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They entered as I slept. They called me by name, asking me to get up, get dressed. They were on a schedule. I was still hungover and had hoped to sleep, something I rarely did. I tasted stale cigarettes and rolled over to check the time on my cellphone. Along with the wallet, cigarettes and lighter I kept on a Rubbermaid container by my bed, my phone was missing.
Its charger hung from the outlet. I wearily asked if one of the two men now standing in my room knew where it was. But they were on a schedule and we couldn’t be late. This is it, I remember thinking. It was about two a.m.
Home About Us Subscribe / Renew Shutterstock Footage Shutterstock Music Shutterstock Blog Digital Asset Management Design Tips & Tricks Press / Media Careers Become a Contributor Affiliate/Reseller Program International Reseller Program Developers Shutterstock for iOS Shutterstock for Android. Thirty groups have started Repair Cafes across the Netherlands, where neighbors pool their skills and labor for a few hours a month to mend holey clothing and revivify old coffee makers, broken lamps, vacuum cleaners and toasters, as well as at least one electric organ, a washing machine and an orange.
And the men grew agitated when I turned away. Nuzzling my pillow, I remember thinking this couldn’t be happening, not to me. I fell asleep for a moment and awoke again when one of them pulled off my covers. Grabbing one of the corners, I pulled hard and tried to bring the covers over my head to keep the lights in my room, now turned on, from waking me. A knee pressed into the small of my back and I briefly convulsed. It did not hurt, but the helplessness was suffocating.
The man seemed like he was twice my height and ten times my weight. I could feel everything, all of him, as he restrained me.
“I did not want to do this the hard way,” he said. I didn’t really know what this was. When he let go of my arms and stood up, the meeker man stepped closer to the bed and placed next to me a pair of my oversized jeans and a tattered T-shirt.
The men reminded me of Lenny and George from “Of Mice and Men,” both in appearance and demeanor. The boss and his stalwart companion. I sat up, rubbed my eyes and looked around to see the endless disarray in my room. My mother called it a pigsty.
Computer parts, soldering irons and solder, Plexiglass, nuts and bolts and screws, cardboard boxes, notebooks and notated looseleaf pages strewn about the floor. What color was the carpet? On the walls were medals, certificates, designs, diagrams, floor plans, autographed memorabilia. A diploma from Valley Forge Military Academy.
Pink tardy slips, truancy reports. The windowsills were lined with beer cans and bottles. Inside were cigarette butts and ash. With the exception of the two men, everything seemed as it should. Until that night, I’d been comfortable in the chaos. They couldn’t say where we were going or why.
Given the chance I wanted to talk my way out of it, whatever it was. “How long will we be traveling for?” I asked. “Can’t tell you.” “How long will I be gone for?” “Let’s go.” “Is it out of state?” “We’re on a schedule.” You said that already. My mother and father peeked through a crack between the two bedroom doors. I had not seen them together since the divorce.
“Go with the men, please. Download Pehla Nasha Pehla Khumar Songs Pk. Don’t fight.” “Don’t,” Lenny said, pointing out of the room to suggest they leave. And so they did. * * * My youth was spent on deadline. For years I believed it was impossible for me to live past eighteen. I was never sober. I blew Ketamine in the backseats of Mercedes C-Classes speeding down Route 9 in New Jersey.
Nights were spent at strip clubs, pool halls, backyard ragers. I was rarely home. And I had a bad heart. For months after I was born, I was stuck inside an incubator with a cautionary heart murmur. Each year I’d go for a cardiogram and each year I asked if I would live until my next test. My parents and cardiologist said I would. As the years went by I started to believe them.
But I never shook the notion that I was living on borrowed time. Those feelings came to a crest in 2005, just before I started public school in New Jersey, after two years at a military academy. Around the time I wrote in my journal a list of traits I wanted but lacked.
It was a particular set of ideas — a person I wanted to become. Being hazed at Valley Forge — because my balls hadn’t dropped, because I was young, because I was Jewish, because my ears were too large, because everyone needed to prove how tough they were — and having kept Kosher all the while, away from drugs and alcohol and fighting and pork, a decent student who studied the Talmud from a hidden drawer in his desk, I decided it was time to change. Desperate to be cool and accepted but unsure of how to become the man I wanted to be, I spent the summer before freshman year in a makeshift workshop in the basement of my mother’s new home. We moved to the large house in a Jersey suburb after my parents split. My sister and I chose to live with our mother in the hushed community. Everything about it — the tidy lawns, early-morning dog walkers — seemingly plucked from fiction. Even the birds sounded chipper.
Whatever it was, it was a chance to start over. To a degree, that’s what I did. In the basement of that house, removed from whatever happened on our cul-de-sac, I spent hours huddled over computers that I built from scratch, fashioning cases and cooling components out of aluminum, Plexiglass and other materials I ordered from a catalog the size of a phonebook.
When the machines were built I began coding; at first, a simple script called “Hello World.” Then I tinkered with hacking BIOS and wireless networks. Working with computers back then was a lonesome endeavor, but it gave me a sense of confidence and the control I longed for.
My mother later said she didn’t mind the reclusive lifestyle. In that way, she could keep an eye on me. She never worried about my making new friends ― I had always been charismatic and the break from the Forge, she would later say, was what I needed. She knew I needed to recharge after spending two years under the presence of commanding officers. This nerdy persona would not work in high school, though. This much I knew at the start of freshman year when I stood next to my sister by some trash cans in a common area, waiting for the first bell to ring. A group of giddy girls with braces asked if I was new in town.
We were, I said, motioning to my sister. They asked if I wanted to hang out with them before the bell. I went with them, not knowing anyone there, leaving my sister standing alone. When word quickly traveled to classmates that I came from a military academy, everyone had questions. How many pushups can you do? Have you ever been in a fight?
What’s it like to shoot a gun? Are you joining the military? The barrage of positive attention was something I had never experienced. Yeah, we smoked pot in the barracks all the time. Did a lot of pushups when we got in trouble. Just like my grandfather, I want to be a Marine.
All the time, daily and late into the night. I’ve done coke. Of course I smoke.
How many girls? Lying is only that for so long. A year and a half later, midway through my sophomore year, I had built a reputation as defiant, a rebel who was at all times high or drunk or both.
In that year and a half the school created a manila file with my transcripts and pink reprimand slips that illustrates my rapid downward spiral. Years later I came across the file, its multi-colored papers gathering dust and fraying at the edges.
