Chapter One: Dr. Lane Curtis
When I asked the young, attractive red head who was sitting on the other end of the sofa in my luxury hotel suite how she liked being a magazine columnist, she gave me a confident smile and said what most people say when you question their choice of career.
“Oh, yes, I just love my job.”
I gave her a wary look. “Do you? Really?”
I said the words playfully, as if I didn’t really believe her.
Her confident smile faltered for a moment, but her blue eyes held their sparkle. Her lips were full, painted deep crimson to contrast the light tone of her ginger skin. Tiny freckles danced across her nose, across the top of her chest. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, I just loved red heads.
She cocked her head and gave me the eye. “Do I really what?”
“Do you really love your job?”
She blinked as if I’d just asked if she was sure her name was… what was her name… Meredith… something… I think. Her business card was on the glass coffee table. I didn’t bother to glance at it. A look of confusion washed over her pretty face. When she frowned, a line went across her forehead that Botox would have to address a few years down the road.
“Well, yes, I really do love my job,” she said, a little defensively now. “I mean… Don’t you?”
“Don’t I what?” I asked with a mock frown.
“Don’t you love your job?”
“Well, yes, now that you mention it, I do.” I said it with a grin that should have let her know that I was just messing with her, but she still looked unsure. Just to be clear, I added, “I do love my job.”
“Oh, that’s great!” The words tumbled out over a long breath that she’d been holding. Her shoulders relaxed, and she gave me a demure smile. “It’s always nice when you love what you do.”
“It is,” I said with a nod, thinking that it was also nice when you loved who you were doing it to. She glanced into my eyes and looked quickly away. Score one for Team Curtis.
I should have been focusing on the interview the poor girl was trying to conduct, but it was hard to concentrate given her look and her smell and the way she kept looking at me and the movie that kept playing in my head. Being on the cover of a national magazine would definitely make the cash registers ring—sales of my books, DVDs, seminars, retreats, private sessions with big stars—but sometimes a guy had to do what a guy had to do. And I was all guy. And despite all my advanced degrees in psychology and understanding of how the human brain works, sometimes my cock just seemed to have a mind all its own.
This was my subtle way of innocently flirting with a girl almost half my age and getting away with it without being branded a lech. I had learned early on in my career that when a rich and famous, forty-year-old guy like me, hits on a hot and “seemingly vulnerable” twenty-something girl like her, there were protocols that had to be followed to make sure everything that happened between us—or didn’t happen—was consensual and without coercion. You’ve seen the news lately. Every day it seems there’s a new story about these guys in my position who force themselves on women. They use their power and their influence and their money and outright fear to “persuade” girls to do things they otherwise would not do. Cosby. Weinstein. Spacey. They should have known better, and I hope they get what’s coming to them. End of sermon.
Times have changed, and protocols must be followed so there can be no doubt. Meeting up in a bar was one thing, but if I hit on this girl directly while she was interviewing me for her employer, Psychology whatever magazine, if I made overt suggestions that maybe we should move this conversation to the king-sized bed in the master suite, there would always be that shadow of doubt in her mind that maybe she was coerced or forced into doing something she didn’t really want to do. And shadows of doubt lead to tawdry tabloid headlines and ugly public relations scandals and expensive law suits.
Besides, I was not that guy. I didn’t have to force myself on anyone. I’m Dr. Lane Curtis. I could have women lining up outside my door if I wanted. I’m not being cocky. It’s just the truth. It’s one of the things I love about my job. Fame and wealth have benefits. You’ll hear no apologies from me.
And unless my “horny meter” was failing me big time, Meredith and I were both thinking the same thing. I leaned in and gave her a salacious grin. “In fact, I love all sorts of jobs.”
Her cheeks flushed red and she directed her eyes back to the list of questions on the iPad resting on her crossed legs. She ran her finger down the pad to figure out what her next question would be. I had flustered her, but in a good way.
Flirtation aside, I have always been genuinely curious about what makes people tick. What makes them happy. What makes them miserable. What turns them on and what turns them off. I also wonder why so many people lie about such things. They lie to themselves and they lie to others.
You hear people say that sort of thing all the time. I love my job. I just love my job. I love my spouse. I do. I really do. And I love my life. I’m calling bullshit. Usually, the people who say such things are trying to convince themselves of the fact more than anyone else. They think if they tell themselves something enough times, maybe it will really come true.
