‘You knew you needed help from another human being to extend your field of vision. Because you can’t see the back of your head, can you? I can.’
(Sometimes, I would add, ‘Yeah, then again, you can’t see my face.’)

Just once did J sweep through with what felt like an ultra-confident, male intervention. ‘Of course, you know the facts about sex, don’t you?'

Inside, I was desperate to cover up shame, to not expose my clumsy naivety to his penetrating searchlight. The call was to reassure him – yes, yes – to steer the conversation away from embarrassment, possibly for us both. The truth crept beneath the searing inner loneliness of not sure.

‘The thing is,’ I confided, forgetting that he did not need to be subjected to keeping-worries-at-bay strategies, ‘I’m completely asexual.’

Long silence, rich with scepticism.

J replied, sounding certain of his facts. ‘There is no such thing as being asexual.’

I was determined to cling to my life raft. ‘Aren’t you the lucky therapist, because you are working with the exception! I am telling you, I’m totally asexual!’
His Master’s Voice rose again, sounding like Death tolling. ‘You cannot not be sexual. You can only choose to be in relationship with your sexuality or not.’

A demoralised mood ensued as I pondered the implications of his statement. Did that mean I could never get rid of sexuality?