In one semester, I had 200 absences and a litany of out-of-school suspensions. The sun is drooping in the December sky as cicadas weave ominous melodies into the summer air. Their shrill vibrato is the soundtrack to Azola Nkqinqa’s last day as a boy. It’s the time of year when Nkqinqa, 18, and about 50,000 other South African boys, come to one of the many remote initiation schools in order to learn how to be a man. This school is located in the Eastern Cape province — the country’s poorest.
In the Xhosa culture, the transition into manhood is marked by a month of instruction from elders, who teach the teens how to be a father, a husband. The Xhosa boys are also circumcised during this time, and most years these schools make headlines because dozens of the boys die during the process. Nkqinqa is feeling particularly insecure. It is customary for the patriarch in a family to send a boy off, but Nkqinqa’s father has not been a part of his life for several years, and three of his uncles are dead. So a neighbor named Patrick Dakwa has agreed to take responsibility for him. Dakwa is a community volunteer who spends a lot of time trying to make circumcisions safer, running seminars near the Eastern Cape town of Flagstaff, teaching traditional surgeons how to safely dress wounds.
However, since previous initiates are sworn to secrecy about the ritual’s details, as he lies in a hut with the other boys, rabid speculation is Nkqinqa’s only close companion. The next day, the 13 boys in his cohort consecutively go to see a surgeon.
Using a blade about the size of a steak knife, he slices off each of their foreskins. Dakwa and his fellow health volunteers recommend in their seminars that separate, disposable razors be used for the circumcisions so as to eliminate the risk of HIV transmission. But this is an illegal initiation school that shows little regard for regulations.
All boys go under the same knife here. The surgeon wraps Nkqinqa’s penis with a traditional dressing comprised of medicinal leaves. The pain is unremitting and debilitating, but Nkqinqa tries not to let his discomfort show.
He doesn’t want to appear weak in front of the other emerging men. When Dakwa returns later for an inspection of all the boys’ progress, he observes that Nkqinqa is faint and unresponsive. The wound has changed shape and color. Urine no longer is discharged from his urethra, seeping instead out of other parts of the shaft. “This guy is beyond the control of the traditional nurse,” Dakwa thinks to himself. He brings Nkqinqa to Holy Cross hospital, about an hour away by car, on a Saturday evening at about six p.m. The next morning, Nkqinqa wakes up confused about where he is or how he got into this white and blue gown.
He lifts up the sheets to look at his groin area and finds a devastating absence where his penis once was. He sobs bitterly. A visit from his best friend offers little consolation.
Even though Nkqinqa explains that his penis is gone, his friend cannot metabolize the information. “I will explain when we are out of the hospital,” he says. Then, Nkqinqa begs his friend not to tell anyone about the situation. Nkqinqa’s case is not uncommon. Most amputations happen a few days after the actual circumcision, the result of unsanitary dressing practices which in turn lead to infections like gangrene. Once the flesh is necrotic, nothing can be done — though if the doctors can save any part of the flesh they will tend to opt for a partial amputation. Because Dakwa has counselled several amputees in the past, he knows how important it is to dispel the myths that are spread by some traditional nurses — the worst of which being that the penis would grow back. Dakwa addresses the misinformation head on.
The penis is gone forever, he says sternly but tenderly, and Nkqinqa should not entertain false hope. * * * Driving into Flagstaff, the first thing one notices is how incredibly dense the traffic is. Cars must slow down to avoid pedestrians, as well as the occasional goat crisscrossing the main street. This part of the country is where most of the between 80 and 250 penis amputations in the country happen every year. The dire conditions in the province can be observed in the dilapidated storefronts and the treacherous roads. This state of affairs is inextricably tied up in the country’s past, going back to the decision by the government in to designate some of the land here a “homeland.” (This term was a disingenuous euphemism used to describe a small section of the country — just seven percent — in which black people could legally own land. The lion’s share was reserved for whites.) The extreme concentration of citizens trying to pursue subsistence farming here has perforated the landscape with divots, caused by rampant soil erosion.
In 2015, only of the local working-age population was employed. It was here that, five years ago, Patrick Dakwa founded one of the few support groups aimed at helping Xhosa men cope with the loss of their amputated penises. The 27-year-old’s bubbly demeanor and perennial smile are challenged as he thinks about the tragic cases he sees. Of the amputees, he says most “have a drinking problem and most of them, they use drugs. They tell me, ‘we’ve lost our penis so we feel like there’s no life, there’s nothing.’” Dakwa encourages them to talk about their problems and proudly reports that some have managed to become optimistic about their lives through exposure to the group.
A few even manage to attend university. But amputation is just one of the possible consequences of a botched circumcision. At after going to a traditional initiation school and getting circumcised. The summer of 2016 was the first season Dakwa can remember in which none of the 3,500 initiates died in or around Flagstaff. “December, last year, we experienced three deaths and four amputations,” Dakwa recounts. “June, last year, we also [had] two deaths and three partial amputations and one full amputation.” I ask him why amputations are still occurring, given that he, along with some NGOs, have put a lot of time into training traditional nurses in more sanitary methods. He says that there is resistance from the older, traditional nurses — they are not willing to accept instruction from the younger generations.
Dakwa has clashed with traditional leaders several times during his campaign for safer circumcision protocol. They are opposed to him talking to the media about the matter. “They say I have no authority to speak. I want to preserve the culture, but if there’s nothing to preserve” He trails off as anger flashes across his face. He talks about inept politicians who have not been able to secure lasting change.
“They do nothing to show that they want to protect the culture.” Research looking into the causes of deaths and amputations in the Eastern Cape concurs with Dakwa’s experience. A found that conflicts between traditional leaders and medical personnel are a major contributing factor to the perpetuation of unsafe circumcision methods. In some cases the problem is that schools are not traditional enough — after all, the rite has been carried out safely on many boys for generations. “There’s been a development of charlatans taking the place of more traditional people who are supposed to be doing the circumcisions,” says Zoelle Horowitz, a doctor who spent many years treating initiates in the Eastern Cape. Many illegal schools have popped up, such as the one that Azola Nkqinqa went to, which charge exorbitant rates from boys who are sometimes under age — legally, initiates must be 18 to attend — and employ negligent practices. “So there [are] a variety of bush schools that one could go to, some being more careful and traditional and proper, and some being a bit careless and seeking money, really,” Horowitz says. Unfortunately, botched circumcisions aren’t the only thing taking the lives of young men at these schools.
