I was told to sit on the chair positioned in the center of the room. It was one those uncomfortable, hard, wooden chairs last seen in a classroom or a doctor’s office in 1969. Other chairs formed a large circle around the room. They were contemporary. Only mine was made of wood. When the door opened, every person on the grounds filed in and found a seat. My addict-peers and the entire staff surrounded me. The purpose of this elaborately staged event was to provide me with an opportunity to beg for forgiveness, repent my transgressions, and plea for a second chance. My crime? I had sex in rehab.
The entire scene seemed a little over the top, even by backwoods Louisiana standards, but they’d had their eye on me ever since I arrived with a suitcase full of ratty old stripper costumes. After a year of homelessness, the contents of this bag were all I had left in the world. Inspecting my cassette tapes – Zodiac Mindwarp, Southern Death Cult, The Violent Femmes, and the Cult – one asked if I was a Satanist. I couldn’t tell if he was joking. This was, after all, the deep south. I explained that as a Canadian my work options were limited and the costumes were my equivalent to a debit card to rebuild my life after rehab. I caught the look they shared. I was about to fill them in on my pre-stripping career in New York City when I realized that, in the big picture, it didn’t matter what these rehab workers thought of me. They left me alone for a few minutes and returned with a third person whose role was to inform me that sex was prohibited in the facility and that I wouldn’t be sharing a room – an unexpected perk that came from being judged as a sexual deviant. They probably thought no one was safe with a bisexual when the lights went out. The joke was on them. I’d had sex less than 5 times during the eighteen months since my marriage ended.
Minutes into my tribunal, I was begging them not to kick me out of rehab. Finding a place that accepted Canadian health insurance was nothing short of a miracle. I’d never been able to get clean on the street and I knew this was my one shot. Yes, I was guilty of having sex in rehab. I don’t know why I did it. Boredom? Restlessness? Maybe I just needed relief. I was experiencing insane levels of anxiety without drugs in my system. What I didn’t tell them was that I hadn’t been particularly horny or remotely interested in the person I’d had sex with who’d cracked under pressure and confessed to his counselor. Most likely, I did it for the cheap thrill of rule breaking – and because I could.
If this had been a scene from Peggy Sue Got Married I would have said something like, “Do you really think that forced morality and shaming the newcomer is an effective strategy? If what you say about the recovery process is true, I’ll discover my own moral compass. Besides, I happen to know for a fact that in the 21st Century sex will become part of the recovery conversation. And one other thing – in a few years you’ll all be singing songs by The Cult.”
I rarely think about my time in New Orleans post-rehab. Whenever I do, isolated moments rise up like scenes from a
movie rather than scenes from my life: Bourbon Street’s a sea of intoxicated pre-Mardi Gras tourists roaming strip clubs like frat boys at a pub crawl. I’m naked, lying face down on a slab of wood swinging back and forth above the bar at Big Daddy’s while men wave dollar bills and heckle me. I quit an hour into my shift. I’m staying with a gay friend from rehab. I take cabs to NA meetings three blocks away because the air stings because the thickness of my skin is no match for the rawness of my nerves. Balmy nights feel like heroin to me. I’m shy, insecure, and socially awkward. I don’t recognize this version of myself. Mardi Gras passes through town like a slow-motion carnival. I kill time between meetings chain-smoking and trying not to think about the future. To celebrate sixty-days clean I have sex with a skateboarder I meet in a record store. He makes me a mixtape. I play it for my room-mate who laughs, “Girl, if you have sex with four more people and get four more mixtapes you’ll have a soundtrack for the bus ride to LA.”
When I got to Los Angeles, I discovered NA meetings filled with people with an insatiable need for adventure and laughter. We weren’t consciously manipulating reality as much we were sidestepping our fear of boredom. Sober friends opened Club Fuck! Where we’d dance to industrial music, get tribal tattoos and body piercings on stage, or participate in S&M performances. This collective acting out became a modern primitive performance art movement that took many of us around the world. Despite our penchant for debauchery, we were serious about recovery. With few exceptions, we’re still sober twenty-nine years later.
A lot of us were suffering from untreated trauma but this wasn’t something anyone talked about in the 80s. In early recovery, boredom and restlessness were excruciatingly painful. Sex dulled the edges for many of us until we gained the capacity to exist in the grey area of our emotions. What saved us from ourselves was our unity, honesty, and willingness to grow up in public, however messy. We held on until other solutions became available.
I had a little over a year clean when I spoke at a large meeting in Hollywood and wasn’t prepared for the level of honesty that left my mouth. “I’ve never confused sex with love. I see it as a form of “playing” for grown-ups. I’ve never thought of it as a replacement for love. Here’s what’s messing with me – while I was busy “playing”, all of my friends got into relationships. I’m not exaggerating. Even my best friend, a notoriously promiscuous gay man, has a boyfriend. For the first time since getting clean I’m feeling lonely and lost from myself again and my head keeps telling me that I’m too damaged for love. Anyway, I’m starting therapy. My sponsor said to start the session with, “I’m f**king everyone and I can’t stop”.
Horrified and embarrassed by my own words, I prepared to make a quick exit as soon as the meeting ended. This was impossible. As happens in recovery, honesty begets honesty. Half the meeting stuck around to talk with me afterward. One straight man kept his sugar daddy around to supplement his income and the secret was making him feel like a fraud; a married woman was tormented by sexual fantasies about a co-worker; someone asked if I thought unsafe sex was really a form of suicidal behavior. I hadn’t realized how much people suffered because they were too afraid to talk about sex. The open dialogue began.
This story is meant to be a window into my early recovery during the late 80s. Self-discovery and healing, for me, has happened over time. When I say that promiscuity was fun, it’s because that was my experience at the time. I’m able to own the choices I’ve made throughout my life because they were the very best I could make at the time. Expectations of perfection is a great weight to the human spirit. Thankfully, in recovery my tolerance for suffering and my need for drama has diminished. There’s wisdom to the saying “When the pain of staying the same is greater than the fear of change, we change.” Change, for me, came with work. Thanks to sponsorship, step work, service, therapy, trauma work, EMDR, Neurofeedback, time and aging, I have a relationship with myself I never imagined possible. I know this sounds sort of “Hallmark greeting card” but it’s true. I really do.
For several years, I’ve been hosting “Sex Talk” a free monthly online open-discussion about sex in recovery. Whenever people share about conflicts in their sexual behavior or confusion about their current relationship to sex, they’ll ask, “What’s the right way?” Honest self-examination shared with others is an act of faith, and – like everything else – more will be revealed. Secrets will always try to keep us in the dark but our spirit will move us into the light if we find the courage to let it. Recovery is the personal journey that leads us to ourselves
1 Comment
Fabulous, insightful piece. Thank you!