My Blow Job Essay

It's strange to write this essay. I am not even sure how to begin or what I want to say. I just know the title came to mind and I thought, yes, that is an essay I need to write. And yet, I cannot help thinking of who looks at my blog, what they might think, how they might judge me for talking about blow jobs and sex and all the sordid details of life with a sex addict.

It's a topic I am reluctant to address at times.

It's hard, now, two years after the divorce that was final on 2/15/08, to make myself remember what my past was like, what my 20s were like.

I have memory problems when it comes to sad moments of my past. The events disappear like being erased by the sands of an etch-a-sketch board, a soft-shaking and they unzip from the screen of my mind almost as they are occurring. If I do not write them down right away, I lose them.

"I think you'll do a reading for Joanne, just like you did for Andrea," my mom said to me in March of 2009, the weekend after my g0dmother died. We were driving down to Port Byron, Illinois from Minneapolis, MN, for her funeral. A breast cancer survivor, she had gotten her final death sentence the April before: pancreatic cancer, six months. She made it eleven.

"What are you talking about?" I asked. In July of 2008, my mother, father and I had made the drive to Port Byron to bury my second cousin, Joanne's daughter, who had died while calling her mother, complaining of leg pain, a blood clot. Valedictorian who spiraled down through bad relationships, financial trouble, depression and substances, had hit bottom in Vegas and was making her way back up into the world. She was three and a half years older than me, 33 when she died. She had been the cool cousin I looked up to, the one who played strange music in her room to a strobe light and talked on the phone for hours to her friend. The one who wrote me letters in perfect handwriting about the Guess jeans she had bought, about shopping trips, and her new cat Hillary.

She couldn't be dead.

"I didn't do a reading," I said to my mom. I remembered the awful drive down, the hot drive back, the nausea I felt in the hotel room, standing in the cemetary, feeling the hot humidity caught between the blue sky and the yellow earth, the weeds and cattails in the ditch across from the road pushing up into the sky, the birds darting across the skyline, the moisture I could smell coming up from the earth. Fertilizers, decay, a soggy earth baking under the July sun. I remember standing under a tent, thinking it wasn't fair that her life end this way, that she be dragged back from Seattle, Chicago, Vegas just to be pinned under the thumb of her conservative farmer relatives. I blamed her dad.

We went out for dinner at a restaurant and I remember staring at the menu and feeling sick. A burger. Your cousin's dead. French fries? Your cousin's dead. Pass the ketchup. She's gone.

I remember the wake, the pictures, the cheerleader, the model, the new pit-bull, new friend, her mother. Joanne, in a wig and too much blush, held my arm but didn't cry. She would be gone within a year and she already knew it. Maybe Andrea knew it too. Maybe she knew losing her mother would make her something of an orphan. So she went first.

I'm probably not being fair, but this is how I felt. This is what I remember. I blamed her dad.

But I don't remember reading. I don't remember the funeral. I got to my godmother's funeral eight months later and the church felt familiar. The shape of the room, the look of the altar. I couldn't place it in the neurons of my mind, but I remembered the drive from the funeral home to the parking lot.

I didn't remember giving a reading.

When I told my mom that I had lost the memory, that I couldn't access it, that I had somehow erased it, she nodded sympathetically. "It happens."

Why do I bring this up? It's because it is so important for me to write the details I remember still before they slide away. I want to remember because it was nearly ten years of my life that I spent learning about addiction, and that I feel like things happen for a reason, and I feel like I have learned and grown so much and that maybe others can learn and grow too by way of shared stories.

This is why I'm writing about blow jobs.

It's an essay about sorrow, unfortunately, but let's start it with compassion. Let's start with the catlyst for this essay, the encounter with the ex.

