What sure looks like an ordinary male human Earthling tentatively advances into the office.  "Hi...  Are you Ms. Sterling?"

"Yes, I'm Ramona. Do you have an appointment? I don't seem to have you in my calendar."

"Yeah, I'm not... actually sure how safe I am to talk about things on calls where maybe the NSA intercepts everything, or even Signal... if that all sounds to you like I'm crazy then I'm in the wrong place and I should just leave."

"You're not in the wrong place. I'm pretty used to people sounding like they're crazy. We can decide later if you really are crazy, but for now let's just assume you're not. What can I do for you?"

"Okay but like specifically there's an alien living in my house and... there's an online rumor that for you that's Tuesday."

"Oh gosh. It sounds like you're not quite sure what to do about that. I'm not either, not yet, but you haven't scared me away yet. I might be able to help."

She opens the door wider and gestures at the couch inside her office.

"I have about half an hour before my next appointment. Why don't you come in and tell me more?"

"Okay but like are you actually experienced in that area."  He hasn't advanced further into the office yet.

Ramona laughs.

"Yes. It's just, there's aliens and then there's... aliens. I don't want to give you false confidence by claiming I can definitely help before I've heard more about your situation."

She looks at him for a moment.

"Let's just say, thinking back on the last few months, I've worked with between three and five cases vaguely matching what you've told me so far."

"Great.  Great.  Okay."  He enters her office.

Followed by an alien doing a pretty good job of passing as human; even somebody aware of the Masquerade might take her for a cosplayer at a first glance, though not a second one.

Ramona maintains a carefully composed face, betraying nothing.

"I am Zephyria, third Princess of Nebulon.  This ignorant slut -"

"We're trying to have a relationship yes I know this is maybe not incredibly smart but apparently we're doing that anyways."

"I see. Many relationships start from that premise."

Ramona clears her throat.

"What's going on that you need help with?"

"He wants to take another wife."

"Her species only goes into heat every seven Earth months."

"I think I might understand the basic difficulty. Are you saying you have a sexual desire discrepancy? Meaning that one of you..."

Ramona nods at Zephyria.

"...wants to have sex less often than the other one."

Ramona nods at the man.

"Is that about right?"

"I mean there is not a desire discrepancy (in that direction) while she is in heat, which she was when she first got here, and -"

"There is a status discrepancy.  A pride discrepancy.  I am the third fucking Princess of Nebulon."

Ramona controls the corners of her mouth with concentrated effort. She takes a breath.

"All right. So in addition to sexual desire discrepancy... some of the time... there is also what we think of on Earth as a class difference. How does that affect your relationship?"

"I have lowered myself immensely, but I draw the line at -"

"She's got a bunch of weird sticks up her ass but I'm willing to compromise on everything except only having sex for a week every seven months.  Even if it's an entire week."

"Princess Zephyria... is that how I should address you? I think I want you to finish that sentence. You draw the line at...?"

"At being this man's [BIP]* haremette!  I don't have a [BIP] harem!"

(*)  A vocal translator's standard the-term-which-follows-has-not-been-translated-well BIP, denoting that 'haremette' and 'harem' are being used to translate Nebulonian terms not well matching the chosen English equivalents.

"It feels beneath you to be just one of his partners, particularly given your obvious prominence and dignity?"

"I haven't worked with Nebulonian royalty before. Can you tell me, is it common for Nebulonians of your class to take a harem? Can anyone do it, or are there implicit or explicit rules about who may take multiple consorts?"

"Multiple mates are for those whose children's [BIP] lineage is of no consequence, or those so overaweingly potent that all Nebulon has no choice but to bow before their whims or die."

Ramona wants to follow up on that comment from the Princess but first checks to make sure the man doesn't look like he's about to blow his top.

He looks exasperated with this girl's antics but not particularly explosive.

Ramona directs her attention back to the Princess.

"The second part makes sense. If you're enough of a badass, you get to do whatever you want. But let me make sure I understand the first part."

"Ordinary people are free to form multiple connections, but someone like you, a Princess, may only take one partner, because you must have clarity about the parentage of your offspring? Is that right?"

"I am aware that Earthling males do not themselves bear offspring.  This has been explained to me.  Repeatedly.  But [BIP] lineage is not so easily rearranged into alien structures!"

"Okay. There are definitely some elements here I don't quite understand yet, but that's normal at this point. What I know so far is that you can't agree about how much sex to have, about how many partners each of you should have, and about how to integrate the answers to those two questions given your differences in social status and... species."

"Are there any major elements of your situation you haven't mentioned yet? For example, is there any violence or abuse in the relationship? Are either of you addicted to mind-altering substances? Have either of you broken your relationship agreements?"

"He has submitted with acceptable eagerness to the usual disciplines that I would impose upon my mate.  I am, however, perturbed that his wish for concubines was not mentioned to me earlier -"

"You didn't exactly warn me that your sex drive wouldn't be that high all the time!"

"All right. Given what you've described to me about your situation, I think I can help. I am willing to take you on as clients. Do you have any questions for me that will help you decide, or are you ready to book your first appointment?"

"We're not exactly swimming for choices here."

"Uh, no offense."

"A princess must be decisive.  I am ready for whatever comes my way."

"Very well. Here are some paper forms to fill out, since you are wary of online communication. I will see you next Tuesday at 11am. This is, after all, a typical Tuesday situation for me."

"Thanks, and, uh, just to be clear, uh - Nebulon doesn't completely know where she is right now, but that's not a relationship complication we both know about that part, I'm just saying, don't go around casually mentioning to, uh, whoever, that you're seeing a Princess of Nebulon."

"I never talk about my clients with any specificity. If I need to consult with a colleague about your situation, I will blur the circumstances. For example, I'll swap your genders, or I'll say I'm seeing a Countess of Muppox --"

"You will not swap my gender."

"Just in telling the story, not in real life. I don't know how to do that in real life. Is that a thing that can happen in real life?"

"Not to princesses!"

"Thank you so much for coming in. My next appointment is due to start soon. I'll see you on Tuesday!"

The 5 Point Cafe is across the street from Ramona's office building. Its squat facade is festooned with neon signs. Bar patrons are seated in the outdoor patio area, smoking and drinking. The front door bears a placard written in Sharpie block letters: "Cosplayers welcome."

