Читать книгу The Truth - Neil Strauss - Страница 13

STAGE II

▪ Adapted Adolescent ▪

I SEE ANOTHER LAW IN MY MEMBERS, WARRING AGAINST THE LAW OF MY MIND, AND BRINGING ME INTO CAPTIVITY TO THE LAW OF SIN, WHICH IS IN MY MEMBERS. O WRETCHED MAN THAT I AM!

—ST. PAUL

Romans 7:23-24

Chicago, Thirty Years Earlier

You know the drill, right?

Yes, Mom.

Then let’s go over it again.

My younger brother and I are at the kitchen table, eating cereal. My mom sits in a chair backed against the wall, her mismatched legs dangling from her housedress at different heights off the ground. She observes us carefully as we speak, trying to ascertain whether we can be trusted.

If you die, we’re not allowed to tell anyone.

What do you do if Uncle Jerry calls?

Don’t say anything until afterward.

Right.

Then we go get you cremated.

What if Daddy tells you I should be buried? He wants that, you know. He doesn’t care.

We don’t listen to him. We make sure you get cremated. Then we put the ashes in a Marshall Field’s box.

And then what?

We take the box to Lincoln Park and scatter the ashes.

Right. And no funeral. No obituary. No grave. Nothing. Don’t tell anyone I’ve died until after it’s done, in case they try to stop you.

Can we keep the box?

Yes, you may keep the box.

And then we’re going to meet you at the bookstore, right?

We’ll meet at Kroch’s & Brentano’s in Water Tower. In the magazine aisle.

Should we meet at the guys’ magazines or the girls’ magazines?

Either one is fine.

I’ll be looking at the music magazines, okay? I’ll wait for you all day. In case you’re late.

You may not know I’m there, but I’ll be there. I’ll try to find some way to let you know.

I imagine her as a ghost, in another plane where she can see me but I can’t see her. And I hope that if I stay alert, I’ll be able to sense her presence in a cool gust of air or a sudden rustling of magazine pages or …

Maybe you can whisper something in my ear.

I’ll try to do that. Now hurry up and wash the dishes. The school bus will be here in ten minutes and you’re always late.

Yes, Mom.

Don’t ever forget what I told you today.

When Lorraine finishes her lecture, Joan’s lips curve into something resembling a smile. She walks to the front of the room, then lets us bask for a moment in the knowledge that we are now not just sex addicts but rageaholics. We fuck women because we hate our mothers.

Although pleased with the net effect of the talk, Joan also seems resentful of Lorraine’s easy command and sway over our minds. She motions brusquely for Lorraine to leave, then turns to us and speaks. “One of the other therapists tells me that the male sex addicts have been talking to her female sex addict. I told her that it can’t have been my guys, it must have been her patient. But then”—she raises her eyebrows in feigned shock—“I was told by a member of this group exactly what happened and who was responsible.”

I flash Charles a dirty look and turn back to feel Joan’s glare heating my face. “Do you see women as human beings or do you see them as a collection of body parts?” she asks.

It’s such a loaded, judgmental question that I don’t feel like answering it. I stay silent to see if I can get away with pretending like it’s rhetorical, but she just repeats the question. So I tell her, “I see them as human beings. I’m not a serial killer.”

“I would beg to differ,” she responds, as if she really believes that eye-fucking someone should be punishable by lethal injection.

I want to be a better person. I want to have a healthy relationship. I don’t want to cheat and lie and cause pain. But outside of Lorraine’s talk, the lifesaving healing and lessons in intimacy that Rick said I’d experience here are nowhere to be found. I’m trying to have an open mind, but Joan keeps filling it with garbage.

“As a consequence of your behavior,” Joan continues, “I’m going to have to take more extreme measures with all of you.”

She holds up several slips of paper, each with the words MALES ONLY on it. “I’m requiring all of you to wear this in your badge, displayed prominently at all times. From this moment forward, you are not allowed to even say hi to a woman.”

What if she says hi first? I wonder. But Joan’s already closed the loopholes, with the exception of one: Paul, the lone gay member of the group, also has a badge that reads MALES ONLY. “Just point to your badge if they say anything.” She slams her pencil onto her desk. “If any of you are seen talking to a woman, I will hear about it.”

Now we don’t just have the scarlet letter, we’ve been muzzled. It’s hard to tell if they’re healing our shame core here or adding to it.

“What about you?” Charles asks. “You’re a woman. Are we allowed to talk to you?”

And that’s the last straw for me. I’m not like Charles. I can’t just blindly obey. It needs to make fucking sense to me. It’s like going to a church to be a better person, but then being told that the only way to do it is by worshipping a god you don’t believe in. Maybe I’ve come to the wrong place to learn how to be intimate and decide if a sexually exclusive relationship is right for me. So far, this program is as effective at teaching monogamy as prisons are at teaching morality.

“Is the underlying principle of all this the idea that if we have true intimacy in our relationship, we won’t seek outside sex?” I ask Joan.

“Yes,” she says, with some satisfaction that I appear to be getting it.

