Imagine my surprise when I walked through my therapist’s door and saw her swaying slowly to the music that she played through the speakers on her computer. She was standing up and listening to Janet Jackson while she sipped from a bottle of fruit O water and dancing in a manner that was actually enticing.

Her secretary had sent me in even though I’d arrived ten minutes early. Cameron obviously hadn’t buzzed for me. She usually wore a blazer but today she was clad in a snug-fitting, Baby Phat, polo-style shirt and a jean skirt that shocked me by revealing an outstanding shape.

I knocked on the door to get her attention. She turned around and from the look of embarrassment on her face it was apparent that if she were white she would have turned as red as a can of Coca-Cola. “That must be some bottle of water.” I laughed to break the ice.

She looked at her watch and then laughed it off. “You’re early. Was Jackie at the desk?”

“Yeah, she sent me in.”

She nodded then grabbed her sweater from her chair. “Excuse me for one second.” Cameron headed out of the office, surely to go chew her secretary out.

When she walked back in three minutes later she was wearing her sweater and she seemed fine. I’d already taken a seat and she was ready to get down to business.

“So how have you been Khalil?”

“I’ve actually been good.”

“The dreams? No recurrences?”

“No not really. I mean no.” She nodded suspiciously or my mind was working too hard. Changing the subject I blurted out, “I saw the woman who abandoned me as a child. I saw her at the airport in L.A.”

“You mean your mother?”

“No, Frannie. She was my father’s girlfriend.”

She scribbled down something. “So she wasn’t your mother, but you chose to use the word abandoned. Why do you think that is?”

“Well, she was like a mother to me. The only mother I knew for the early years of my life.”

“I remember the story. I have to ask you a question though. Now that you are an adult, do you think it was her responsibility to take care of you?”

“Not legally, no I don’t, but morally, yes. Yes I do. In the same position, it’s what I would do. She knew what she was leaving me behind to face.”

“You mean the drugs or the sexual abuse?”

“All of it. She left me behind. She knew what I was facing. She knew my father was on drugs, though it did get worse, or rather, out of control when she left. She still had to know that there was no way I’d be okay after she left.”

“So do you blame her or your father for what happened to you? For the life you lived.”

“You mean the life I didn’t live.”

She shrugged. “Or do you blame yourself?”

My eyebrows rose. “Why would I blame myself?”

“You’d be surprised. Victims do it all the time.”

“But I was only a kid. What could I have done?”

“That’s the question. Maybe you think you could have done something. Fought her off. Told someone. Gone to the authorities about the drugs or the abuse.”

“Cameron, no kid does…”

“You’d be surprised. Each case is different though. We’re talking about you.”

“I blame my father. He wasn’t a real man. A real man takes care of his child. I blame my mother. She was weak and evil and selfish. And I blame Frannie, because she wasn’t like my parents. She could have helped. She could have saved me.” I felt the tears beginning to come. I was embarrassed that she was taking me there.

Her face showed compassion now. “Khalil, if you need…”

I interrupted her as a thought flooded my mind. “I could have done something but…” The same compassionate stare. She was waiting for this. “…I could have stopped it, but I think I liked it. I liked what she did to me. I hadn’t had anything good in my life for a long time. No one else paid me any attention good or bad. Tenille was the only one,” I said as I began to cry the tears of shame. I covered my face and let it all out.

“It’s okay, Khalil. It’s okay.” A moment later and I heard her shut the door. She then kneeled at my side and handed me a Kleenex. “Let it out. It’s okay to feel all that you feel. Those feelings are yours. Own them and then we’ll work on letting them go.”

I continued to cry for at least a minute as I thought about everything that I’d been through. My chest moved in and out as if I’d just run a four-minute mile. “I loved Frannie. I did and she left me.”

“It probably really hurt her to do that. She probably didn’t think there was anything she could do, Khalil. Did you get her number when you saw her at the airport?”

“Yes.”

“You need to call her and talk to her. Just be honest with her. Just be honest.”

I tried to calm myself. I was in so much pain. Cameron handed me more Kleenex. She reached up to wipe my face and I felt her hands on my cheeks. I looked up from my palms and she was right there in my face. And I couldn’t have written a worse ending to the session, but she leaned in and kissed me on the mouth. I never realized that I felt anything for her emotionally that would have made me respond. But physically, she’d always enticed me. Many times I’d fantasized about bending her over this desk. I kissed her back and we stood up, lips locked.

A second later and my right hand was up her shirt caressing one of her globes and hers was at my crotch. It was like a lightning bolt when I heard her use the words, “Fuck me, Khalil.”

The words were different but they triggered the memory of Honey’s request. “Take me upstairs and make love to me…Now.”

I pulled away and said, “Stop.”

She was stunned. The look on her face told me so. “Please, Khalil. I know it’s wrong, but I want you. Just this one time.”

My head could have fallen off my shoulders and rolled out of the office. I couldn’t believe that my therapist had lost control like that. I wanted to ask her who she was. Instead I told the truth. “I’m in love. I can’t do this.”

“You can.” Her voice was seductive. “It’ll never happen again. I…”

I cut her off. “I have to go.” I turned and walked out of her office and didn’t look back.