"You live alone?"

"Yes. I have an apartment."

"You have many women friends?"

He shook his head. "No. Not now. I'm very busy."

Gayle sipped her tea. "What do you do when you're not busy, Adam?"

"I don't know. Catch up on my reading. Catch up on movies. I belong to a videotape club. On Sundays, in season, I sometimes go to football games with some fellows from the office."

She considered how much she could push him. "Do you have any time for a social life, Adam?"

He blinked at her. "I-I don't know what you mean. You mean girls?"

"Do you go to parties? Meet women? See women for dinner?"

He gulped his tea and put down his empty cup. "I used to. Not much. I hardly do that at all anymore." He looked at Gayle sideways, tried to hold on her. "You-you know I have a problem. You were there when Dr. Freeberg discussed it. You know my problem."

She nodded. "Of course. Maybe half the men in this country have problems in that area; only they repress them, won't face them." She wasn't sure of her statistics, but it sounded right.

"Really?" he said. "Well, I guess I wouldn't discuss it either, for a long time. But when I realized it was affecting my work-I wasn't concentrating on my regular accounts, not going after new ones-I thought maybe there was a connection."

"You were right, Adam. There is a connection. If you are having sexual difficulties, it affects not only your love life but your entire life, the way you relate to people and to your career."

"I was having more-more trouble," he said. "I was having trouble sleeping. But I was too ashamed to try to get help until a fellow in the office mentioned a great analyst he was sending his son to. Well, I went, and this analyst, he helped me open up, speak about the problem, and finally recommended I go to California for a month to see Dr. Freeberg." He gave a shrug. "So here I am. I-I'm not sure anything can be done."

"Well, you were smart and gutsy enough to try. And, Adam, I assure you something can be done. If you work with Dr. Freeberg and me, go along with us, and don't get discouraged, I'm certain you won't know your old self in a month-less than a month. You'll be a brand-new person. You'll be wanting women all the time, and they'll be wanting you, again and again."

"It's hard to believe. You've done it for other men?"

"A number of times. With patients far worse off than you. Dr. Freeberg and I have never failed."

"When do we get started?" Demski blurted out, his chalky pallor more evident.

"Now. Right now if you feel relaxed."

"I guess I'm as relaxed as I'll ever be." There was a slight tic beside his right eye. He swallowed. "Do I-do I undress now?"

"No, Adam," she said seriously. "That would be rushing it. In due time, when we're ready, we'll both undress. Right now, some simple exercises, fully clothed, but important exercises. One is called the hand caress. The other, the face caress. We can start with the hand caress."

"Hand caress," he said. "What's that?"

"Exactly what the name implies. I'm going to focus on your two hands, focus on touching them, rubbing them, feeling them, to give you relaxation, a sense of pleasure, a minimal sense of intimacy. Adam, I'd like to sit closer to you to start this. Do you mind?"

"Of course not. Whatever you have to do, just do it."

Gayle lifted herself off the couch, narrowed the gap between them, and eased onto a cushion beside him, her thigh barely touching his. "It's a two-way thing, Adam. I'll take your hands first, because I want to demonstrate the exercise. I'll ask you not to talk, and I won't talk, either. I'll ask you to keep your eyes closed. I don't want any visual input confusing you."

Demski was clearly puzzled. "Visual input confusing me? How could that happen?"

Gayle thought of how she might explain the necessity for him to keep his eyes shut. Then she remembered something. "I think I can give you an example of what I mean," she said. "When I was in training in Tucson, learning to become a surrogate, Dr. Freeberg found me a male partner to work with while Dr. Freeberg guided me. Well, the first time my partner and I were nude, I was struck by how handsome and well built my partner was. Although Dr. Freeberg was trying to show me the point of sensate focus -concentrating on a back caress-I paid little attention because I wouldn't shut my eyes but kept staring at my good-looking partner, or at least what I could see of him. Dr. Freeberg noticed what I was doing. Immediately, he pulled out his large handkerchief, folded it, and blindfolded me so that I would stop focusing on the wrong thing and get in touch with my feelings about the caressing. Dr. Freeberg succeeded in doing that by shutting my eyes for me. Now you can realize the importance of that, Adam, can't you?"

"I-I think so."

"Something else to know. When I start touching you, it'll be for my own pleasure. When I'm doing that, I'm doing it for my own sake and therefore not putting pressure on you or on me to perform. I'm doing it for pleasure rather than performance. The effect of the touching is that it feels good, first for me, then for you. Good lovemaking is first loving yourself and then learning to share that love with another. Once you can learn to share your love for yourself, then you're on your way. Does that make any sense?"