I ask again, just to make sure. I want everyone in the room to hear exactly what she’s saying. Troy’s advice from earlier echoes through my head: I’m not going to let her break me. I’m going to be the voice of sanity. Of reality.

“If you had true intimacy in your relationships,” she repeats, “you wouldn’t be seeking sex outside your relationships.”

“I have this thing that’s been going through my head all day. Is it all right if I ask it?”

“Please.” The word drips with disdain.

“Is it okay to use the blackboard?” I don’t know any other way to explain it.

Her back stiffens. She senses something unpredictable may be about to happen. She shoots me a stern look, trying to melt my resolve as I approach the blackboard.

My hand starts shaking as I pick up a piece of chalk. I write her words on the board:

If true intimacy, then no outside sex.

“That’s your theory,” I begin. “If you boil it down to the basic idea behind it, what you get is this …”

If true X, then no outside Y.

“And the problem is, this equation just isn’t true.” In school, I never thought I’d actually have to use algebra in real life. I was wrong. “Even if you make both X and Y the exact same variable, it still doesn’t work.”

I continue writing:

If true X in the relationship, then no X outside the relationship.

“Let’s say, for example, that your wife is the best cook in the world. Then according to what you’re saying, you’ll never want to eat anywhere else.”

Joan remains quiet, watching me, letting me write on her blackboard, rattling me with her lack of reaction.

If true cooking in the relationship, then no cooking outside the relationship.

“But that’s just not true. Sometimes you want to go to a restaurant for a change.”

The guys are watching intently. Calvin is on the edge of his seat. Troy has a big smile on his face. Charles’s brows are deeply furrowed.

This is it. This is the moment where I disprove all the bullshit Joan’s been feeding us. She can have her revenge afterward, whatever it may be.

“Now let’s go back to your original premise. And let’s make it even stronger.”

If true intimacy, then no outside intimacy.

“Even that statement isn’t true. You seek intimacy with your parents, your siblings, and your friends. No matter how you look at it, what you’re telling us doesn’t add up.”

She says nothing. I press on.

“The other issue is that you’re telling us intimacy and sex are related like this …

“But for men—and not just the guys here but every man I know—they’re like this …

“So what are we supposed to do with all the rest of our sexual needs?”

The guys are staring openmouthed now, big dopey grins on their faces—except for Charles, who’s looking at Joan imploringly. I must be interfering with his recovery again.

“Here’s what I’m starting to think,” I press on. “People are under the logical fallacy that when their partner wants sex outside the relationship, it’s harmful to their intimacy together. We are all here because we don’t believe that’s true, but we do believe that lying and deceit harm intimacy. So instead of being retrained to accept a relationship on our partners’ terms, we could just as easily retrain them to accept the relationship on our terms.”

Troy dares to applaud. Calvin pumps his fist into the air in solidarity.

Joan doesn’t change her expression. She’s stone cold. “Cross out if intimacy, then no outside intimacy,” she instructs me. I do as she says. “Now cross out, if cooking, then no outside cooking.” I do that. “Now go back to your seat.” I do that too.

She stares at the board. “I’m processing,” she says.

The room is completely silent. It’s like a chess match. And everyone’s wondering if it’s checkmate.

Finally, Joan turns to me. “You need to define intimacy.”

“Would you like me to do that now?”

“You can do that on your own time.”

I’m disappointed, because I know the answer. I heard it recently in the patient lounge, where someone was quoting Pia Mellody, who’s the Patrick Carnes of codependency: Intimacy is sharing your reality with someone else and knowing you’re safe, and them being able to share their reality with you and also be safe.

“The definition doesn’t have any bearing on what I’ve said, anyway,” I tell her.

“I think you’re intellectualizing to be able to control the overall addiction,” she responds.

That’s all she’s got: to tell me to stop using my brain? “That’s what dictators like Pol Pot and Hitler and Stalin say. They burn books and kill intellectuals so no one can question them.”

The response comes out more confrontational than it’s meant to be. I’m not trying to rebel. All my relationships have been disasters and something clearly needs to change. “So help me,” I add, beseechingly. “I want to be wrong. I want to recover. But I need to reconcile this contradiction. What you’re teaching us needs to actually make sense to me.”

“This is your addict fighting against recovery and not letting go,” she says sharply. She looks at the clock and rises to her feet. “You’re all late for dinner.”

She walks to the desk and starts gathering papers, holding her head high as if she’s prevailed. Yet everyone, possibly even Charles, is aware that not only did she fail to defend her thesis, but quite possibly she couldn’t.

“Neil,” her voice rings out as I’m leaving, loud enough for everyone to hear, “why don’t you present your timeline to the group tomorrow?”

At dinner we all sit together, the red demons of the round table. We are bonded now in brotherhood, in celibacy, in shame, in sickness, in punishment, in victory, and by the fact that we’re all wearing signs that read MALES ONLY around our necks.

Nearby I see the anorexics in their workout clothes; Carrie, the love addict; Dawn, the alcoholic; and Naomi, the female sex addict. And they are ghost-like to me, creatures in an alternate dimension I can’t communicate with.

