The Truth. Neil Strauss

nature that makes us want to sleep with other people or is it really an addiction?”

      “It’s definitely an addiction,” Charles says authoritatively. “And the day I finally admitted I was powerless over it was the happiest day of my life. Suddenly I was no longer responsible. If I saw a beautiful woman on the street and was attracted, I knew it wasn’t my fault. I just looked away and said, ‘This is a disease and I’m powerless over it.’”

      At a table near the caffeine-free-coffee maker, I spot a fashionably dressed brunette with a red tag. She’s the first female sex addict I’ve seen. So of course I sit next to her. She’s tall and graceful, like a Siamese cat but with a forehead as big and shiny as a car mirror. Her name, according to her tag, is Naomi.

      She’s sitting next to a heavyset woman with short black hair, a lumpy sweatsuit, and several chins and growths on her face. Charles refuses to sit with us.

      “We signed a contract,” Charles admonishes me.

      “We’re not hitting on them. We’re just eating with them.”

      “We’re not supposed to talk to female patients.”

      “Says who? It’s not even in the contract.”

      “You’re threatening my sobriety,” he warns.

      Naomi laughs as Charles walks off, indignant. It’s the first music I’ve heard since checking in. The laughter of a woman is a high unto itself.

      As we eat, I ask Naomi about her story. She says she cheated on her husband seventeen times. “I remember the first time I slept with someone else. I got my first client on my own at work and my boss took me out to congratulate me. We started drinking, and he leaned over and made out with me. That acceptance was like a high for me. My head was just spinning. I’ve cheated since then looking for that high again, and it’s always the same situation: wanting acceptance from powerful men.”

      As she speaks, I think about how easy it would be to fuck her. She’s got a nice body, and she seems to have a wild side.

      Shit, now I definitely broke the contract. Maybe Charles was right. A shiver of remorse runs through me: Why am I trying to patch things up with Ingrid when I’m still clearly not capable of the commitment she expects? But I suppose that’s why I’m here: to become capable.

      Check-in: shame.

      Guilt is about breaking the rules. Shame is about being broken.

      “My therapist gave me a really big insight today,” the person I just accidentally fantasized about is saying. “I always put a lot of thought and care into the clothes I wear. But she told me that dressing to get attention is a form of acting out and part of my disease.”

      These therapists must be stopped. If they succeed in bullying women out of dressing beautifully, we might as well all move to Iran.

      “She explained that sex addiction is different for women,” Naomi continues. “Female sex addiction is usually about seeking love.”

      She tells me that roughly 90 percent of sex addicts entering treatment are men because guys tend to act out, while roughly 90 percent of people with eating disorders are women because they tend to act in.

      The woman next to her, Liz, has a purple tag, which she says is for post-traumatic stress disorder. Because Naomi is the only female sex addict here, they’re in the same group. “They diagnosed me as a sexual anorexic,” Liz says.

      I’ve never heard the term before, so Liz explains that it means she avoids sex. She tells us she was raised in a cult and repeatedly gang-raped. Eventually she ran away. And since then, she’s compulsively eaten a lot, neglected to care for herself, and dressed sloppily to keep men away. All those chins may look soft on the outside, but in actuality they serve as a strong shield, keeping her body safe.

      After lunch, as I walk along the path to the dorms, the sex-addicted sex addiction therapist from Joan’s group spots me and motions me over with his finger.

      “Your last name is Strauss, right?” he asks when I join him on the lawn. His name tag reads TROY.

      “Um, yes.”

      “I read your book.”

      “Do me a favor and don’t tell anyone who I am,” I plead. “It’s too ironic.”

      “So why are you here, man? I thought you’d be out living the life.”

      “I was. I learned all that stuff and it was fun. But at some point I want to get married and have a family, so I have to shut it off if I want to do that.”

      “I’ll tell you something,” Troy whispers conspiratorially. “As a sex therapist, I’ve heard every story there is out there.” He gestures away with his right arm. It doesn’t matter which direction he’s pointing: All roads lead out of here and to the real world. “And after fifteen years in this job, I don’t know if I believe in monogamy.”

      I clap him on the back and breathe a sigh of relief. “Let’s talk some more about that,” I tell him.

      I’ve found either an ally in truth here or a partner in crime.

      I’ve been sitting in this room with Joan for three straight days now and I’ve barely spoken a word or learned a thing. Today, Calvin is in trouble again. In the meantime, a new patient has joined us: a gay crystal meth addict from Las Vegas named Paul. He sits in his chair, unshaven, scratching his short brown hair, probably wondering why he’s here as Calvin tells Joan, “I was doing equine therapy and there was this girl”—Joan glares at him and he corrects himself—“I mean, woman, there. Carrie.”

      “Oh man, that’s my arousal template right there,” Troy mutters, patting his chest.

      Joan’s neck suddenly reddens. “Are you aware that undressing someone with your eyes is covert sexualized violence?” She doesn’t yell—that would signify a loss of control. Her weapon is severity. She knows just how to reduce a man to a boy: become his mother on her worst day.

      “Sorry, I am aware of that,” Troy says obediently.

      I, however, am not aware of that. I want to ask her: Since when did thinking become an act of violence? If you see a bank teller counting a huge stack of bills and imagine taking it when she’s not looking, is that covert bank robbery? And what are the charges?

      “Go ahead, Calvin,” she says icily, “tell everyone how you pornified Carrie.”

      “I don’t know. I just noticed that she had riding boots on and was talking about how she liked horses, and I do too. So I was fantasizing about riding away on a horse with her and getting married.”

      I always thought that sex addicts would be lecherous criminals, not overgrown boys who fantasize about getting married to women who share their interests. The first time I heard of sex addiction was when I saw a news exposé as a teenager. It followed a sex addict who drove around the city in a van with a mattress in back and somehow talked women into hooking up with him in there. He was very ordinary looking and plainly dressed, and I was envious that his sheer determination to have sex could actually produce results when my desire was getting me nowhere with the ladies.

      I guess the moral is: Be careful what you wish for.

      When I tune back into the room, Charles and Troy are bickering about pronouns. Joan asks them to sit in chairs opposite each other and talk using what she calls the communication boundary. She holds up a poster board reading:

      When I saw/heard ____________.

      The story I told myself about that was ____________.

      And I feel ____________.

      So I would like to request that ____________.

      Charles tries it: “When I heard you say that ‘we’re not monogamous by design,’