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THE TRUTH
When I look back on my childhood, I see a malnourished nerd wearing cheap black-rimmed plastic glasses, too big for my little face yet too small for my gigantic ears. And I see greasy brown hair chopped awkwardly short—at my request. I hated my curls. Everyone else had straight hair and I wanted to fit in. Even my own mother called me a follower. My losing streak continued not just through high school—where my junior prom date left the dance with another guy and my longest interactions with attractive women were during haircuts—but through college and my twenties. I sat on the sidelines, watching other people have fun. Eventually I made that a full-time job and started writing profiles of musicians for a living. When things got particularly lonely in the long droughts between girlfriends and I craved female touch, I’d go to an Asian massage parlor. And even there, I got the feeling they were making fun of my awkwardness behind my back. But one day, everything changed. I embedded myself with the world’s greatest self-proclaimed ladies’ men, hoping to turn my losing streak around. After living with them and traveling the world with them for two years, I finally developed the confidence to talk to women I was attracted to and, for the first time in my life, the ability to attract them to me. The book I wrote about my education at the hands of these unlikely Lotharios became so infamous that it eclipsed everything I’d done before. And so my pursuit of sex didn’t destroy my life, it made my career. How frustrating, then, to find myself in rehab some five years later, trying to unlearn everything I’ve spent so much time and energy learning. “Do you realize that you’re harming these women when you use their bodies to masturbate with?” Joan admonishes Calvin. She senses he’s on the verge of tears, then tries to bring him over the edge. “They don’t care about you. These are hurt and abused women. And you’re reenacting their childhood trauma. You are their father, their first boyfriend, the predator who raped away their innocence.” And that’s it. Calvin is done. His head rolls down and he covers his eyes with his palms as the tears spill out. Victorious, Joan takes a verbal lap around the room, asking different patients to report on what their sexual addiction has cost them, breaking down each of their defenses, stripping them of the last vestige of ego and pride they’ve retained from any affair or adventure or transaction.
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