My ex-husband, the one I met when I was 18, started dating when I was 20, married when I was 24, and divorced when I was 29, moved four blocks away from me when we divorced. We live in Uptown, Minneapolis, the trendy yuppie-granola section of town, filled with lakes and bars and restaurants, and outdoor apparel shops that have replaced decades-old small family-owned dive bars. I run the lake. He runs the lake. Today I saw him when I was running the lake. He was walking with his new girlfriend, cute as a button, stocking hat pushed down over dirty blond hair. Both were carrying coffee cups and walking towards me as I finished the 3.5 mile lap around Lake Calhoun.

As usual, I did not look my best. Running pants on, University of Minnesota, Morris hoodie pulled tight over my head and tied under my chin to keep out the unexpected cold of the Saturday morning in March. My hands were balled under the ends of my sleeves and I knew without needing a mirror that my skin was pink verging on red and that sweat was beading on my forehead, upper lip, and under my eyes.

He looked good-looking. Six-foot-three, blue eyes that captured the clouds of the day and spit them back out in a flash, the slightest lines edging his thin face. Hat on to cover the receding hair line. Down vest over broad shoulders. He walked like he was half-listening to his girlfriend, the cute-as-a-button woman who was clearly venting during their walk.

I saw him see me. Then he stared at the lake as if something really interesting was out there and nodded like he was considering an important matter. But I wasn't scared. So I continued to watch him as I puffed along, sweaty and pink. At the last second he glanced at me; I felt a swell of sad love fill my being and though I don't think my eyes watered, they do now as I write this, and I smiled. I smiled because I can't pass my ex-husband on a running path and pretend he doesn't exist.

He tries. Pretends he can't see me. And in this way I know he still grieves too.

I feel sorry for him.

I can't imagine she knows about his addiction. What do you say to someone when you admit you are a sex addict? That's all behind me know. Six hours of surfing a day, but it's over.

And sex addiction is so easy for many people to dismiss. Porn floods our culture. Affairs are commonplace and not seen as a cry for help. When a friend said, "with complete sincerity, I don't care about Tiger Woods's extra marital affair, his 'sex addiction' or his apology. Take it to the Maury Povich or Jerry Springer show" on his facebook page, I couldn't resist commenting. I sent him a message explaining that it was my belief that people suffering from any type of addiction deserve compassion and firm personal boundaries. He responded by mocking Tiger and pointing out that the DSM-IV psych book didn't recognize sexual addiction as a legitimate condition.

Nine years of my life. Not recognized as a legitimate condition. Belonging to the Jerry Springer show.

This is why I want to talk about blow jobs.


How important is sex to a relationship? When Shawn and I first started dating, first started having sex, we were in a long-distance relationship. I assumed our sex life was healthy because we had a lot of sex when we would see each other. I didn't feel scared the first time we had sex; he was my first. First boyfriend, first lover, first husband, first love.

How does one decide to marry a sex addict? At the end, blue comes to mind. The end of our marriage was blue and black and vacuous. The space between us in bed crushes me still today. We would lie next to each other and lie to each other. "I love you, baby," he'd say.

At the end, we had sex maybe twice a month. I would attempt to sleep with him about eight times a month. His penis would be flacid and limp. I would rub up against him, arch my back, nuzzle my mouth against his pants, undo his belt, look up at him from under blonde hair and pretend like putting his cock in my mouth was the most amazing experience of my life. Lick, suck, press here, gaze up- like magic, I knew how to make him hard. We'd fuck for a minute or two. I'd pretend to get off. Then I would slide off of him, go back down on him, lick, suck, press til he came. In this way I reassured myself that our marriage was just fine.

The time in between sexual advances on my part- and I tried so hard to be enticing, wearing heels and one of his shirts when he came home from work, strewing clothing and underwear on the stairs of our townhome and waiting in bed naked, pouncing on him after we came home from the bar, from a night out with friends- we spent making dinner. We were great at making dinner. He'd chop, I'd sautee. He'd set the table, wash the dishes, I'd make the dessert, put napkins in napkin rings. We would have friends over. We'd cook for ourselves. We'd sit at the table or in front of the tv. We went to movies. We went to bars. We went to plays. We went to the Farmer's market. We never fought. We talked politics. We talked movies. We talked dreams and he pretended to encourage me. We talked music. We went to concerts. We watched movies at home and I'd fall asleep; so tired from my job. We were great when we weren't having sex.

