The Truth. Neil Strauss

      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