At the next meeting, the old guy whose wife kicked him out cried. Andrew bragged that his ex-girlfriend thought he was a god, even though he told her she had to find her own higher power and support network.
"That poor girl is threatening to commit suicide over him, and he's relishing the power of it," I complained during my post-meeting wrap-up with Johnny. We were strolling beneath gray-barked, ancient trees that were unfurling fresh new green flags into the pale springtime sky. "And that's the step we were supposed to be learning today: realizing our powerlessness! One thing I learned from everyone's sad stories is that all those anonymous people I had sex with, they're real human beings who were badly used as children, and when I think about them like that, I know I can't continue to exploit them. You know? Or that I can't let them exploit me because that's really me exploiting them? Like there's an invisible chessboard beneath our feet, and I can no more do something different from how I'm programmed than, say, a bishop could suddenly move straight or sideways instead of diagonally. I mean, I could move forward or backward if there were no other pieces on the board to remind me what the game is. But the second someone else appears, moving the way they're supposed to, it all clicks into place."
"Do you need me to come over tonight?" Johnny asked.
I looked at him to determine if he meant what I thought he meant. He did. "God, yes!" I cried. Then: "No! I'm sorry! We quit, remember? Hearing this stuff at meetings actually brings up good memories for me, though. If only I'd met you ten years ago. Why did you tell me you wanted to be monogamous?"
"Because I wanted to be," he said. "I wanted to keep all that sleazy stuff separate from you. I thought that was what you wanted."
"I did. I do!"
"I wanted to be the perfect boyfriend for you. It seemed like you'd done everything, and just being faithful was the one thing you hadn't. Is there anything you haven't done?"
"Yes. The Texas Star. That's with five guys. One in each hand and all three holes."
"I want to do that with you."
"I want to do that with you!"
I decided it would be fastest and smoothest to look for the four other fellows online. I'd never gone to swinging sites before; it seemed too premeditated. It had been my habit to find people in real life; it felt more like chance that way. But a Texas Star was beyond chance.
"We don't have to tell Don, right?" I said.
Johnny had sex-addiction phone therapy with Don in Colorado once a week. Sometimes I sat in on the call. The nature of sex between us had changed as per Don's instructions: only do it missionary, looking into each other's eyes.
Johnny would fuck anything. I liked that, that he'd always err on the side of having done too much rather than less.
It was the sweetest feeling. "This is what it's going to feel like when we're making a baby," Johnny said. That his cock had been in and out of thousands of mouths — maybe even days ago — didn't bother me in the least (at least, once I got the clean bill of health from the clinic). It had done so because it was hungry to plunge into a home; it had urgency. That made me like it — and its owner — more. I never cared for the hypocrisy of wanting to but holding back. There's something chintzy about restraint and exclusivity. Johnny would fuck anything. I liked that, that he'd always err on the side of having done too much rather than less.
I figured he was going to leave me in the end, just because I was the best thing that had ever happened to him. I liked that, too. (Philosophically; on a personal level, it was terrifying). All men loved by a good woman will fantasize about leaving her, quitting their job, running away from home, but they don't. Johnny did everything he dreamed of. That's how I was, before Beau was born and my brain turned organized and undestructive. But I was still that way — the leaving way — inside.
I didn't need to explain anything to Johnny or be told anything. I looked into his eyes and was naked. Not my body, which had been naked a million times before, but the part of me that normally morphs into whatever the other person in the room wants, because, in its real form, it's so terrible and wrong I know that I must hide and transform it always.
"Sex addiction is not the problem," Don told us. "It's only a symptom of the real problem, which is emptiness." He offered Johnny practical methods for curing the symptom, like putting a rubber band around his wrist and snapping it each time he has a non-intimate sexual impulse, so that he'll rewire his brain to associate porn or anonymous sex with pain rather than escape. But, he reminded us, the emptiness would still be there, and without Johnny's anxiety-relieving ritualistic risk-taking, the feeling of emptiness would get worse, feel more urgent, and Johnny better determine the source of it in regular therapy, or everything would blow up.
Because sex addiction wasn't the problem, surely one last Texas Star wouldn't hurt anyone.
Because sex addiction wasn't the problem, surely one last Texas Star wouldn't hurt anyone. But oh, perusing these swingers with sober eyes was dreadful! The grammar, and the tacky furniture these people pose naked in front of! It's not like I have great furniture. But I would at least find a bare wall to stand in front of instead. Oh, the flowered, tattered couches! The pictures on the walls! I don't want to know these things!
"I fear I shall remain Texas Starless forever," I sighed to Johnny. "Well, maybe it's for the best. Remember the English woman we nearly had a threeway with? She reeked of perfume and cigarette smoke." Those were two of Johnny's triggers — things that reminded him of something bad, scared him and made him mean.
"You don't wear perfume or smoke," Johnny said reverently, as if he'd just heard about me winning an Emmy, and he moved closer.
"And you don't stand naked in front of a flowered couch," I agreed. "I'm happy with you. I'm not happy with the world. Why did we think it was a good idea to leap into their midst?"
His breath mixed with mine, and our hands tangled. "We must have been drunk," he said.
