“There is,” he said. “There is all the difference in the world.”

Underneath the blanket, so slowly I was sure he couldn’t see, I slid my hand toward my crotch again, then pressed my fingers there. The intense comfort of it, my home.

“I’ve done it for a very long time,” I said. “Like I told you.”

Silence.

“I can’t help it,” I said finally.

“There is no need to help it,” he said. “I am only suggesting that it might provide clues as to who you are.”

People masturbate when they’re full of craving, when they’re horny, when they want. This much was obvious. But this wasn’t all of it, I knew. I thought back to the opera, to what had happened right before I’d run to the bathroom: Werther, his anguished frenzy, my own.

“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.