"Gwyneth Jones - Red Sonja and Lessingham in Dreamland" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Gwyneth)

whimpered in his sleep, nuzzling the soft fabric, "Mama ..."


She told Dr. Hamilton that "Lessingham" had raped her.
"And wasn't that what you wanted?"
She lay on the couch in the mirrored office. The doctor sat beside her with his smart notebook on
his knee. The couch collected "Sonja's" physical responses as if she was an astronaut umbilicaled to
ground control; and Dr. Jim read the telltales popping up in his reassuring horn-rims. She remembered
the sneaking furtive thing that she had glimpsed in "Lessingham's" eyes, the moment before he took over
their lust scene. How could she explain the difference? "He wasn't playing. In the fantasy, anything's
allowed. But he wasn't playing. He was outside it, laughing at me."
"I warned you he would want to stay in control."
"But there was no need! I wanted him to be in control. Why did he have to steal what I wanted to
give him anyway?"
"You have to understand, "Sonja," that to many men it's women who seem powerful. You women
feel dominated and try to achieve 'equality.' But the men don't perceive the situation like that. They're
mortally afraid of you: and anything, just about anything they do to keep the upper hand, seems like
justified self-defense."
She could have wept with frustration. "I know all that! That's exactly what I was trying to get away
from. I thought we were supposed to leave the damn baggage behind. I wanted something purely
physical. . . . Something innocent."
"Sex is not innocent, 'Sonja.' I know you believe it is, or 'should be.' But it's time you faced the truth.
Any interaction with another person involves some kind of jockeying for power, dickering over control.
Sex is no exception. Now that's basic. You can't escape from it in direct-cortical fantasy. It's in our
minds that relationships happen, and the mind, of course, is where virtuality happens too." He sighed, and
made an entry in her notes. "I want you to look on this as another step toward coping with the real.
You're not sick, 'Sonja.' You're unhappy. Not even unusually so. Most adults are unhappy, to some
degreeтАФ"
"Or else they're in denial."
Her sarcasm fell flat. "Right. A good place to be, at least some of the time. What we're trying to
achieve hereтАФif we're trying to achieve anything at allтАФis to raise your pain threshold to somewhere
near average. I want you to walk away from therapy with lowered expectations: I guess that would be
success."
"Great," she said, desolate. "That's just great." Suddenly he laughed. "Oh, you guys! You are so
weird. It's always the same story. Can't live with you, can't live without you . . . You can't go on this
way, you know. Its getting ridiculous. You want some real advice, 'Sonja'? Go home. Change your
attitudes, and start some hard peace talks with that husband of yours."
"I don't want to change," she said coldly, staring with open distaste at his smooth profile, his soft
effeminate hands. Who was he to call her abnormal? "I like my sexuality just the way it is."
Dr. Hamilton returned her look, a glint of human malice breaking through his doctor act, "Listen. I'll
tell you something for free." A weird sensation jumped in her crotch. For a moment she had a prick: a
hand lifted and cradled the warm weight of her balls. She stifled a yelp of shock. He grinned. "I've been
looking for a long time, and I know. There is no tall, dark man ..."
He returned to her notes. "You say you were 'raped,' " he continued, as if nothing had happened.
"Yet you chose to continue the virtual session. Can you explain that?"
She thought of the haunted darkness, the cold air on her naked body; the soreness of her bruises; a
rag of flesh used and tossed away. How it had felt to lie there: intensely alive, tasting the dregs, beaten
back at the gates of the fortunate land. In dreamland, even betrayal had such rich depth and fascination.
And she was free to enjoy, because it didn't matter. "You wouldn't understand."