* * * Because human rights advocate Johan De Waal’s office is located on Keerom Street, just a stone’s throw from Cape Town’s High Court, the area outside his building is always abuzz with robed figures rushing about like pensive clergymen. I have to brief a guard garrisoned behind an imposing desk and a team of secretaries on the details of my visit before I can see him. De Waal himself has graying hair and a gentle voice that conspire to give him an air of grandfatherly beneficence. Almost immediately, upon ushering me into his room, he mentions how intrigued he was to hear that a journalist was poking around a case he had handled almost four years ago. “It’s a total and utter travesty,” he starts. The case involved two males, aged about 20, who were attending an initiation school run by its chief, Isaac Monaheng. On November 25, 2013, the pair were brought to Stellenbosch Hospital, 40 minutes east of Cape Town.
They were already dead when they arrived; the likely cause was dehydration — initiates are typically not permitted to drink water for up to eight days because it is believed that liquids would slow the recovery from a circumcision. But one of them also had abrasions on his back from an improvised whip known locally as a sjambok. De Waal was contacted by the local municipality on December 1 because the authorities wanted him to make an urgent application to the High Court to gain access to the school for an inspection. He shows me an affidavit issued by the Stellenbosch mayor, Conrad Sidego, detailing the sequence of events that led to the court application. According to the document, Sidego and a doctor arrived on November 29 with the intention of investigating suspicions of misconduct precipitated by the deaths. “I am extremely concerned about the state of health of these initiates,” Sidego wrote. Many of the young men who die after attending initiation schools do so because of dehydration or septicemia that sets in after a botched circumcision gets infected.
Often the boys do not seek medical attention. Consequently maladies which may have been treatable if identified early on, progress to a lethal point. Because the property belonged to Stellenbosch municipality, and had been rented out to a group that ran the initiation school, a formal investigation was launched to determine whether this arrangement could continue in light of the fatalities. The investigation eventually concluded that the school could resume operations provided that the municipality was allowed to conduct regular inspections and generally exercise more control over the site.
No criminal charges were laid against the owners of the school or the immediate supervisors who oversaw the boys, including Monaheng. No civil case had been brought before the court either. “I don’t know why the family hasn’t laid charges,” De Waal says. “We cannot say we did not know why these kids were dying, if you look at all the evidence. It’s also embarrassing for all of us.” On a national level, the state had opened around over a period of five years in response to deaths occurring at initiation schools. (There have also been numerous reports of kidnappings, dehydration and whippings.) Only ten of those cases were ever heard in court. Nomboniso Gasa, a gender activist and adjunct professor at the University of Cape Town,: “Often people go to lay charges — those who are brave — and after they have laid the charge there is very little follow-up Police don’t [act] because in many cases they don’t want to be seen to be going against dominant cultural practices, but also because they don’t see this as something which is urgent. So consequently they think after the outcry, it will go away.” De Waal goes a step further.
“It is a case ultimately about whether we are serious about black lives,” he says, pointing out that the country’s response to initiation in black and white communities is still very different. De Waal, who is white, uses the example of Stellenbosch University — a historically white institution, which has a long tradition of demeaning hazing ceremonies. “You can imagine, if there’s one child at Stellenbosch University who got injured in a residence because of initiation, then you’d get front page newspaper day in and day out, parents jumping up and down. Here, two people died, other people sjamboked and there’s nothing done.” De Waal is not alone in questioning whether the government truly does value black lives. Since 1994, several acts — presided over by the majority black government — suggest that violence done to people of color is tolerated more readily than in white communities.
The most brutal instance of this was seen in the, during which 34 striking miners were killed by police with levels of impunity last seen during apartheid. More recently, when student protests for free education broke out in 2015 and 2016, the police’s unequal treatment of white and black citizens became so blatant that the white students would stand in the front row to deter police brutality. * * * I meet Isaac Monaheng, who runs the initiation school where those two 20-year-olds died in late 2013, at one of the swanky cafes that line Stellenbosch’s streets.
The atmosphere is decidedly European, not only due to the mainly white residents who patronize the establishment; the tall exotic trees also conjure a genteel Germanic ambience. Though Monaheng, a black man, has spoken to the media many times about the incident, his gravelly tenor voice betrays his discomfort. He orders a hot chocolate that will go almost untouched as he explains his side of the story. He starts by going over the business aspects of traditional circumcision.
Each year, beginning in November, the initiates typically spend about two months on the property, he says. The entire ritual, which involves the slaughtering of a sheep, costs each boy’s family roughly 4000 Rand, or about $280. All initiates need written consent from their legal guardian to participate. Monaheng belongs to the Basotho people, a group that, along with the Xhosa, practice this form of circumcision. Others, like the Zulu, have largely discontinued the traditional form of the ritual.
Monaheng says that initiation is an opportunity for men to pass on cultural insight about manhood to the next generation. But also, beyond the verbal tuition, the rite is seen as a test of endurance — in addition to withstanding pain and going without water for days, boys go through a period of eating austere, unsalted food. Surviving the test serves as proof of one’s worth as a man. It remains a highly valued tradition. Even Nelson Mandela went through the Xhosa version of the ritual, an event which he writes about in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. When I ask about the two boys who died under his care, Monaheng’s countenance stiffens. “I was in and out of courts, trying to tell these people, ‘We are not taking the boys there to kill them.
That is not our intention.’ It’s also not nice for us; it was also very very bitter,” he says. He leans forward on the table as he recalls the incident. It was very hot, and though it goes against custom, Monaheng says he instructed the caretakers to give a boy water on the third day when he reported feeling weak. The minders followed the instructions and soon the boy began to look a little better.
He even got up to go urinate. But the next thing they knew, he suddenly collapsed. As the caretakers were tending to him, the second boy fell to the ground as well. Monaheng appears remorseful about the incident. He says that more water should have been given to the boys earlier and he has since built what he calls a halfway house on the property so that initiates can get water without having to leave the school — to depart the initiation process early would be to court stigma.
But when it comes to culpability he seems to hold many different views. When asked who should be held responsible, he says, “The caretakers, the person who’s been granted permission to do that [circumcision] of course me as well, as I am the overseer; I should be there very often to avoid these kinds of mistakes.” When I ask about the sjambok wounds he says, “That was a mistake.” The caretaker who inflicted the wounds has since run away. But then he goes on to downplay role of the abrasions in the outcome, saying, “I don’t think that is what could kill a boy.” Institutions like Monaheng’s are regularly monitored by various stakeholders, and in the almost three decades that the school has been running, no other fatalities have been recorded.
