People appeared to have no clue how truly horrible they were.

It bothered me that we behaved differently when other people were at the arcade. It bothered me that we had to be different at different times. I wished we could always be ourselves.

Greg had told me on the ride over that there was another organisation called SLAA, which stood for Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. He didn’t know the difference between the two, but this was more conveniently located, and anyway love wasn’t his addiction.

They were looking at videos, and the woman was giggling quietly, as they often do in porn stores, unable to believe what they’re seeing, the monuments men have built to vaginas and to the very notion of sex.

It goes without saying that a great majority of men are sex addicts, or would be if they could manage to get laid.

Real men don’t need porn.

I couldn’t help wondering what it was that made me not good enough. It was a familiar feeling. I’d had it off and on my entire life.

I could have something like an encounter out there – a vicarious experience completely free of any fears of infection or the face-to-face intimacy I didn’t know how to process.

It might have been the real reason I went out there at all, to hear all the nice things guys had to say when they got you alone, when they earned their shot in a booth with you.

I am sometimes in awe of all that I have been exposed to culturally that I never would have discovered if not for the pursuit of sex or sexual gratification. I think of all the movies I watched when I was young simply because I thought I might glimpse a nude body.

That was the moment when I knew I was in real trouble, that I might really be the kind of person you weren’t supposed to be.

What exactly are you looking for in a job? Like, what’s your best-case scenario for a new career?”“I haven’t really thought that far. The best-case scenario is just that I look back on this entire era of my life and laugh and say, ‘What a weird time that was. I can’t believe I did that.