The mood at our all-male table is jubilant and conspiratorial. If the guys could carry me on their shoulders, they would. I am their white knight, their sacrificial lamb, their dick in shining latex. In the meantime, from my perspective, something has shifted. This whole notion of sex addiction is unraveling for me. And quite possibly for everyone else. I came here with such high expectations from Rick, but all rehab has done so far is make me even more ambivalent about relationships and monogamy.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about how Joan made me add up all the money I spent,” Calvin says. In the outside world, he’s a day trader who writes about conspiracy theories online. “And most of it was worth it. I was with a porn star from Serbia once. She was a ten. Cost a thousand dollars—and she worked me over. It was the best experience of my life. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” He pauses and reflects. “I’ve probably wasted more money on bad food.”

“And bad dates,” adds Troy, the sex therapist. He tears open three bags of sugar substitute and pours them into his coffee substitute.

“Okay, here’s my main question about this place,” I begin. “I think helping us understand our childhoods and heal our wounds—that will help our relationships. But I don’t know if I buy the idea that wanting to sleep with other people is an unhealthy response to that trauma. I mean, they told me when I checked in that if I masturbated, I was a sex addict.”

“Let me tell you, Neil, just be glad you’re not in one of the sex addiction programs run by the church,” Adam says. “My wife made me go to one of those before I came here. They consider you a sex addict if you have premarital sex.”

Troy flashes a big grin. “We’re guys. We like sex. Everywhere you turn, you’re shown pictures of gorgeous women who look like they want to cater to your every desire. And then what? If you think about sleeping with them, suddenly you’re sick and unhealthy?”

Adam nods. “You know, I don’t think there are many guys who, if they were staying alone in a hotel and a beautiful woman wanted to have sex with them, would turn it down.”

Suddenly Charles slaps the table, as if trying to snap us out of a trance. “This is your disease talking right now, guys. You can’t trust your thoughts. Your addiction will say anything so it can keep controlling you.”

“How old’s your wife, Charles?” Troy asks.

“She’s forty-eight.”

“And do you find her attractive?”

“I don’t know. She’s a beautiful person.”

“So when’s the last time you had sex with her?”

“Eight years ago. But I brought that on myself.”

“Adam, what about you?” Troy asks.

“Things were okay at first,” Adam says. “But when we had kids, everything changed. She just let herself go. We tried having date nights once a month, but all she’d do is worry about the kids. So we stopped doing that too. And”—he hesitates—“I’ll tell you honestly: I like sex that’s exciting, you know, and sometimes a little rough. And she just lies there like once every three months, and basically lets me have sex with her.”

And I wonder: Is this the reality I’m here training for? To cut off my dick in a sexless marriage, and then pathologize myself as a sex addict if I break down one night and sleep with a woman at the office or an ex-girlfriend while I’m traveling or even a hooker, just so I can remember what it feels like to have my dick sucked?

“So what do they expect?” Exasperation pushes the words out of me with unexpected force. “It’s just common sense. If your partner hasn’t had sex with you for a year, you should be allowed to get it elsewhere without having to throw away your entire relationship.”

“Sex isn’t something you’re entitled to just because you want it,” Charles admonishes me. “Pretending like this is common sense and natural is a form of denial. If you want any hope of overcoming this, you have to recognize and intervene on your distorted thinking. When I see another woman, for example, I just tell myself, Bright red apple, wrong orchard.”

As the guys laugh over Charles’s orchard, I’m overwhelmed by a crushing anxiety. A vision forms in my head before I can stop it. I grab my notebook and sketch it for the guys. They gather around to look:

THE MALE DILEMMA

1. Sex is great.

2. Relationships are great.

3. Relationships grow over time.

4. The sex gets old over time.

5. So does she.

6. Thus the problem.

It’s a horrible thing to write or even think. No one could ever say this in regular society. They’d be destroyed for it. But it seems to be the reason most of these middle-aged guys are here. “That just about sums it up,” Adam says sadly.

Troy shakes his head resolutely. “You wanna hear something tragic? I was still having sex with my wife four times a week when I started my affair.”

“And that’s the problem with what Joan’s been telling us.” Calvin flashes a big, guilty grin. “Sex isn’t always about intimacy. Sometimes you just want some dirty sex.”

Charles jumps out of his seat and announces, “This is not good for my recovery.” He grabs his tray and walks away, looking for another table without women.

The counselor supervising the anorexics turns around and scowls at us, so we take it down to a whisper. We’re rehab insurgents plotting a revolution. “Wanting variety is natural,” Troy says quietly as the guys lean in. “Look at porn: Guys don’t watch the same girl every time.”

I think about one of the books the attendant confiscated when I checked in: James Joyce’s Ulysses. The main character is an advertising salesman with a gorgeous wife at home. And he wanders around Dublin, worried that she’s cheating while he gawks at and fantasizes about women of all ages, shapes, and sizes. At one point he starts wondering what his problem is, until he concludes very simply, “The new I want.”

Santa Claus looks up from his food and speaks for the first time today, acknowledging morosely, “That’s why I kept going to Tijuana. You could walk around a club with sixty women and have any one of them. And the things they could do …” Then he drops his head again.

