not our fault if he lied to us.”
“Do you have any homicidal thoughts?” she asks.
“No.” And in that moment, I have a homicidal thought. It’s like saying, “Don’t think of a pink elephant.”
She moves to the next question. “What are you here for?”
“Cheating.”
She says nothing. I think about that word. It sounds lame. I’m in a fucking mental hospital because I couldn’t say no to a new sex partner. So I add the other reason I’m there: “And I guess to learn how to have a healthy relationship.”
I think of Ingrid, whose heart I broke, whose friends threatened to kill me, who never did anything wrong but love me.
The nurse looks up to face me. It is the first time she’s made eye contact. I see something soften. I’m no longer a pervert. I’ve said the magic R word: relationship.
Her lips part and moisten; her whole demeanor is different now. She actually wants to help me. “Of course,” she says, “the first part of that is finding someone to date who’s healthy.”
“I found that person,” I sigh. “She’s totally healthy. That’s what made me realize it’s just me.”
She smiles sympathetically and continues looking through my intake folder. I ask her if she thinks I’m really an addict. “I’m not an addiction specialist,” she says. “But if you’re cheating on your relationship, if you’re visiting porn sites, or if you’re masturbating, that’s sex addiction.”
She opens a drawer, removes a red square of paper, and writes my first name and last initial on it in black marker. Then she slips it into a small plastic sleeve and loops a long piece of white string through it. It’s the ugliest necklace I’ve ever seen.
“You’re in red two,” she says. “You’re required to wear your badge at all times.”
“What does red two mean?”
“The tags are color coded. Red is for sex addicts. And the red two group is in therapy with”—she pauses and flashes a brief, uncomfortable smile—“Joan.”
I can’t tell whether it’s fear or pity in her expression, but for some reason the name fills me with a crawling dread.
She then picks up a large poster board from the floor and holds it on top of the desk, facing me. There are eight huge words on it:
JOY
PAIN
LOVE
ANGER
PASSION
FEAR
GUILT
SHAME
“This is called a check-in,” she says. “You’ll be required to check in four times a day and report which emotions you’re feeling. Which ones are you experiencing right now?”
I scan the display for crawling dread, for utter worthlessness, for total confusion, for intense regret, for rule-hating frustration, for the impulse to jump up and run away and change my name to Rex and move to New Zealand forever.
“I can’t find my emotions on the list.”
“These are the eight basic emotions,” she explains with practiced patience. “Every emotion belongs in one of these categories. So select the ones you feel the most right now.”
I don’t get this. I feel like someone just made this shit up. It’s completely arbitrary. It makes me feel …
“Anger.”
She types it in my file. I am now officially institutionalized. I feel another emotion coming on.
“What’s the difference between guilt and shame?” I ask.
“Guilt is just about your behavior. Shame is about who you are.”
“And shame.” Lots of shame.
She leads me back to the reception desk, where I see a woman with her arm in a blue fiberglass cast being led out of a nursing station: another new arrival. She has pasty skin, blue-black hair, lots of piercings, and the look of a vampire who seduces men to their doom. And I’m instantly attracted.
From the other direction, an even more alluring woman, with long blond hair pouring out of a pink baseball cap, saunters to the reception desk. She’s wearing a tight black T-shirt that clings to every contour of her body. And I think what I always think, what every man always thinks. What was puberty for if not to think these thoughts? What is testosterone for if not to feel a sudden rush of chemicals priming the neuroreceptors in the medial preoptic area of the brain right now, impelling me forward to action?
“What are you here for?” I ask the blonde. Her tag is blue.
“Love addiction,” she replies.
Perfect. I ask if she wants to get dinner.
Check-in: guilt.
And passion.
My roommate also has a red tag around his neck. As soon as I walk through the door, he looks me up and down, and instantly a wave of inferiority washes over me. He’s tan and muscular; I’m not. His face is chiseled; mine is soft and weak. He was the most valuable player in a football championship, if his T-shirt is to be believed; I was always picked last for sports teams in school.
“I’m Adam,” he says and crushes my hand in his. He speaks with confidence; my voice is nervous and fast.
“Neil.” I extricate my hand. “So what are you in for?” I ask with forced ease. If I looked like Adam, I would have had girlfriends—or at least some sort of sexual contact—in high school and probably wouldn’t be lusting after every woman on the street, on the plane, in rehab, in a fifty-yard radius of wherever I am. I’d have some fucking self-esteem.
“Neil, I’ll tell you.” He sits down on his bed and sighs. “I’m here for the same reason you are, the same reason every guy is: I got caught.”
Or maybe I still wouldn’t have self-esteem. Suddenly, I like him. He speaks my language.
The room is sparse: three small cots, three locking wardrobes, and three cheap plastic alarm clocks. I claim a bed and a closet as Adam tells his story. The bed is so low to the ground that his knees are almost at his chest.
Adam is a hardworking, God-fearing, patriotic American man clipped right out of a 1950s magazine ad for aftershave. Married his college sweetheart, bought a small house in Pasadena, sells insurance, has two kids and a dog, goes to church on Sundays.
“But my wife,” he’s saying, “she doesn’t take care of herself. She lies around the house all day and does nothing. I come home from work and she just sits there reading a magazine. I’ll ask if she wants to hear the five-minute version of my day and she’ll say, ‘No thanks.’ She doesn’t even have dinner ready for the kids.” He drops his chin into his hands and takes a deep breath into his probably perfect athlete’s lungs. “It’s not that I want her to be a housewife or anything, but I’m exhausted. So I’ll make dinner for everyone and she doesn’t even clean up. You know, Neil, I call her every afternoon and tell her I love her. I send her flowers. I do everything to show her I care.”
“But do you care or are you just doing a duty?”
“That’s just it.” He anxiously twists his wedding band. “I play football and help run the local leagues, and there’s this woman who started coaching one of the teams, and there was something there between us. It was maybe seven months before anything happened, but when it did, let me tell you, Neil, I’m not kidding, it was the best sex I’ve ever had. It was real passion and it developed into real love. But then my wife hired a private eye and that was the end of that.”
Perhaps