Ramona pushes through the front door, nods at the bouncer, and settles herself at the far end of the bar on the diner side, near the entrance to the kitchen. She leaves one seat empty on her other side.

The bartender on duty grunts and puts Ramona's usual in front of her moments after she's settled on the bar stool, then hastens back to take an order at the other end of the bar.

A pretty impressive cosplayer settles into the empty seat a minute or two later.

(It is impressive cosplay.  A naive Earthling could actually believe it was a human in there, under a lot of makeup and some heavy masking equipment.)

"You have summoned me; therefore I am here."

"Hey there. You're looking particularly good today. New chin prosthesis finally come in? The jaw looks really realistic when you talk."

"Indeed!  I went on a human bus to Tacoma yesterday.  The Earthlings didn't notice a thing!  Several males flirted with me!  But nobody initiated mating."

"Do you want me to increase the odds of that happening on your next trip down there? I can probably give you a few pointers. Though... what are you going to do if it actually works?"

"Mate back!"

"I am... not entirely sure they will be ready for that! Call me if things ever get out of hand, okay?"

"Anyway, I need some help with a case, but we're going to have to dance around a bit for me to get the information I need without violating confidentiality. Do you have time for me to be a little... oblique?"

"You have less time than I do, I'm sure."

"Okay, so... I need to know more about the sexuality and mating habits of the inhabitants of one of the following planets: Ziabos, Nebulon, Struagawa, Chegrenides, and Criuq. I also need you to cross index by status level in the society from peasant to merchant to noble to royalty, or the local equivalents. And I'm tempted to throw in a few more variables but as you say, I don't have all week. Can you get that for me?"

"They don't exactly allow [BIP] Wikipedia on a barbarian planet like Earth.  Also your primitive concept of information security is appalling.  If I asked you to homomorphically encrypt your actual question is there any chance you would know what I meant and how to do it?"

"Look. I'm aware you can probably make some hypotheses based on what I've said so far, but they would only be hypotheses, and also we both know I have good reason to trust you. I am sorry for skipping the step in my initial question where I ask you to take my 'primitive,' 'appalling' question and make it robust from an infosec perspective before you send it onward. Unless... you just happen to have the information I'm really looking for cached in your head?"

"The galaxy is large.  The stars you can see in the sky are only a tiny fraction of those there are, a tiny sphere about the Earth within a structure much larger than that."

"I will make your question... 'robust' from an 'infosec perspective'... and send it onward, to where a true copy of [BIP] Wikipedia is permitted to exist, and to where, more importantly, it is possible to homomorphically check the blinded answer to ensure that none of the retrieved information is forbidden to exist on this planet.  This will require an AI that is, in your own terms, at least GPT 4.5-level, and there are not many places in the galaxy where those are permitted to exist.  I estimate eight Earth days until you have your information."

"Amazing. Thank you. Can I pick up the tab for that?"

Ramona points to three plates of liver and onions on the bar in front of her associate.

They crush some more of the liver and onions in their fist, and spread the paste over their arm, the previous layer having been mostly absorbed.  "Can you?  Yes.  Will I account it as the payment I am owed?  No."

Tuesday, 11am.

"Welcome back. It's nice to see you again. Before we get started, I need to let you know a few things."

"First off, I need to make you aware that I'm not particularly a by-the-book Earth therapist. You came to me because I specialize in... unusual... clients. There are not many therapists like me on Earth, and demand is brisk, so I try to be as efficient as possible."

"Second, I don't follow the standard Earth therapy ethics of non-interference in my clients' lives. I give myself a lot of latitude to do the right thing, up to and including killing my clients if I come to believe they threaten too large a swath of humanity. No, I will not tell you exactly what the threshold is. Please refrain from killing or enslaving any substantial number of my species, unless you hand-pick your victims and you're very very sure that's their kink."

"Finally, I really prefer to be paid in hard Earth currencies such as the Yuan, the Euro, or the US Dollar. I also accept Neptunian crystals. I do not accept currencies from outside the local solar system at this time as they are too difficult for me to extract value from. Payment is due at the end of each session."

"Do you have any questions about any of this?"

"I always hand-pick my victims!  Ha, ha ha... uh..."

"No."

"I have few expectations about Earth 'therapists' to begin with, except that you are those charged with judging relationship problems to say who is in the right."

"...Right. Let's say that's what I do. Okay, let's begin."

"I'm going to ask you a series of questions. I want each one of you to answer each question. It doesn't matter who speaks first, the other person will also get a turn. Please don't interrupt each other. Here's the first question."

"Imagine that we are meeting for the last time, because therapy has been successful. You are happy with the outcome. What is different, within you or within your relationship, so that you know our work is done?"

"I am his sole mate and he is happy, for example because we have found a drug that switches off Earthling sex drives when their mates are not in heat."

"I get to have sex, let's say twice a week, at least, with someone who's interested in having sex with me.  It'd be great if it was with her but her species definitely does not have a drug like that, according to her, it's not that she'd be unwilling to use it."

Ramona was flying blind, with the report on Nebulonian sex and mating rituals not due back for a few more days. Nothing for it.

"How do you define sex? Feel free to show me the relevant anatomy and what you do with it if you think that will help me understand."

"A Princess of Nebulon does not show her [BIP] genitals to any but her beloved!"

"It's warm, wet, squishy and basically works for me."

"That was... less than completely illuminating."

Ramona sighed.

"I am trying to figure out if there are any activities that constitute 'sex' from Jake's perspective that Zephyria is willing to participate in when she's not in heat. It might be helpful to take a more expansive view of eroticism, rather than expecting one specific act with one specific outcome. What comes to mind?"

"The problem from my perspective is that she's not interested.  Not reacting.  I'm not really into sex like that."

"I do find that entirely understandable, that a male receives little pleasure from mating with an infertile female.  I am surprised that self-pleasure is a thing that even exists, among other species, but at least humans cannot be satisfied by it - that would just be strange."

"Zephyria, is sex connected directly to reproduction for you and your species? Or rather, is it primarily or only for reproduction, or is it also for other purposes, such as pleasure or connection?"

"By 'for' do you mean its historical evolutionary causation?  Or the present internal-psychological causes, the ends to which we in our own intelligence use sex?"

"The latter."

