Ten—A Session
When he does undress—if he undresses—he usually does it quickly, like jumping into cold water. The decision made, then done before he can think about it again.
And then the thing that nobody warns him about.
He’s aroused. Not necessarily fully, not necessarily for long, but enough that he knows it and assumes I don’t. He angles away. Sits down sooner than he needs to. Finds something to hold. The strategies are different but the impulse is the same—to manage, to conceal, to get through this particular moment without it being acknowledged.
I may be aroused too. I don’t hide it. Not because I’m making a point, but because hiding it would be its own kind of performance, and we’ve had enough of those already. If he notices—and he does—something in the room changes. Not into something sexual. Into something more honest. Two men in a room, bodies doing what bodies do, nobody pretending otherwise.
I don’t draw attention to his embarrassment. I don’t name it or reframe it or offer reassurance. If he wants to talk about it he will, and some men do, often with a laugh that’s only partly a laugh.
But mostly I just let it pass through the room like weather. In my experience that’s what it needs—not attention, but space. The embarrassment is looking for a reaction to feed on. When it doesn’t find one it tends to get bored and leave.
He relaxes. Gradually, unevenly, sometimes with a setback. But he relaxes.
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