“I masturbate when I feel lonely,” I said.

“When you want to connect—” Freud softly said.

“When I feel so profoundly lonely, such intense longing, it seems insatiable.”

“—and the connection isn’t there to be had,” he continued. “So instead, you connect with yourself.”

I pressed my fingers harder over my pants, not rubbing myself, just holding myself in. When you come, you’re in ecstasy; you leave yourself for a moment. Little death. You come, so you can come back to yourself.

“Yes,” I whispered, and for some reason then was able to pull my hand away. “I’m remembering something…” I said. “What happened after the opera. Please, will you put your hands on my head?”

There they were again, palms pressing into my skull.

When we’d gotten home, I told him, my mother had gone to get ready for bed, while my father had gone to tidy the kitchen—there were still dinner dishes in the sink. I felt my cheeks still flushed from what had happened in the bathroom; I hadn’t known my body could do that. I had felt the twisting there before, had rubbed and pressed my crotch in all sorts of ways, but never before had I ascended to that white-hot place.

I stood watching my father from the doorway, his hands covered in suds, his studied expression. He had taken off his jacket but was still in his suit pants, which hung in a long line to the floor.

I paused, unsure if I could continue. Freud had just watched me come, and yet what I had to say next felt like another order of revelation.

“I can’t say what I need to say,” I told him.

“Why?”

“I’m afraid.”

No response.

“Are you still there?”

“I’m here,” Freud said, and of course he was, I felt his hands on my hair.

I swallowed. I balled my shirt up in my fists. I opened them, slipped one hand underneath the waistband of my jeans and pressed my palm into my stomach, the soft hot skin.

“I couldn’t stop looking at his ass,” I blurted out, and then sighed deeply, relieved I had managed to let the words into the air, relieved I hadn’t been struck dead. His ass had looked firm, tough, but like it had a little bit of spring to it. I’d never seen him naked, not even in his underwear, except when he was wearing a bathing suit. I’d never seen a man’s ass at all, or a boy’s. What shape was it? It was hard to tell through his clothes. Was it hairy, like his legs? What did it feel like?

I edged into the kitchen and then behind him, crouched down a little, laid my cheek on it. It was better than a pillow, even through his pants; I thought that word—pillow-as my cheek made contact. But just as my eyelids floated closed and an orange feeling spread through my chest, his body went rigid. I lifted myself away, slowly, willing my body to disappear into thin air. Maybe he hadn’t noticed. Maybe I could transform myself into a ghost.