Across the country most of the deaths occur in illegal and unregistered schools. In June 2015 alone,. Monaheng fiddles with his hot chocolate. “I think I’m doing very good work,” he responds when I ask him if there is anything else he would like to say. “Nobody can stop the culture.” * * * Three years have passed since Azola Nkqinqa’s penis amputation.
In the intervening years South African doctors at the University of Stellenbosch have twice successfully performed penis transplants — the initial one, in 2014, being the first such procedure in history. The two recipients’ donated penises function completely normally. One transplantee even had his first child in 2015. But as impressive as such innovations are, it will be a long time before they become accessible to rural amputees like Nkqinqa.
Until that time, booze continues to be the medication of choice for a lot of them. Nkqinqa confirms that he too started drinking heavily, and that he dropped out of school for two years immediately after the amputation. “I gave up on life, once I saw that this thing is no longer there,” he says. His anxiety was exacerbated by the ridicule he endured when the other kids at school found out.
Girls would giggle when they saw him, boys would mock and jeer. But with the help of the support group Nkqinqa says he managed to adopt a positive attitude. Now he accompanies his mentor, Dakwa, to public events where he has become a kind of spokesperson, encouraging amputees to reintegrate into society. He says too that he doesn’t harbor any ill feelings for those responsible for the loss of his penis. I ask him what value he sees in the ritual engaged in by so many Xhosa boys at the many initiation schools across South Africa. “They will call you a man,” he says.
“And you like that word because it means everything to you.”. My brother Johnny had just been paroled from the Georgia state prison system when I found my birth family. When the train taking me to the reunion pulled into the Savannah station, Johnny was waiting on the platform with my sister Belinda and my brother Mike.
Already in tears, I went for my sister first, and then Mike, while Johnny stood quietly and waited his turn to hug me. Johnny was dark, like me and our mother, who’d died the previous year. His eyes were my eyes, his lips were my lips. He had a dimple on one cheek that appeared when he smiled, just like me. He was a good-looking man, as were all my brothers.
He’d just been released from prison; his body was meaty and well-nourished. Learning I was related to someone with felony convictions didn’t bother me; I was no saint, for one thing, and I’d also been a criminal defense lawyer for ten years by then. Nothing could shock me, I thought. Riding that train for twenty hours, I swung wildly between worries and hopes about what life inside a new family would mean to me. My mother had been fifteen when I was born, and just three months later she married the man who would be the father of the rest of her children, a daughter and five sons.
I’d been adopted as an infant by a family up North. My siblings grew up with my mother and their father.
This would be my first time meeting them. Would they be so different from me that I’d be repelled?
Or would I snap into place with them? I’d learned a little about them all from letters and phone calls. It sounded like most of my five brothers were a lot like my clients.
Unlike some defense lawyers I knew, I liked my clients – and I liked the no-frills, no-bullshit, blue-collar culture of people who were poor and struggling. I liked rule-breakers.
At the train station, and all during the week of my first visit to Savannah, Johnny and I spent long minutes staring into each other’s eyes. Download The Law Of Ueki Sub Indo 3gp. I was under a spell of fascination with the resemblance I’d been missing my whole life as an adopted person, and although I looked like all of my siblings in some way, the resemblance was strongest between Johnny and me. He was the sort of man who wouldn’t look away from another person’s gaze; probably, I thought, a habit picked up in prison, where to look away meant weakness. I was 34 then, and he was six years younger than me. I wanted to be literally in touch, as if separating from him physically would tear off a piece of my skin. A book I’d read before getting on the train, The Adoption Triangle, had prepared me for those sorts of feelings.
Of the many stories of adoption reunions, there were a few of brothers and sisters, and mothers and sons, who fell headlong in love, intoxicated by “deep, unrestrained love” and “intense, incestual feelings.” This didn’t surprise or disgust me when I read about it, or even when I experienced it myself. After all, it’s easy to confuse love with sex and sex with love. I’d devoured stories of brother-sister incest all of my life: Wuthering Heights, Ada, The God of Small Things, Game of Thrones. It wasn’t me who’d turned those stories into bestsellers and critically-acclaimed classics. The attraction I felt wasn’t a sign of deviance, but I didn’t plan to act on it. * * * Soon after I got back to New England from that first visit to Savannah, Johnny was arrested on a burglary charge. Confined in the local jail, he charmed the female relative of an employee into helping him escape.
He was picked up again within days. A few months later, I traveled to Savannah again, this time with one of my courtroom outfits packed away. I dressed up like a lawyer to visit my brother in jail, and brought the maximum number of boxes of Marlboros allowed. We sat in an open visitation area at one of fifty tables. We held hands, the only contact allowed. Rules meant to prevent revealing attire were enforced against female visitors. In spite of that, the women visiting their men turned up the heat with the arch of their spines, the curves of their lips.
Their heat spread to me, and I caught myself looking down at my breasts, which swelled against the silk blouse I wore, and I felt the same heat from Johnny. Psychologists will say we repeat our families’ pathologies because we try, as adults, to rebuild the patterns we know. I’d always been attracted to reckless men like my brothers, even though I didn’t grow up with men like that. Once I met my brothers, I decided my desire was simpler and deeper than trying to replicate a childhood pattern; it was blood calling to blood.
For the next few years, Johnny and I communicated through letters while he was locked up. I learned, partly through his letters from prison, and partly through what others told me, that he’d been institutionalized at seven years old and given shock treatments and anti-psychotic medications.
He’d been sexually abused by staff at that institution, and later in juvenile offender facilities and foster homes, where he was called “hyperactive.” By sixteen, he was living on the streets, and he’d survived by stealing and prostituting himself. “If the price was right,” he wrote in one of his letters, “but as I got older and wiser, I started just robbing them kind of people.” By the time he reached his twenties, he’d spent half of his life incarcerated. Johnny’s prison terms and deep dives into heavy drug use kept him away from all but one of the series of beach-house reunions I staged in the first ten years after I found my family. I was fixated on having everyone under one roof at the same time, trying to recreate the family-that-would-have-been if my mother hadn’t given me up, and I was oblivious to reasons why that might not be a good idea. That one he made it to was in the fifth year of my reunion with my family, after I’d left my first husband and sold my law practice, after I’d started teaching college classes. That year, I began drinking with my brothers, and drinking hard, as I had in my teenage years and early twenties.
