your wife, why didn’t you just get divorced?”
“It’s not that easy. I have a mature, established relationship with my wife. And we have children, and you have to think about them.” He pushes himself off the bed and rises to his feet. “Wanna keep talking while we jog?”
I look at his legs, built by some super genetic stock and, probably, by a strict dad who loved him only when he scored goals. It would take me four steps to keep up with just one of his.
“That’s all right. I have dinner plans.”
“See you around, then.” He starts to leave the room, then turns back. “Anyone warn you about Joan yet?”
“Joan?” And then I remember.
“She runs our group. A real ballbuster. You’ll see.”
And off Adam goes—healthy, wholesome, and fucked.
In the cafeteria, there’s no sugar or caffeine, just food that won’t make anyone high. At a table in the corner, seven women with eating disorders sit with a staff counselor, who makes sure they swallow their allotted calories and don’t purge in the bathroom.
So far I haven’t seen any women with red tags. Evidently, women have eating disorders, men have sex addiction. I suppose both share the same obsession: women’s bodies.
I sit down next to the love addict, who’s with the broken-armed vampire from reception. Turns out they’re roommates. The love addict introduces herself as Carrie; the vampire as Dawn, an alcoholic and indiscriminate drug fiend. Whenever Dawn needs more sugar-free dessert or caffeine-free coffee, Carrie gets it for her, until the counselor from the eating table walks over.
“Stop getting food for other people,” he reprimands her. “That’s co dependency, and it’s against the rules here. No more caretaking! Got it?”
After he leaves, Carrie gives me a helpless look. “But her arm’s broken! What am I supposed to do?”
“You’re enabling my cast addiction,” Dawn jokes. And we laugh as if everything’s normal. But as we do, I look down and see the red tag dangling over my solar plexus like a scarlet letter. And I start to falter, to get nervous, to wonder if they’ve noticed that, of all the people to talk to here, I’ve chosen them—the youngest ones, the most attractive ones, the only two I shouldn’t be sitting with.
If they don’t know yet what this red badge means, they will know soon: Keep away. This man is a pervert.
On a bulletin board outside the reception area, there’s a list of twelve-step meetings taking place that night: Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Crystal Meth Anonymous, Co-Dependents Anonymous. A menu of dysfunctions to choose from.
I’ve never been to any of these meetings, so I choose the most relevant: Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. It’s in the patient lounge, which serves primarily as a library of tabletop puzzles to keep obsessive-compulsive patients busy wasting their lives. In a circle of couches and chairs at the far end of the room, there’s a group of three men and three women, including Carrie, led by a sad but dignified gray-haired man with a binder open in front of him. He looks like a newscaster who’s fallen on hard times.
“My name is Charles, and I’m a codependent depressive sex addict with PTSD and OCD,” he tells the group.
“Hi, Charles.”
“I was treated for sex addiction ten years ago and then relapsed two months ago. Because I didn’t want to raise kids around my addiction, I’ve passed up the chance to have children with my wife. We’re both too old now, and I really regret that. And I’m scared for her to come for family week, because I don’t want to lose her.”
When he’s finished, he looks to Carrie. She’s changed into another tight T-shirt. This one says DAMAGED GOODS on it.
“My name is Carrie, and I’m a love addict and trauma survivor.” Hi, Carrie. “I just got here today. I spent the last two years chasing after an abusive guy who wasn’t even interested in me. If a guy gives me just a little bit of attention, I get obsessed. I don’t feel pretty, and I see him as a challenge. And because I want approval and love so much, I have sex before I should—and a lot of times when I shouldn’t at all.”
The thought occurs before I can stop it: These groups are a great place to meet women. Carrie is sitting here divulging the exact strategy by which she can be seduced. There’s nothing a man with low self-esteem loves more than a beautiful woman who doesn’t know she’s beautiful.
I need to control my mind. I suppose that’s why I’m here.
Next up is a man in his early fifties: gray hair, gray beard, slight belly, red cheeks, like a skinnier, sex-addicted Santa Claus. He stares at his stomach and slowly, reluctantly tells his story. “I started out just going to strip clubs, but then I went to Tijuana and found this whorehouse and started going there all the time.”
He sucks in a lungful of air like it’s cigarette smoke, and lets out the saddest sigh I’ve ever heard. “And I got an STD.” He pauses, as if considering whether to share the rest of the story, then squeezes his eyes shut for a moment and shakes his head side to side. “And I haven’t told my wife about it yet.” He waits for a reaction, but it’s so quiet you could hear a syringe drop. “I’m going to have her come for family week and tell her then, I guess. Twenty-five years of marriage, and the whole house of cards is about to come tumbling down.”
He looks like his neck is in a guillotine and he’s waiting for the blade to fall. No one seems to have much of a problem with cheating here, just with getting caught. Many a man has shot himself in the head rather than face up to the consequences of what he’s done in his secret life.
Yet the consequences are rarely death, violence, or prison. The consequences are that other people will know about it, and they’ll have feelings and emotions about it that he can’t control. Santa Claus’s wife isn’t going to kill him. She’s just going to be really, really, really pissed off. Lying is about controlling someone else’s reality, hoping that what they don’t know won’t hurt you.
Suddenly I notice that everyone’s eyes are on me.
“My name is Neil.”
“Hi, Neil,” they all echo flatly.
And then I hesitate. If I check in as a sex addict, that could ruin my chances with Carrie.
But I’m here to ruin my chances with Carrie. I’m here to ruin my chances with everyone. If I have sex in rehab, then I’m really doomed.
But Carrie aside, am I even a sex addict? I’m a fucking man. Men like to have sex. That’s what we do. Put a beautiful woman in a tight dress in a bar on a Saturday night, and it’s like throwing raw meat into a den of wolves.
But I ate the meat while I was in a relationship. And I lied to and hurt someone who loves me, or loved me—I’m not sure which anymore. I suppose that’s what addicts do: They want something so badly, they’re willing to hurt others to get it.
“And I’m a sex and love addict.”
Okay, so I softened it a little.
Everyone is listening, no one is judging. They’ve all got their own problems. “I never thought I’d be in a place like this. But I made some bad decisions and I cheated on the woman I love. So I guess I’m here to find out why I’d do something like that and hurt her so much. And because I want to become healthy enough to have a committed relationship, hopefully with her. I don’t want to end up destroying a marriage and traumatizing my children because I cheated.”
Santa Claus shakes his head and his eyes well up with tears.
I stop there. I decide not to mention the other option I’m debating: to just say, “Fuck it, this is my nature,”