Chapter 11

The hangover had left him at two in the afternoon the following day, and although his head still ached a bit, he was glad to have lost the nausea. The meeting that night started at six, and he wasn’t too sure if he wanted to see Renee ever again, given the circumstances. Yet there was an irresistible quality about seeing her again, and so he decided to go to the meeting. When he arrived at the church, Jerome, Irving, and Manuel were there, but Phil was conspicuously absent, as he was usually the first to arrive.

“Phil is no longer with us,” said Jerome after Charlie had asked him about it.

“What do you mean?”

“He’s busy acting out. We saw him in the street talking to a hooker.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No,” said Irving. “He called me last night drunk from a hotel room. He said he’s been sleeping with a hooker for four straight days. He’s not coming back.”

“I had no idea. What on earth happened?”

“Just couldn’t hold on,” said Jerome. “The man has a lot of problems, I guess. He doesn’t want to face up to the fact that there’s anything wrong with him. His days are numbered if you ask me.”

“It could happen to any of us,” said Irving. “We’re just men after all. We’re not supposed to last very long at anything we do.”

A melancholy silence filled the room as Eliza, LaShaun, and Renee entered the church basement at the same time. They didn’t seem as happy and light-hearted with each other as they did before, as though the entire group had been menaced that evening by things they couldn’t control, especially with the vacancy that Phil left behind. And yet still Renee looked as pretty as a picture, sullen as she was. After a sex addicts preamble that seemed to go on for too long, LaShaun opened the meeting and welcomed the group.

“We’re one less tonight, and I actually saw Phil on the street the other day, stumbling along the road drunk and obviously in a lot of pain. He said he was doing the nasty again with women off the street, and that’s the last I saw of him. He looked very sick, and I don’t think he’ll last very long. He was fed up, and sometimes we do get fed up in this program. There’s no question that everyone here has urges to act out from time to time, especially now that summer is in full swing. But I can’t emphasize enough the importance of coming to these meetings, even when we’re just hanging on. Because there’s nothing but death and disease out there if we choose to act out instead of working the program. From what I can tell, we’re all on the edge of something here—every one of us. So don’t be complacent about the addiction we have, because it sneaks up on us and kills us. If you want to live, then you’ll come to these meetings and talk about what’s bothering you, because leaving it all bottled up inside, as Phil did, will kill us. It will send us back out there. So I want you guys to be honest tonight. What is it that’s bothering you, and if you’re headed for a relapse, you have to let us know about it. It’s life and death that we’re dealing with.”

Renee’s hand went up, and the whole room listened with rapt attention.

“Hi, I’m Renee, and I’m a sex addict.”

“Hi, Renee.”

“Let’s see. Well, it’s really sad to hear that someone from our group has left. I mean, I didn’t know him very well, but from what it sounds like, it’s really bad that things turned out for him the way it did. But see, I’m not going to let it affect my sobriety. For the past few weeks I’ve really started to understand the scope of this disease, and I’m very lucky to be here. Really I am. With the help of the program, I’ve gotten a lot better at putting this disease into perspective, and I’m finding a sex-free life to be difficult at times, but I’m going along with it, and slowly I’m starting to see the benefits of remaining abstinent. I no longer have to have sex to feel accepted or to feel loved, and that’s quite a relief to me—to be shown that there is another option besides getting involved in difficult relationships and doing drugs and sleeping around. I no longer have to do those things today, and I’m thankful that all of you are here, because you’re showing me the way. Thanks for letting me share.”