My uncle’s redheaded wife was the person in our family who most often told it like it was. When Johnny was released, and it looked like he would make it to the fifth beach-house reunion, she took me aside to tell me to watch him around children, and to explain why her husband – my uncle – didn’t want to be around my brother. When their daughter was three years old, they’d left her in then fourteen-year-old Johnny’s care and had come home to him with his pants down, his penis in the little girl’s mouth, and him saying “Just suck on it like it’s a bottle.” I wondered why my other brothers, or my sister, hadn’t told me Johnny had molested our cousin. Maybe they believed it wasn’t necessary because he was safely locked away so soon after I met him. Maybe they saw that I loved Johnny, and they knew love had been in short supply in his life. Maybe they wanted me to love him, and they were afraid I’d recoil in disgust.
But I didn’t. In that fifth year, in a crowded two-bedroom beach house on holding over a dozen people, where I was hell-bent on recreating the family dynamic I never had, I lay down on the Berber carpet in the room where four of my little nieces were sleeping in a bed. Johnny lay down a few feet away from me.
He and I were the last ones up after a night of full-throttle drinking. Other than the time I visited him in jail, this was the first time we’d been together since my first trip to Savannah.
I’d been watching him around the children, the youngest of whom at that time were four-year-old Brandon, who was sleeping on a couch with his mother, and six-year-old Candi, who was one of the little girls in the bed. I hadn’t seen anything amiss. I punched a pillow down under my neck to make the floor more comfortable, and then I reached back and pulled Johnny to me. It was the familial love, the call of blood to blood, and it was sexual. “Don’t do that, Michele,” he said. “Please, don’t do that.” I stopped, realizing the wrongness of what I’d just done, and realizing I couldn’t get away with it.
I’d just turned forty, and I was informed enough to know better. And then I passed out.
When I woke at dawn, Johnny was a few feet away from me on the floor, snoring heavily. The girls were all still asleep in the bed. Nothing had happened. And even drunk, how could I have made that move with the children sleeping in the room?
In a life full of bad acts, that move is the act I’m most ashamed of, even though it didn’t go any further than a gesture, even though my brother, the convicted felon, stopped me cold and saved me from myself. * * * His final conviction was for armed robbery. By that time, I was of two minds about him being in prison: it was violent, dangerous and dehumanizing, but safer than the street, where there was nothing at all to protect him.
At forty, he was no longer young and strong enough to rebound from privations and beatings, no longer quick enough to evade the rage of people he stole from, and on his way to becoming the homeless man who creeps around the edges of a campfire, snatching at scraps, and getting kicked for it. He was in prison in 2004 when my brother Rudy and his wife, who were addicts, signed the papers to give me guardianship of their daughter, my niece Candi. She’d just turned thirteen, and over Cherry Coke slushies, she told me Johnny had molested her, too, when she was about three years old. Her parents had gone out to score some drugs and had left him in charge of her and some other children.
He brought her into a bedroom and started licking her private parts. He was an adult, not a confused fourteen-year-old kid. His assault on my little cousin wasn’t an isolated incident. I had to admit my brother had a predilection for molesting little girls. I wrote to tell Johnny I knew what he’d done to Candi, that she was living with me, that I still loved him, and that the next time he got out, I’d try to see him on his own, away from the kids. Leans toward the conclusion that pedophilia is hardwired, a sexual preference like heterosexuality or homosexuality that emerges in adolescence and is pretty much exclusive to men. But only about fifty percent of the men who molest children are actually pedophiles; the other fifty percent are men with histories of violence or personality disorders.
Those men tend to molest family members. I wondered which category my brother fell into, and whether it mattered. Candi is twenty-five now.
I messaged her, told her what I was writing about, and asked, does it matter to her? She told me no, the why didn’t matter, but knowing Johnny was also abused helped her to let go of wondering why.
And then she added: “Some of the worst things can become our biggest blessings. I’ve decided to heal and to not let that control me, so I don’t mind talking about it. I’m not hiding anymore.” I was reminded of my little cousin, who is now forty years old, and a conversation she and Candi had about Johnny, how my cousin said, “There can’t be any dark secrets if you don’t keep them in the dark.” One dark afternoon, Candi and I went to the boardwalk near the pier at Jacksonville Beach to see the ocean after a hurricane. The air was still tropical, and the waves still curled like rows of fists, ready to pound the sand. The wind blew her long blond hair around her shoulders, and we both spread our arms wide to feel the uplift, to pretend we could rise up at any moment and fly. She didn’t notice the man sitting next to the Coast Guard station, the dark man with wild hair and a wild beard and the ruddy look of someone who’d been outdoors and drunk for months. But I saw him.
How could I not? He stared back at me with my own eyes. We held each other’s gaze for a few long moments. I tried to figure out a way to distract Candi so I could go over to Johnny and tell him I loved him. But the boardwalk was empty, and the shops were shuttered closed.
I turned my face from his, and hustled Candi into the car with the promise of a stop for Chinese food. I looked back, and he was still staring at me. I did not reach out to him. My brother, who’d had so little love in his life, was not my heart. Candi was my heart.
Back at our apartment, the door closed behind us with a little push from the wind. Inside, the air was cool, the lights were bright, and the dining room table was waiting for us, clear except for a bowl of flowers we’d arranged together earlier that day. The next day, after Candi left for school, I drove back down to the beach, parked my car, and wandered around where the homeless people hung out.
Johnny was gone, like a mirage that disappears once you look away, or once you stop believing in it. I never saw him. I never saw him again. Topless Housecleaning + Lapdance Gentlemen, do you need a good, clean tease after a hard day’s work?
I’ll clean your house and give you a (1) lapdance $100/hr – have your own cleaning supplies – no blocked numbers. When I arrive at the house of the first viable person to respond to my Craigslist ad, I knock on the door and take a step back. He opens it right away. Jim or John, suddenly I can’t remember. He’s young to have such a nice mini-mansion with a swimming pool and younger than I normally like to deal with. I like his work jeans and dirty white t-shirt, though. They feel kind of homey.
I step in, a little flirty, but all-business to begin with. I get him to show me the whole house, which serves the double purpose of planning ahead for cleaning and making sure there’s no one else hiding, ready to pop out for a gang rape later. Just when the tour is complete my phone rings. It’s my security detail — Possum, the hillbilly witchdoctor I’ve befriended, following instructions to wait for me to clear the house and call to be sure everything’s okay. “Hey,” I say. “It’s all good in here.
Call me in like an hour.” “ Ayep,” Possum replies in his drawl. I turn to JimJohn and start to pull my shirt off, then stop. “Business before pleasure, babe,” I say, making the little money sign with my fingers. “Oh, of course.” He pulls a hundred out of his pocket and presses it into my hand. I shove it down one of my stockings as I take my pants off, because I have always believed that the safest place for my money is right against my skin.