"Sex is a cause of connection, bonding, the satisfaction of a partner, and to this end we refine our sexual knowledge when not in heat, that we may bind our partners all the more strongly when our time comes."

"How do you refine your sexual knowledge? Do you just brush up on, like, sex in general? Sex with your specific partner? How do you get better at it without actually doing it?"

"Abstract study of books, video tutorials; among the wealthy, machine-monitored execution of those motions that can be used later."

"A surprising amount crossed over.  In my own opinion."

"Zephyria, do you enjoy the study during the down times? Do you get any pleasure, even if only intellectual stimulation, from refining your sexual art?"

"It's not what I'd call [BIP] terrifyingly advanced mathematics, intellectually speaking.  I get - that ordinary satisfaction which you'd expect to get, from studying something that would be of use to you and your mate, later?  Like - building a castle in virtual reality for him to wander through, though you won't see him get to wander through it until months later, and when you do witness it there shall be many orgasms for both of you."  

"Okay, I promised you this therapy was going to go fast. I'm going to jump ahead to problem solving here and give you something to try. I don't necessarily expect it to work, but I do expect all three of us to learn something from what happens when you try... or when you fail to even try. Here it is."

"Zephyria: I want you to try a practice session on a live model instead of a mechanical surrogate. You're going to practice on your actual husband, even though you're not in heat. You don't need to feel more into it than you normally do at this point in your cycle. You can just feel that standard, ordinary, castle-building satisfaction. You don't need to have any orgasms unless that was also part of the practice. Your task is the same as always: refine your technique."

"Two things will be different for you. First, you will get better training data because you are using your techniques on your actual husband so you get to see what happens. Second, to whatever extent you are experiencing that standard, ordinary, castle-building satisfaction, I would like you to express that satisfaction out loud so he can observe it."

"Jake: Congratulations, you're about to get laid. Woo-hoo! And she's going to be into it... in a way. You're going to have to work with what you've got. It is not going to be the same as when she's in heat."

"Two things will also be different for you. First, you need to give her lots of feedback, out loud so she knows what's working and what isn't."

"Second, you will need to take a pill immediately after sex that will erase your memory of the sex. You may write down in your journal that sex occurred, and write some other code phrase that will convince future-you that this is not a lie, but you may not otherwise describe the sex to yourself in any way. This will preserve the element of novelty and surprise for the later time when she is in heat. She needs the fun of building the castle and surprising you with it."

"This is your homework. What questions do you have before we end our session today?"

"A pill - uh -"

"I don't understand why?"

"Why, what? Why do I think this kind of sex will benefit you? Or why do I want you to forget it?"

"I'm not seeing where the whole thing is going."

"I want to figure out if there's a middle ground for the two of you that can be achieved simply by moving the slider bar of sexual frequency. You want twice a week. She wants one week out of every seven months. Those two points are pretty far apart. Can we move that slider bar around in a way that doesn't violate her bodily autonomy, increase the frequency in a way that truly works for her and her sexuality? That's what I'm checking first."

"Like I said, I don't know if this experiment will 'work' in the sense of now you're both feeling happy with your sex life and ready to go forward like this forever after. But I think we'll learn a lot about what the solution space looks like by trying it once."

"I - I'm sorry to be difficult but I have personal-integrity issues with having my memory occasionally erased!  And I don't think that having sex but not remembering is - would be really - I mean, at that point why not just masturbate and not remember it, if the only trace is left on my body and not my mind?"

"I don't think I have a strong need to see him experiencing my works for the first time while I'm also in heat?  Sex works more than once, it is an event for which a biological organism ought to feel enduring motivation."

"Okay, fantastic, we're learning from this experiment before it even begins! Delete the part about the memory erasure, but keep the rest of the assignment. Any further objections?"

"Certainly not of me.  It is not the first time I expressed a willingness to be there and squishy for him."

"I mean, I expect it not to work and - I admit I haven't actually tried it, it just seems kind of - I mean, no matter how horny I got back in the day, I never went to a prostitute because having her not be into it didn't feel right.  And I mean I know some prostitutes actually are into it, it's just, it's impossible to know, right, because they'll pretend that either way.  I never wanted to be the guy whose girl was, you know, there for him even when she wasn't into it."

"Of course, you're right, at some level. All three of us expect that it's not going to be the same as when she's in heat. It'll be a different kind of satisfaction for her, much more intellectual and muted. But she's promised to speak that true satisfaction out loud, and not pretend the rest of it."

"So expecting it not to 'work' in the sense of 'feeling just like when she's in heat' is absolutely fine. I'm asking you to try it, despite your doubts, and pay attention to what actually happens."

"Next week, same time?"

"I'm not comfortable with this.  Sexually.  Am I supposed to do it even though I'm not comfortable with it."

"Let me explain how an experiment like this works. Anything that happens - literally anything - is good experimental data. So, like, you can go home and then just utterly fail to initiate this kind of sex at all, and then the next time we meet I'll ask you what was going through your head and whether you even remembered the homework and what stopped you from bringing it up. That would be an experimental result, and we would learn from it."

"Or maybe you would start, and then you would find that you could not be less interested in what was happening, your body is not responding, you would rather be digging ditches than having sex right now. So you stop. That would be an experimental result, and we would learn from it."

"Or maybe you would start, and you would do something you'd call 'sex,' and you'd have some sort of sensory and emotional and cognitive experience of that. Whatever your experience turns out to be, that would be an experimental result, and we would learn from it."

"Anything that happens is okay. All that I'm really asking is that you walk out of the room with the intention of making a run up to the experiment as outlined and seeing what actually happens."

"With that framework in mind, tell me more about your discomfort. What's feeling off?"

"Being with a girl who's not into you is - somewhere between failure as a man, and rape."

"Okay, so, the premise here as I understand it is that she's voluntarily interested in practicing her sexual technique on you so that she can 'bind you to her more tightly' when she's in heat. She's willing, she's an active participant, she has her own agenda, and from the sounds of it she's doing her best to learn how to please you. She's also deriving at least some pleasure from it herself."

"In my professional opinion, this is NOT RAPE."

"A lot of times when cis het men talk about 'failure as a man' when having sex with women, they are very focused on... giving her orgasms? Or something to that effect? Is that what you're worried about?"

Ramona worried briefly if orgasms were even a thing for Zephyria and then remembered that the castle-building exercise was supposed to culminate in "lots of orgasms for both of us" so it was probably all right.

