The Truth. Neil Strauss

We don’t feel you have a problem. Whatever problem you have, you know and we know.

      It would help us connect. Remember my ex-girlfriend Lisa? When she saw us together, she said it didn’t seem like there was any warmth or love between us.

      Lisa was just with us for one meal. I wasn’t comfortable with her. She wasn’t friendly or smiling. She didn’t relate to us at all.

      Joan’s words ring in my head as she speaks: another example of the women I date not being good enough for my mother. The implicit message is that sex and affairs are okay, but don’t get a real girlfriend because that would be competition.

      I try using her own weapon against her: guilt.

      As a mother, it would be one of the best things you could ever do for me.

      How would it help you exactly?

      It would help me be happier, healthier, and capable of having a functional relationship and starting a family of my own.

      Charlie Aaron didn’t get married until he was in his seventies, and he was never happier. And he didn’t need any kids.

      My breath catches in my throat. I’ve never heard of a mother who didn’t want to be a grandmother. Every word coming out of her mouth seems to support Joan’s horrific diagnosis.

      But remember Irvin from high school? He said he didn’t even know the meaning of the word love until he became a father.

      Irvin was your brother’s friend?

      No, he was my friend.

      That’s not possible. You were a dork. You didn’t have any friends.

       Why would a mother ever say that to her son? I wonder. Then I realize that I just recently learned the answer: She’s keeping me in my place. I beg and plead for them to come, countering objection after objection, until she says flatly …

      I have some really valid reasons why we can’t come. We love you, and we’d do anything else for you.

      Hard to believe that right now.

      Can just Dad come then?

      No way, José.

      He says nothing. He has no voice in the relationship. I try one last angle, my ace in the hole: promising to keep the secret.

      Whatever you’re worried about, and I think I know what it is, we don’t have to discuss that.

      I know who I am. I know who my parents are. I had an idyllic childhood. I think I turned out to be a great mother with two wonderful kids. I wouldn’t change you an ounce. But if you’re not satisfied with you, then you can help you by yourself. I’m not coming for personal reasons—very personal—and that’s it! Tell them not to call.

      The words fall like a sledgehammer, breaking the ground around me, isolating me, sending me spinning off into space alone. I reach for a lifeline.

      Can I ask you to just send me a copy of the keys to the house instead? They said it would give me a sense of closure if I could wear them around my neck as a symbol that I can be trusted.

      I realize that since leaving home for college, I’ve always had an odd key fixation. I’ve never thrown one away, even to old dorm rooms, cars, and apartments.

      Sorry, Charlie. It’s not you, it’s me. I don’t feel safe. And, besides, you’re absentminded. You lost that tape recorder when you were twelve and a million other things. And I can’t endanger my feeling of safety.

      Okay, thanks for listening. Bye, Mom.

      We can hire two people and send them to family week instead if you want.

      That’s okay.

      Enjoy your incarceration.

      The world I once knew, the one I thought I grew up in—strict, yes, but full of love and sacrifice from the parents who conceived, nurtured, and supported me—is gone. What she’s saying, ultimately, is that her issues are more important than my well-being. And they always have been.

      It could be worse, though. At least she has a sense of humor.

      I shower for a second time, making sure to use a washcloth, soap, and pressure, then trudge to a men’s circle in progress on the lawn. The thirty or so guys there are using what they call a talking stick, and only the person holding the erect-cock-sized piece of wood can speak. When he’s done, he says “aho,” which is some sort of macho Native American sound, and hands the wooden dick to the next lunatic.

      “Hi, I’m Calvin and I’m a sex addict. And I’m feeling a lot of fear right now, but also joy, because Mariana”—the Brazilian prostitute he impregnated—“just told me she wants to keep the baby. Aho!”

      He hands me the stick. It’s my turn to check in and I want to get it over with quickly: “I’m Neil and I’m tired of labels and I’m fine. Aho!”

      Everyone sucks in air or exclaims “ooooh” like I’ve just stepped in shit.

      “What?” I ask.

      Charles gestures for me to hand him the stick. I shake my head in annoyance and hand it to him. Idiotic rule.

      “Fine stands for fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional,” he says.

      “That’s about right.”

      The men glare at me in silent accusation: I spoke without holding the talking stick. You’d think I just shot someone.

      Charles hands me the talking dick and I place it on the ground next to me. “I love how someone can just make up a random fucking rule and you all follow it like sheep,” I tell them as I walk off. “I’ve been in a fucking men’s circle all week anyway. Aho!”

      No one responds because no one is holding the talking stick.

      I’m aware, as I walk away, that I’m not really mad at them. And I’m not mad at the talking stick. It’s actually a decent rule. If I’d had the chance to speak uninterrupted as a child and express myself and truly be heard, I’d probably be much healthier.

      What I’m mad about is that some people’s parents can’t come to family week because they’re dead or broke or in prison, but my parents just won’t. A guy who molested his daughter has the balls to show up here. As for my father, he doesn’t even have the balls to speak up for himself on the phone.

      Check-in: fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional. And rethinking everything I thought I knew about my childhood, my life, and who I am.

      The perfect frame of mind to see Ingrid after all this time apart.

      She is too pure for this place.

      She stands in the nurses’ area, where I’m now allowed the occasional use of my razor under supervision only. She’s wearing a fitted blue plaid button-down shirt that’s open to reveal a triangle of flawless skin, and black jeans that stop just above her high heels. No one wears high heels in this place. It’s not healthy for the fragile libidos here.

      She stiffens as she sees me and everything comes up at once in her face—the love, the hate, the desire, the fear, the hope, the hurt—and pushes through the scab covering it all.

      The words “Oh my god” escape from her mouth. Then the tears roll. When we hug, it seems like she’s dissolving into me. But when I feel her shirt rubbing against my chafed navel, a sense of unworthiness sweeps over me. Here I am, lusting after every slightly attractive inpatient I see, while she’s come all this way hoping I’ve changed. I guess I’m here because I want to be as good a person as Ingrid is.

      What I’m feeling right now