by Gabi Moore
“Right, so we have some new faces with us this time, Erin, would you like to go first and tell us what’s brought you here today?”
I leaned back in my seat and looked at the frightened teenaged girl in front of me. Before she opened her purple-lipsticked mouth I already knew the story she’d tell. Because it was my story.
Shitty parents (or in my case, no parents at all), shady boyfriends, outrageous nights out, and then the juicy bits that everyone wanted to know – the drugs (sometimes it was alcohol), the poor choices, the vivid descriptions of wanton, empty sex that everyone shook their head at but deep down relished …I knew about it all.
“…and that’s when I realized I had a problem” she said, little tears in her eyes. “I always told myself I’d never do that. I’d never sink that low…”
I knew every man in here was mentally fucking her brains out as they all nodded and smiled politely.
“Yes, well, it’s a place we’ve all been, so you’re not alone,” the coordinator said. “Thank you for sharing, Erin.”
I knew it was ridiculous. I couldn’t even imagine what Leo would say if he knew I was here. I had told him more about my past than I had told anyone. And he had accepted everything without a second thought. But this was a part of me that I couldn’t tell even him. What was I going to say? That even though he was perfect, that he adored me, that I felt more myself and more in love with him than I ever had for anyone in my life, somehow part of me kept returning to …this. To these seedy meetings. These cringe-inducing confessions. I kept coming back week after week. I figured, at least going to a sex addicts support group was better than actually being a full-blown sex addict, right?
It was time for the next newbie to spill his guts. What would his story be? Four women in one night? Addicted to porn? Or was it something nasty like cheating on his wife?
I scanned him over and tried to guess. Worn cowboy jeans but pristine shoes. Too-long hair and a kind of shifty look about him. But he was hot; I’d give him that. I worked all day with people, and with people’s bodies, and I had a knack for reading the way they carried themselves. This guy was all in the hips, all swagger, and when he opened his mouth you could tell right away that he was going to indulge plenty in what Lizzy liked to call ‘little backslides’.
I felt bad, staring at him, listening to him speak. Thinking the things I was thinking. But it was my secret. I had it safely locked away on Wednesday evenings at six, and I had it all under control, and basically, it was like a release valve. I knew these meetings weren’t quenching my unhealthy obsessions, but in a way, they were a fixed, controlled dose of bad that allowed all the good that followed the rest of the week. I felt bad that I had kept all of this from Leo. But on the other hand, it was also in his best interests to conceal from him just how fucked up I really was.
The guy and I locked eyes and I didn’t look away. He started to rattle on about his past. About how he felt like an addict, felt out of control. He said he felt crazy without a woman every night, but that he felt predatory going out to pick up someone solely for that purpose. He mouthed the word ‘vampire’ with a little too much sexiness and I couldn’t help but smile.
He locked eyes with me again.
I would have fallen over myself to get to a guy like him in the past. I knew I could read him, and maybe, he could read me too. We were ex members of a cult but we could still recognize the markings, the secret handshakes and gestures. The top half of his body said “I repent”, but the bottom half said “I’m not done sinning just yet.” His lips told a story of hopelessness, but his eyes slid over the room like a hunter, looking for the most vulnerable person.
And just like a little mouse that escaped from my grasp, my mind went scampering away and soon I was imagining naughty scenarios …scenarios that had this particularly unsuitable man starring in the center role. He droned on and on but I wasn’t listening to his words. I was noticing that his body language had quietly angled toward me. Aha. So that meant I was the chosen vulnerable one.
I would never cheat on Leo. Not for anything in the world. But some old, sick, bitter part of me needed this sleazy guy to look at me. Needed him to want me, even if just so I could act surprised and turn him down. We locked eyes again and he finished his story. The truth was that the sex was just a byproduct. I wanted all those weird, fuzzy feelings that came along with the sex. I couldn’t describe it.
“Well, perhaps you can chat to Sophia about that, I know she’s certainly struggled with some of the same issues you’ve brought up here,” Lizzy said and spun her gaze towards me.
I smiled politely.
I knew that on the surface I seemed cool and calm. Put together. A sensible girl who had already had her come-to-Jesus moment and took up holistic healing and prayer beads instead to heal the hole in her heart. A nice girl. The same girl who had stood before this very group and claimed that she now saw her body as a temple.
But that wasn’t quite the whole truth. My upright posture, Buddha-smile and sensible shoes hid the fact that every Wednesday at six, I came here to fantasize. And now I was fantasizing about him. I told myself it was OK. I did it mentally so I didn’t have to do it for real.
What harm did it do to picture myself suddenly standing up, right now in the middle of the next person’s little speech, and just stripping right down to nothing? Did it matter that I wasn’t listening to them at all, but imagining how deliciously shocked they’d be to see me exhibiting myself, shameless, then picking out the man I wanted and fucking him right here, on this dirty linoleum, while everyone watched?
If I didn’t really intend to ever do any of that, why not push the fantasies a little further and imagine …all of them? Piling on top of me and overpowering me completely? Why not indulge in the image of me, the reformed, the once-was-found-but-now-am-lost-again girl, spreading her legs wide and inviting anyone to come and help themselves?
