Army days, deprivation and excess

The army provided me with discipline and structure. It also immediately deprived me with any privacy. I could not easily get a sex fix in basic training, as I was in an open room bunked with 8 guys. I’m not interested in guys and that also made any type of masturbation a challenge. That is if I was going to keep it a secret. Occasionally I sneaked into a bathroom stall with some sun block for lube. This was a rare treat as the daily schedule and conditions didn’t allow for much spare time. I got in tremendous physical shape in basic, and despite what shrinks might tell you, I wanted to “express myself with a woman more than ever during training. I didn’t want the hard work on my body to go to waste.

I had one fleeting moment with a very attractive female holdover. She came into the office where I had duty one night. We had a great talk and some pretty good flirting. Unfortunately we were discovered and had to part ways before anything “good” happened.

I didn’t have any luck in AIT either. Although there were woman around, I didn’t have any luck with them. I became the master of silent, nearly motionless masturbation, in my bunk once I heard the other guys fall to sleep.

Once I was shipped off to Germany for permanent duty things improved, as far as my addict and love life were concerned. Germans are sexually much more liberal than Americans. I even had some advantage to the other G.I.s, in that I could speak the language.

Part of the typical G.I. initiation was to take “newbies” to the red light district in the city. German brothels are unassuming, but clean, despite their seedy business (they are also legal and government regulated). When you walk down the hallways, available prostitutes are waiting in the doorway of their bedrooms. Typically the floors (usually at least three) are arranged by race and sometimes age. So basically you walk around and engage in a sort of immoral window shopping. I was taken to these within the first few weeks of my tour in Germany. I found a place to act out many a fantasy and basically started a hobby of buying sex from every type and race of women that I ever wanted.

I had a couple of girlfriends in this time as well. Tonya was a friend of a friend in Berlin. A good friend of mine from Italy had moved to Berlin. He was still in high school at the time. When I visited him I met mostly girls who were still in high school or freshly graduated. Tonya was a 16 year old high school drop out. I was twenty when I met her. We had an immediate attraction toward each other and started a sexual relationship right away. At the time I didn’t see a problem with our age difference and oddly neither did her parents. This was not a typical age range for me at the time. I did develop feelings for Tonya but our relationship was cut short by the Gulf War.

During the Gulf War I returned to my practice of masturbating quietly and motionless in my sleeping bag at night. It was seven months of lonely nights.

A hero’s welcome awaited us when we returned from the desert. I had sex with women just based on the glorification of war and heroes. It didn’t last long but women at bars were certainly willing to “put out” for soldiers just because of the war. I also continued my prostitution hobby upon returning to Germany.

I purchased a motorcycle with money I saved while at war. I loved motorcycles but I also wanted one to help me pick up women. It worked sometimes for sure. Occasionally all it took was convincing a woman to take a ride with me and the rest of the seduction was pretty easy.

I started working on my craft of seduction during this time. I used my innocent looks often to put my target women at ease. I saw seduction as a game and I definitely got a charge or a thrill from the chase. I studied books on the subject and came up with a few of my own tricks, ploys and theories. Many times I added to the thrill by having sex in public locations or in front of other people.

I’m sure I hurt some of the women involved. Sometimes my feelings were hurt as well but I saw it as all part of the game. Every conquest pumped my ego as the numbers of partners increased. Now I don’t try to figure out how many women I slept with. I actually just feel lucky I didn’t get VD.

I moved to Savannah, Georgia after my tour in Germany.

An apology to women

Sometimes in my story I may sound sexist or at least very impersonal when I write about the women in my experience. I’m not a great writer but I do want to convey that I do respect women despite my objectification and using of them. I’m trying to write about the experience as I felt at the time. That is going to reflect my immaturity and my state of mind at the time these event actually occurred. I’m an addict and by definition I’m sick. This is not an excuse but an explanation. Please forgive me if you can find it in your heart to do so.

Three Circles of Behavior

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been considering the direction of this blog and I decided to add a few things in addition to finishing the story.

In S.A.A. we learn to describe our behaviors as a three ring circle. The center inter most circle comprises the destructive behaviors that have made our lives unmanageable as well as hurting those who we love as well as ourselves.

My bottom line behaviors: These are the behaviors that define my addiction. (inner circle)

Internet pornography. Sober since April 2007.
Compulsive masturbation. Sober since April, 2007.
Seeking pornography at work during breaks. Sober since June, 2007.
Affairs outside of a committed relationship (though not my current relationship). Sober since 2004.
Anonymous sex with multiple partners. Sober since 1992.
Sex with more than one partner the same day. Sober since October 2003.
Seduction. Sober since January 2005
Lying about my addiction and behaviors. Sober since August 2007
Objectification of women. Not Sober.
Living a secret or double life. Not sure.

