in search of a starting point

To all things there is a beginning.

At times I've attempted to remember the exact point at which my addiction made itself known. Is there an event to which it can be traced, a precise moment in time when I started down the path of sexual addiction that would come to govern my life?

I am sixteen years old, a mall parking lot in Chattanooga, TN. I'm in town visiting relatives. We've done all those Tennessee things--the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, for example. Ruby Falls. Rock City. An incline railway to the top of Lookout Mountain. I am bored, bored, bored. The cousins and I have been released from the adults for the evening. We have been sent off to find our own entertainment while the adults dine at some fancy restaurant.

The cousins and I go to a movie. There are two of them-a boy, seventeen, a girl fifteen. The movie theater is located in a mall. We arrive early and decide to kill some time at Banana Republic. This is back when Banana Republic had a jungle theme, tropical plants everywhere and pants in khaki and olive. There's a boy working there, all done up in jungle gear. He looks like a high school football player sentenced to summer employment at the mall. I've never gone in for the bulkier jocks, with their overblown muscles and underdeveloped minds, but something about this guy immediately gets to me. Looking back, I can't remember exactly what it was. Did he have beautiful eyes, nice hair, exceptionally good manners?


I can't recall. I only remember that he came over to the rack where I was trying on belts (I wasn't intending to purchase, as a single belt would have put a serious dent in my meager babysitting income). Without saying a word to me he took a woven leather belt and slid it around my waist, working it under the beltloops of my jeans, so that, at one point, we stood as if in a one-sided embrace, with his arms around my waist, mine straight at my sides, our faces so close we could have kissed.

Then he buckled the thing. In retrospect, I'm rather amazed by him still. How does a boy of that tender age acquire such confidence, such skill in the art of seduction?

He wanted to know where I was going. To the movies, I said. He was getting off work, wanted to know if he could join me. Of course, I said. I told my cousins I'd meet them at the theater. They looked at each other, concerned, as if they hadn't planned for this possibility. What to do with the wayward cousin visiting from afar (well, not so afar)? Did they have some responsibility for my virtue? I guess they decided they didn't, because they agreed to meet me later.

Banana Republic boy and I never made it to the theater. We went to his car instead, in the parking lot of the mall. No fuss or negotiation, straight to the backseat. It was one of those old Ford Broncos, I think, where you had to work just to get up into the seat. He doesn't even start with my shirt, the way most boys his age do--the way, in fact, every boy I've known up to this point has done. No, he goes straight for the zipper of my jeans, I can feel his hand tugging down there--jeans to the knees, followed by underwear--but this is the eighties, the jeans are tight, they must come all the way off. So then he's kneeling in the back seat, pulling off my shoes, yanking at my jeans until they're all the way off, and he's still wearing his shirt, and I'm still wearing mine.

It's summer, the sun stays up late, we are not covered by darkness as we fuck in the back of his Ford Bronco, fucking where anyone can see us, making all sorts of noise. And I love it and hate it at the same time. It hurts but I don't want it to stop. And I'm wondering what happened, how I got here, how at one minute I was shopping at Banana Republic and the next minute I'm fucking a stranger in the parking lot.

That was the beginning, I think. Of a whirlwind, a firestorm, and grand and terrible thing.

Because if you think sex addiction is sexy, here's one thing you may not realize: it runs your life. Eventually it ruins it. And yet, there's that moment in the back seat of a car or in some grimy bathroom or in the woods or at the bar or wherever--that moment when it feels like exactly what you need.