“Do you wake up witherections?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say immediately, then grimace. “Sorry. That was fast.”
“That’s fine,” she says, unbothered. “That’s useful information.”
Useful for whom remains unclear.
She asks about sleep, alcohol, stress, exercise. I answer honestly, which is to say I sound semi-healthy. When she asks if I’m under pressure at work, I laugh before I can stop myself.
“No,” I say. “Not at all, not even a bit.”
That gets her attention.
She leans back slightly. “Tell me about that.”
And somehow, without meaning to, I do. Not the dramatic version. The practical one. The stopping. The quiet. The absence of urgency. The sense that I’ve stepped off a moving walkway and now I’m just standing there while everyone else glides past.
She listens. She nods. She does the usual medical tests: blood pressure, a little rummage of my dick. She does not once suggest blue pills.
When the examination is done and she sits back down, she folds her hands and looks at me.
“Physically, everything appears normal,” she says. “I will send off your blood to see if there is any underlying issue but, given what you’ve described, this is very likely psychological.”
Right. Figures.
She says it gently. Explains that stress doesn’t always look like panic. Sometimes it looks like disconnection. Like a loss of momentum. Like a body that’s waiting for direction.
I nod, because despite myself, that lands.
“We can refer you for counselling,” she adds. “It can be helpful to talk through periods of transition.”
Transition. That sounds polite. Almost flattering. Like I’ve chosen this rather than blundered into it.
I hesitate, then ask the question that’s been hovering since I sat down. “Does it… come back?”
She meets my eyes, calm and steady. “Yes. In the vast majority of cases.”
Relief loosens something in my chest. “So this is… temporary?”
“Erectile dysfunction can have many reasons,” she says plainly, like she’s telling me the time. “And yes, very often it’s temporary. Especially when there’s no physical cause.”
There it is. The phrase. Erectile dysfunction. It sounds heavier than the reality feels, like it should come with a leaflet and a support group and a sombre nod from society. I swallow.
“If you’d like, I can make the referral,” she says. “Talking it through sooner rather than later tends to help.”
“In fact,” I begin, then stop, because this is where I either commit or wriggle. “I might already know someone. A therapist. Friend of a friend. Apparently a miracle worker.”
Her eyebrow lifts. Just a fraction.
“A miracle worker,” she repeats. “Is that so.”
“I mean,” I say, immediately defensive, “I haven’t met her. But I’ve heard very good things.”
She leans back in her chair. “Men have a tendency to say that when they’re trying to avoid actually booking anything.”
I open my mouth to protest.
She holds up a hand. “I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing. I’m saying that if you do nothing, this won’t magically resolve itself. Avoidance tends to entrench the problem.”