It was my job that allowed him flexibility as an addict. I would leave at 6 a.m. I would pull out from the garage of our suburban townhome and notice a blue glow from the bedroom. He'd wake up when I left but didn't have to be to work until 9. Later I would start to notice his porn use, I'd know from the url addresses and the history that he was looking at porn from the time I left until fifteen minutes before he had to be at work.

Later I would find the credit card statements: $14, 000. It was school, he said, your ring. I'd see the records a year after my naive trust and realize it was dvds purchased from the same adult video empire, this on top of the $300 a month cable bill. I don't know where he kept them. I think there was a closet at work that he used to keep his stash. The addict has to hang on to the trophies.

And I see him as two people: Shawn and the addict. It was Shawn who looked ashamed when he saw me run around the lake today. Shawn who felt remorseful. It was the addict that would lie to me. "I saw the look in your eyes and I knew I had to quit," said the addict. Earlier, as I was waking to the concept of addiction, he'd say, "But how did you know?" addict eyes all soft when I confronted him about the internet porn use. I told him, stupidly, and thus the addict learned how to better cover his tracks.

So why does a girl marry a sex addict? Because he didn't pressure me or force me to do anything that felt scary. Because maybe I had problems with intimacy as well. Because lots of sex meant good sex in my 20 year-old mind. Because I used to love making him have an orgasm, because there was a certain thrill in being able to give him a blow job that would make him get off. Because we would have sex on the floor of his parents' living room while they were asleep, because I gave him a blow job in the car while his brother slept in the back seat. Because we had sex up against his truck in the cul-de-sac where he lived. Never mind that I felt empty during the experience, look how passionate this was. It must be love.

Plus I said, I do. The good girl in me believed that meant forever. That meant convincing him to love me, trying so hard to be what he wanted. Posing, arching, gazing, sucking. I could make him want me. Sometimes it worked. I could keep trying.

Do I give blow jobs today? This is not an essay about my current loves, my current relationships, but I do. I have. I refused for over a year, but I have relented and at times I will at least give head. I don't gaze. I don't fawn. I don't pretend it is the most amazing experience of my life. I still enjoy causing a man to have an orgasm, but I am much more selfish. I don't fake orgasms. I don't pretend to get off. I don't scream. If anything I keep my orgasm to myself. An orgasm requires a certain level of selfishness. A selfishness I lacked in my marriage and in lacking this quality, overgave and enabled an addict.

I have learned that what I cannot tolerate is that blue-black-vacuous feeling between a man and myself in bed. I have learned that sexual intimacy is about more than frequency, more than theatrics and face-paint.

I am compassionate towards Shawn, though a part of me still hates the addict. I believe our dinners were the way we made love. I believe our conversations were our intimacy. I believe he wishes he could have thrown away his addiction, the addiction he told me began at 14. I believe he wanted our relationship to work just as he wants things to work with his new girlfriend. I believe he wants to think he is different. I believe he wants to forget what happened.

Sometimes even I doubt it happened. How could a man possibly look at that much porn? Not want his wife? "It's definitely not you," said a guy at a bar when I told him my story. When I see him walking with his new girlfriend I question myself: did it happen? Did I make it up? Was it real?

It was real. It exists. It's a real problem. Addiction soothes pain and sex-addicts numb out through whatever method works. All of us dance on the edge of an addiction, whether it is work, or sex, or drugs, or booze, or antiques, or gambling, or music: we all have our escape from the loneliness that fills heart blue-black-and-vacuous.

We don't need the DSV-IV to tell us whether or not our problems exist.