"I'm not sure."

She realized further talk, at this stage, would do little good. Only through demonstration would she be able to define better what she had been trying to explain. "I think that as we proceed, it will become clearer to you and will make sense. The place to begin, I repeat, is the hand caress.

"Right now, I want you to sit back and be comfortable and let me take your hands. When I'm through, I'll tell you, and then I want you to do exactly the same thing to me. You understand?"

"Yes."

"Sit back now, go limp, shut your eyes, give me your hands."

Demski did as he was told, shifting toward her slightly, extending his hands, which were trembling once more. Gayle took his hands and placed them in her lap. His fingers were long, knobby, the nails manicured. She released his left hand and cupped his entire right hand in her own.

"In your mind, just focus on the temperature of my hands on yours and how it feels when I stroke you. Now we'll be quiet."

Softly, her warm fingers stroked upward across his fingers and the smooth back of his hand to the hairs at his wrist. Gradually, she stroked downward, between the crevice separating his thumb and forefinger, between his bony fingers, then she slowly kneaded his entire hand. Slowly, she turned his hand over, palm upward, and resumed her light stroking and caresses.

Not until his right hand was limp and warm did she take his left hand in hers and begin to massage it on both sides.

Then she took both his hands together inside her own and cupped them warmly, moving her fingers, rubbing, stroking, kneading.

After perhaps twenty minutes she lowered his hands to her lap and released them.

"All right, Adam, you can open your eyes now, and we can talk a little." She met his eyes. "How was that-how did it feel?"

"I don't know exactly. What can I say? It felt sort of good."

Gayle moved her fingers over his left hand. "Were you aware of the different feelings when I touched your hand in different places? Did you feel pressures here on this bump, there on that crevice?"

"Sure, it was nice."

Gayle slipped one of her hands under his. "Okay, do the same hand caress to me. Close your eyes, and I'll close mine, and you do it to me the way I did it to you. For as long as you wish."

After a brief hesitation, Demski began to rub and squeeze her hands. He continued to do so with more and more intensity.

Nearly ten minutes had gone by when Gayle laced her fingers between his and stopped him. "Okay, Adam, that's fine. You can look at me. How did it feel? Did you get any special feeling from it?"

"Well, I guess so. It was sort of-sort of-" He couldn't find the right word.

Gayle tried to find it for him.

"Sensuous, maybe?"

"Yes, that's it."

"There was more," Gayle said professionally. "Did my hands feel soft or weak or firm to you? Did you notice I had even the tiniest callus? Were you conscious of my fingernails, that they're not too long but they have nail polish on them? And the backs of my hands-were they smooth or chapped? To most people a hand is a hand is a hand, something to eat with, write with, shake with. But there's a lot more there. The purpose of this exercise, Adam, is to develop and heighten your sense of discrimination and focus. I want you to know more about your body, and my own. I want you to know shape and texture. Because if you do, you'll start creating pictures in your head, and the more sensual pictures you create, the more alive you're going to feel."

"I had sensual pictures doing it."

"Excellent," said Gayle. "The ridges of our hands, the smoothness of them, their texture, that can make you aware of yourself and of me as human beings. We get too accustomed to ourselves and others. But as we do more touching, you'll realize the richness and variations about your body and mine. You'll know how different it is when you touch the hairline of my neck, then the hairline of my groin. You'll stop being turned off from your body, and you'll become more alert and awake to every sensuous experience. Like the face caress. That should be next, and we have time."

"What is it?" Demski asked worriedly.

"Just touching each other's faces, the various parts of our faces in different ways, feeling the bone structure, the skin, the fuzz. I've always thought the face caress an exquisite experience. Some patients have told me it reminds them of when they were children, the tender way they were touched then, but they haven't been touched that way by anyone since. Let's try it, Adam. First, me to you, then you to me. Now shut your eyes."

He did so, and Gayle moved more closely to him, then reached up and began to massage his forehead softly, soon running the tips of her fingers over his nose and across his cheeks, flitting them across his quivering lips and down his chin.

She repeated this several times and finally finished by cupping his face in her hands. "All right, Adam." When he opened his eyes, she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. "Well, Adam, what did you feel?"

At first he was unable to speak, then he whispered, "Like I-I wanted to kiss you."

She stared at him. "Why not? Go ahead."

He pushed his face toward hers and brushed his lips against her lips.

"Was that what you wanted to do?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Or did you want to kiss me in different ways?"

"I-I don't know what ways."

"A woman likes to be kissed in other ways, too. On the eyelids, tip of the nose, cleft of the chin, hollow of the throat, and on her earlobes, in her ears, behind her ears. Have you ever done that?"

