Unable to vomit, I sat back and the orientation session ended. The Rubins thanked us for being good listeners and handed out information packets with a map of the Center grounds, a personalized schedule listing our counseling session and class locations, a rulebook, a pocket-sized edition of The Prescription for a Superior Existence, and a personal digital assistant with electronic copies of everything. The other guests, eyes on their packets, rose and filed out of the room, and Mrs. Rubin asked me civilly if I needed assistance in getting to my next event.
My itinerary said I was supposed to be in Room 227 of the Celestial Commons building, one floor above, so I left the room and paused to look up and down the hallway, where Shang-lee’s back was receding toward an Exit sign that marked the stairwell and elevator. Single escorts were placed at fifty-foot intervals between us, as motionless and erect as suits of armor. I passed these hollow men in their blue tunics, reached the stairs, and climbed them deliberately, going over problems that configured themselves in my head as a tetrahedron, with my separation from Mary on one side, my present incarceration on a second, my forced sobriety on a third, and my unemployment—with its implications for my debts—on a fourth. The first and fourth sides existed in the outside world, to which I didn’t have access presently, while the second and third affected me then and there, and had to be overcome. Which I didn’t know how to do. Shang-lee, Rema, Alice, and Star were out of sight when I got to the second-floor landing, apparently already in their counseling rooms.
A short man in his midforties with a flat nose, sparse hair, and ruddy complexion met me at the door of Room 227. His name was Mr. Ramsted, and he invited me to sit at an oblong mahogany table with attached seats that slid back and forth on floor tracks, where the other guests—Ang, Brian, Eli, Rema, Quenlon, Amanda, Tyrone, Helmut, Sarah, Summer, and Mihir—introduced themselves. For the benefit of Rema and me, the only newcomers to counseling, Mr. Ramsted explained the sessions’ format: on days not designated for group discussion, a guest told the story of how his or her problem developed up until the time they chose to enter the Wellness Center. Then the other guests would make observations and suggestions and corroborations, and Mr. Ramsted—who throughout his twenties had been a sex addict, practically living in the Castro’s bathhouses, and who therefore possessed authority beyond that of just being an actuated savant—would provide his own insights into what was wrong with us and how we could improve.
“Jack,” he said, “since this is your first day, why don’t you start our session by telling us the history of your problem?”
“What problem?”
“With sex.”
“I don’t have one.”
“You do.”
“I don’t.”
“Let’s not waste everyone’s time, please.”
This echo of my exchange with Ms. Anderson was an effective piece of psychological torture. I slid my chair back to the end of its groove. The faces around the table looked at me impatiently, as though I were an actor who’d come onstage in costume and makeup to say that the evening’s performance would not go on because I didn’t look the part.
“I don’t belong here,” I said.
Addressing the rest of the table as a prosecutor would a jury, Mr. Ramsted said, “Are you saying you’re completely satisfied with your sexual history?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“All of it.”
“Yes.”
“That’s amazing. I’ve met confirmed libertines, people who would rather have sex than bring about world peace, who can’t say as much.”
The walls were a creamy orange and air ducts in the ceiling circulated a cool breeze. The windows’ shades were drawn and I pictured what was happening on the other side of them—nothing. I felt as though I were tumbling down a mountain while the static world spun around me. My lower back was alight with discomfort and I placed my wrists gingerly on the tabletop, where they glowed yellow in the reflected varnish, thinking that if I remained completely still the pain in them would settle down to an acceptable throb.
“What do you want to hear?”
Mr. Ramsted pursed his lips and rubbed his nose, the divot in the bridge of which suggested an old fracture. “I want an explanation of the incredible statement you just made. I want you to confirm that you’ve never made an unwanted pass or offended a partner in bed. That you’ve never had an inappropriate dream about a family member or friend. That you’ve never lusted after someone too young or too old. That you’ve never had erectile dysfunction or gotten an erection when you shouldn’t have. That you don’t fantasize too much or too intensely. And that you think back on all your sexual encounters with approval and sanguinity.”
“I do.”
After a pause Mr. Ramsted said, “Rema, let’s hear about your experiences.”
“From the time I was a kid?” she said.
He rose and began slowly circling the table. “Just be honest. Without honesty no one can hope to grow or improve or come to know the truth.” He looked at me and continued his orbit. “You know what Alexander Pope said: ‘An honest Man’s the noblest work of God.’ And Emily Dickinson wisely wrote: ‘Truth is as old as God, / His twin identity—and will endure as long as He, / A co-eternity …’ And Jesus said, ‘You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ Honesty is the bedrock of Prescription for a Superior Existence, as it is the policy of every right-thinking adult who aspires to succeed in this life and the next.”
Rema then gave a nearly two-hour account of her sexual biography, starting full throttle at age thirteen and accelerating through twenty years of rogue-gallery men and dithyrambic women, in bedrooms and public parks and water closets and interstate train bathrooms, in and out of schools, in and out of jobs, in and out of in and out. It was a smoldering, exhaustive, unpredictable, and inventive monologue that, had it been told breathily instead of with evident pain and shame and self-censure, could have been turned into a podcast sensation. I was enthralled and uncomfortably aroused throughout most of it, and my problems seemed as small as dust mites.
“I have to cut this short,” Mr. Ramsted finally said, giving me another reason to resent him, “and forgo our chance to comment, which is unfortunate because this tragic story puts into stark relief the misery caused by our libidos, in exemplary fashion, but it’s time for lunch. I’d like to thank Rema for her brave, unstinting account of two decades’ worth of mistakes. I asked for honesty and she provided it generously.”
Mihir fell in line beside me on the way to the dining hall and said that despite my obstinate behavior during exercises and counseling, I hadn’t ruined my chances at the Wellness Center. I could yet make up for it. At the serving line as I selected six pieces of pepperoni pizza and a tall fruit juice, he said he understood my attitude, which, although counterproductive and immature, was to be expected at first. Men were brought up to brag about their exploits, not confess them, so we felt cognitive dissonance when learning that our every sexual thought from the moment puberty stretched and dropped our genitals was a debasement of our truest self. It had taken him five days to work up the courage and to develop the perspective to tell his story.
“Is that right?” I said, disappointed by the pizza before even tasting it.
He ladled salad dressing over a plate of tomatoes. “Now I love to tell my story. Every time I do I feel such relief and gratitude that I changed before it was too late. As recently as one month ago I was like a person eating red meat three meals a day without any thought for his cholesterol level, as though I had a good reason to be cavalier about my diet, as though heart attacks were as uncommon as Huntington’s disease!