Sex Fix

     Hypersexuality is real, and in my case the only cure is death.

     Recovery clubs and fellowship clans will tell you differently, but most of these anonymous addiction cliques are so full of crap they wouldn't know striped skunk poop if they fell into a pile of it face first. I witnessed some of their non compos mentis bullshit firsthand and it was the exactly the same kind of classic human nature hogwash George Carlin liked to joke about.

     Almost decade earlier, I'd gotten married for the second time to a woman I'd met in the seventh grade at Pacific Beach Middle School, which at the time was called PB Junior High. We used to call it Peanut Butter and Jelly High. The marriage was annulled after one year. It was my fault of course. I was one fucked up bat in the belfry, and compulsive sexual behavior was my main echolocator.

     My bag was, and still is, masturbating to pornography. My pornomania began innocently enough, first with Playboy and Penthouse magazines, and later with adult videos. Eventually, my repeated behaviors and intense urges for solo sexual arousal led me to the promised land of Internet porn.

     Plenty of good men have gone down this smutty road. It's a raunchy, rip-roaring ride, but it's also an out-of-control rabbit hole of damaged self-esteem and relationships.

     My favorite mag was Playboy's Book of Lingerie, the last hook in an erotically fixated Megalodon that would become my calling card in life. My father once wrote that having an organism is equivalent to meeting our maker, meaning the red-hot orgasmic moment of feeling the earth move is the closest we can ever get to God or any other Supreme Being.

     As an agnostic, I believe lovemaking to the point of climax, either by copulating or jacking off, is just nature's scientific way of making us want to procreate our species. It makes no difference if sperm swim up pussies to predestined eggs or perish in wads of tissue papers and wet wipes.

     But if there were a kingdom come, I wouldn't be surprised to find the Creator and every other spirit in the place floating rapturously around in a continuous state of intoxicating euphoria.

     Back to my story. My second wife, Rachelle, eventually got me to attend my first Sexaholics Anonymous meeting. At first, I thought I'd found the holy grail, but boy was I wrong. The SA pundits will try to trick you into believing that the only path to recovery is through fellowships with other sex addicts and thorough self-inventories based on what are called the twelve steps.

     Twelve-step programs might work for some people, at least in theory. But most folks going all in on fellowship groups with whatever skin they have left in the game are just kidding themselves. The reason is simple: fraternities are ruled by the laws of human nature, which means they're flawed and eventually take on a delusional and deceptive life of their own.

     Just ask the real Shirley Jackson or the fictional Doctor Moreau.

     Like most well-intentioned addicts, I eventually found a men's group I liked and started attending meetings on a regular basis. Rachelle made sure of this. That's when I met Gary (I don't remember his real name), a short, stocky, jet-black haired and bearded fellow in his mid-30s who claimed to be a motivational coach and speaker by trade and certainly proved it by stealing the show every time he shared at meetings.

     When Gary the dynamic and seemingly sincere orator spoke, people listened. He assured us he was hanging on to his sobriety. He told us it wasn't easy and that he had to work hard for it. He said that if we worked the steps and put getting and staying sober at the top of our priority lists, each and every one of us could be free from sexual addiction.

     By the time I started going to Gary's group, he was already the most popular and respected addict there. His charismatic and captivating talks mesmerized and motivated everyone who listened. And I too fell for his bloviation hook, line, and stinker.

     A few months into my recovery I went off the deep end and made my way to one of the high-end strip clubs in the city, Deja Vu Showgirls. I was never a regular at all-nude strip joints or topless titty bars but like any other proper sex addict I was never against going to one.

     The nightclub was hopping. Dolled up and scantily clad girls could be seen standing, walking, strutting, talking, smiling, laughing, dancing, and grinding in every direction. The dimly lit pleasure dome was abuzz with blaring music and gleaming party lights, pounding and pulsating in a smokey, boozy, swirling neon haze of horndog high energy.

     I made my way to the main stage and took the only seat left, keeping my eyes on the hot, busty blonde working the pole. No one seemed to notice my arrival. Left and right, other men were staring up too, drinking and clapping and throwing bills, mostly ones and fives, onto the bronze-railed stage.

     That's when I saw Gary. He was on the other side of the T-shaped, poshly lacquered platform, looking up like a wolf in a butcher shop at the current chunk of flesh caught in the stripper lights. It was Blackbeard himself—steady, sober, smooth sailing Gary—right there in the thick of it, licking his concupiscent chops like the rest of us!

     That's when I knew it was all bull pucky. Gary had been talking out of both sides of his mouth, high as a masterful, line-broken kite on his own brand of deceptive toploftiness. The motherfucker was just as fake and fraudulent, duplicitous and double-dealing, and lost and lonely as the next suffering sex fiend.

     I'm not sure if Gary ever saw or even recognized me that night. He never once looked directly at me. Like every other swinging dick in the joint, my man Gary was fully engaged and preoccupied by the ever so erogenous and eye-popping entertainment going on around us.

     But I kept looking over at him. I wanted the prick to know I was there and that I knew his big secret. And while trying to catch the corners of his eyes there was one instant when the goofy, goatish, I'm-so-into-you look on his face changed to a caught-in-the-cookie-jar countenance.

     I believe he knew I was watching him but didn't care or dare to look in my direction. At least not squarely. One mainstage dancer later Gary and his hard-on were gone, vanishing into thin striptease air.