The group chat turned out to be rather uneventful. We discussed boundaries, we shared some ‘triumphs’ from the past week, plus our goals for the week ahead. After some affirmations the group split up and people wandered off to nibble the cookies or head home. The guy cornered me, cookie in hand, and cocked his hip my direction.
“So,” he said, smiling, “I hope this doesn’t come across as rude or anything, but you really don’t look like the kind of girl who should be at a meeting like this.”
I smiled back. A pickup line at a sex addicts’ meetup was certainly gutsy, I’d give him that. I loathed him already. So why didn’t I just walk away?
“Well,” I said, “don’t take this the wrong way, but you totally look like you should.”
He burst out laughing.
“I deserved that,” he said, and then extended his hand. “Trevor.”
I didn’t offer my own hand. “Yeah, I know. You already introduced yourself in the group,” I said, good-girl smile still on my face.
“Do you uh… do you not find all this stuff really awkward? I mean, is it normal for the group to share, you know, such crazy personal information?” he said, trying another tack.
I wondered what his cock looked like. I wondered whether he said ‘shit’ or ‘fuck’ when he came, or even ‘oh god’.
“Yeah, well, being honest is all part of the recovery process,” I said breezily. But I could tell that he had noticed that although my tone of voice was saying “back off, creep”, my eyes were saying, “keep going”. I picked up a cookie and bit down hard into it.
“Ok, well, be honest with me then. How long has it been since you’ve …you know …had a backslide?” he said with an impish grin, putting scare quotes around Lizzy’s favorite word. This was all strictly against the spirit of the group. Completely bad for his ‘recovery’, and mine. But it was also the most fun I’d had all week.
I looked up to the right and pretended I was completely unaware of the fact that he was trying to come onto me. There was no chance in hell. In fact, it was only because I knew how impossible it was that
anything could happen here that I allowed myself to indulge in a little banter.
“Um… well let’s see …I’ve been on a really good stretch lately. I’m being very productive at work these days, and, oh, I’ve just gotten engaged!” I said cheerfully, and flashed my new ring at him. He looked at my hand, a sour smile spreading across his face.
“Aw, shit, I’m sorry …I didn’t …”
“Sorry for what?” I said, staring at him blankly.
He took another cookie, mumbled something and wandered off. I felt a little nauseous. It was time to go home.
I didn’t know why I kept coming to these things. I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me. But I walked out, said goodbye to the last few stragglers and walked home in the cool night air. It was just a temporary thing. My life was looking up. I had nothing to be unhappy about. So what if I still had some weird sexual hangups left over from a weird time in my life? I’d stop attending these meetups just as soon as Leo and I married. Obviously. I loved him. More than anything. And he’d run screaming if he knew …well, any of this.
The walk home was quiet. My head squirmed with thoughts that I shouldn’t be having. I pictured a dirty, alterative reality unfolding, parallel to my own. As I walked home, alone, chaste and reasonable, another version of myself was busy living out a different story. This Sophia stayed behind and flirted with the too-long-hair guy, and asked him to come home with her. This Sophia was reckless. Horny. So desperate that she couldn’t even wait to get indoors and instead pulled the guy into a dim alley on the way there and fucked him right on the street.
I picked up my pace. Leo would be waiting at home for me. The thoughts, however, still followed. When I walked past a dark, empty alleyway I took a quick detour and found myself instantly cloaked in darkness and cold. I threw my back against the chill brick wall and squeezed my eyes shut. Before I could stop myself, one hand freed itself from my pocket and I thrust it between my legs, rubbing desperately at the ache there, hidden from view.
My fingers worked furiously over my clit as I succumbed to the images rushing through my mind. Bad things. Forbidden, filthy thoughts.
I saw the guy from the meetup in front of me. “I knew this is what you’d like, you dirty girl…” I imagined his worn jeans in a bunch. His too long hair.
The hunger inside me reached fever pitch as that Sophia collided with this one. My fingers worked furiously and soon I choked and gasped as I came thundering to a secret orgasm, sweet relief flooding all through me. Heart still pounding and a thin sheen of sweat prickling at my brow, I hurriedly straightened my clothes and raced out of the alleyway, towards home.
I hated myself then.
I was going to be better.
Starting tomorrow, I was going to be better, I swore to myself.
Chapter 7 - Leo
“The trouble with being the kind of free agent you’re trying to be is that it often feels like you’re playing broken telephone. The Costa Ricans aren’t exactly known for their savvy business practices, you know?”
I was paying this lawyer a disgusting amount of money per hour, and it unsettled me that even a tiny bit of that hour was going towards casual wisecracking. I led him to the back office and set him up at the makeshift desk, where he started to offload his briefcase of documents.
I had a million things on my agenda today. The problem with setting up the whole export operation was that everything needed to be ready all at once, but every step required the previous step to be in place first. It was a house of cards built out of catch-22s.
I hated walking around this empty warehouse; so empty it felt like an aircraft hangar. I walked around doing casual calculations in my head about how much money was being bled away every day with every square foot that went unoccupied.
