The Pervs & Partners Convention
If you had asked me a year ago where I thought I would be on a hot Saturday afternoon in July, the answer probably would have been something like shopping, playing on the computer at home, sitting outside chilling, or even preparing for a barbecue. The last answer I would ever think of (well probably the very last answer I’d give would be, “sitting in jail”)…so the next to the last answer I would think of would be attending the SA/S-Anon International Convention. But that is where I was today.
SA is an organization for those suffering from compulsive lusting, masturbation or sexual behavior. In other words, sex addicts. S-Anon is the partner organization for those family members affected by a sexaholic. My dear husband belongs to SA and I to S-Anon.
The convention this year was in Philadelphia. My friend from S-Anon, R, had been pushing our attending and participating in the conference. She had been to others and found them to be a lot of fun. Fun with sex addicts seemed incomprehensible to me. As such, I have to say that I was not at all sure what to expect when I walked in on Friday afternoon. I love my fellow S-Anons, but those SA people (except for my husband, of course) were a kind of unknown commodity. These were men and women who lusted, masturbated, adulterated (I just made up that word), went to strip clubs, procured prostitutes (?prostiturated) and in some rare instances, exposed themselves, molested, or in other ways violated adults, children, and animals. What the hell was I getting into here?
Getting stuck in traffic, I arrived late to run my breakout group that I had been asked to moderate: Expectations: Keeping Them Reasonable. Luckily they had found a substitute and I got to participate in this S-Anon discussion without having to lead it. Afterwards I went in search of my dear husband who by then should have been there. He wasn’t reachable by phone, so I found a place to plunk myself down and decided to wait. Now most of the people who passed by were nice and cordial, yet some held my gaze just a beat too long, and their smiles were a tad more than friendly. But no one was inappropriate. It was just clear that some of these people seriously had some boundary issues that they still needed to work on…diligently.
I got up to stretch my legs and ran into a sista. She looked at me hopefully, “Are you an SA?” As I responded, her eyes drifted downward to my color-coded nametag. She looked sad to see that my tag was yellow, the brand of S-Anon. The SA’s had blue tags. The Double Winners (no, I didn’t make this term up) , those with both addict and co-addict issues, had yellow and blue nametags. I told Sis that I was an S-Anon, and she shared that she had been looking for other SA women for company. Within 5 minutes I knew that she was from Texas and had issues with compulsive lusting and employment. She also knew that my husband had been asked to move out, went through inpatient rehab in Texas, and had finally managed to meet the 3 stipulations for him to be able to return home. Such was the level of intimacy at my first SA/S-Anon convention.
I did start to get that kinda schizophrenic, twitchy but intense staring vibe from Sis after a few minutes, so I took my leave and called my husband yet again. I finally reached him and he said that he had sent me a text message explaining that since he had missed most of the afternoon, he wouldn’t be coming. All I could respond was a pitiful, “You’re leaving me here alone with all these people?” A message that translated to, “You’d better get your happy ass over to this hotel since you were the person whose problem led us to this Perv Convention in the first place!” He got the message and got there by dinner.
We ate at a table with most of my S-Anon buddies and their spouses. There were so many things I knew about the partners, but now I got to pretend I didn’t and simply enjoy a nice dinner with everyone. Actually there really wasn’t any pretending. I guess we all just knew that each person at the table knew more private stuff about ourself than we would ever need disclose. There was kind of a comfort in realizing that everyone already knew your and your partner’s business. We had an intimacy in recovery more than most people would ever know. After dessert there were speakers who shared their stories: one from SA and one from S-Anon. You could see how each person hit his/her bottom and found recovery through the program. By the time this part was done, it was about 9 PM, time for the Birthdays Celebration. Mason and I ducked out. I was exhausted.
I don’t know if it was the conference subject matter or this damn progesterone I am taking, but this morning, I had the most erotic dream about meeting this 18 year old guy who worked at McDonald’s (who looked something like my favorite hottie from Il Divo, Urs 
) who I ended up having mad, passionate sex with for weeks on end. (It is funny how one dream can seem to last weeks.) The next thing I knew, I woke up and found it was already 9:21 AM and I was supposed to have been back among the pervs for the first full day of the conference. As such I missed the couple’s meeting, but managed to make it there in time for my shift at the literature table.
As I sold books, pamphlets and other S-Anon items, I was struck by how overwhelmingly normal most of the attendees appeared. Who would have thought that sex addiction would have cut such a swath through the lives of these benign, Wonder Bread looking people? Now yes, there were still those who appeared to be a tad off…perhaps in need of medication and talk therapy or an increase in medication and talk therapy. There were also some who I thought might benefit from ECT or a jail cell, but these were few and far between. And who was I to judge just by their demeanor? They might be thinking the very same thing about me.
The lunch speaker told a story that was so funny that it bears repeating. I’m sure he won’t mind. He explained that he also had an issue with alcohol. That was his first addiction. A long time ago before he had achieved sobriety, he said that he had been driving and decided to step on the brake hard to see if any of the beer cans that rolled out from under the seats had anything left in them. They didn’t. So he stopped at a bar. When he walked in, there was a woman who caught his eye. She was a fair redhead who couldn’t take her eyes off of him. “This is the woman for me,” he thought to himself. He sat at the bar and ordered a drink. When he turned to look at the woman, she was still riveted to his face. He was thrilled. He asked the bartender her name. “Gloria,” he responded grimly. “She can’t be named Gloria, not with that red hair and complexion,” he thought to himself. “She should be named something like ‘Colleen’.”