So, they chant it like a mantra.
I love my job.
I love my mate.
I love my life.
No, really…
Honestly…
I just looooove my job.
I love getting up every morning at the crack of dawn to deal with my asshole clients and dick head customers.
And I love my employees. They’re like family to me. I love them, one and all.
What bullshit.
They’re not fooling anyone but themselves.
Trust me, I know how the human brain works and I’m well aware of the lies we humans tell ourselves, often in a vain attempt to be happy. Or be somewhat happy. Or to just not be miserable.
You see, I’m a psychologist. A really, really good one, mainly because I don’t have a bunch of baggage of my own. I’ll be the first to admit it. Most people who go to college to study psychology, then go on to make a career out of, do so to try to figure out their own shit. Ask one hundred psychologists why they went into the field and they’ll give you some bullshit answer about being interested in the human psyche and wanting to help their fellow man. Again; bullshit. They just wanted to figure out their own fucked up shit. Some do figure it out, some don’t, most never stop trying. People in the psychiatric field are some of the most fucked up people I know. They just can’t help themselves.
I never really had my own shit to figure out. I have just always been fascinated by how the human brain does and does not work. I hold multiple degrees in the field of psychology and have written multiple bestselling books. I have studied the human brain for most of my life. I know how the average Jack and Jill’s mind works (or more often does not work).
People buy into the bullshit that “whatever the imagination can conceive, the mind can achieve”. Want to be rich? Just imagine yourself rich. Want to be happy in your shitty marriage? Just imagine yourself happy. Want a new Corvette? Just put out your desires to the universe and hang on, my friend, because the universe shall deliver whatever you desire.
I know.
It is amazing how many people believe this bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
Want to solve all your problems in one very expensive afternoon? Go stand in a big arena full of other idiots at a Tony Robbins event and chant along with everyone else.
Me? I know better.
Most people don’t love their job.
Most people don’t love their mate, their kids, or their life.
But they say they do because they think that will make it come true.
Or they think it’s what everyone wants to hear.
I love my job.
I love my mate.
I love my life.
Yeah, sure, just keep telling yourself that, pal. Maybe someday it will come true. Probably not, but maybe. And maybe makes the world go around.
But I really do love my job (I know, you’re probably calling bullshit given everything that I just said). I love it because it’s not a job. It’s a calling, a vocation. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing. It helps that my job has made me wealthy beyond my wildest dreams and famous beyond my wildest imagination. My name is often mentioned right up there with Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz and even Masters & Johnson. I know Oprah and Gail and Gwyneth and Deepak and Tom, and I hang out with the beautiful people all over the world. Granted, most of them were made beautiful by their back accounts rather than their looks and personality, but that’s okay. Not everyone can look like… well… me (insert that smiling emoji here).
So, back to my point. I really do love my job, my clients, and my life. I also love unicorns and rainbows and cute kittens and women with big tits and tight pussies. Okay, I threw in that last part because in all honestly, that’s the part of my job that I love the most.
The women.
The groupies.
The fame fuckers.
The star suckers.
Even the stalkers, to a degree, so long as they aren’t coming at me with butcher knives or paternity tests.
Yes, my friend, I am Dr. Lane Curtis, Ph.D.; one of the world’s foremost authorities on sex and psychology. I lecture to sold-out crowds around the globe. I write bestselling books. I conduct high-dollar weekend retreats and seminars. And I am a top guest on any talk show you can name, mostly because I talk about how we torpedo ourselves with our fucked up thinking and misconceptions about sex.
Yes, my friends, our brains screw us, often making us un-screwable by those we’d like to screw. I mean seriously, ladies, do you want a well-hung guy who is great in the sack but a total fucking psycho otherwise? Lots of women have just that. Or would you prefer a guy with a small penis but your best interests at heart?
Are you seriously having to think that over?
The answer should be much easier, wouldn’t you agree?
Thanks for proving my point.
And it’s not just you, ladies.
We guys are even more fucked up than you are.
Guys, would you rather have a smoking hot nympho with amazing tits and a tight pussy who drives you fucking batshit crazy 99.999% of the time? Or a simple, decent-looking girl with a not-so-hot body who’ll let you fuck her and then make you pancakes?
Don’t bother answering, guys.
We all know what you’re going to say.