This business would be a tight, money-making ship once it got off the ground, but it was eating ungodly amounts of cash to get it there in the first place.
“Want some coffee?” I said with a little flourish. The place was certainly brimming with the stuff since my most recent trip had seen me coming back with a giant bag of ‘samples’. Beautiful, polished brown-black beans from Tarrazu, it was luxury coffee with a superstar profile: the body of a supermodel, low acidity and an aroma so deep and strong you could feel it at the back of your throat.
My distributors were chomping at the bit – in fact a coffee house in San Francisco was currently being built that wanted to stock my beans exclusively and were hoping to open in a month – and I had a few reps coming over this afternoon to discuss pushing a few loads to blenders up north who had just had a falling out with their main supplier and were looking for something that could give them a Fairtrade stamp on their menus.
It was a tremendous amount of responsibility. A massive undertaking in which I personally shouldered most of the risk. A lot was riding on me pulling all of this off. But I loved it.
I sat down at the desk, handed the lawyer his coffee and tried to make sense of some of the documents he had pushed over to my end of the table.
“Oh, wait a second. When were the inspectors here?” he said, eyes zooming in on one particular paper in a folder I had handed him.
“Uh, I don’t know. Months ago. It was one of the first things I did, to get it out the way.”
He shook his head and put the document down again.
“Yeah, no, you’re going to have to get an updated check I’m afraid. See, you’ve since installed the washrooms and plumbing to the rear of the premises, correct?”
“Correct…”
“In that case, they’ll need to go ahead and do another inspection before we can move on with the next step...”
I could feel my nostrils flaring.
“But this certificate is good for a year…”
“It is good for a year, but you’ve altered the property, you see, so in the eyes of the law it counts as a whole new property. I’m sorry, we can’t move forward unless I have this clearance.”
Fuck, I hated this shit. The endless list of stamped and signed documents, the endless mountains of regulation I had to wade through, all at great expense. I rankled at the thought of having this guy in my office again. He saw me rubbing my face and smiled apologetically, then handed my folder back. I knew the asshole would charge me for a full hour even though he’d scarcely been here long enough to take two sips of his coffee.
“Do I have to pay again for a whole new inspection?”
He stood up and gathered his things in his briefcase.
“You’ll have to take that up with your individual providers,” he said formally, and extended his hand for me to shake. I shook it, grumbled something or other and saw him out.
It was a bad start to the morning.
I checked my watch – at least I’d have a little time now before the circus of reps started for the afternoon. I sat down at my desk, undid the top button of my shirt and threw my feet on the desk. I grabbed the remote and turned the TV on to catch an interesting looking news segment.
Some footage of a pair of sniffer dogs walking in the airport followed by a professorial type talking into the camera. I turned the volume up.
“The problem with substances like this is that even when what’s being sold is correctly labelled, the consumer often vastly underestimates the potency or simply doesn’t know what they’re doing, so they overdose…” the man said, waving his hands.
I had been vaguely been following this story in the papers for the last few days, but was surprised to see how alarmed people still were. They were saying it was worse than anything the country had seen before. A new, scary compound called ‘PK’ was coming out of Eastern Europe, people were dying, the police had yet to get a handle on any of it.
I took a sip of my piping-hot coffee.
At least my soon-to-be drug empire was legal, I thought, cynically. But it got me thinking about Vito. He wasn’t featured in this segment, but everyone knew that at some point, the mob had to be involved. That was the way it worked arou
nd here – if there was a big enough pie out there, you could be sure these guys had their fingers in it, no question. In fact, with how big this whole PK thing was, it was basically a given that Vito and his guys were at the heart of it.
I wondered about the inspectors. About all these hurdles the lawyer was throwing my way. It grated on me that an honest businessman like myself was wasting time with useless legislature while parasites like Vito ran around unchecked for literally decades. It made me feel like a chump just knowing that he had never had to deal with building inspectors, never had to pay to apply to have a fucking toilet installed at his workshop, for crying out loud…
I slammed my feet back down on the floor and marched over to get some more coffee.
Maybe, though …maybe there was a middle ground between getting involved with Vito outright and merely taking the best of what he had to offer. Maybe I could use him, too. I knew that if I was one of Vito’s cronies, I’d be done with a month’s worth of bureaucratic bullshit by lunchtime today.
As a thin stream of chocolate colored liquid drizzled out the coffee machine, I chewed down on my lips and tried to think. Maybe it wasn’t all or nothing. Maybe I was making life hard for myself by not taking the golden opportunity right in front of me. Would it be the end of the world to take a little help from Vito Roselli? It wouldn’t be forever, just till I got a leg up on my own, till I could run the whole outfit more legitimately.
I had always complained to Sophia that the crap part about growing up without a family is that it’s so hard to make new connections – personal connections, business connections … but wasn’t Vito my one, original family connection? Look, part of me hated the guy, but he had money, he had clout, and he could make a lot of my problems go away overnight, I knew that much for sure. And now with Sophia and the wedding …well, a little extra certainly wouldn’t go amiss right now.