The Truth. Neil Strauss

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      “So all you really want in a relationship is freedom?” Ingrid asks as we walk to the cafeteria for dinner later that day.

      “Yeah, I think so.”

      “I’d like to give you more freedom, then.”

      “Really?”

      “Yes, starting now.” She grabs my jeans playfully and starts pulling them down. “This is what freedom feels like!” An impish smile, which I’ve sorely missed, spreads across her face. “Why don’t you show everyone here your freedom?” she mocks, pulling next at my boxer shorts.

      I yank the waistband up to keep from exposing myself: If Joan saw this, she’d probably add compulsive exhibitionist to my permanent record. But Ingrid keeps fighting to remove my clothing, yelling “Freedom!” at the top of her lungs.

      We walk into the cafeteria, grinning ear to ear. She’s making a joke out of the issue all us red demons have been tying ourselves in knots over. Perhaps the best cure is just to lighten up. I don’t need Zoloft. I have her.

      “Miss, you’re going to have to button your shirt higher,” the dining-hall counselor and anorexic-feeder barks when he sees her, as if the sex addicts are going to break into spontaneous public masturbation when they see that extra inch of cleavage.

      We each grab a plate of flavorless chicken parts over soapy rice and walk to the sex addict table. Troy claps me on the back and says idiotically, “You didn’t tell us how hot she was.” Maybe the counselor was right after all.

      Charles doesn’t leave the table as we sit down, which means visitors are presumably exempt from the “males only” rule. Ingrid asks each guy in the group about his story and each speaks freely of his sins, except for Charles.

      Then she tells them her family’s story: “My grandfather cheated on my grandmother all the time, but she always loved him. After he died, she started having recurring nightmares about him cheating. So every morning, she goes to his room and yells at his ashes, ‘Dios mío! Even in death you are still cheating on me. Can’t you let me be, you dirty old man?’” The guys laugh all too knowingly. “Then, a few hours later, she returns, apologizes, dusts the room, and refreshes the flowers on his nightstand.”

      And so, even in death, in relationship with a memory, the ballad of the love addict and love avoider continues.

      Ingrid’s mother was just as obsessive a love addict. “She used to be beautiful and independent and have her own TV show in Mexico, but when we moved to America, she became a domestic slave to my stepfather,” Ingrid tells the guys. “I’d try to get her to leave him because he was so emotionally abusive, but she’d always say, ‘I can’t. What am I going to do when you both turn eighteen? I’m going to be left alone.’”

      “Maybe that’s the female dilemma,” Troy cuts in. “She marries someone who’s giving her love and romance, but over time she gets taken for granted or turned into a maid or becomes a baby factory or gets cheated on. There’s not a single emotional need of hers that’s filled by her husband. Then he has the nerve to complain that she’s not sexual or attractive when he’s drained the life out of her.”

      As the guys nod in sad recognition, Ingrid quickly summarizes her teenage years, some of which she’d never shared even with me before: Her stepfather treated her worse than a servant—making her do backbreaking work, refusing to let her dine at the table with the rest of the family, and giving her an unheated garage without any furniture as a room. Ingrid soon slid from a straight-A student to a straight-F student.

      Eventually, she ran away, started doing meth, and spent two years living in rehab because her stepfather wouldn’t let her back in the house. She ended up becoming the youth spokesperson for the treatment center, appearing on the news and speaking at events with the mayor.

      Yet despite separating from her family and accomplishing so much on her own afterward, she still followed in her mother and grandmother’s footsteps and fell in love with a cheater.

      After dinner, the anorexic-feeder curtly tells Ingrid that visiting hours are over. As we head back to reception, Henry, my new friend from the art room, falls in step with us and starts speaking in his slow monotone, ignoring Ingrid. “They talk about how there are eight emotions here, but I think there are nine.”

      “What’s the other one?”

      “The ninth emotion is the death emotion. It’s just feeling nothing.”

      We’re fragile beings, I think as I see the pain in his face. Even when the body heals, the soul remains scarred. As we talk, he slowly becomes aware of Ingrid’s presence and asks if she’s my girlfriend.

      I turn to Ingrid and our eyes search each other’s for an answer. I’ve done my penance and shown a willingness to change by checking in here; she’s shown her forgiveness by driving here to see me and sharing her own secrets.

      “Yes,” she tells him. “I am.”

      Relief and gratitude flow through me. I’m done fantasizing about the women here. I’ve been given a second chance not to be Ingrid’s father and grandfather—or to be them and perpetuate the multigenerational pattern of cheating men and the women who love them. The sins of the parents are the destinies of their children. Unless the children wake up and do something about it.

      “I trust your boyfriend,” Henry says. “I feel like I can talk to him.”

      Of course he can, I think. I must give out some sort of enmeshment signal, letting everyone know they can confide their crazy shit in me. That’s probably why I ended up profiling rock stars for Rolling Stone, why all those mistrustful celebrities felt comfortable divulging private thoughts to me that they’d never shared with anyone else, why my editors clapped me on the back afterward and put the story on the cover.

      Childhood trauma may sneak up from behind and fuck you in the ass when you grow up, but at least it leaves a tip on the nightstand.

      “Who was that poor guy?” Ingrid asks as Henry drifts away, talking about his latest suicide plan: He’s identified the most dangerous patient here and is planning to pick a fight with him.

      “He had sex with a horse.”

      “And the horse got jealous and told his wife?” she jokes, though there’s a barb in there that I ignore.

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