Chapter 7: Ricochet: Chapter 7

I sit in the therapist’s waiting room with Rose by my side. She skipped all of her classes for the day to be here with me. I’ve thanked her about a hundred times. My eyes dart between the exit and the door to the office. Fleeing sounds tempting, but with Rose here, I stay situated to the white couch cushion and refrain from biting my nails. A window overlooks the New York skyline, the interior just as modern with glass bookshelves and purple orchids.

When the door finally opens, I spring to my feet as though the couch electrocuted my butt. And the therapist greets me with a warm, sincere smile. Looking in her early forties, her chocolate brown hair bobs at her chin, and she wears a black skirt, fitted jacket, and a cream blouse. With her heels, she just barely reaches my height. She must be super short then.

“Hi Lily, I’m Dr. Banning.” She holds out her hand, and I shake it, momentarily embarrassed by my sweaty palm. When she lets go, I’m surprised she doesn’t wipe her hand on her skirt like she caught something infectious.

She gestures to the office, opening the door wider for me.

I look back at Rose.

“I’ll be right here,” she assures me. I try to soak in some of her confidence, but unfortunately, it’s never really been contagious.

I raise my chin, pretending to be strong, and enter Dr. Banning’s office. A few glass bookshelves line the walls, and her cherry oak desk sits off in the corner. In the center lies a white fur rug and two pieces of furniture: a brown leather chair and an identical brown leather couch.

“Take a seat,” she says, motioning to the couch.

I rest on the edge of it, my foot bouncing in anxiety. I glance out the large window, a park in direct view, the patch of green actually calming me a little.

Dr. Banning holds a notebook in her hands, and my eyes transfix to it for an extended second. My problems will be documented within the pages for (hopefully) only her to see.

“Are you going to tell me why I’m like this?” It’s the very first thing I ask. Not even starting off with a cordial ‘how’s your day?’ Nope. I begin by blurting out my biggest insecurity: what the hell is wrong with me?

“Maybe in time. Why don’t we begin by getting to know each other first?”

I nod. Oh my God. I even do therapy wrong…I can’t do anything right.

“I went to Yale for my PhD, and I’ve focused primarily on addiction, especially sex addiction. Now, tell me a little about yourself. It doesn’t have to be related to sex.”

This should be the easiest question she’ll ask, but my tongue feels heavy in my mouth. “Can I have some water?”

“Of course.” She stands and goes to her mini-fridge that sits beneath a Vincent van Gogh painting. When she returns with a bottle of water, I take a long minute to spin off the cap and sip.

“I…um, I grew up in a suburb outside of Philadelphia. I have three other sisters.” My eyes flicker nervously to her. “You’ve met one.”

Dr. Banning smiles encouragingly. “And your other sisters—are you as close to them as you are to Rose?”

“Not really,” I say. “Poppy is married, and she has a little girl. She’s much older than me, so I didn’t really grow up with her. And Daisy’s a lot younger, and when I entered high school, I kind of went my own way.”

“What were you like in high school?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I was the quiet girl. No one bothered me unless I was pulled into Lo’s fights. Normally, no one ever really acknowledged me, except when there was a group project. I was kind of…just there.”

“Did you have any friends?”

“Yeah, Loren…my boyfriend. He, um, is in rehab.” I scratch my neck.

“It’s okay, Lily,” she says easily. “Rose explained your situation. We’re going to talk about him in time.”

I’m suddenly afraid she’s going to say that he’s the root of all of my problems. What if she tells me to never see him again? What if that’s the solution? My chest thrums with rapid anxiety that I end up blurting out, “I know that I have an unhealthy relationship with him, but there has to be a way that we can be together and work through our problems. Right?” Please say yes. Please don’t end this for me.

Dr. Banning inspects me for a long moment and tucks a piece of her bob behind her ear, but it pops back out, so thick and so much volume that it won’t stay in place. “For now, I want to concentrate on your addiction, Lily, and then we’ll talk about how your boyfriend plays into it. You don’t need to worry, okay? We’re going to try to work through this together to find the answers you want.”

I relax only a little and slide further back on the cushions to refrain from bolting out of the office. “Okay.”

“Okay,” she nods and glances at her notebook. “Let’s go back a little in time. I want you to tell me about your relationship with your parents. How did they fit into your life? And how do they fit into your life now?”