Ramona then worried more that perhaps "orgasm" is not actually a concept that maps neatly between species, and that perhaps in some sense, Zephyria was faking it the whole time, if only because cross-species sex is confusing.

Ramona decided not to bring up that possibility at this moment in therapy.

"I mean, I have gotten far enough in life to know that women don't like being pressured into needing to have orgasms.  But - it's not about how much pleasure she experiences, it's about, her being there for the sex.  Her being a sexual person, who's there with you and not for you.  On a sexual level, I mean; I get that Zephyria would be doing it for me and with me as a person."

"That's a real thing you're worried about. That's the actual truth about your spouse. She is not there for her own electric, passionate, sexual gratification when she's not in heat. Because biologically, that is not a thing for her. It doesn't matter how much of a man you are. You could be the intergalactic champion of manliness and it would not matter at all. It's not about you. It is a fact about her."

"And I want to acknowledge that it's possible that that doesn't work for you, that you aren't going to thrive in a relationship where your partner doesn't have electric, passionate, sexual gratification more than a week or two a year. That would be valid. But it's not a personal affront. It's not something you did wrong, or something that you could overcome if only you were better. It's got nothing to do with you."

"I mean, it's not something I'm doing wrong to her or with her, I get that.  It just means my life is going badly because I can't be with somebody who actually does sexually desire me in that way, rather than somebody I, incentivized into being with me anyway - but it's not about pride it's about it not being sexy."

Hmph. He doesn't have sexual object permanence - her wanting him when she's physiologically in the right state doesn't carry over, or at least carry over long enough. And to be fair, one week to 6.75 months is a pretty steep ratio, that would be tough for most sexually-focused humans to manage.

It's also too bad he's quite this dependent on external validation. I wonder how much I can get him to find himself sexy, to self-validate? I wonder if him becoming an outrageous flirt, and having people flirt back, would fill this tank for him?

Not ready for any of those conversations yet, Ramona, one thing at a time.

"That may be. Like I said a moment ago, it may simply not work for you to go 6.75 months at a time without anyone feeling and expressing desire for you. That would be valid, and I get why you would want to seek out that feeling of being wanted elsewhere - that was exactly the solution you were proposing when you walked in here."

"And yet... I want to work with just the two-person system first and see how stable we can get it before we start adding in new partners. I want to see how much better you feel, if at all, when you're connecting sexually more frequently, even if that sex doesn't meet all of your ideals. I want to get you really solid about the concept that it's not about you, not just intellectually but in your gut. When we've done that, then we can start to explore what else we might add to this system."

"I'm concerned myself about the effect, on our relationship, of my mate having sex with me that he does not find satisfying, but you are the [BIP] relationship therapist."

"I suggest you do your best to make it physically satisfying and we'll go from there."

Eight days was only an estimate, this planet having previously proven too primitive to speak in civilized credibility intervals.  The brief on the socially stratified customs of four random planets and one nonrandom planet is not ready by next Tuesday, as would have been estimated to be no less than 23% probable had the human actually asked for a probability distribution.

"That is really unfortunate. I was counting on having that report before my next session with this couple because they do not make sense to me at all."

Ramona took a sip of her beer.

"I think person A had a very intense experience at the beginning and is still chasing the high from that, but person B... I don't know what's up with them. I feel like they probably have a lot of better options. And it sure would help to know the mating habits of, um, Struagawan merchants, to figure it out."

"There's a saying that... what would be a human translation.  We're all somebody's bimbo.  Somebody's catgirl?  There are great gains in trade to be unlocked by going outside your own species.  Though, obviously, many of the species that are still around, are by now composed of those who don't.  But if you ask why I'm excited to mate with Earthlings, you don't need to look any further than the fact that you're so soft and nice and stupid."

"Glad we're making you feel so welcome!"

"I have to say, though, banging non-humans hasn't really interested me so far. It probably doesn't help that most of the aliens I meet are demonstrably bad at relationships and sex, or they wouldn't be seeking my help. I think I need some more cross-species role model couples. I'm just not seeing the... gains from trade. For myself. Any advice?"

"You ask me what species you would mate with, if you were not restricted to human men?  How would I know?  If I were to go off your entertainment I imagine you would be looking for a rich caring tentacle monster, and there are ten thousand races like that if not more."

Tuesday, 11am, again. (Second full session.)

"Good morning and welcome back! I definitely want to hear about the results of your experiment, but before we get into that, is there anything you want to put on the agenda for today?"

The couple trades uncertain glances, as if to indicate that neither of them has put any previous thought into this and the whole point of putting their lives in the hands of a therapist is that they don't have to.

"I suppose I would be interested to know if you have a time estimate on when you expect to finish your work."

"As I mentioned in the first session, I try to be as efficient as possible. That said, there's a limit to how fast I can work; ultimately, you are the ones looking to change your relationship. I can't do that for you. I will discover as much about your situation as fast as I can and I will be plain with you about how I see your situation and what I think you need to do."

"If you want things to go quickly, the best thing you can do is be transparent with me and be open to trying the experiments I suggest, or telling me flatly why they will not yield good data."

"I got... not very far into it and then decided to back off before I hurt myself.  Sex with someone who doesn't desire you is not fun or sexy."

"Okay, yes, let's go ahead and talk about this week's experiment right now. It sounds like it worked out exactly the way you predicted. That's completely fine."

"The new data, at least for me, is in what you observed about yourself in the process. Would it be okay to relive the attempt, go through it slowly, moment by moment? Or will just thinking and talking about it also hurt you too much?"

There is no way this guy is going to go for this. He's not very introspective. He's just going to keep repeating the party line that this kind of sex sucks - it's a thin story, and getting him to thicken it with detail is probably going to fail.

She's going to try it anyway, because there's so much potential locked away if she can crack the shield around that... but if he can't go there, he can't, and she'll have to find another way.

"I'm not that fragile, and I backed off before I could damage our relationship -"

"As I had instructed him beforehand, indeed."

"But I'm not very sure how much there is to say.  Sex isn't just... the part of a woman, female, that's warm and wet.  It's knowing that there's a person there and that she's into it.  If I find a lesbian who's not into guys at all, but doesn't hate it, just doesn't really care very much one way or another, and I pay her enough to blow me, that's... sort of like using a male sex toy but with added ick factor and that's a turn-off.  There's guys who can't be turned on unless the woman, wears high heels, dresses in black leather, whatever.  I need her to be sentient, conscious, and into me."

