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GROWING UP – THE EARLY YEARS
My name is C., and I’m a sex addict. I can trace the beginnings of my addiction to about the age of 7. This age seems to be the starting point for a lot of things which have significance later on in my life.
My first sexual fantasy, at age 7, was a rape fantasy. The TV show Mr. Roger's Neighborhood had a puppet world. I fantasized that the male members of the cast tied down the female member, naked and spread-eagled, and molested her sexually.
I had problems getting to sleep at night. I would lie awake in bed for hours before finally falling asleep. I never got enough sleep.
My sister and I had two very good friends – M. and A. The four of us used to have "bare parties" We would all get undressed in the playroom at their house and would crawl under their large throw rug. We didn't touch each other.
My Dad would normally come home at night and spend most of the evening in the bathroom -- either on the toilet on in the bathtub, reading books. Every so often he would bellow for one of us to bring him something, usually a beer. If we wanted to use the bathroom (we only had one), we did it in his presence. I remember once when he had dropped a coin into the toilet. He told me to get it out, despite the fact that the bowl was filled with floating feces.
Once, I was with another group of boys in the basement of a house. For some reason, we all decided to strip. I stripped completely, but everyone else stripped to their underwear. The father who owned the house chose that moment to check on us. I was very embarrassed and remember hiding behind a furnace or boiler of some sort.
At school one day, I got angry for some reason. The end result was that I caught a girl, knocked here down, kneeled on top of her, and shook her head.
My sister and I had something we called the "vagina wash," where she would be in the bathtub, on all fours, with the front of her pelvic area under the running water. One particular day, while she was doing this, I began to turn up the temperature of the water. I did this until it was very hot. I do not know how badly I burned her, but I remember my Mom asking me why I had done it -- so it must have been bad enough that she told my Mom.
All of these events happened when I was 7 or 8.
At age 9, in 4th grade. I was known as a boy who was willing to kiss girls, although I hadn’t actually done it. One day, a group of us boys chased down a girl at school. We caught her. The other boys held her down while I kneeled over her, to kiss her. I moved my face over hers, very close, without touching her. I’ve just recently realized how closely that activity resembled a forcible rape.
As a child, I was terribly lonely. I desperately wanted love, nurturing, and affection. I was constantly being told to go away and that if I wanted to be accepted then I needed to become someone that I was not. My needs and wants were not important. So I decided, at the age of 9, to kill myself.
There was no doubt that I would do it. I had it planned out. I even wrote a will. I told a group of kids at school, and they laughed. Apparently they found the statement, "I have a .22 and a pack of bullets, and I'm going to kill myself," extremely funny. Their reaction just enraged me, and made me more determined to do it. I don’t know why I didn’t kill myself. I don’t remember making the decision to not do it. I just never got around to it and eventually forgot about it. I did, however, begin to change. I found a way to relate to the world around me without being vulnerable and without feeling the pain. In later years, I would jokingly call this my "mask." Very few people ever got to see what was behind it. At first, the mask was unrefined, and over the years, I made improvements to it.
The mask was confident and at times arrogant. The mask was always the center of attention, and it was loud, aggressive, and forceful, as required, in order to accomplish this. The mask excelled at school, as a way of achieving approval. And the mask maintained very superficial relationships with just about everyone, except romantic partners. The mask insulted others through the use of "jokes." This kept them at a comfortable distance. The mask was a perfectionist that followed the rules to the letter. The mask needed constant approval and affirmation from others in order to function well, and it created an atmosphere where approval would occur. This led the mask to try to control events and people. The young boy behind that mask was very lonely and miserable, but the mask was better than what he'd had previously.
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