The Truth. Neil Strauss

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СКАЧАТЬ book on evolution I once read, the writer cited research claiming that gay women have fewer than ten partners on average in their lifetimes whereas gay men have more than a hundred. So I ask Paul about it.

      “I’ve been with over a thousand guys,” he confirms. His voice is raspy and gruff, and he has the permanent look of someone who’s had a rough night partying. “But it’s different in our world, because everyone wants to have casual sex. So, literally, guys would come over to my place and instead of hooking up, they’d go online and invite more people. I’d have a dozen guys fucking each other in my living room sometimes.”

      “I once interviewed a woman who was going through a sex change to become a man,” I tell him. “And she told me that as soon as the testosterone therapy kicked in, she suddenly understood men, because she wanted to fuck everything that moved.”

      “Imagine if women were wired like men,” Calvin says dreamily.

      “It would be sexual pandemonium,” Troy replies with a big smile.

      I ask them the ultimate question: “So if your wife allowed you to sleep with other women, would you allow her to sleep with other men?”

      And much to my surprise, every guy except Adam says yes. “I wouldn’t like it, but I guess I’d have to suck it up,” Troy says.

      Adam appears uncomfortable. We may have gone too far for him. Unlike the rest of us, he doesn’t yearn for casual sex or variety; he just wants the love and passion his marriage is lacking. “Here’s the thing you’re all missing,” he says, laying his huge hands on the table. “We’re not here because we had sex. We’re here because we lied, because we wanted sex so badly that we violated our own moral values.”

      He has a great point. No one is actually here for promiscuity. They’re here solely for cheating. Except for Calvin, of course, and for Paul, who came to get off crystal meth but was placed in our group when he mentioned sex parties in his intake interview. “You’re right,” I tell Adam. “If we were single and behaved exactly the same, we wouldn’t be here. It wouldn’t be considered an addiction. If the rule was that you’re not allowed to eat sushi once you’re married, we’d all be here as sushi addicts.”

      “So maybe the answer to your male dilemma is that you sacrifice,” Adam replies. “You tough it out and stand beside your wife, for better or worse, as a choice that you’re led to by faith in your family and God.”

      “But why should you have to make that sacrifice?” I ask. “A relationship should be about what you both want, not about what you both don’t want each other to have. There must be some way in which we can have freedom and our partners can have security—or we can all have both freedom and security.”

      Troy points a long finger at me. “See, that’s the kind of thinking they want to stop here.” He stretches an arm along the back of Charles’s vacant chair. “The problem with therapy is that they try to normalize everyone and keep them in the middle of the road. But if you do that to a society, there’s no innovation. Nothing new is created. You need that one caveman who said, ‘We can’t just keep waiting for lightning to strike every time we need fire. We have to make fire ourselves.’ They probably thought he was crazy, rubbing rocks and sticks together. Today they’d diagnose him as obsessive-compulsive. But then he gave them fire, and all of a sudden everyone was doing it. You can’t get anywhere as a civilization without that kind of original thinking and focus. It’s people with compulsive behaviors who change the world.”

      As Calvin fist-bumps Troy, I wonder if maybe life has led me here not to cure my supposed sex addiction, but to take on a mission for the betterment of my peers and the world: to redesign relationships so that the needs of both sexes can be met. Because they don’t seem to be working as it is.

      Chicago, Twenty-Eight Years Earlier

      Sigh. You’re the only one I can talk to around here.

      What about your friends?

      I can’t trust them.

      Not even Denise?

      She’s the worst of all. Never tell her anything. She can’t keep her mouth shut.

      Okay.

      I’m lying in bed wearing Star Wars pajamas, a comic book and flashlight tucked under the covers. My mom’s sitting in a small desk chair pulled up to the side of the bed. Sometimes, when she’s really upset at my dad and has no one else to talk to, she comes to me. This is one of those times.

      I’ve just had it up to here with your father.

      Is that why you guys were fighting?

      Do you hear the way he swears at me—in front of you and your brother? He’s a monster. I don’t think he has any feelings.

      He must have feelings.

      He doesn’t. He’s like a rock. I remember I returned from my honeymoon and asked my mother if I could divorce him. And she said she wouldn’t let me come back home if I did that. So I stayed with him, that selfish bastard.

      You don’t have to stay with him now, though. You’re an adult.

      Where am I going to go? Who’s going to take care of me?

      I’ll take care of you.

      You’re not old enough. Where are you going to get the money?

      I don’t know. Maybe you can find someone else with more money than Dad. Then you can be happy.

      Maybe when I was younger. I had a lot of confidence then. I even entered a beauty contest. A lot of men wanted to date me, if you can imagine that. But your dad has ruined me. You know he could only get it up twice: once for you and once for your brother.

      Really?

      Really. Listen to me, Neil: Whatever you do, never grow up to make anyone as miserable as your father makes me.

      After dinner, I walk across the grounds to the art room to work on my timeline. I’m supposed to present the story of my life from birth to age eighteen, which Joan doubtless plans to use to pathologize me as a sex addict and troublemaker. And if that’s the truth, so be it. I’ll give her everything she needs.

      I grab a long sheet of butcher paper and a black marker. Then I read a handout with instructions. I’m supposed to write my family message along the top of the butcher paper; words describing the different members of my family down the sides; and, along the bottom, a list of my family rules, my most prevalent feeling growing up, and the role I played in my family system.

      Then I’m supposed to draw a long horizontal line from one side of the paper to the other, and to write positive memories above it and negative memories below it in chronological order.

      Carrie sits two chairs away from me working on her own timeline, her nipples practically jutting through her shirt. “How’s it going, Neilio?” she asks with a friendly smile.

      I show her the slip of paper in my badge and trace a fake tear out of my eye. She pretends to catch СКАЧАТЬ