The Truth. Neil Strauss

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      My roommate also has a red tag around his neck. As soon as I walk through the door, he looks me up and down, and instantly a wave of inferiority washes over me. He’s tan and muscular; I’m not. His face is chiseled; mine is soft and weak. He was the most valuable player in a football championship, if his T-shirt is to be believed; I was always picked last for sports teams in school.

      “I’m Adam,” he says and crushes my hand in his. He speaks with confidence; my voice is nervous and fast.

      “Neil.” I extricate my hand. “So what are you in for?” I ask with forced ease. If I looked like Adam, I would have had girlfriends—or at least some sort of sexual contact—in high school and probably wouldn’t be lusting after every woman on the street, on the plane, in rehab, in a fifty-yard radius of wherever I am. I’d have some fucking self-esteem.

      “Neil, I’ll tell you.” He sits down on his bed and sighs. “I’m here for the same reason you are, the same reason every guy is: I got caught.”

      Or maybe I still wouldn’t have self-esteem. Suddenly, I like him. He speaks my language.

      The room is sparse: three small cots, three locking wardrobes, and three cheap plastic alarm clocks. I claim a bed and a closet as Adam tells his story. The bed is so low to the ground that his knees are almost at his chest.

      Adam is a hardworking, God-fearing, patriotic American man clipped right out of a 1950s magazine ad for aftershave. Married his college sweetheart, bought a small house in Pasadena, sells insurance, has two kids and a dog, goes to church on Sundays.

      “But my wife,” he’s saying, “she doesn’t take care of herself. She lies around the house all day and does nothing. I come home from work and she just sits there reading a magazine. I’ll ask if she wants to hear the five-minute version of my day and she’ll say, ‘No thanks.’ She doesn’t even have dinner ready for the kids.” He drops his chin into his hands and takes a deep breath into his probably perfect athlete’s lungs. “It’s not that I want her to be a housewife or anything, but I’m exhausted. So I’ll make dinner for everyone and she doesn’t even clean up. You know, Neil, I call her every afternoon and tell her I love her. I send her flowers. I do everything to show her I care.”

      “But do you care or are you just doing a duty?”

      “That’s just it.” He anxiously twists his wedding band. “I play football and help run the local leagues, and there’s this woman who started coaching one of the teams, and there was something there between us. It was maybe seven months before anything happened, but when it did, let me tell you, Neil, I’m not kidding, it was the best sex I’ve ever had. It was real passion and it developed into real love. But then my wife hired a private eye and that was the end of that.”

      Perhaps marriage is like buying a house: You plan to spend the rest of your life there, but sometimes you want to move—or at least spend a night in a hotel. “So if you were so happy with this other woman and so unhappy with your wife, why didn’t you just get divorced?”

      “It’s not that easy. I have a mature, established relationship with my wife. And we have children, and you have to think about them.” He pushes himself off the bed and rises to his feet. “Wanna keep talking while we jog?”

      I look at his legs, built by some super genetic stock and, probably, by a strict dad who loved him only when he scored goals. It would take me four steps to keep up with just one of his.

      “That’s all right. I have dinner plans.”

      “See you around, then.” He starts to leave the room, then turns back. “Anyone warn you about Joan yet?”

      “Joan?” And then I remember.

      “She runs our group. A real ballbuster. You’ll see.”

      And off Adam goes—healthy, wholesome, and fucked.

      In the cafeteria, there’s no sugar or caffeine, just food that won’t make anyone high. At a table in the corner, seven women with eating disorders sit with a staff counselor, who makes sure they swallow their allotted calories and don’t purge in the bathroom.

      So far I haven’t seen any women with red tags. Evidently, women have eating disorders, men have sex addiction. I suppose both share the same obsession: women’s bodies.

      I sit down next to the love addict, who’s with the broken-armed vampire from reception. Turns out they’re roommates. The love addict introduces herself as Carrie; the vampire as Dawn, an alcoholic and indiscriminate drug fiend. Whenever Dawn needs more sugar-free dessert or caffeine-free coffee, Carrie gets it for her, until the counselor from the eating table walks over.

      “Stop getting food for other people,” he reprimands her. “That’s co dependency, and it’s against the rules here. No more caretaking! Got it?”

      After he leaves, Carrie gives me a helpless look. “But her arm’s broken! What am I supposed to do?”

      “You’re enabling my cast addiction,” Dawn jokes. And we laugh as if everything’s normal. But as we do, I look down and see the red tag dangling over my solar plexus like a scarlet letter. And I start to falter, to get nervous, to wonder if they’ve noticed that, of all the people to talk to here, I’ve chosen them—the youngest ones, the most attractive ones, the only two I shouldn’t be sitting with.

      If they don’t know yet what this red badge means, they will know soon: Keep away. This man is a pervert.