I squint, processing these relationships that I desperately tried not to quantify for the longest time. “When I was younger, my father was always busy. He still is. I’ve never hated him for it. His success has given me a lot of opportunities.” Hell, I wouldn’t have been accepted to Princeton or the University of Pennsylvania without my family’s prestige.

“You’ve never been upset that he couldn’t spend more time with you?”

I shrug. “Maybe when I was little and didn’t understand how his hard work paid for our house and our nice things. But now, I only wish he’d retire so he could have more time to himself.”

“And your mother? She doesn’t have a job, does she?”

“No,” I say. “My relationship with her is…” My brows furrow, trying to put to words how my mother used to treat me compared to the other girls. “…I’m not sure how it was. But now, she leaves me alone. We talk briefly here and there, but that’s about it. It’s probably mostly my fault. I just haven’t been around much.”

“Why is that?”

When I got to college, I started going to less and less of the weekly family luncheons. Then I just kind of stopped all together. It was really the only scheduled “family time” and I always found a way to bail. For sex.

I take a shallow breath before saying, “I didn’t find them all that important. Not compared to my own stuff, I guess.”

“Your own stuff being sex,” Dr. Banning clarifies for me, her tone clinical.

I nod once. “It sounds awful, doesn’t it?” I mutter, the shame slithering in like a virus.

“It sounds like you have a problem, and you’re seeking help for it. That’s a monumental step.”

“I just want it to stop,” I confess.

“Be more specific. What exactly do you want to stop? The sex?”

I shake my head. “Not all together. But my brain feels like it’s going to explode sometimes. Even if I’m not doing it, I’m thinking about it almost every minute of the day. It’s like I’m stuck on this loop and I don’t know how to get off it. It’s exhausting.”

“It’s normal for addicts to be consumed by their addiction, especially sex addicts where a large portion of the obsession is in terms of fantasizing. How have the fantasies changed since Lo left? Are they less frequent?”

I pause and think about this for a moment. “I think so,” I say with an unsure nod. “I spend more time missing him. So maybe, yeah.” Of course that might change if he returns to me. He’ll be home and I’ll have more energy to fantasize. God, I hope not. I just want my brain to stop.

I take another sip of water. “Are you going to ask me about sex?” So far, I feel like we’ve been beating around the topic. Aren’t therapists supposed to be direct?

Dr. Banning tilts her head a little, and I’m lost to her pretty brown eyes that remind me of Loren. Only, his have amber flecks that resemble his favorite alcohol. “Of course. Do you feel comfortable enough to talk about it? Rose says that the topic makes you nervous.”

She told her that? I wonder how transparent I am in front of my sister. “What do you want to know?” I ask.

“What does sex mean to you, Lily?”

I’ve never been questioned about sex before. Lo even dodged the topic in order to avoid the subject of alcohol in return. “It makes me feel good.”

“In your questionnaire, you wrote down that you like having sex in public places. Why are you okay with this, but you’re not comfortable with ménage or voyarism? Take your time to answer. I know you probably haven’t thought about this before.”

She’s right. I haven’t. And for some reason, my muscles begin to loosen at her words. I don’t feel as though she’s judging. She genuinely seems to want to help me. Kind of like Rose. “I like doing it in the bathroom or somewhere besides my apartment because it’s easier to get away afterwards. The moment can start and end with the sex, and I don’t have to wait to talk to the guy.”

“And when you’re with Lo?”

His name causes my cheeks to flush. “It adds to the excitement.” I remember the gym locker room. Where he grabbed my wrists and forced them above my head. I had a leg hiked around his hip while the other struggled to stay on ground, but he lifted me off the floor with each thrust inside. He filled me until I nearly burst at the seams. All the while, some guy could come around the corner and catch us. The alarm bristled my nerves and heightened the tension. I was on fire, flying seven feet above the ground with a high so natural that I nearly collapsed at the end of it.

“And why not the other two?”

“Two guys at once…” I cringe, remembering that happening one time. “Lo…he looked at me funny when I thought I slept with two guys. I drank too much, so I can’t recall the moment, but…I don’t want him to ever see me like that.” I bite my nails, catch myself, and bring my hand down quickly. “I can take the judgment from other guys, the ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ but I couldn’t have my best friend looking at me like that. And maybe for another girl, it would have been okay to reach those points, but I knew for me, my addiction was progressing to new extremes. And I couldn’t let it go there.”