“You know who the best girlfriend would be?” Calvin interjects, his eyes lit up as if he’s just had the perfect picnic. “That mutant from X-Men who can turn into anyone she wants. I’d never get bored of her! You could have sex with Megan Fox one night and Hillary Clinton the next.”

“Hillary Clinton?!” Troy asks for all of us.

“Why not? Just for the experience,” Calvin says. “Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it.”

None of us has.

I’m intoxicated by the discussion. But in the back of my mind, I wonder: Are we a bunch of junkies in denial—addicts bonding over our favorite drug—or is this just a natural by-product of high testosterone? In a book on evolution I once read, the writer cited research claiming that gay women have fewer than ten partners on average in their lifetimes whereas gay men have more than a hundred. So I ask Paul about it.

“I’ve been with over a thousand guys,” he confirms. His voice is raspy and gruff, and he has the permanent look of someone who’s had a rough night partying. “But it’s different in our world, because everyone wants to have casual sex. So, literally, guys would come over to my place and instead of hooking up, they’d go online and invite more people. I’d have a dozen guys fucking each other in my living room sometimes.”

“I once interviewed a woman who was going through a sex change to become a man,” I tell him. “And she told me that as soon as the testosterone therapy kicked in, she suddenly understood men, because she wanted to fuck everything that moved.”

“Imagine if women were wired like men,” Calvin says dreamily.

“It would be sexual pandemonium,” Troy replies with a big smile.

I ask them the ultimate question: “So if your wife allowed you to sleep with other women, would you allow her to sleep with other men?”

And much to my surprise, every guy except Adam says yes. “I wouldn’t like it, but I guess I’d have to suck it up,” Troy says.

Adam appears uncomfortable. We may have gone too far for him. Unlike the rest of us, he doesn’t yearn for casual sex or variety; he just wants the love and passion his marriage is lacking. “Here’s the thing you’re all missing,” he says, laying his huge hands on the table. “We’re not here because we had sex. We’re here because we lied, because we wanted sex so badly that we violated our own moral values.”

He has a great point. No one is actually here for promiscuity. They’re here solely for cheating. Except for Calvin, of course, and for Paul, who came to get off crystal meth but was placed in our group when he mentioned sex parties in his intake interview. “You’re right,” I tell Adam. “If we were single and behaved exactly the same, we wouldn’t be here. It wouldn’t be considered an addiction. If the rule was that you’re not allowed to eat sushi once you’re married, we’d all be here as sushi addicts.”

“So maybe the answer to your male dilemma is that you sacrifice,” Adam replies. “You tough it out and stand beside your wife, for better or worse, as a choice that you’re led to by faith in your family and God.”

“But why should you have to make that sacrifice?” I ask. “A relationship should be about what you both want, not about what you both don’t want each other to have. There must be some way in which we can have freedom and our partners can have security—or we can all have both freedom and security.”

Troy points a long finger at me. “See, that’s the kind of thinking they want to stop here.” He stretches an arm along the back of Charles’s vacant chair. “The problem with therapy is that they try to normalize everyone and keep them in the middle of the road. But if you do that to a society, there’s no innovation. Nothing new is created. You need that one caveman who said, ‘We can’t just keep waiting for lightning to strike every time we need fire. We have to make fire ourselves.’ They probably thought he was crazy, rubbing rocks and sticks together. Today they’d diagnose him as obsessive-compulsive. But then he gave them fire, and all of a sudden everyone was doing it. You can’t get anywhere as a civilization without that kind of original thinking and focus. It’s people with compulsive behaviors who change the world.”

As Calvin fist-bumps Troy, I wonder if maybe life has led me here not to cure my supposed sex addiction, but to take on a mission for the betterment of my peers and the world: to redesign relationships so that the needs of both sexes can be met. Because they don’t seem to be working as it is.

Chicago, Twenty-Eight Years Earlier

Sigh. You’re the only one I can talk to around here.

What about your friends?

I can’t trust them.

Not even Denise?

She’s the worst of all. Never tell her anything. She can’t keep her mouth shut.

Okay.

I’m lying in bed wearing Star Wars pajamas, a comic book and flashlight tucked under the covers. My mom’s sitting in a small desk chair pulled up to the side of the bed. Sometimes, when she’s really upset at my dad and has no one else to talk to, she comes to me. This is one of those times.

I’ve just had it up to here with your father.

Is that why you guys were fighting?

Do you hear the way he swears at me—in front of you and your brother? He’s a monster. I don’t think he has any feelings.

He must have feelings.

He doesn’t. He’s like a rock. I remember I returned from my honeymoon and asked my mother if I could divorce him. And she said she wouldn’t let me come back home if I did that. So I stayed with him, that selfish bastard.

You don’t have to stay with him now, though. You’re an adult.

Where am I going to go? Who’s going to take care of me?

I’ll take care of you.

You’re not old enough. Where are you going to get the money?

I don’t know. Maybe you can find someone else with more money than Dad. Then you can be happy.

Maybe when I was younger. I had a lot of confidence then. I even entered a beauty contest. A lot of men wanted to date me, if you can imagine that. But your dad has ruined me. You know he could only get it up twice: once for you and once for your brother.