* * * I’d had eighty dollars left to my name when I drove into Greenville, South Carolina. Half a tank of gas and two blueberry smoothies later, it dwindled to sixteen dollars folded together in the bottom of my pocket. For some people, this might have been a problem, but not for me. I have the magical ability to walk into a strip club just about anywhere there is one and make a few hundred bucks just because I’m willing to get naked and smile at people. Sex work is my trust fund. When I’ve been broke down on the side of the road with no money, when I’ve been a homeless teenager, when I’ve wanted to buy a house, a car, an education — sex work has always been there for me. I’ve done almost all the sex work: everything from street hustling to dancing in bejeweled gowns to foot fetish parties and erotic hypnosis.
Whenever I discover a new form of sex work — the weirder or more interesting the better — I try to experience it. I’m staying, with my dog, Spot, in my van down by the river next to Possum, who lives in a van that’s much bigger and nicer than mine.
Possum drew me a map showing how to get to the two strip clubs he knows of: a big one, and a little one. Big strip clubs sometimes have things like rules and schedules and lots of competition and high house fees, which I don’t like. I decided to try the small one first. The small one turned out to be a brothel with very little business, where I met some very beautiful, very southern women, including a 300-pound dancer named Hamhock who I wish I could introduce to every teenager worrying about their weight ever. I was too fat for the big one, or the door guy was having a bad day.
I started to feel a little panic. That’s when the idea of topless housecleaning came to me — purely formed, rising sweetly out of my desperation — so I put up a Craigslist ad and here I am at Jim or John or whatever his name is’ house.
* * * I do the kitchen first, like my friend Tania who actually grew up in a mansion and knows how to clean explained to me last night on the phone. I keep up a steady stream of flirting while I put his dishes in the dishwasher and move everything on the counter to one end so I can clean it. While I’m stacking his mail neatly I check out his name.
The counter is dirty, covered in stains and puddles of dried-up food and glue and who knows what else. Scrubbing while bending over a counter in six-inch heels, back arched so that your ass sticks up pretty, is hard work. Especially while flirting the whole time with a man you hope is staring at your ass and not your sweaty face. He asks about me, how I came to be a topless housecleaner.
I don’t tell him that he’s my first, or that I’m broke, or that I live in a van. If you watch television you know what happens to broke homeless women: They give $20 blow jobs, not $100 counter scrubbings. Instead I make up a prissy story about finishing my Master’s degree and taking a year to drive around the country in an R.V. Of course I tried dancing here, I explain, but the clubs are just so dirty, and I’m way too classy to expose myself to such an environment. The crazy thing I’ve discovered is that the snobbier you seem, the more they will pay you. Jim is amazingly empathetic about the nastiness of the local clubs.
A classy woman like me obviously doesn’t belong in places like those. He follows me from kitchen to bathroom to bedroom to living room, staring while I wipe, mop, scrub and vacuum, all while trying to look like I’m not sweaty from doing this work in humid 90-degree weather. His story is interesting. All his time goes to his race-car business, which is like a dream, but lots of hard work. He bought this house two years ago, but hasn’t had the time or taste to furnish it yet, though he does find the time to indulge in the tradition of illicit hooch brewing down in the basement. Steely grey eyes and his young tough look contrast with his docile nature as he tamely follows me around his house.
I’m beginning to think all men in the South must be gentlemen. When I’m done cleaning I settle him on his couch, set my iPod to Depeche Mode, and tell him that he gets one free lap dance with his housecleaning and after that they are twenty dollars, just like in the club. He opens his wallet and peels off another hundred, right away, and tells me to just dance until that runs out. “No touching,” I remind him as the song starts and I move in front of him. Soon I’m crawling all over him, undulating, brushing my ass across his hard penis through his jeans. He is begging me to let him touch me, and I’m reminding him that I’m not that kind of girl, although I make sure to sound a little confused. “Come on,” he says, getting his wallet out.
“What about for another hundred?” I pretend to think hard, then: “Okay.” I take his hands and guide them over my body. “You can touch here — my ass, my thighs, my stomach, but no titties or pussy.” “Two hundred?” he pulls two crisp $100 bills out of his wallet. It’s not really a question for me. I’ve given this much contact for thirty dollars a song. I pretend to think long and hard, though. If I let on that I have no principles, I can’t pretend to sell them.
“Okay,” I finally say, pushing the bills down my stockings, “but keep your hands off the kitty! That is not for sale!” He has gentle, well-practiced hands that he swirls around my nipples and brushes softly over my ass. I arch my back and gasp in pretend ecstasy. Soon he wants more again — a hand job, a hundred dollars. I insist that I’m not that kind of dancer while I consider this through to its logical conclusion. A couple hundred more for a hand job, a couple hundred more for a blow job, a lot more for sex. It could be a grand, easily.
But do I want to have sex with this guy? The thing is, I’m a lesbian. The other thing is, sometimes I think I could be bisexual, and every year or two I have a man sex experiment. I can get into men, and right now on this guy’s lap, I’m turned on. My phone rings again. “It’s been an hour,” he says, “are you okay in there?” “Yeah,” I giggle, “I’m having a great time.
I’ll be just another fifteen minutes or so.” “ Awright.” He hangs up. “Will you touch it?” Jim asks. Do I look like that kind of girl? I’m a very classy stripper, I remind him. “Oh, of course, of course. I’m sorry,” he says.
“I hope you’re not offended.” “No” I cock my head. “Actually I’ve always kind of wondered what it would be like to do something like that for money.” “Well, here’s your chance to find out.” “HmmI dunno. Wellhow much?” “A hundred?” “Oh, no.
I couldn’t.” “Two hundred?” He’s got his wallet out, two crisp hundreds in his hand. “Okay.” I grab them and shove them into my stocking. In my mind I’m counting and calculating miles. This makes 600, or is it 800? That’s, like, 5,000 miles of gas money!
Or 2,000 miles and a month or two of groceries and stuff while I explore desert canyons and sky islands. What more could a girl need? I slide down between his legs and he unzips his jeans eagerly.
It is small, with a nice curve and for a second I love it and want to fuck him. Smiling, I bring my face close, admiring it like I’m about to lick it.
He gasps and wiggles a little, and I take his cock in my hand. It’s already throbbing, and I just run my hand up it lightly, swirl some of the pre-cum back down it, run my fingers over the whole thing. He moans and half thrusts his hips. When I finally grab his cock, two-handed, and give it a couple strong, twisting strokes, he explodes right away.