"No."

"Do it now, to me. Kissing can be almost as intimate as intercourse. Start with my eyelids."

She closed her eyes and felt his nervous lips flutter at them, then waited as he made small pecks at her ears, cheeks, nose, chin. She was tempted to grab him, press his mouth against her own, open his mouth and her own, and give him a tongue kiss. Just to loosen him up. But she didn't succumb to it. That would be going too fast, pushing it too hard.

When he was done, she said, "Now it's your turn to give me a face caress."

His fingers went over her face, tentatively exploring and rubbing every feature, for many minutes.

At last, she opened her eyes. "How was it, Adam?" He smiled with less effort. "I liked it."

"So did I."

"Sort of-uh-sensuous," he added.

"That's what I thought." She sat back. "Well, there you are. First two exercises behind you. And nothing scary at all. Maybe you even found it fun."

"It was fun, I admit." He wriggled forward, reaching for his jacket behind him. "I guess I should go." He paused. "What-what do we do at the next session?"

"Footbath. Then"-Gayle was thinking-"maybe we'll move right into body imaging."

"Body imaging?"

"We both stand in front of a full-length mirror and tell what we like and don't like about our own bodies. We'll both be nude."

His expression did not hide his concern. "We'll undress? I thought you said that would come later?"

"Usually it does. A little later. But I was just thinking it would make it easier for both of us, definitely show more progress, if we were able to work together without anything on." She searched his face. "How do you feel about that, Adam?"

"I-I'm not sure."

"Well, let me discuss it with Dr. Freeberg first."

"If we do that . . . how will it help me?"

Gayle smiled enigmatically. "You'll see."

In the quiet of his computerized modern rectory in the rear of his Church of the Resurrection-actually a suite of rooms where the Reverend Mr. Josh Scrafield both lived and worked-Darlene Young efficiently continued to go through the routine of preparing her employer for his weekly television broadcast.

As she secured Scrafield's clerical collar to his starched white shirt, and helped him into the coat of his conservative dark suit, Darlene was again conscious of her employer's size and strength, which by now she knew all too well. Scrafield was a powerful man physically, over six feet tall and muscular, who considered his body a temple and who worked out with barbells four times a week with a local exercise coach. She knew, for he had told her so many times, that his temple must be cleansed and strengthened regularly, so that he could stand as an inspiration to the weak and frail of his ever-expanding flock of followers. Scrafield liked to say that he perceived the fears and lusts of his followers, and it was only to understand their temptations fully that he brought himself-forced himself, as he put it-at least once a week, to yield to her tender ministrations.

When she had applied for the job as Scrafield's secretary, and been hired, her double role of servicing had been understood from the start. Nor had Darlene minded. Scrafield had been single, and Darlene herself long divorced. In her late thirties, Darlene had wanted a man. Scrafield had not been unattractive. His thick eyebrows over oddly Mongolian eyes, fierce riveting black eyes, his pinched nose, jutting jaw, and mesmerizing voice (a grandiloquence of speech) had proved utterly seductive. She had been devoted to him, and to his generosity, and she had shown qualities of cleverness that matched his own, and this had gained her a promotion to publicist and television producer and allowed her to hire a secretary for herself. By then, she had become less enchanted with him, had tried to overlook his vanity, cunning, and what she suspected was a certain insincerity about his calling. Scrafield's real religion, she guessed, was his ambition to be somebody.

Now that she had him neatly dressed, except for his trousers, she began to remove his trousers from the hanger.

"Not yet," he said, waving them aside. "You know I like to keep them pressed until the last minute."

With that, she knew what she had known the last several months. She knew what was in store for her.

Dressed, but still in his boxer shorts, Scrafield was walking to his gargantuan desk, large enough to satisfy a Mussolini.

"I want to run through the script for tonight one more time," he was saying as he lowered himself behind the desk, took up the script, and wheeled his chair toward her. "Do you mind listening?"

"I look forward to it," said Darlene.

"If any of it sounds wrong, you let me know."

"Absolutely."

"All right," said Scrafield, clearing his throat, "let's run through it."

She sat on an ottoman, near him, as he began to read aloud from the script in his deepened and more theatrical voice.

"Brothers and Sisters," the Reverend Mr. Scrafield began, "once more I have come upon new information about the latest threat that is quietly but inexorably setting about to destroy our families and the very foundations of the American way of life.

"This insidious and cancerous growth that has invaded the schools of our youngest-the schools our children attend, namely, grammar schools and high schools-is known as sex education. This blatant and provocative teaching is being pressed on our young and unformed heirs.