Really?

Really. Listen to me, Neil: Whatever you do, never grow up to make anyone as miserable as your father makes me.

After dinner, I walk across the grounds to the art room to work on my timeline. I’m supposed to present the story of my life from birth to age eighteen, which Joan doubtless plans to use to pathologize me as a sex addict and troublemaker. And if that’s the truth, so be it. I’ll give her everything she needs.

I grab a long sheet of butcher paper and a black marker. Then I read a handout with instructions. I’m supposed to write my family message along the top of the butcher paper; words describing the different members of my family down the sides; and, along the bottom, a list of my family rules, my most prevalent feeling growing up, and the role I played in my family system.

Then I’m supposed to draw a long horizontal line from one side of the paper to the other, and to write positive memories above it and negative memories below it in chronological order.

Carrie sits two chairs away from me working on her own timeline, her nipples practically jutting through her shirt. “How’s it going, Neilio?” she asks with a friendly smile.

I show her the slip of paper in my badge and trace a fake tear out of my eye. She pretends to catch it and put it in her pocket. This feels a lot like flirting.

I turn away instantly, exercising too little self-control too late. Next to me, a large-jawed, broad-faced man in a white T-shirt and jeans is working feverishly with a charcoal pencil. He looks like he could play the romantic lead in a Hollywood film, except for his forehead and his posture. The former is deeply furrowed, as if his brain is in pain; the latter is rigid, almost bristling, as if the slightest touch will send him into a fit of tears or violence or both.

I look at his drawing. It’s a very detailed rendering of a demonic, childlike face behind bars. And it’s beautifully done—good enough to sell to Goth kids. He notices me admiring it and I avert my eyes. Too late.

“Have you heard the story about the kid who wanders into the forest and gets captured by a witch?” he asks, his voice monotone.

“Hansel and Gretel?”

“No, this kid was bound with a golden cord. And when he got free and told people, no one believed him.”

“I don’t think I know it, but …”

“That’s me,” he says laconically, pointing to the creepy child face. “The bars are what separate me from everyone else. And no one can see through them to the monster I’m hiding inside.”

His tag is purple for post-traumatic stress disorder. His name is Henry. It’s clear someone did something horrible to Henry—probably repeatedly—and no one believed him when he sought help.

Henry says he runs a furniture-manufacturing company. As we discuss our lives, I’m aware that Carrie is nearby, listening to every word. And although I’m speaking to Henry, I’m also talking for her benefit. I’m following the rules but missing the point.

“Guys don’t shoot themselves in the heart,” Henry is telling me. “They shoot themselves in the head because they’re trying to shut their brain up.”

I try to focus on my timeline. I write a few words describing how I saw my mother when I was a child, then a few words about my father.

MOTHER

Punishing

Strict

Secretive

Complaining

Suffering

FATHER

Distant

Unemotional

Selfish

Temperamental

Alone

As I review the list, I realize that my family fits neatly into the sex addict mold that Lorraine taught us: Mother is strict and punishing (i.e., rigid) and father is distant and unemotional (i.e., disengaged).

I press on, writing down my most prevalent feeling growing up (“misunderstood”) and my family role (“the black sheep”). Next I’m supposed to list my family rules.

And that’s when I get stuck. Not because I can’t think of any rules, but because there were so many of them. Too many rules to think about right now.

I feel a rush of anxiety and decide to postpone this part of the assignment. In the meantime, I start filling in the timeline with childhood memories that had a strong impact or imprint. Until I explored my father’s closet, I never thought of my childhood as particularly bad or unusual. Although my parents were strict and at times eccentric, they loved me and provided for me. But as I start unpacking my memories, a small black cloud drifts into the idyllic picture.

I remember that some days my mother told me never to be like my father; but other times, when she was mad at me, she’d say I was just like my dad. And this was a man she apparently hated. She complained about the way he smelled, the way he slouched, the way he chewed his food, even the way he put his hands in his pockets. She’d call him temperamental, selfish, awkward, embarrassing, and a loser with no friends.

Suddenly, I notice that her constant admonishments that I’m just like my father are not only the root of my self-esteem problems, but that every word I used on the timeline to describe him was a word I’ve also used to describe my negative qualities: distant, unemotional, selfish, temperamental, alone.

For a moment everything in the room goes silent, and I feel an old wound begin to tear open. I shake it off and try to focus my attention elsewhere, like on Carrie.

“I’m running a meeting tonight for incest and rape survivors, if you want to come,” a monotone voice tells my ear. It’s Henry. And suddenly my tiny black cloud seems like a small white wisp compared to big-T Trauma.

“Okay.” Anything to avoid having to think about this stuff.

As I put away my supplies and prepare to walk out with Henry, Carrie writes something on a piece of paper and hands it to me.

I read it instantly: “When I’m in L.A., we have to hang out.”

I nod yes. And then I realize: If I can’t control myself around her, then maybe I do have an addiction. This is my chance to demonstrate that I’m not powerless. I resolve not to give Carrie my number, and to resist doing anything else that will violate my celibacy contract for the rest of the time I’m here.