“Oh my god,” he says. “No, goddess.” “Oh my goddess.” He smiles. “Stay right there, I’m going to get you a washcloth.” I run to the bathroom. While he cleans up, I pull my jeans and tank top back on over my fishnets and thong. I’m ecstatic and high from the rush of going from six dollars to 800 dollars in an hour with my hustling skills, but I know I won’t have really pulled it off until I’m in the van, driving away.
I make myself look totally calm while I throw my iPod and cleaning stuff in the bag I came with, give him a goodbye hug, and tell him he should really call me again to clean the rest of the house. I don’t start laughing until I’m in the van and Possum is driving us away. Then I fold over in my seat, laughing and clapping my hands with excitement. “Possum,” I exclaim, “I love having a vagina!
Leaning back, I push my hips up to pull my jeans down and start fishing the hundreds out of my fishnets. Possum looks over at me with my legs up on the bed, pulling eight $100 bills out of my thigh highs.
“Holy shit,” he says, “I do believe I wish I had a vagina too.” Checking “topless housecleaning” off my to-try list of sex-work gigs makes me enough money to get back on the road. The next day Spot and I get in the van and drive across the country until I find a beautiful desert-sky island in northern Arizona.
I stay for a couple weeks, playing in a creek and tracking coyote, before I get low on money again and start over. * * * Tara Burns is the author of the Whore Diaries series. She lives in a little cabin in a big boreal forest and she is working on a memoir. Follow her. This story features explicit situations that may not be suitable for all audiences. It’s past two a.m.
And my husband’s breathing has become long and even. An opportunity presents itself. I slip my right hand down my pajama pants and move slowly, careful not to bump my elbow into his side rib, or bring my hips into it. Too much movement or sound will wake him, and to be found out for something like this is not just embarrassing but potentially destructive.
He’ll think he doesn’t satisfy me, and men do not like feeling inadequate, especially when it comes to matters of the bedroom. Or maybe he’ll feel sorry for me. And who wants to fuck someone they pity? Even worse, maybe he’ll finally say the words I’ve been waiting for him to say since I first told him that I am a sex addict.
That he’s bored with it. He’s disgusted. He’s had enough. I lift my wrist away from my body.
I’m careful to keep my breath from becoming a pant, even as my pulse quickens, but this takes much concentration. The body desires the convulsion the mind denies. There is no letting go here though.
This orgasm is a controlled, measured, calculated experience. I have masturbated in this way next to the sleeping bodies of all my serious, committed partners who came before my husband. In some cases, as expected, it was because I wanted more sex than they could give me. I’ve been called “insatiable” and “demanding” one too many times.
But this has not always been the story. Yes, I have an incredibly high sex drive, but even in relationships where I have great sex multiple times a week my nighttime stealth for self-pleasure has persisted. My college boyfriend, burgundy haired and tattooed, had the high sex drive typical of most nineteen-year-old males. We fucked all the time, but even still, I wanted more, something only I could give me. One afternoon, after he’d fallen into a deep post-sex slumber, I serviced myself with my second, third, and fourth orgasm beside him.
That was the first time I’d experienced such a level of both secrecy and shame. I made a promise to my husband and to myself, long before we were even wed, to be austerely honest. He knows I’ve been a compulsive masturbator since I was twelve years old. He knows about my extensive fluency in the hardcore categories of various porn sites. He knows about the bad habit I used to have of hooking up with not-so-nice men because they were available and I was bored — and that I rarely used protection with any of them. And that I believed, for a really long time, that my addiction made me a broken person, a disgusting person, a person unworthy of love.
I told him these things from the start because I met him at a time in my life where I was ready and open for change. Because I liked him so much that I wanted to love him. Because I knew that the only way to love him, and be loved by him, was to be myself.
* * * “What’s your favorite porn scene?” The man who will become my husband in less than a year asks me this question as he lies naked and vulnerable beside me. We’ve just had sex and although I am naked too, it isn’t until this moment that I feel just as vulnerable as him.
While it might seem absurd to some, I know immediately this is a moment of great significance for us. It is an opportunity to finally do things differently.
The possibilities run through my head. I can describe something vanilla: This one where a busty blonde gets banged by her personal trainer. Or perhaps something a little more racy: These two hot teens swap their math teacher’s cum after he made them stay late in the classroom. Chances are he’ll get hard again and we’ll end up abandoning the conversation for a second round. These are harmless answers. Expected answers. They’re also lies.
The possibility of revealing the actual truth not only makes me nervous, but also physically sick. I feel a constriction in the back of my throat, a flutter in my belly, a tremble in my extremities.
After all, we’ve only been dating a couple of months and he doesn’t love me yet. If I tell him, will he ever? “Why do you ask?” I reach for the sheet, damp with sweat, a tangle of 300-thread-count cotton across our limbs, and yank it up to cover my breasts. “I don’t know,” he says. “Curiosity?” He turns over on his side and props his head up on his left hand. His green eyes are wide with wonder.
“Seems like a weird question.” I tuck the sheet into my armpits and scoot my body a little to the left so we’re no longer touching. The tone of my voice has become defensive and he can tell.
“It’s just that I usually pick the porn,” he explains. “Do you like what I choose?” I see what he’s doing. He’s trying to be considerate since we just had sex while staring at the laptop screen after searching terms of his choosing: Latina, real tits, blow job, threesome.
Maybe he feels guilty for getting off to them instead of me, even though I’m the one who suggested we watch porn in the first place. Even though I’m always the one who suggests we watch porn while we have sex. “Yeah, sure.” I look up at the ceiling. “They’re fine.” “Are you sure?” I wish he’d stop prying, but I realize something else is happening here. Not only is he trying to be considerate; he’s also trying to get to know me. The past couple of months has allowed us to cover most of the basics — what ended each of our most recent relationships, what our parents are like, what we hope to do with our lives in the next few years — but there’s still a longing for something deeper, and I can’t think of anything deeper than knowing a person’s favorite porn scene.
It can speak volumes. For one scene to stand out amongst the rest, when so many others are available, there has to be something below the surface. What maintains its appeal?
What keeps a person returning in the deep, dark recesses of a lonely night? Perhaps the answers to these questions are a great source of shame. I never thought of revealing such answers to anybody, and especially not somebody like him, somebody I could really like.