She nods. “That’s good. So your boyfriend helped you realize what was considered safe for you personally and what was not?”

“I guess so.”

“And you had the willpower to stop.”

I shrug. I never thought I had much of anything other than hope. Willpower—that seems like a strong word.

“You don’t think you have willpower?” She must see my hesitation and insecurities. My weak shrug must have given me away.

“I’m not any better, am I?” I tell her. “I let Lo sleep with me during Christmas Eve, and I knew he shouldn’t have. I masturbate all the time, and I just threw out my porn. I’m not even sure how long that will last.”

“Lily,” she says, edging forward on her seat. She stares at me for a long moment. “You wrote on here that you’ve been monogamous the entire time you solidified your relationship with Lo. That is an achievement that you can claim. I have patients who’ve spent years with multiple partners, and they still struggle to stay faithful. You spent those same years with different men, and yet, you’re here, telling me that your problem is not cheating but rather compulsive masturbation, pornography, and intercourse. That is a huge hurdle.”

My chin quivers. No one has ever told me that I’ve done something good. This whole time, I thought I failed Lo in a huge way, I thought that my problem hindered my ability to help him. Maybe it still did, but Dr. Banning is telling me that I tried to be healthy for Lo. And I succeeded in a large way. “Oh,” I mutter under my breath, not able to form any other words. I wipe my eyes before the tears come.

“You love him,” she tells me. “But your situation is incredibly delicate. Rose tells me that he’s enabled you your whole life, and in turn, you’ve enabled him.”

I nod, pain weighing on my chest. “I’m going to change.”

“Good. In order to become healthy, you’re going to have to do the reverse. Instead of enabling each other, you’ll need to help each other.”

The only problem that stands in my way now—I’m not so sure Lo’s willing to come back and help me. What if he’s set on his own path that no longer involves me? I won’t force him to be a part of my life if he chooses not to be in mine. Even if…even if it kills me a little, I’d do anything that Lo wanted.

Obviously that’s been our problem so far.

This isn’t going to be as easy as it seems, I realize.

“Was Lo your first sexual encounter?”

“What…what do you mean by that?”

“Was he the first person to touch you?”

I cringe a little, trying to draw my brain back to those early memories. “Yes…we, uh…were nine, I think.” We played “doctor” and I sprawled on the leather couch in his game room. Naked, not knowing any better, I suppose. But maybe we did…we knew a little about sex by nine. He touched my breast. I touched him. And then I grabbed his hand and put it in between my legs. We separated after that and never played the game again. Buried the moment like it was some embarrassing story. I explain this to Dr. Banning. Briefly.

“It was consensual from both of you?”

“Yes. Is that weird?”

“It’s a little old for children to be playing doctor,” she informs me, “especially since, by that age, you have somewhat of an understanding of sex or at least sexuality. I would call it experimenting. Did anyone interrupt you?”

“No one ever came in. Lo’s nanny was kind of a flake. She used to sit on the couch and watch soaps all day. So…it’s not abnormal?”

“If something like this happens, it’s best if the children get caught and then hopefully the parents can sit down with them and explain appropriate behavior. It’s unfortunate that you didn’t have that guidance, but I wouldn’t fixate on it too much. Between nine and twelve sexual experimentation is a normal part of child development. You and Lo are roughly the same age, neither of you were coerced or forced into it, so I wouldn’t consider it abnormal.”

I try to take in her words before she asks another question.

“And after that, did anyone else touch you?”

I shake my head. “No, I touched myself a lot. And then, I had sex.”

“With Lo?”

I sink in the seat. “No, not with Lo.” I knew I was going to talk about the loss of my virginity—as though it solidified the rest of my nefarious acts for the future. The buried memory has already surfaced these past couple of days as I mentally tried to prepare for this discussion. “I was thirteen.”

“Was he older?”

“Not much. He was a fifteen-year-old kid, the son of my mother’s friend. I was at his house for his father’s surprise birthday party. It was during the day, and everyone mostly stayed outside by the pool. Lo was supposed to be there.”

“Why wasn’t he?”

The memory hurts a little because if Lo’s plans had changed, I know, without a doubt, that I wouldn’t have lost my virginity that day. But I believe I still would have gone down this road. Even if my first wasn’t mind-blowing, I still loved the sex. The way it exploded my nerves and rocked my body to an ultimate high. Once I felt a glimmer of it for the first time, I was sold.

“He didn’t want to go to the party. He wanted to find booze and hang out by the lake. But Rose begged me to go. She didn’t want our mother to be focused on her the whole evening, so I went to keep Rose company. And in the end, I left her to go hook up with some guy that paid me a little bit of attention. We went to his room, and what’s done was done.” My stomach hurts as I admit the rest. “Rose forgave me. She always does, but I can’t really ever forgive myself, you know? I’m a horrible person, and I convinced myself that it was better if I wasn’t involved in anyone’s lives. If I just stayed away, then they wouldn’t be hurt by me and I could do what I wanted.” I nod to myself. “Yeah, so that’s how it went afterwards. But Rose doesn’t take lightly to being ignored. She never allowed me to push her away completely.” I rub my eyes quickly.

“And Lo?” Dr. Banning asks, not missing a beat. “What happened to him that night?”

“I snuck from my house to his. We lived down the street from each other, so it wasn’t so hard. And I climbed through his window. I found him passed out on his bed. So I shut away all of his bottles before his father found them, and I tucked him under the covers.” I nod again, as though accepting the memory for what is. A painful reminder of our fucked up relationship. “The next day, we just acted like nothing happened.”

She stares at me with dark eyes, a sort of worry that I think therapists are not supposed to possess. It flickers away before she scares me more, but I realize that she’s beginning to understand just how deep our tangled, messy, destructive relationship actually goes.

“After you lost your virginity, how did your relationship with Lo change?”

I squirm a little in my chair before I say, “I mean…we’ve always been friends.” I’m about to say nothing changed. But I can’t muster the lie. After I started having sex, everything changed.

“So take me through your sexual experiences between the day you became sexually active and now. How did things progress? Especially with Lo.”

My mind spins as I think about eighth grade and feeling like utter trash for losing my virginity so young. I didn’t tell anyone for months, and even though I was hooked to the feeling—I refused to do it again for a while. Too scared of the obliterating guilt that haunted me like a shadow. The second time happened at a graduation party. A public school kid threw it. Lo and I barely knew them, so it had the right requisites to attend. We both liked the anonymity. As years passed in prep school, people often grouped us together because of our friendship and status. We were Fizzle and Hale Co., and the more they wiped our identities away, the more we clung to each other.

The party was like any other, except for bedrooms upstairs. They were open and available, and so was the fifteen-year-old soccer player I met. It felt better than the first time, and I devised this theory that it would just keep getting better and better the more I tried.

I remember leaving the party with Lo braced on my shoulder. We couldn’t hide the fact that he’d been drinking from Nola, but she kept her opinions to herself and dropped me off at the Hale house. It was that night, with Lo sprawled half-asleep in his bed, that I asked him if he was a virgin.

I wanted him to tell me no. To ease my shame.

“I’m waiting,” he mumbled sleepily.

My eyebrows furrowed. “For marriage?” But he fell asleep before he could answer, but I think I knew it anyway.

He was waiting for me.

I began having sex every few months, nothing serious. Mostly I spent my time with porn and self-love. The day Lo found out I lost my virginity wasn’t even a monumental one. We were reading comics together during a rainy afternoon, and I complained that Havok and Polaris needed to just fuck and get it over with. Their sexual tension was killing me.

Lo looked up at me, and out of nowhere asked, “Have you had sex?”

It was like someone vacuumed the air right from my lungs. “What?” I squeaked.

He pulled his knees up and shrugged, like it was nothing. Maybe he was just trying to make me comfortable. “When we go to parties, you disappear. And when we leave, you’re always a little different.”

I didn’t know how he’d react. If he’d call me a slut, kick me out for being dirty. But I had never lied to him before, and I couldn’t bear the thought of starting. So I spilled everything in the briefest way possible. I didn’t want him to think I had been taken advantage of, so I made sure to emphasize that I’ve been seeking out most of the guys lately. That I liked sex.

His first question was, “Does Rose know?”

I shook my head, told him that I didn’t want to tell anyone else.

“I can keep a secret,” he said, but his words didn’t ease the panic in my chest.

He knows, I kept thinking over and over.

He sensed my alarm and gave me a reassuring nudge in the side. His warm amber eyes met mine, a little concerned but more understanding. I let out a small breath of relief.

“Just…can you let me know if you’re going to do it at the parties? If someone hurts you—”

“I’m careful.”

His eyes darkened. “Still. We look out for each other. Okay?”

“Okay.”

So I did. We reveled in our acts and hid our secrets from other people. To everyone else we were Fizzle and Hale Co. To each other, we were safety, love, and free from judgment and scorn. At fourteen, Lo finally lost his virginity.

To me.

One sloppy night that we buried with our hedonism.

We moved on like always, and by sixteen I was having sex at least once a month. Senior year, we became a fake couple and everything changed yet again. He kissed me. I kissed back. And I believed all along that we were pretending. But there were times where I questioned it. Where our “practicing” and the teasing turned to sinful touching. More than we probably should have.

When I left for college, I couldn’t last more than a week without some kind of release, and I wasted hours to porn. Having a place away from my parents became my bane. Everything escalated; my rituals began at dawn and ended at dusk. An obsession that cut into my sleep, my dreams, my everything. It consumed me whole like some sort of rabid beast.

Lo and I may have enabled each other for years, but I know for certain I’d be on a street corner or worse if Lo hadn’t been there. Whenever I felt like I was spiraling, I turned to him. To talk. About anything really. His companionship was my saving grace.

My mouth dries as I finish spilling my life story. I feel cut up and drained and really can’t believe I let it all out like some sort of emotional flood. Dr. Banning stares at me with an expression I can’t gauge, but she must think that I’m fucked up beyond help. Our co-dependent relationship began as children, and even though we’ve hurt each other, we’ve also been the only real support system for so many years. How do you fix that without damaging it as well?

“Have you changed your mind?” I ask her. “Are you thinking we shouldn’t be together after all?”

Dr. Banning taps her pen to the notebook. “No. I just think you both have a lot you need to work out. And hopefully we’ll reach that point. I want you to uncover the source of this addiction, Lily, and maybe I’ll be able to help you get there in time.”

She’s telling me there may be an answer, but I’m not going to have it anytime soon. I can wait. “I just…want to know what I should expect. Are you going to give me medicine? Am I going to need to go through the twelve-steps or something?”

Dr. Banning shakes her head. “No medication. Drugs aren’t going to solve your problem.”

“But…I can’t sleep…” Nights are horrible. All I want is to orgasm, to feel this release, this high and if I don’t take a sleeping pill, then how will I rest?

“Right now, there’s an imbalance in your oxytocin levels. With compulsive orgasms, you’ve offset chemicals in your body. That’s why you’re going through withdrawals. It’s important that the chemicals readjust to a normal balance. You’ll be able to cope better and fight sexual compulsions. Drugs will only mask the problem.”

I try to process her words, and my head begins to float away. “What about when I’m sad?” With Lo absent, I feel such a strong pressure on my chest. I’ve always heard about depression, but I never understood how debilitating it can be. Some days, I just want to go to sleep and never wake up.

“I can give you a prescription,” she tells me. “But I’d rather you didn’t take any anti-depressants. Like I said, the chemicals in your body need to readjust. They’ve been out of flux for probably a long time. Now, will you be going through the twelve-step program? No.”

I frown. “But Lo…”

“You’re not an alcoholic,” she tells me. “The goal of the twelve-step program is to completely eliminate the addiction from the addict’s life. For sex addicts, that is unfeasible. Sex is a part of nature. Alcohol is not. Your sister knew this, which was why she didn’t want you to go to an in-treatment facility that promoted the twelve-step program for sex addiction. Permanent celibacy is not going to be the answer. Intimacy with your partner is what we’re going to strive for.”

Intimacy with your partner. “So Lo…”

She nods as though she can read my thoughts. “When he returns from rehab, he’ll be an important part in your recovery. I’d love for him to accompany you to some of the meetings.”

I blush. “I’m not sure he’ll want to do that…”

“From what Rose has told me, it sounds like he’d be willing to do just about anything for you.” She glances at her clock. “That’s it for today. Did I scare you off?”

I shake my head. “No…actually, for the first time, I feel like I’m headed somewhere.”

And I know that place is somewhere good.