I hurry out of the art room with Henry like Lot escaping Sodom. If I look back, I’ll turn into a pillar of addict.

When we get to the meeting, two women are already there: Dawn, my other temptation, and a sickly looking freckle-dusted brunette in her thirties. Henry arranges us into a square of four chairs. He picks up a binder with instructions and readings for twelve-step meetings, then sets it aside. “Let’s not do this,” he says, speaking slowly, as if each word requires effort to utter. “Let’s just talk. I can begin.”

He pauses for five long seconds, the corners of his mouth trembling, then continues. “I snuck out to the street last night. I stood there and looked at the cars passing by in the dark. And I thought about throwing myself in front of one. I stayed there for an hour. I wanted so badly to end it all. It wouldn’t take much effort. Just a little bit of courage to take that leap.”

Not only did he almost get himself killed, I think, he almost got himself sued for violating the Promise Not to Commit Suicide form he signed.

“You don’t worry about losing your life when you don’t have one, when it was taken from you,” he continues. He’s silent again for several seconds, his brow furrowing and unfurrowing. “I remember the first time my brother raped me. I was in my room, and he came in and held me down. He choked me while he did it and said he was going to kill me if I made a sound or ever told anyone.”

Henry goes on to talk about an evening, years later, when his father caught him molesting a horse in the barn and beat him. “For a long time, I’d seek out prostitutes, usually men, to whip me and beat me,” he continues. “I got into some dangerous situations. My wife doesn’t know any of this. Not even about my brother. When I told her I was going to rehab for post-traumatic stress disorder, she just looked at me and said, ‘That explains it.’ That really hurt me.”

Dawn volunteers to speak next. Her story is also horrifying. She tells us about two memories of her father fondling her. A decade later, he was arrested for sexually abusing other underage girls. She testified against him and now he’s serving time in prison. Then the freckly woman tells us how her adoptive father would come home drunk, stagger into her room, and molest her.

“I called him last night and asked him to come for family week to help me heal,” she says, her eyes and nose filling with tears and mucus. “And he actually agreed to come.”

As a culture, we voraciously consume horror movies about vampires, ghosts, zombies, and other supernatural beings. But people are much scarier than any monster we can make up. It’s not just the acts of horror they perpetrate on each other, but even when they spare the person’s life, they still take their soul, their spirit, their happiness. These offenders are the kinds of people I used to think of when someone mentioned sex addicts, not guys like Adam and Calvin.

“I just want me back,” Henry is saying, his eyes ringed red. “I want to know who I am.”

Then he looks at me and waits. I’m the only one who hasn’t spoken. And I haven’t been an incest or rape victim. But then I remember: One day, when I was in seventh grade, the school bully fondled me, then tried to have anal sex with me. The next day, he and his friends began a relentless bullying campaign against me. I lived in terror for the rest of the school year.

“I’m not supposed to talk to women,” I tell the group. “But I guess this is okay.” I then share the story, which I’ve never told a single person before. It was my first sexual experience, I conclude, and perhaps my obsession later in life with seduction was a way of overcompensating and proving to myself that I was straight.

As the three of them respond supportively, I still feel like an impostor: My trauma is woefully inadequate compared to theirs.

Even here, in a hospital of misfits, I don’t fit in.

Chicago, Twenty-Six Years Earlier

Take off your shoes.

I know, Mom.

And put them on the mat, not the carpet like last time.

Yes, Mom.

Now go wash your hands before touching anything. It’s too hard for me to keep cleaning your dirty fingerprints off the walls.

Okay, jeez.

And don’t forget: Dinner is at six o’clock sharp. Don’t be late or you won’t get dessert.

I walk to my room to wash my hands. There is no television there, no phone, and no technology except a small stereo. It used to be the Beatles whose music soothed me, but now that I’m a little older and my voice is starting to change, hardcore seems to fit my temperament better.

I’m in the mood to play the Damned’s “Smash It Up,” but I smashed the record in a fit of anger after I was grounded for a weekend for putting my feet up on the kitchen counter. So instead I crank Suicidal Tendencies as loud as I can without getting into trouble: “They just keep bugging me and they just keep bugging me and it builds up inside.”

And I wash my hands. Like a good son.

A few minutes before six, I hear my mom’s voice:

Dinnertime.

I enter the kitchen and see her sitting at the far end of the table, my father on her left, and my brother at the end closest to me. I’m the last to arrive, as usual. The black sheep. I sit down in my appointed seat.

Neil, elbows off the table. Ivan, you too!

Her voice is gentle for me, but harsh for my father. He is the blacker sheep. I feel bad for him. But my mom constantly tells me, “You’re your father’s favorite,” as if that’s a bad thing, so I try not to show him any sympathy.

You’ll never believe what your father did to me this time. He told Robin in his office that we were going to Sarasota for vacation. I have half a mind to just cancel the trip. You two haven’t told anyone, have you?