"Can you say more about what 'into it' and 'into me' actually mean? If I were to watch a movie of someone having sex with you who was really 'into it' or 'into you,' what would I see happening on that movie?"

Getting Jake to describe the movie might help him separate out the behavioral - what's actually happening in the room, what he wants his partner to say or do - from the cognitive or emotional interpretation he makes out of his partner's actions. People tend to mix those together as if they're one monolithic thing.

"So like - Zephyria on arrival -"  He turns to her.  "Is it okay to talk about?"

"If her kind's guild-oath bars her from repeating it further."

"That's how it usually works on Earth.  I mean, we don't have a proper Assassin's Guild like you told me about around here, or a lot of things on Earth would be different, but I don't think your average therapist breaks it."

"Speak, then, and I shall keep my [BIP] blushes and screams to myself."

"So like Zephyria was pretty, pent up, when her ship crashed on the beach where I'd parked my mobile trailer.  She basically jumped me and didn't totally... ask a lot, which is fine, because I'm not especially into being asked first so long as the girl is hot.  And she doesn't naturally gasp in pleasure exactly like a human woman but her translator was up to the job and pretty soon I figured out what it meant when her ears twitched -"

"I don't think she needs THAT much detail!"

"Sorry.  Anyways.  That's what the movie looks like when Zephyria is into me.  And when she's not into me, the translator doesn't overlay any gasps of pleasure, she's just quietly focusedly executing, what did you call them -"

"The Forty-Seven Ecstatic Maneuvers."

"And I know that the person inside there isn't feeling it."

"Okay, I'm starting to get the picture. So when Zephyria is 'into it,' she initiates, she's aggressive, and she makes non-verbal pleasure signals like ear twitches -- oh, sorry Zephyria, too explicit?"

"But when she's not in heat, when she's in practice mode, it's quieter, more mechanical, more rote, and none of those non-verbals are there."

"And you end up having a very different experience. Even if, sensually, it feels very nice on your body, there's no erotic energy zinging between the two of you. It's not alive."

"Is that about right?"

"Yyyeeeessss?" he says in the tones of somebody who's not sure whether a seemingly obvious question conceals a trap.

"If I missed something or I'm off the mark, feel free to set me straight!"

Ramona is utterly unsurprised by anything that Jake has said so far. But Jake explaining it, and then Ramona explaining it back to him, at length, might possibly be helping Zephyria understand in a way that doesn't damage her ego.

(Zephyria's ego is far beyond any Earthling's ability to damage, for the record.)

"I mean, I think you're looking for something physical to add and it's about what my mind knows is behind her eyes.  If she set her translator to make fake pleasure sounds that would be awful and not fix the problem."

Jake's comment inadvertently undercut the next move Ramona was going to make, but that sometimes happens and she can still salvage it.

"Zephyria, I'm just getting to know you, but I think making fake pleasure sounds seems very out of character for you. So far with me, you've been very direct and it seems important to you to represent yourself accurately. And even if I got you wrong, and you were willing to fake it, I wouldn't expect that to help, and Jake doesn't want you to do that. So all three of us are against that plan."

"So let me ask you this: is there any way, when you're not in heat, to authentically do the things that make sex have more of that energetic zing for Jake? Can you authentically take more initiative, be more aggressive, feel more pleasure, and express that pleasure out loud? Or is that simply inaccessible when you're not in heat? Any true answer is perfectly fine, but I am still learning about your species so I don't know what's available to you and what's not."

"I am not sure what it would mean for initiative and aggression to be authentic; those sound to me like outward behaviors, not feelings.  I can push Jake to the ground and tear away the portion of his clothing covering his genitals, but I would be doing so out of calculated interest in his satisfaction rather than eagerness for my own pleasure; this seems nigh-tautological to me as a historical description of the psychological causality of how those outward behaviors would come about, and I don't know if you define that as authentic.  I predict Jake doesn't."

"As for feeling sexual pleasure when not in heat, that is beyond me and almost-all my kind."

"By authentically, I mean, be true to yourself - do what you really want to do. You're right that it's behavioral, but not purely behavioral; it's more a statement about how aligned your insides and your outsides are. As I get to know you I suspect that this distinction is not helpful to you -- and that we are perilously close to having a deep philosophical discussion about the nature of free will. I think I would probably enjoy that discussion, but it wouldn't be efficient, so let's not."

"What I'm hearing is that while you can find motivation to behave in a sexually aggressive way, you would not be doing it to sate your own intrinsic erotic desire, and you would not feel sexual pleasure as a result. And you think that's not going to work for Jake. And I think you're right."

Ramona looks at Jake as she says that last bit, to confirm that her understanding is on track.

Nod.

"Okay. Let's take stock a little bit."

"My first idea was to work with the definition of 'sex' and see if perhaps you two were too narrow in your thinking about what sex even is. We didn't spend much time on that, because it turned out to be beside the point; it wasn't central to what Jake was missing."

"My second gambit -- seeing if we could simply move the sexual-frequency-slider to an agreeable intermediate point -- has also failed, and that's okay. It was the logical thing to try next, and we tried it, and it didn't work. There are more things to try."

"Before we move on, I do need to check something. Zephyria, what do you already understand about what it's like to be Jake in these circumstances? Do you think you basically 'get it'? Or are you at a bit of a loss, and can't really put yourself in his shoes?"

"I suppose I do have some difficulty imagining what it's like to be slightly in heat all of the time and in a way where he can go a week without sex but not seven months.  But much more of my indignation is focused on his proposal to solve this problem by taking a second wife.  Adding wives is not really how my own people try to solve relationship problems."

"We are going to have to talk about Jake's idea relatively soon, but we are not actually there yet. I would like to stay just a little longer in the two person system, if that's okay with you. There's something important to understand here, and it sounds like you don't quite have it yet."

"Jake, would you be willing to explain? What is it like to be you, in the third week when you have been wishing to have sex with Zephyria, and it's just not available? The third month? The sixth month? How do you feel -- physically, emotionally? What kind of thoughts go through your mind?"

There are a lot of ways this situation could go from here, but all of them will go better if Zephyria is able to take Jake's perspective and show understanding and empathy about it. It doesn't mean Zephyria has to solve the problem herself -- her feeling sexy is apparently not actually even a biological option -- but being Jake's teammate in at least wishing she could solve the problem, will go a long way.

"Just like the standard 'after three days without sex, life becomes meaningless' thing that human males have.  Brain's like 'well that's not working out for you evolutionarily, now is it' and pokes me to go get horny somewhere that might work out for me, and dispose of any obstacles that stand in my way."

"So there's sort of two parts to that answer. In part one, you feel like life is meaningless, and in part two, you set out to solve the problem by acquiring more sex. I want to hang out longer in part one, because Zephyria doesn't have that experience and doesn't really understand it."

"So after three days, life becomes meaningless. Say more?"

"Everything else I do seems less important since it isn't leading into getting sex.  World feels grim and dark.  Just the usual."

"It is not particularly implausible to me that biology would design his species to punish him for not breeding when he could be breeding.  I don't know if I can understand on a deep level when he's not my species, but people often don't understand one another on a deep level even within a species and especially across the sexual gap of biological design."

"Jake, how does that grim darkness creep into the rest of your life? How does it affect your work? Are you able to take pleasure in other activities or hobbies?"

"Basically, paint us a picture of 'Jake with sex' vs. 'Jake without sex' and how different they actually are."

"This isn't especially comfortable for me to contemplate especially when I have not in fact had sex for a few weeks now.  Can't you be the one to describe to Zephyria what it's like to be a human male depressed about lack of sex?  I don't even understand why we're doing this, she says she understands I'm hurting, she's just not okay with me solving my problem by having sex with somebody else."

"I actually can't explain what it's like to be you, because I don't know. I'm not going to tell you you're unique, or even unusual. I suspect a lot of male humans have a similar experience to yours. However, there is a big variety of experiences - there is not a single standard. And from what you're describing to me, you are unusually strongly affected by relatively short gaps between sexual encounters, especially for someone who is no longer in adolescence."

"There's also a lot of variation in how that deprivation shows up - what facets of your life it affects - how strongly. How you think about it. What you tell yourself it means. How you cope with it. And once we factor all of that in, you are actually unique. Nobody else experiences this quite the way you do."

"I started by asking Zephyria if she already understands what how not having sex affects you, and she said she didn't actually understand."

"The only person who can explain it to her is you."

"Are you willing to do that?"

"I don't understand what the point is of having Zephyria understand the exact details of how I'm hurting when, I mean, she's an alien she's never really going to get it and she already says she's willing to believe that I'm hurting."

Ramona is very surprised by Jake's unwillingness to engage with this question. Most human clients in this much pain are bubbling over with the desire to explain their pain to someone who's sincerely interested, and really wants to know.

And also - it feels unlikely this couple is going to end up happily non-monogamous - Zephyria seems pretty adamant that it's not going to work for her. But if they were going to end up with that solution, the path would almost certainly flow through Zephyria understanding Jake. If Zephyria gets what's at stake for him, she'll be far more motivated to work with him on solutions that are hard for her to swallow.

So Jake's kind of shooting himself in the foot here, Ramona thinks.

All that being said, he clearly doesn't want to talk about this. So maybe there's something stopping him. Maybe his pain is so intense, and his distress tolerance so limited, that he actually can't really open up the box and show everyone what's inside. He's given as clear a "no" to talking about it as he can.

Clearly Ramona is going to have to find another way.

Ramona finds herself still wanting to work with Jake, see if she can get him to open up, maybe by leading the way a little bit more, making suggestions about how it might feel to be him.

But that's no good, that's not actually forging intimacy, that's not Jake showing himself to Zephyria, that's Ramona doing too much of the work.

So if Jake's not going to do it, and Ramona's not going to do it, that only leaves one person.

Ramona's next idea is to ask Zephyria what she sees from the outside, how Jake's different in one state versus the other, but that's not going to work either. This relationship is so bimodal - it's either FUCK-FUCK-FUCK or it's grim-dark-depression and practicing-mechanical-sex-moves-alone-in-your-room. Zephyria doesn't actually know baseline Jake and can't compare these different states meaningfully.

What even is this relationship.

Ramona really needs to come back to that. Why is this couple attempting to make it work? What's at stake? What does Zephyria see in Jake? It's undoubtedly something great, but Ramona just doesn't know what it is yet.

But now is not the time. She needs to finish the task she's in the middle of. Somehow.

"Zephyria, what is your take on Jake's pain? Is it evident to you that he's hurting? What do you make of that? What do you wish for, for him?"

"Not so much a solution to the problem - though of course that's interesting too. But something more like, does it bother you that he's in pain?"

"It bothers me a great deal.  A woman who can't solve all her man's problems, especially as they relate to her, isn't much of a woman.  A woman who has her man's problems relating to her solved by some other woman is even less of a woman.  I'm not really used to - the great lack of good options, that Earthlings have, other than piling more women into the relationship.  You have drugs for decreasing a male sex drive but they have side effects, and Jake has expressed unwillingness to take those even if they didn't have side effects.  I'm at least a little skeptical about how real his apparent lack of options actually is."

"I get that he's in pain.  My kind of male can outright die if he goes into heat without any mate."

"I - suppose I should say out loud that I in fact like him, too, and don't want him to be in pain for that reason, too, and not just my pride as a princess."

"To summarize so far:"

"Jake. You get very depressed unless you have sex with an enthusiastic female partner every few days. It's not enough for the physical coupling to feel good to your body; it's not enough for you to reach orgasm. The thing you want lives outside yourself, and inside your partner: you want your partner to want you, and feel sexual pleasure, and show her desire and pleasure to you."

"Zephyria. You care about that, and don't want Jake to be in pain, and want to solve his sexual problems, but you are inherently, biologically unable to do so."

"Jake has a proposed solution to this dilemma. Sexual relationship broken: Add More Women."

"Zephyria, you've telegraphed that you're not interested in this idea, but let's take some time to explore it and see what happens."

"What's there to explore?"

"Jake, can you describe a little bit more? What did you have in mind? How would it work, according to you?"

"It's - not incredibly complicated?  Six months and one week out of the year, I've got some bit on the side ethical-nonmonogamy-style, and the remaining three weeks are for saving up erotic energy, spending a week with Zephyria, and recovering afterwards."

"Gosh. You make it sound so straightforward. Do you have any practical experience with non-monogamy?"

"Not the ethical kind.  - I kid, I kid.  Yeah, there've been times when my life when I was with two or three girls each of whom wanted to have sex once a week.  Only ever been serious with one girl at a time, that's the part I'd worry about navigating with Zephyria."

"Tell me more about 'being serious.' What's different in a serious relationship vs. a 'bit on the side' relationship?"

"I mean, there was the one girl who I got an apartment with, and where we messed with each other's lives maybe too much, and then there was the girl I screwed on Friday evenings and the girl I screwed Sunday mornings and we all knew that it wasn't going to be until death did we part."

"Okay. So in a 'serious' relationship you might live together, and you expect to stay together for a long time, and you have influence on each other's lives. But in a 'side' relationship, you spend a few hours a week together and most of the relationship is just sex, and you don't expect it to last? Do I have that right?"

Ramona is talking to Jake but she's sneaking a look at Zephyria's face to see if she can read any nonverbal cues, despite the cultural divide. Can she?

Zephyria looks, or is choosing to look, politely interested and not particularly surprised.  Maybe even slightly admiring?

"I mean, it's not like we didn't care about each other, or never went on more complicated dates ever, it's... more like we knew we weren't responsible to each other."

"Say more about 'responsible.' What does that mean?"

"So with the ones I wasn't responsible for... she could be... failing out of college, say, I don't know, though she wasn't in college by then and neither was I.  And it wouldn't be my job to fix it, just to give her a hug about it.  If it had happened with the girl in my apartment, I'd have felt like, it was my job to do something about that.  If I'd needed to get surgery she'd have picked me up from the hospital.  Lives entangled."

There are two ways to go from here. Ramona wants to check with Zephyria and see if she's learned any new information here that might soften her about non-monogamy. But having snuck that look before, she doesn't actually expect that anything has changed for Zephyria.

The other thing to do is to see if Jake understands Zephyria's objections to non-monogamy.

And nested under that are two more options: a) have Zephyria explain her objections to Jake, or b) try to have Jake explain them back to Zephyria.

Ramona decides to go with 2b: ask Jake to explain Zephyria's objections. It's pretty clear they've already tried 2a and it hasn't worked. The circular form of the question might move things forward more effectively.

"Jake, I know Zephyria has told you that she's against your idea. Can you explain to me what her objections are?"

"Her species is even sadder than human women are, about not getting to have a whole man to themselves -"

"I'm royalty.  It'd be different if I was a footloose slut."

"Her species and culture.  She's a princess and she is supposed to have a man all to herself."

"Well, yes!"

"I don't... actually think that I fail to understand that part?"

"Jake, do you take her objections seriously?"

"I understand that they pose a relationship problem."

"Do you... care? She's saying that this is untenable for her, that you taking more partners would hurt at least her pride, and I wonder if that matters to you."

"It's... she's an alien, right.  I'm not going to be able to feel exactly what she's feeling, because she's not human and I'm not Nebulonian.  Her reasons don't make sense to me but they're not supposed to, right?  It'd be like trying to explain to her why the particular sequences of pitches in Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata sound haunting to me, or how the Pachelbel Canon sounds like a celebration."

"I don't want her to hurt, but sometimes it doesn't even sound to me like - hurting, more like pride."

"Having your pride injured hurts!  That's why people will physically injure themselves to avoid injuries to their pride!  I'm pretty sure humans are like that too, I've watched romantic comedies!"

"All right. I've been wondering something since I first met you two, and it's time to ask."

"Why are you together? Why are you fighting so hard to keep this relationship, despite this obvious major difficulty? How invested are you, and why? How much motivation do you have to get more creative, to find another solution, or maybe to make a sacrifice of some kind?"

"Zephyria, you first, please?"

"Royal couplings are - permanent.  Maybe not as a matter of physical reality, but social reality.  I mated with Jake Harrison and now I'm mated to him.  That's how it works on Nebulon."

"I do understand that Jake didn't know that, when he let me have my way with him.  I wasn't in condition to tell him, when he found me.  I'm not - without empathy, for that, I understand that I am in the wrong and that Jake never agreed to this.  It doesn't change how things are for me, now that I've done that wrong."

"And I do understand that - it's the premise of plenty of books, you know, where by books, I mean animes - and it's not like I'd seen past the Masquerade before this, or I'm going to get issued another alien princess if I lose this one.  I won't die without her, she won't die without me.  It doesn't mean that I'm going to give up my first and almost certainly only alien princess, without putting up enough of a fight to see a relationship therapist first.  I think it's fair to say that I genuinely like and enjoy being with Nebulonian princesses more than I've ever liked Earth girls."

Ramona is, for the first time, actually kind of charmed by the couple's haplessness, but decides it is probably not helpful to coo at them and tell them they're cute, so she keeps her smile professional.

"All right, sounds like you're motivated! Zephyria, you're stuck with Jake. Jake, you've got yourself quite a catch, and you don't want to lose her."

"So far you've each generated one idea. There's a symmetry here: your idea works for you but not for your partner. Neither one is going to work, at least not out of the box."

"Time to generate some new ideas. Ones that actually work for both of you. What've you got? No idea too wacky."

"And before you look at me blankly and tell me that's why you came to see me: that is not actually how this works. Hiring me does not mean that I magically solve your problems. I will not hold back any great ideas that I have, but you two are the experts on your own lives and it is likely that you are better positioned than I am to come up with something. My job is to help you communicate effectively and take both parties into account."

"The last time I tried coming up with clever ideas, I physically injured Zephyria's pride."

"His idea was to clone me.  Even if I could afford to make six more clones of myself so you could have sex every month, do you have any idea what that would do to the delicate lineage-web of the Nebulonian monarchy, not to mention how I would feel about being one of seven equal women in your harem -"

"Really, it's ideas like that which make you understand how my species bred itself out of being quite as creative as some others."

"I admit, I was thinking about cloning! That way you wouldn't have to share with anyone... else. Only with other copies of yourself. I don't suppose it helps if the other clones are sterile?"

"They'd commit suicide on you within a few days.  Do you humans have any problems that you don't try to solve by cloning people?" 

"Zephyria, has anything like this ever happened to any other Nebulonian? Surely you're not the first Nebulonian princess to mate in erotically-fogged haste and repent at leisure?"

"Excuse you, just because I understand I've wronged Jake doesn't mean I repent of anything.  He's hot and I'm a princess."

"As for your proper question, the official histories would have it that Nebulonian princesses don't often flee their home planet in search of a real man.  I'm more skeptical of this official history than I was a couple of months ago, but that doesn't change that I haven't seen past the censorship.  If we were on Nebulon, I'd have enough relationship leverage to force a Nebulonian man to do things my way, and make it up to him however I pleased."

"How did you come to be off-planet just as you were coming into heat? Is there a story behind that?"

"After the end of my last heat, I'd decided that I was tired of masturbating my only life away and that I was never realistically going to find a Nebulonian worthy of myself, so I left my planet in search of a mate, one I'd hoped to find before I went into heat.  There was then a series of entirely understandable miscalculations on which I really see no need to dwell, and the calendar error wasn't even my fault it was in somebody else's code, all of which culminated in my spaceship crashlanding near Jake after I got too distracted to pilot."

Ramona has at this point generated at least one or two possible technological solutions for this couple, but is still holding out hope that they're going to come up with something on their own if she opens up the conversation enough.

After all, she's not just here to solve this problem, she's here to help them be stronger as a couple - and that includes building their curiosity about each other and helping them withstand the tension of not-knowing-yet.

So she stays curious, and asks Zephyria more about herself. Has Jake gotten any of this backstory before, she wonders? She'll keep an eye on his face while Zephyria talks.

"How was it that the entire planet of Nebulon offered no one at all you were interested in?"

"The fact that any Nebulonian man would accept whatever I wanted the solution to be, if he could be mated to a Nebulonian princess, is part of it.  I wanted someone who wouldn't be that far below me - the sort of relationship where I didn't have an overriding sexual market value far in excess of my mate's, even if it meant appearing before them as a foreign refugee princess instead of a native wealthy princess.  There's also the point that Earth is one of the planets whose native men look much more masculine than a Nebulonian male can shift himself to look; Nebulonian men can't poke out their toes that far and don't have noses that long.  I might have been better off, in my life, if I'd abided in censorship and never found out what lay beyond my own world's sun, but the fact is I did find out and maybe learned it too young..."

"I have a sense that I'm not truly communicating my own thoughts, here.  Do you not find Earth's men dissatisfying to you, sometimes?  Is it hard to imagine that somebody a little more picky and proud would end up dissatisfied with all her planet's men and go looking around other stars instead?"

Ramona laughs to herself, remembering her friend at the bar suggesting a rich tentacle monster.

The idea was not completely without merit...

"So in a way, you're kind of enjoying that Jake won't just let you have your way, that he's fighting for something important to him? That adds to the appeal? Along with his long nose and toes, of course."

"I wouldn't say that I'm enjoying it, so much as that it's something that I need for the relationship to feel real to me at all.  I suppose that in the end maybe what ends up feeling real, is that I lose - but I'm still hoping for not-that."

"You mentioned that you know you're in the wrong, you started the relationship with a bunch of conditions that Jake wasn't aware of -- does that have any implications? Does it make you any more willing to compromise, to figure something out?"

"I'm not sure that's quite the way my species sees things?  It means that Jake doesn't injure my sense of righteousness, when he pushes back in the way that he does, only my sense of pride, which are different senses.  I know that I couldn't expect support from others if I tried to just subdue Jake to my own will, even leaving aside that I'm on his planet and not mine.  It means that I'm out to find a way we can be happy together rather than out for revenge."

Ramona makes a mental note NEVER to injure Zephyria's sense of righteousness.

Except wait. She has no idea how to avoid that.

"Juuuuust out of curiosity... since we are talking to each other across a cultural divide, and you're probably not used to so many direct, personal questions... have I done anything that's come close to offending your sense of righteousness? I'm not totally sure what you mean by that."

"The web of relations that has to exist in order for society to exist, rather than those relations which are about the triumphs and alliances between individuals.  If you broke your vows of honor as a therapist and so harmed me, that would injure my sense of righteousness.  It is not easy for us to be injured in that way by aliens, we would need to trust them first."

Ramona feels reassured, for now.

But also makes a mental note to think through how to keep herself from getting stabbed through the eye by someone's retractable poison claw in session one day, just by asking the wrong question.

This was not covered in human therapy school. She's been winging it, so far, and it's all worked out, but she doesn't want to press her luck.

"Okay, that's helpful, thank you."

"I want to go back to something you said a while back. It was just sort of an offhand comment but I realized I didn't understand it. We were talking about the idea of making several clones of you, and staggering when they were in heat, so Jake would always have a Zephyria to have sex with. You said something about that complicating questions of lineage. I suggested that all the other clones could be sterile, and then you said they'd become suidical."

"I realize I don't understand what you mean when you say lineage. I've been assuming you meant something very straightforward like we have in some places on Earth: there's a royal family, and the firstborn child assumes the title when their parent dies or abdicates, or some other rules of succession are followed. What does lineage mean on Nebulon?"

"It goes back to a time when Nebulon didn't have computers or genetic tests, the conditions of our ancestry under which our emotions evolved.  Today, in principle, it's possible for a woman to sleep with a man and use contraception and not have that complicate the future ancestry of her children at all.  But none of that changes how we feel about anything, any more than Earthlings would not care about the taste of their food so long as it contained the right sort of optimized nutritious slurry.  The way law works, the way custom works, the way my feelings work, for Jake to sleep with another woman complicates the lineage of Nebulonian royalty even if he used a 'condom'.  Which, to be clear, most Nebulonians wouldn't do in the first place--use contraception--because the people who'd do that have been weeded out of our race by evolution."

"I think I understand. You were programmed by evolutionary biology to feel... anger? revulsion? just wrongness?... if your mate has sex with someone else? And that feeling doesn't change at all even if the someone else is genetically identical to you, because you didn't evolve in a world with clones?"

"Loss of--status, pride, place--that I'm someone whose lineage doesn't matter and isn't worth tracking--that my children aren't meant to be saleable on the mating market to high-class suitors who are picky about their future spouses' genetic material.  A defining quality of Nebulonian royalty is that we're meant to be our species's repository of all the best genes, and you can tell exactly whose genes might've ended up in a kid."