It seems far too risky, preposterous even. It also seems necessary. Too many of my past relationships were doomed by my inability to tell the whole truth, to fully be myself. Now I have the opportunity to go there, and to say to a person, “This is who I am. Do you accept me?” “Well, there’s this one gang bang,” I start, looking over at his face to see a reaction of surprise and interest register at once. “Go on.” I take a deep breath and proceed to tell him, first slowly, then progressively faster about the scene.
Like a busted dam, I can hardly hold back the rush of descriptors fumbling from my mouth: “Two women in a warehouse. One dangling from a harness. The other just below her.
Both are waiting to take on fifty horny men” and on and on. I watch his face the whole time, not pausing when his smile becomes a frown and his eyes squint as if it hurts to look at me. “Afterward, the women exit the warehouse through a back door while the men applaud.” For a long moment after I’ve finished talking, there is silence between us, but there is also a sense of relief on my part. I have revealed something so dark, so upsetting, so impacted in shame, and he hasn’t immediately disappeared. He is still here beside me, propped up on his left hand, naked and vulnerable, and so am I.
He sees me and I see him seeing me and we are in new territory. But then he says, “I kind of wish I hadn’t asked.” It’s all I need to hear to send me into tears. Not just tiny, embarrassed sobs, but humiliated wails. I have myself a tantrum. He is confused now as he pulls me close to him, laughing nervously at my abrupt shift in disposition. I try to pull the sheet completely over my head, but he pulls it back down and covers my face with apologetic kisses. He can’t possibly understand why I’m crying.
He can’t possibly know what I’ve just revealed to him. “What’s going on? Baby, what’s wrong?” And so I tell him. * * * Addiction to porn and masturbation is often grouped under general sex addiction because they all have to do with escape via titillation, pursuit and orgasm, but I’ve always felt more pathetic about my predilections.
Going out and fucking — even someone you don’t really like — is wild, dangerous, but essentially social and shared. Though I had periods of promiscuity throughout my twenties, my biggest issue has always been with what I do alone. There’s something so sad and humiliating in imagining a person locked away in a dark room, hot laptop balanced on chest, turning the volume down low, scrolling, scrolling, choosing, watching, escaping, coming. And then realizing that person is me.
But my proclivity for solo pleasure has strong, stubborn roots. I lost my virginity to a water faucet when I was twelve years old. I have Adam Corolla and Dr. Drew to thank for this life-shaking experience; it was their late-night radio show “Loveline” on L.A.’s KROQ that served as my primary means of sex ed during my pre-teen years. This technique is one of the many things I learned, but I had a whole other kind of education going on, which had long filled my head with other ideas — sex is something that happens between a man and woman who love each other; masturbation is a sin.
You know, your typical run-of-the-mill Catholic guilt stuff. Just as oppressive as the Catholic guilt was my femininity. Girls weren’t talking about masturbation and sex. I had no company with whom to share my new activities and interests. And so this silence morphed into shame. I became a pervert, a loser, a sinner. I tried to stop myself from taking long baths, from late-night undercover activities, from being alone too long, but the more I obsessed about stopping, the more I could not.
I joined shame, secrecy and pleasure in a daily orgy, whether I was tired, bored, angry or sad. Whether I was single or coupled, it didn’t matter. Getting off required all of these components and I needed new, more extreme methods to stay engaged — more hours sucked away watching progressively harder porn like the warehouse video, complemented with dabbles in strip clubs, peep shows and shady massage parlors. It became impossible to get off during sex without fantasy, my body over-stimulated to numbness.
I was irritable unless I was fucking or masturbating or planning to do either of these things. Life revolved around orgasm to the detriment of any kind of real progress in my professional or social existence.
I was out of control. * * * Little did I know that describing my favorite porn scene would be the first of many future admissions that would help peel back, layer by layer, a long and exhausting history of self loathing. My future husband and I quickly learned that watching porn during sex wasn’t a harmless kink for us; it was a method I’d long used to remain disconnected from my partners. It took much discipline and patience for us to expel it from our relationship altogether, though every now and then we slip up. Talking about my habits led me to examine them, which ultimately led to my desire for change. Holding a secret for too long is like being unable to take a full breath. I didn’t want to feel this way anymore.
I needed to share — often and fully — what had for too long been silenced in order to reclaim who I was underneath my addiction. I needed to breathe again. I found relief in Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meetings, seeing a therapist I trusted, attending personal development courses like the Hoffman Process and writing about my journey. I’ve managed to move away from porn for the most part, but when it comes to this addiction — to something I don’t have to seek out or purchase — control is like a wayward horse and my ass is always slipping off the saddle.
I constantly struggle with whether or not I should give up porn completely, but until I find a way to have some moderation with it, I avoid it as best I can. I wish I could just watch it occasionally, as some sort of supplement to my active sex life, but the whole ritual of watching porn is tangled up in too many other negative emotions. Watching porn takes me back to being that little girl alone in her bedroom, feeling ashamed and helpless to stop it.
I can’t just watch one clip without needing to watch another after that, and another, until hours have passed and I’m back to binging every night. If my husband leaves me alone all day and idleness leads me to watching porn, it’s the first thing I confess upon his return. Sometimes I don’t even have to say it. He can tell by my downturned eyes and my noticeable exhaustion.
He shakes his head and takes me in his arms as I make another promise to try to leave it alone. When I visited a peep show on a recent work trip out of town, he seemed more amused than upset about the whole thing. Unfortunately, I have yet to be as generous. If I find he’s been watching porn without me, when I’ve struggled to abstain for a stretch of time, I react with what might seem like unjustified rage. This frustration is only rooted in envy. * * * Masturbating beside my husband while he sleeps is the last secret I’ve kept from him. Although I’m beginning to fear that it’s actually just the latest secret.
My resistance in telling him only proves how fragile recovery is. This week it’s masturbation. But maybe next week it’s back to porn binging. Or obsessive scrolling through Craigslist personals. Or lying about my whereabouts.
And so forth. Abstaining from these habits, when so readily available, without abstaining from sexual pleasure completely, or the shame I’ve long bound to it, is a challenge I face daily. That’s why I need to tell my husband.
Not because I need his permission, his forgiveness or to offer him some act of contrition. But because I need him to see me. The act of telling the truth, especially about something that makes us ache, is often the only absolution we need. * * * is a writer from Los Angeles. Her essays have appeared in Salon, Substance, LA Observed, The Manifest Station and HelloGiggles.
She is also a staff writer at Luna Luna Mag. Read more at and follow her on Twitter. Iris Yan is a Brazilian-born Chinese cartoonist who completed a one-year certificate at The Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont.