When sex is used for the wrong reasons a spiritual problem is created.
Charlotte Davis Kasil
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their won bodies conceal themselves?
Walt Whitman
Every Thursday at noon I have sex with Rick in room #213 of the Rainbow Motel.
...I open my eyes. He’s leaning over me, his palm on the pillow beside my head. I can hear the second hand of his watch ticking beside my ear. His breath numbs the hollow at the base of my neck. Sweat gathers on his temples. The necklace taps his chin as he fucks me. A gift from his wife?
I wonder. He kisses me. Strokes me. But this is just a repetition of all the other times with Rick. Nothing unusual. Just the basics. Routine sex. Hew doesn’t even bother to try to impress me with fancy positions like Crushing Spices. Flower in Bloom. Dear to Cupid. Just the missionary position. Sometimes sixty-nine-but all Rick wants is to get the job done. Quickly.
Charlotte Davis Kasil
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their won bodies conceal themselves?
Walt Whitman
Every Thursday at noon I have sex with Rick in room #213 of the Rainbow Motel.
...I open my eyes. He’s leaning over me, his palm on the pillow beside my head. I can hear the second hand of his watch ticking beside my ear. His breath numbs the hollow at the base of my neck. Sweat gathers on his temples. The necklace taps his chin as he fucks me. A gift from his wife?
I wonder. He kisses me. Strokes me. But this is just a repetition of all the other times with Rick. Nothing unusual. Just the basics. Routine sex. Hew doesn’t even bother to try to impress me with fancy positions like Crushing Spices. Flower in Bloom. Dear to Cupid. Just the missionary position. Sometimes sixty-nine-but all Rick wants is to get the job done. Quickly.
...Can’t I understand that this, what we do here, has only, ever, been numbed emotions of familiar strangers, fucking? Why can’t I accept the difference between this and love? How can love be two bodies wrapped in a sheet that’s singed by careless cigarettes, here, in a room with plastic curtains, tin ashtrays, base metal, stained carpet, bad alchemy, artificial air, and television promoting the same pornographic movies every hour on the hour? Here in a room when, by one o’clock, Rick looks depleted, the blue of his eyes seeming to have bled beneath the skin.
...For months, like a mantra, my therapist has told me, “These men are killing you”. I don’t know if he means emotionally, spiritually or physically. I don’t ask. He explains that I confuse sex with love, compulsively repeating this destructive pattern with one man after another. I do this because as a girl I learned from my father, the first dangerous man who sexually misloved me.
…Last Thursday at Rick’s house.
Rick and I didn’t meet at the Rainbow Motel. His son was home from school with the
flu, and Rick took the day off from work to stay with him. Rick and I undressed in the bedroom he shares with his wife, while his son slept in his room down the hall.
The house was hushed. The door to the bedroom locked. But then I heard a small sound; his son crying.
Rick heard him too. I expected Rick to rush to him. We wouldn’t have sex. Instead, we would read his son a story. Give him a glass of water. Press a washcloth to his cheeks. I paused; sure I felt his son’s fever, damp and urgent. He needed his father.
His father didn’t need him.
Rick’s hands tugged at belts and zippers; hurry. We will do this….even though his son might get out of bed, knock on the door, see me leave his parent’s bedroom. What
I then forced myself to know was this, this one careless act of sex, was more important to Rick than his son. And because I, too, couldn’t say no, because I feared Rick would leave me if I refused him sex, I began to know, had to accept, that sex was more important to me, too. In a moment of clarity I realized that, while the sober part of me wanted to attend to his son, a tangled, humid, inescapable part stopped me. Time stalled with Rick’s hands forever on his belt buckle; with my fingers always on the zipper of my skirt.
And a moment later, I no longer heard his son crying.
...For months, like a mantra, my therapist has told me, “These men are killing you”. I don’t know if he means emotionally, spiritually or physically. I don’t ask. He explains that I confuse sex with love, compulsively repeating this destructive pattern with one man after another. I do this because as a girl I learned from my father, the first dangerous man who sexually misloved me.
…Last Thursday at Rick’s house.
Rick and I didn’t meet at the Rainbow Motel. His son was home from school with the
flu, and Rick took the day off from work to stay with him. Rick and I undressed in the bedroom he shares with his wife, while his son slept in his room down the hall.
The house was hushed. The door to the bedroom locked. But then I heard a small sound; his son crying.
Rick heard him too. I expected Rick to rush to him. We wouldn’t have sex. Instead, we would read his son a story. Give him a glass of water. Press a washcloth to his cheeks. I paused; sure I felt his son’s fever, damp and urgent. He needed his father.
His father didn’t need him.
Rick’s hands tugged at belts and zippers; hurry. We will do this….even though his son might get out of bed, knock on the door, see me leave his parent’s bedroom. What
I then forced myself to know was this, this one careless act of sex, was more important to Rick than his son. And because I, too, couldn’t say no, because I feared Rick would leave me if I refused him sex, I began to know, had to accept, that sex was more important to me, too. In a moment of clarity I realized that, while the sober part of me wanted to attend to his son, a tangled, humid, inescapable part stopped me. Time stalled with Rick’s hands forever on his belt buckle; with my fingers always on the zipper of my skirt.
And a moment later, I no longer heard his son crying.
…“Dad, wait. My therapist says he’ll want to schedule a family session. I mean, I know you can’t come down here, but well do it on the phone. Like a conference call”.
“If he wants a meeting, tell him to send me an agenda”
“That’s not exactly how it’s done”
“Then how can I know what were going to talk about?”
The phone clicks.
I know well never have family session, even on the phone.
Mom?
“I’m still here”
“You think he’s really angry?
“Can’t you call him from the hospital without these therapists?”
My therapist has told me not to have any unsupervised contact with my father while in the hospital. No contact with Rick either.
“How about I'll send you flowers?”She adds.
I don’t want flowers. I don’t want presents. All you give are presents. You gave me as a present. To your husband. By feigning illness and staying in bed, your eyes shut, the door closed, you could pretend not to notice how you made me available to your husband-a gift-a little-girl wife.
Mother, I don’t want flowers. I want…..
The impossible: a real father; a mother who saw what she saw, knew what she knew.
Even though the last time my father touched me sexually was when I left home for college some twenty-five years ago, it feels as if I’ve never left that home at all.
“Just to get better”,I answer.
“Well, be sure to pack a warm robe and slippers”, my mother says. Bring plenty of vitamin C. You know how cold they keep those places”.
…Nancy, the nurse, talks about masks. She wants us to think of our addiction and the different masks we wear that keep out true selves hidden. Her voice is steady, direct, clear.
Nancy turns to each of us, asking. What do you see? What do people see when they look at your face? What do you want them to notice?
“If he wants a meeting, tell him to send me an agenda”
“That’s not exactly how it’s done”
“Then how can I know what were going to talk about?”
The phone clicks.
I know well never have family session, even on the phone.
Mom?
“I’m still here”
“You think he’s really angry?
“Can’t you call him from the hospital without these therapists?”
My therapist has told me not to have any unsupervised contact with my father while in the hospital. No contact with Rick either.
“How about I'll send you flowers?”She adds.
I don’t want flowers. I don’t want presents. All you give are presents. You gave me as a present. To your husband. By feigning illness and staying in bed, your eyes shut, the door closed, you could pretend not to notice how you made me available to your husband-a gift-a little-girl wife.
Mother, I don’t want flowers. I want…..
The impossible: a real father; a mother who saw what she saw, knew what she knew.
Even though the last time my father touched me sexually was when I left home for college some twenty-five years ago, it feels as if I’ve never left that home at all.
“Just to get better”,I answer.
“Well, be sure to pack a warm robe and slippers”, my mother says. Bring plenty of vitamin C. You know how cold they keep those places”.
…Nancy, the nurse, talks about masks. She wants us to think of our addiction and the different masks we wear that keep out true selves hidden. Her voice is steady, direct, clear.
Nancy turns to each of us, asking. What do you see? What do people see when they look at your face? What do you want them to notice?
...There is a mask. Its mouth is desperate, famished, enraged: the face of my father.
The masks of the addict are varied. We switch to an addict face as easily as we change expressions. I am all pretence palimpsest, like theses strips of papier mache. I hide beneath layer after layer of lies, secrets, different lives: the Rainbow Motel image I show Rick; the pretend-I’m normal mask I show friends; the pretend I’m professional mask I’ve shown co-workers; the pretend I’m wife mask I’ve shown Andrew [my husband].
This exercise is a ritual. Masks suffocate. Remove the layers. Remove the masks. The false personas. Remove the addiction.
...Men have always pulsed through my mind, unceasing. But now, this eighth day in the hospital, there are thin units of time during breakfast, say, or group therapy, or spirituality, art therapy, game time,addicts don’t know how to relax, so we’re instructed to play cards or board games),when the static of fantasies diminishes.
Like the other day, playing monopoly, I land on Boardwalk, buy it, build hotels, collect money, and, in the joy of winning, I don’t immediately associate hotels with the Rainbow Motel. Rather, it’s as if for one moment I step outside my self and watch an unknown woman in an unfamiliar body perform one new unusually ordinary task; playing a game.
I lie down on top of the bedspread. I must practice how to refocus my mind, my senses. This is a test; see how long I can go without thinking about a man.I glance at the clock again.10:45.I concentrate on the word reduction. Reduce sight to what is before me.
The masks of the addict are varied. We switch to an addict face as easily as we change expressions. I am all pretence palimpsest, like theses strips of papier mache. I hide beneath layer after layer of lies, secrets, different lives: the Rainbow Motel image I show Rick; the pretend-I’m normal mask I show friends; the pretend I’m professional mask I’ve shown co-workers; the pretend I’m wife mask I’ve shown Andrew [my husband].
This exercise is a ritual. Masks suffocate. Remove the layers. Remove the masks. The false personas. Remove the addiction.
...Men have always pulsed through my mind, unceasing. But now, this eighth day in the hospital, there are thin units of time during breakfast, say, or group therapy, or spirituality, art therapy, game time,addicts don’t know how to relax, so we’re instructed to play cards or board games),when the static of fantasies diminishes.
Like the other day, playing monopoly, I land on Boardwalk, buy it, build hotels, collect money, and, in the joy of winning, I don’t immediately associate hotels with the Rainbow Motel. Rather, it’s as if for one moment I step outside my self and watch an unknown woman in an unfamiliar body perform one new unusually ordinary task; playing a game.
I lie down on top of the bedspread. I must practice how to refocus my mind, my senses. This is a test; see how long I can go without thinking about a man.I glance at the clock again.10:45.I concentrate on the word reduction. Reduce sight to what is before me.
...“There isn’t enough”, she says.
“Enough what?”Linda asks.
“Food”,Sheila says.
“You mean breakfast”,I say.
...“No”,Sheila says. “There isn’t enough food, period.Soon as I finish breakfast, it’ll be gone. Then there won’t be anymore food until lunch. Then dinner. Then that food will be gone. All I do after finishing breakfast is think about what Ill eat for lunch. Even when I’m home and can eat all the food in my house, it isn’t enough”
“What can we say to Sheila? She’s right. There never is enough”.
“Enough what?”Linda asks.
“Food”,Sheila says.
“You mean breakfast”,I say.
...“No”,Sheila says. “There isn’t enough food, period.Soon as I finish breakfast, it’ll be gone. Then there won’t be anymore food until lunch. Then dinner. Then that food will be gone. All I do after finishing breakfast is think about what Ill eat for lunch. Even when I’m home and can eat all the food in my house, it isn’t enough”
“What can we say to Sheila? She’s right. There never is enough”.
...Ted [the therapist] would tell us it is love were really after-that we don’t feel enough love, don’t know how to love. We use sex, food, alcohol, money-external objects of false gratification-to try to fill inner emptiness, loss, need-in this emotionally purblind world. Only if Sheila learned to love herself, felt complete, would there be enough.
...“Husbands. Mine thinks I’m a terrible person. A slut.
“But you’re not”,I say.
“Except you wouldn’t believe some of the awful things I’ve done”.She tells me that once, on a vacation to St. Simon’sIsland with her husband and kids, she had her lover drive down and check in to another motel room. And she went back and forth between the two rooms for the entire trip.
“But you’re not”,I say.
“Except you wouldn’t believe some of the awful things I’ve done”.She tells me that once, on a vacation to St. Simon’sIsland with her husband and kids, she had her lover drive down and check in to another motel room. And she went back and forth between the two rooms for the entire trip.
...I wonder if, back in my dorm, the phone might be ringing. I imagine it is. It could be the obscene phone caller. It could be the man in the Corvette, even though he doesn’t know my name or number. It could be Forrest, telling me his wife is no longer suspicious. It doesn’t matter which man. They all want sex as much as I want them to want it. It doesn’t matter where it happens. The essence of all the rooms is the same.
…No one has ever asked me if something is wrong, or if there is anything to talk about. So how would I even know if something is wrong? How could I answer?
…I try to be one of those housewives who are intimate with supermarkets and laundry. This woman who strives to be a wife, wants to obliterate that addictgirl- the girl who knows how to run away from home more than she knows how to stay there. The girl who’s great at beginnings. Endings are a surer bet for her, too. But it’s the long sober tedium of the middle that gets the girl every time. Eventually she’ll crave another man. So these two parts of me (wife and addictgirl) fight for control of one body.
So…..I stop on a dime. I no longer have sex. None. I eliminate men. I ration what I eat as if the world’s food supply is toxic. I am in total control, obsessed with the job of my body’s annihilation. Until I barely think about this troublesome body.
I don’t miss it.
Only this state of celibacy can cleanse me. Only the state of starvation) no fat, no nutrients, no protein, no carbohydrates) can dissolve my lungs, rinse my mind, drain my heart, formaldehyde the remains. On this afdefully tended, emaciated body, I wear plain oxford shirts buttoned tight to the collar. I slumber in the pure essence of arctic isolation-thin air, no food, no sounds, no sex, no colour-an anorexic, monochromatic would with nothing of the real world to tempt me. I am a one-woman famine.
I don’t miss it.
Only this state of celibacy can cleanse me. Only the state of starvation) no fat, no nutrients, no protein, no carbohydrates) can dissolve my lungs, rinse my mind, drain my heart, formaldehyde the remains. On this afdefully tended, emaciated body, I wear plain oxford shirts buttoned tight to the collar. I slumber in the pure essence of arctic isolation-thin air, no food, no sounds, no sex, no colour-an anorexic, monochromatic would with nothing of the real world to tempt me. I am a one-woman famine.
...There must be a connection between the trade winds in the West Indies-and this breeze I wait for now.
But here on the Galveston jetty, I am too numb to understand how these decades link together. I am unable to glue the past and present together into a mosaic of understanding, not wanting to acknowledge that this wreck of a girl in the present is a mutation from the wreck of her childhood’s there is no reason to be here today: no breeze, no comfort, nothing. I return home.
But here on the Galveston jetty, I am too numb to understand how these decades link together. I am unable to glue the past and present together into a mosaic of understanding, not wanting to acknowledge that this wreck of a girl in the present is a mutation from the wreck of her childhood’s there is no reason to be here today: no breeze, no comfort, nothing. I return home.
…I projected love and spirituality onto Gabriel because I wanted him to be a spiritual person. I wanted to steal or borrow his because I have none of my own. I wanted a quick dose of soul. But Gabriel is only a bartender offering an alcoholic free drinks.
...Love is here every day! Before, “here” was a bar, a motel, a boardwalk. Now I must learn that love is where I carve out my own life.
From Lovesick:One Woman's Journey into Sexual Addiction by Sue Silverman
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