No, Mom. Of course not. But it isn’t …

When everyone in school brags about where they’re traveling for Christmas break, it’s hard not to tell them where I’m going. But my mother forbids it. She’s worried that while we’re gone, someone will break into the house. Before every trip, she hooks up lights to timers to fool all the criminals she imagines lurking outside. My father and I then leave the house and pretend to wave goodbye to my mother and brother. Afterward, they wait until the coast is clear, then sneak into a taxi to follow us. Even at my age, I know we have very little to steal: just two small television sets, two stereos, and one VCR.

I’m also not permitted to know my mother’s age, where she went to school, what her past jobs were, or why her leg is deformed. And I’m not allowed to have keys to the house—and never will be—because she’s worried I’ll lose them. However, my brother is sometimes trusted with the keys to the house. It doesn’t seem very …

… fair. Sam’s going to Jamaica and he’s allowed to tell everyone.

I’ve always been jealous of Sam. His parents are divorced and he’s a latchkey kid, which means he gets the keys to his house. He can also stay up as late as he wants. Until recently, my bedtime was seven thirty.

Well, Sam’s parents don’t care what happens to him. And he’s just like his parents. I don’t want you hanging out with Sam, Neil. He has a big mouth. Anything you tell him, everyone in the neighborhood is going to know. Do you understand me?

Yes, Mom.

He’s not your real friend anyway. Now what did I tell you about switching your fork to your other hand after cutting your meat?

…

That’s better. Who’s your mother who loves you very much?

You are.

As I write the family rules on my timeline, I suddenly realize: No wonder I hate monogamy. It’s just another irrational rule I have to put up with.

In the art room the next morning, I quickly finish my last rule—“Don’t trust other people: They are out to hurt you”—and race to join the guys in group therapy. Joan storms into the room a few minutes later carrying a stapled printout. My picture is on it. She looks at me and blurts, “Are you here for research?”

“Research?”

“I looked you up online. I know who you are.” She seemed merely to dislike me before, but now she may actually hate me. She knows what I’ve written: articles and books about sex-crazed rockers, porn stars, and players. A sex addict’s oeuvre. And evidently she thinks my sole purpose here is to undermine her.

“I’m one hundred percent here for me,” I tell her truthfully. What I don’t tell her is that if I were undercover writing about sex addiction, I wouldn’t be in this genital detention camp. I’d be with the sex addicts in the real world—having fun in Thai go-go bars and Brazilian termas and German FKK clubs.

“The truth is, this is the last chance for me to have a normal relationship,” I continue. “If I can’t be convinced that monogamy is natural and healthy, and wanting to be with multiple women is a symptom of dysfunction and trauma, I don’t think I’ll ever want a regular marriage.”

Joan’s arms are folded. She studies my every micro-expression closely, waiting to see if I’ll smile or break eye contact or show any sign that I’m lying. When I don’t, she clucks sharply, “Are you aware that any man who courts a woman with the goal of having sex is an addict?”

I tell her I wasn’t aware of that, and she goes on to explain that couples should have seventeen dates and fully get to know each other before initiating any physical contact.

But sex, I think, is part of getting to know someone. What if you commit to a relationship and she’s horrible in bed, smells like balsamic vinegar, and refuses to give blow jobs?

She waits for me to challenge her, but this time I keep my thoughts to myself. She then uncrosses her arms and nods her head. “Go ahead and present your timeline.”

I unroll the butcher paper—it’s the size I was when I was ten—and sit on the floor next to it. I tell her about the rules, the paranoia, the punishments—and the tough but compassionate babysitter who came to live with us when I was two and became like a second mother to me. When I get to the story about my mom’s wish that my brother and I cremate her and leave no memorial, my face swells and I feel tears approaching.

Joan responds to the possibility of tears in the room like a shark to the scent of blood in the water. “What are you feeling?” she asks, as if inviting me to cry. She has me right where she wants me: submissive, vulnerable, open.

“Pain,” I tell her. “Because just saying that makes me realize how sad she must be inside, how lonely and empty she must feel that she just wants to disappear from the world without any trace of her existence left behind.”

I inhale, clamp down on my emotions, and try to suck back the tears through the sides of my eyes. I will give Joan the story, but I won’t give her my soul. I don’t trust her with it.

When we move into my teenage years, I tell her about my parents never trusting me with the keys to the house, not letting me go on my first-ever date, and grounding me for most of my high school years.

And then, suddenly, I stop presenting my timeline. I’ve reached the part I’ve been dreading.

“I have a family skeleton in the closet here,” I explain. “But I promised my mother I’d never tell anyone about it. So I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to lie or break that promise.”

“This is your recovery,” Joan replies. “And you’re as sick as your secrets. You can’t keep old promises if they’re not healthy for you.”

“Yes, but I have my own value system. Just like we’ve taken a pledge of anonymity here, I pledged secrecy to my mother.”

“Then we will all make a pledge of secrecy to you,” she says. And they all promise.

“One more thing,” I add.

“Just say it,” she snaps, annoyed.

I ask more questions, buying time so I can determine what’s right. I crave the release, but I dread the betrayal. And then, as I look at the faces of the other guys who’ve shared their secrets in this room, I decide that, after two decades, I just need to let it go. Maybe it’s been holding me back, keeping me stuck in the past and riddled with confusion. And so I share what I’ve never told anyone—not Ingrid, not even my brother.