He told the bartender to give her whatever drink she wanted. This seemed to displease the bartender a bit. “Perhaps,” the speaker thought, “the bartender thinks that Gloria is the woman for him. That must be the cause of his attitude problem.” So he had a few more drinks and ordered another round for Gloria. Finally he decided that he would make his way over to her and introduce himself. As he stood and began to walk in her direction, the bartender yanked him by the collar and threw him out the door.
“Hey, what gives?” the speaker yelled at the bartender, “I was just going to say hello to the lady. What’s your problem?”
The bartender poked him in the chest and said, “Your problem, Buddy, is that Gloria’s a mannequin!”
“That’s when I knew that I had a drinking problem,” he concluded. The audience roared!
I spent the afternoon in sessions entitled, You Can Get Bitter or You Can Get Better, and Freedom From The Bondage of Self. The former session really illustrated the S-Anon Problem. We are a collection of people, female and male, who put the needs of others before the needs of ourselves, to our incredible detriment. We live life from the standpoint of victims and exist in a state of dashed expectations and bitterness. And so many there were still in the phase of bitterness. This bitterness is so tied to the perception of victimhood. We see ourselves as victims of our sexaholic’s illness. We think that if s/he could recover, our lives would be as we had hoped. But in this victimhood, there is an incredible powerlessness. I shared that my bitterness left me when I began taking control of my life back. I had given over control to my crazy addict husband. His recovery would save both of us. Bullshit!! His recovery is his problem and Liana needed to be the one who saved Liana. And I did. I’m learning how to care for myself and to put myself first. I worried initially that this self-care would lead to my becoming selfish. Yet as Mason so aptly explained, that will never happen since people who are truly selfish never worry about being perceived as selfish. They just are selfish and unconcerned. So I’m practicing self-care and putting Liana first. With that, my bitterness dissipated. Oh sure I still have anger, frustration, and can get wholeheartedly pissed at my husband, but I no longer see myself as his victim. I’m calling the shots for my own life…and that feels good.
Later in the Bondage of Self session, I ran into one of those people I mentioned above for whom ECT might be of benefit. The woman was an SA who came to this S-Anon session (she admitted that she is actually a Double Winner, though her nametag was blue). She was disheveled and unable to sit still as the speaker shared initially. More interestingly, she would have these periodic myoclonic jerks that were either a primary tic disorder or a medication side effect. I amused myself by trying to remember which neuroleptics had jerks as a side effect, but I was not so crass as to have pulled out my Axim to look it up. She was the first to speak after the speaker ceded the floor. Clearly the woman was disturbed. She spoke of not feeling safe anywhere. Of course my physician hat came on as I worried about whether she was suicidal. She went on a long stream of consciousness ramble about her religious abuse by her family, her feelings that many in SA were provincial in their attitudes, her regrets about how much she had misused her body sexually, and ended with not feeling safe in her own skin.
Of course, like good S-Anons, no one would dare interrupt her sharing, though it went long past the 3 minute recommended time limit. An SA probably would have told her to be quiet so that someone else could talk, but not us S-Anons. I wondered if the moderator had the balls to cut her off if she continued her monologue for a half hour. Probably not. I leaned forward in my chair, trying to think of some way that I could stop her ramble and perform a suicide assessment. But finally after 10-12 minutes, she abruptly stopped speaking. Everyone was caught off guard. “Thanks for sharing,” we all finally mumbled. That was it for me during that session. My ADD kicked in and I began to try to come up with her probably diagnosis. Too fluid for schizophrenia, but definite paranoid ideation. And the myoclonic jerks. She was a puzzle.
Then it was time for dinner. Our group found a table at the back of the room and I had a chance to remark on the major astonishment of the conference so far: the large number of orthodox Jews in attendance. What was that about? There were 4 tables of 12 each composed of orthodox Jews. That was a significant percentage of the 580 people in attendence. Their tables had labels on them saying “Kosher” and “Glatt Kosher,” the latter I misheard when it was announced as “Black Kosher.” What the hell is “Black Kosher?” OK, so I misheard. What the hell is “Glatt Kosher?” The Unjew sitting next to me (otherwise known as my husband) had no freaking idea. Geez, he didn’t even know that the orthodox women were all wearing wigs that seemed to be some variation of Jennifer Aniston’s hairstyle from back in the day on Friends. (Even I knew that the orthodox women wore wigs!) What kind of Jew did I marry?
So while I’m there trying to figure out what the heck Glatt Kosher was, I was also trying to puzzle out why so many of these orthodox Jews were sex addicts. I’m still scratching my head on this one. I understand that anyone can be a sex addict, but I didn’t see any kufi wearing Muslims or Hindus or other representative religion being so prolific at the conference. This is a puzzlement.
Ms. Rambling Myoclonic Jerks joined us at our table for dinner, to my great surprise. She seemed weird but lucid. She even told two jokes, one a complicated Catholic/Jewish philosphical ditty. I got no suicidality from her. She’s just…strange. (How’s that for a DSM-IV diagnosis?) After dinner and two more great speakers, we decided to duck out again before the Talent Show. (Well Pervs can be talented as well…) I made it home in good time, shot myself in the butt with more progesterone, and have curled up in the bed with the kitties and my Vaio to document for my written history, the wonders my attending the Perv & Partners Convention.
Who woulda thunk it? And we’ve got one more half-day to go tomorrow.
Whew!
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