"I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)"
For thrall, who suggested it, and for Lady Ru'etha, who seconded the notion.
*
"Y'see, doc...it's about my wife."
Doctor Hendricks looked down at Jim with an expression of good-natured skepticism on his face. "And yet," he said mildly, "you're the one sitting on the couch. Want to go into a little more detail about what you want out of all this, or should we just go ahead and skip this appointment, and get your wife in here for a hypnotherapy session?"
Jim smiled sheepishly. "Yeah, yeah, okay," he said, punctuating the comment with a heavy sigh. "Is Thursday all right?" It might be a snap judgment, but he was already feeling pretty comfortable enough with Doctor Hendricks to crack jokes. Jim had maybe expected some sort of tight-assed clinical shrink, or maybe a creepy Svengali type, but this felt like talking to a regular guy who just happened to have a bunch of degrees up on his wall.
"Seriously, Doc," he continued, "my wife and I, a few months back we decided that things weren't clicking in the bedroom the way they used to. I mean, you know, not that sex was bad, or anything--she never had anything to complain about, I made sure of that. But we thought about maybe doing something to spice up the old night life, you know?"
Doctor Hendricks nodded. "It's not an unfamiliar idea once you've been married for eight years, and not a bad one, either. So long as you can talk openly and honestly about what you're interested in trying, that is." He looked a little confused, like he was wondering why Jim had come to him instead of calling up Doctor Ruth or something.
"Well, that wasn't a problem," Jim said, his cheeks feeling a little bit hot as he remembered the night he and Dorrie spent sharing their sexual fantasies. Just talking about it had gotten them both hotter than they'd been in years, as they described in detail the things that had always turned them on. He'd felt like there was an iron bar in his pants when he talked about fantasies of Dorrie with another girl, and the way she'd squirmed when she shyly mentioned wanting to be tied up was getting him hard right now as he remembered it. "We talked a lot, and we've been trying some stuff. And it's been...wow." He let out a low whistle. "It's been pretty damn nice, Doc."
"Please," Doctor Hendricks said, "call me Rob. Saying 'Doc' all the time makes me feel like I'm hypnotizing Bugs Bunny." He leaned back in his chair. "So if you're happy, and she's happy, then why are you here telling me that your wife is making you want to be hypnotized?"
Jim shifted a little on the couch. "Yeah, well...there's some stuff she wants to do, see. It's a little..." He fidgeted a little, then finally shrugged. "Weird. I mean, not, you know, weird weird. She's not asking me to piss on her or anything like that. It's just, well...I mean, it's not that I don't want to, I can tell this is something she really wants, it's just that I thought, well, maybe I could use a little help easing into the idea. Not that there's anything wrong with it or anything, but--"
Doctor Hendricks held up a hand. "Whoa, there. We're not going to get anywhere like this. Not only are you getting so tense that you're practically tying yourself up in knots, you're not making a lick of sense. I think the first thing you're going to get out of our sessions is relaxing enough to tell me what you want out of our sessions."
Jim tried to hide the nervousness in his voice. "So I guess it's time for you to hypnotize me, huh, Doc...er, Rob?"
Doctor Hendricks pulled out a crystal pendulum on a long silver chain. "No, it's time for you to hypnotize you." He held the pendant out for Jim to take. "Look," he said, noticing Jim's confused expression, "you don't get to be a certified hypnotherapist without getting pretty good at noticing people's body language, and your body is telling me that you're not all that comfortable with the idea of me hypnotizing you. So we're going to try something a little different, and let you do all the work." He grinned. "It doesn't mean that I'm sharing my fee for the session, though."
Jim held up the pendulum. "So what do I do?" he asked, staring helplessly at it. He didn't know what to do with it; the only hypnosis he'd ever seen was on an old re-run of 'Hart To Hart'.
Doctor Hendricks shrugged. "For now, just try to relax. Go ahead and look at it, and imagine all those worries about me, and about your wife, draining out of your body. Just go ahead and watch that pendulum--if it starts to swing around a little, that's fine. That's normal. That's good. Follow it with your eyes if it starts to move, and relax. If there's something you feel like saying, go ahead and let it out. But it's alright to just watch and listen for now."
Jim looked at the pendulum. He'd expected something really eye-catching, like a sparkly gemstone or something. Maybe even a pocket-watch--that was what they were always supposed to use, right? But this was just a sort of dull, solid-colored pinkish-purple rock that had been cut and polished. It had some veins of deeper purple running through it, which was kind of pretty, but Jim didn't know from rocks. He was an engineer, not a geologist. He'd played with model rockets as a kid, not rock tumblers. "What, um...what's this made out of?" he asked. He twisted his hand a little to get a look at the whole thing.
"It's amethyst," Doctor Hendricks said calmly. "But don't try to move it. Just keep watching it, and it'll move all on its own. You'll be lying there, feeling all the stress pour out of you like the air out of a balloon, and as you feel yourself relaxing and sinking into the couch, the pendulum will move...all on its own. And when it does, Jim, you'll relax even more."
Jim squinted at the pendulum, watching it intently to see if it would really move on its own the way Doctor Hendricks said it would. It sounded like bullshit to him. He was holding it, wasn't he? If he wasn't going to be moving it, who was? "It might help if you traced the veins of deeper purple with your eyes," Doctor Hendricks said, but already his words had become background noise as Jim focused his attention on the pendulum. Jim didn't want to tune him out or anything, but the guy was making it sound like this thing was going to start moving by magic or something. And if that really was going to happen, Jim didn't want to miss it.
"Take a deep breath, and let it out slowly," Doctor Hendricks said. Jim almost didn't notice his lungs inflate. He was too busy tracing the threads of dark purple through the pink hues of the stone. He really wished he'd decided to hold the pendulum closer to his eyes; the effort of narrowing his focus even further down from the stone to the veins was making them water slightly, and every time he blinked, he had to refocus all over again. But he didn't want to move it, not when Doctor Hendricks had told him not to. He just had to keep watching and listening, tracing the purple in the pink.
"And you might notice your hand getting tired from holding the pendulum up, or your eyes getting tired from watching it," Doctor Hendricks said, "but try to ignore that for now. The rest of your body is relaxing so well that it's fine if your eyes get tired, or your hand gets tired. You know you want to see the pendulum move, and you'll need to have your eyes open for that. They can close later."