“Okay. So one day, I was in my father’s closet looking for porn.” The words start slowly, as if waking from a deep slumber. “And I found this videotape. The first thing on it was a tennis game with people in wheelchairs. Then there was a clip from a movie with a woman in a wheelchair begging in the streets for change. Then a swimming race with these people with no limbs just wriggling in the water. And at the end were all these old film clips of”—it’s hard to go on; everyone is silent—“amputees. All these models in bathing suits with missing legs and shit. That’s when I first realized”—again, my throat tries to choke the words back down—“my father’s got a thing for cripples.”

The words fly out between tears and spittle. “And my mom’s a fucking cripple. She had no idea he had this obsession when she married him. That’s why she hates him so much. She thinks she’s like the prize of his collection.”

I tell the group that after I found the video, I asked my mom about it. She seemed relieved she had someone to talk about it with and told me what she already knew about his obsession, like the pictures she’d found of my father when he was younger, bending limbs behind his back to look like an amputee. Eventually, we began investigating him together, and we found detailed inventories that he’d made of his photo collection of men and women with different amputations and birth defects.

Everyone in the room is silent, even Joan. I press on, telling them that my mom’s never told my dad that she knows about this, that she made me promise never to say a word about it to anyone, that she constantly calls me to discuss new evidence she’s found, that she’s paranoid that he has cameras hidden in the house to record her, that she believes he meets regularly with a secret club of men who share his fixation, that she thinks he brings them photos of her and random disabled people he photographs in the streets, that she has such an overwhelming feeling of shame that she won’t allow herself to be photographed and thinks anyone who stares at her must have a thing for her bad leg.

“She even found a film of their honeymoon he’d edited so that it only contained scenes of her limping.” I talk and talk and don’t stop talking. “I try to tell my mom that if she were a blonde with big breasts, people would stare and take photos and she wouldn’t have a complex about it, so she should just think of it as an attractive feature.”

And finally, when the story is as exhausted as I am, I skid to a halt and return to my body.

“Was that so bad?” Joan asks.

I want to answer: Yes, it was that bad. I don’t feel unburdened at all. I’m still carrying the secret; the only difference is that now nine proven liars also know it. I feel vulnerable and sick to my stomach.

“Are you aware that sex addiction has a genetic component?” she goes on.

“I don’t know.” I wish I hadn’t told her: She’s already using it against me. Just like my mom warned me people would do.

“I know,” she says firmly, as if a point has been proven. “However, there’s an issue here that’s even bigger than your father’s addiction and him leaking that energy all over the house.”

“What do you mean?” My face is crimson from fear, guilt, stress, fatigue.

“It’s your bond with your mother—the way you keep secrets for her, the way you both investigated him together.” I can perceive the faint outline of something important on the horizon of her words, but I can’t seem to identify it. “If you put what you just shared together with all the other pieces of your childhood, a clear pattern emerges.”

“Which is what?”

She starts to speak, then stops herself. “I don’t know how you’re going to take this.”

“Just say it,” I snap, imitating her, just to be an asshole.

This gives her the resolve she needs. She sucks in a breath of air, then exhales. “Okay, I’ll just say it.” The pause is long, the room is quiet, my heart is hammering, and then she says it. “Your mom wants to be in a relationship with you.”

It hits me like a ton of bricks. I sit there dazed, and a cold wind blows from somewhere inside me. Images from my life flutter in the current, each one a disturbing fragment of evidence: Why else would my mom come into my room at night and tell me all her problems? Why else would she not let me go on my first date? Why else was I grounded all the time and told that my classmates weren’t really my friends? Why else wasn’t I allowed the keys to the house when my brother was? Why else did she cut off all support and communication when I moved in with my first girlfriend, even though I was in my twenties? And what was I in this whole investigation of my father if not her intimate partner?

The tears come fast now. The statement seems so preposterous, yet something in my body recognizes the truth in it.

Joan’s got me. She’s won. The pride, the ego, the defenses, the algebraic equations are all gone. I am at her mercy. And that’s when she hammers once more on the stake she’s just driven into me: “That’s why you’re unable to be in a healthy relationship.”

“Now it makes sense why there was a double standard between my brother and me,” I choke out between sobs, regressing with each one. “Like, after college, he could have his girlfriends spend the night at my parents’ place, but I never could. Even to this day.”

“And why was that?”

“She said they were never good enough for me. That I chose badly.”

“It’s not that you chose badly.” She’s found the blood in the water now. “It’s that you didn’t choose Mom.”

My head is spinning. My mom didn’t do this intentionally, I’m sure, but it was unconscious. She hated Dad, she didn’t trust her friends, and I was the oldest, most reliable male around. So she probably wanted me all to herself, or at least safely under her control.

“When your mom is emotionally dependent on you and has intimate discussions with you that she should be having with her spouse, there’s a name for that.” Joan looks at me like a prizefighter sizing up a dazed opponent, then lands her final blow. “It’s called emotional incest.”

And I’m done.