Zoe had seen the young woman a few times before. She always sat in the back of the meeting room, seemingly lurking, and she never said a word to anyone. She just sat there with this deadpan expression on her face and listened to everyone else discuss their addictions.
Brian, a white male in his late fifties, was finishing up his testimonial. “I recognize this as an illness now. I used to think I just got a little carried away with sex at moments. Then it became an obsession. There were times when I couldn’t even bring myself to fall asleep without feeling the inside of a woman first. When my wife of many years refused to satisfy my needs, I would resort to paying for sex. I would find myself cruising the avenue to pick up whores. Women that had no issues about giving blow jobs for less than the cost of a tank of low-end gasoline. I realized some of them had to carry diseases. How could they not? Still, I was so obsessed with sex that I risked it anyway.”
Brian’s face became distorted as the first tear fell from his left cheek. One of the moderators, Grace, stood up and walked over to the podium to pat him on the back. While Brian was regaining his composure, Zoe seized the opportunity to survey the young woman’s face again. Still nothing. No sign of emotion whatsoever. If it were not for the light fabric of her rayon shirt moving slightly, Zoe would have doubted that she was even breathing.
Brian pulled himself together and continued. “Now I have nothing. Alice left me. My kids are grown, living their own lives, and they hate me too much to even look at me. I spend every single holiday alone. The pain is unbearable. If only I could turn back the hands of time and start over. If only I could make things better.”
The sexual addiction meeting had turned highly emotional yet again. Several of the people broke down in tears. Not so much for Brian, but for the pain and anguish they themselves had endured in their lives of turmoil. Zoe rarely cried at the meetings anymore. Her counseling sessions with Dr. Marcella Spencer, a month at a center in Florida run by a friend of the doctor’s, and a loving and supportive husband had helped her survive her ordeal. Ironically, Zoe had probably been through more drama than anyone else in the room. Her sexual addition had led to three simultaneous affairs with two of her lovers ending up dead at the hands of a third.
Zoe emerged from her seat and approached Brian. She embraced him and whispered in his ear, “It’s going to be all right, Brian. We’re all in this together.”
Zoe glanced at the back of the room. The young woman had exited as quietly as she had entered. Damn, she always does that! Zoe thought.