last week i spent an hour inside a sociopath's head.i've started doing real telephone counselling at last, and while it's been a real buzz to have strangers unfold before me, the guy who called last week really messed with my head. counselling is confidential, so no names or other identifying features of any kind are used, but god, i still need to put this out there, to distance myself from it.

ok, so it's my second shift, i'm nervous and emotional cos my lover's about to leave and this guy calls, and we talk. it's hard to talk to him, he wants me to do all the work and i do. but then he starts to loosen up a bit, talk about this wall of distance between him and the world, of the "horrors inside his head", of loneliness and boredom. but while he tells me these things, he fluctuates between monotone and flashes of anger - he tells me to fuck off, voice raised past flat depression into a quick flare, and i'm reminded of an ant-lion, the cunning predator that lies in wait for hours until an unwary ant nears his trap, and then - quick flare, aggression. i don't think i'm conveying this well, but i'll try. the feeling i'm trying to get across is that of prey. the conversation goes on, for quite a while; i roam all over the place, trying to find places to build on, areas of less negativity, less anger, and gradually i come to realise he doesn't want to change, he doesn't want 'help', he wants me there with him. we aren't going anywhere, so i say we'll have to wrap the call up, and he hangs up before i can finish the sentence.

then he calls back, and gets me again. he hangs up. calls back. gets me, hangs up. finally, he decides to go with me again, but this time, he's someone else. haven't we talked before, i ask. no, definitely not. and this time he's someone else, someone he makes before my eyes, creating a massive tower of lies - a cabinetmaker, a musician, a fan of 80's music - and then suddenly he's in a wheelchair, blind as well, and i'm tired and we're not going anywhere, and i tell him that we've only got a couple of minutes left, and suddenly the real him is back, vicious. "Did you really believe all that?" he hisses and slams down the phone and i feel dirty, dirty, dirty. it takes me two days to wash off that call, the feeling of being so close to someone who toys with you and is smart, who knows the counselling method, who uses it like that to test the mettle of the person at the other end of the phone.

it's making me tougher, that's for sure. with this call, once i twigged, my walls were up and we were playing a game, just a dirty little game.