The Truth. Neil Strauss

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