Triggers: The situations and behaviors that trigger the above behaviors. (middle circle)

Stress at work or home.
Too much alone time, especially with unprotected internet access.
Feeling tired, sleepy and out of shape.
Seeing attractive women, anywhere.
Too much time between healthy sex.
Boredom.
Not spending enough time on art, working out, and spiritual activities.

Healthy behaviors: Behaviors that not only help me avoid the inner circle, but also make me a better person. (outer circle)

Prayer and meditation
Going to meetings
Calling my sponsor or other members of S.A.A.
Reading motivational, self-help material
Reading for enjoyment
Working out and sports
Calling friends, family
Working on my committed relationship
Spending time with my dog
Volunteering

I hope this helps clarify a few things. Stay tuned in for more of my story.

SH

The high school years of a sex addict.

My high school years were spent in Vicenza Italy. In a way high school was a great time in my life and in other ways it was horrible. I struggled with grades through out high school. I kidded people and said that I was on the five year plan. My parents separated when I was 16 and my mother moved away. To make matters worse, the physical and emotional abuse from my father returned. When I had difficulty with school, particularly if it was my own fault, he would tell me that I was going to be a bum or a hobo when I grew up. Sometimes I believed him, but some part of me inside never gave up.

Girls were a hit or miss situation with me. While I didn’t date until I was a junior, I did have the occasional erotic encounter. I was a decent looking boy and with wrestling I managed to make myself fairly attractive to girls. Italian girls liked me I think because I was blond and different from Italian boys. Italians are also a bit more sexually liberated. This surely added to my growing love of Italy.

As much shame and guilt as brings me, I must admit I took advantage of a lot of girls who developed a crush on me. Many times I had sex with these girls only to dump them if they wanted more of a relationship[1]. My heart was dead for a while and I just couldn’t allow myself to get involved emotionally with somebody. I was emotionally attached to sex but not my partners. I kept this habit through out the throws of my addiction.

I belonged to a circle of friends that comprised of a diverse group of kids. We were athletes, artists, musicians, pot heads and general misfits. We all had one thing in common, our home life sucked in one way or another. Many of us used each other for comfort or sex (between guys and girls in the circle) and we all self medicated with alcohol and drugs.

On a positive note, in my junior year I did get my act together somewhat. I focused on my academics and sports. I pulled my grades up to the A-B range and I had moments of glory in Athletics. My art, thanks to heavy mentoring from my art teacher, also developed nicely. I even managed to have a couple of healthy romantic relationships.

I left home and joined the Army right after graduation.

[1] My average relationship was less than two weeks. I don’t consider this dating.

Early teen life of a sex and porn addict.

I crawled back and under the waterbed1. In the beam from the flashlight, I could see something. I crawled closer and anticipated my find. Stacks and more stacks of girlie magazines awaited me.

After the losing of Becky, and major heartbreak2, I returned to my secret life. I began to experiment with masturbation. At first, I didn’t really know that it would be so pleasurable. I had a bad experience at Boy Scout camp one summer. I had to take showers in the open bay shower with all the males in the camp. I didn’t really know what “shrinkage” was about until then. When I went to go in the shower with a friend of mine, I noticed that my penis decided to shrink heavily because of the cold night air in the drafty out door shower hut. I was ridiculed for having a small penis, even though I knew it was actually bigger but was being shy for some reason.

I thought if I got more erections that, my penis would stretch out and relax. So, I started experimenting with lotion to stroke my penis into an erection. I quickly realized how good this felt but still didn’t ejaculate for the first weeks. This played into my insecurities that the other boys at camp helped develop, as well as the other kids at school who said I was a loser. I already felt broken because of Becky. So, feeling like something was wrong with me wasn’t a big stretch.

This is when for some reason I snooped around my parent’s room while they were out of town. I found many stacks of porn magazines, and videos in a tunnel under their waterbed. I just looked initially, amazed out how different each nude woman was. Then it occurred to me that combining masturbation with the porn would be fun. And it was fun and I was finally able to ejaculate. This was a relief at first. I was no longer defective, but that feeling didn’t last.

Soon my masturbation and porn habit grew and intensified. I began to feel different again. I suppose it was a form of shame, but I felt like it was wrong and I was gay or something (I obviously know now that masturbation isn’t exclusive any sexual preference). I definitely liked girls so I’m not sure why I felt gay.

I continued my masturbation to my dad’s ever growing porn collection. Oddly, during this time, the relationship with my father stabilized until my mid teens. I’m not sure, but I think sometimes that my outward behavior changed and he sensed that I shared some of his personality flaws.

I really wanted anther girlfriend at this time but just couldn’t find a girl that I liked enough to risk the rejection. Besides, I felt as if I would be inadequate anyway. My body was doing all these weird things, I was doing weird things and my voice would break because it would change every other week.

Reflecting on my early teens, I definitely see the development of my secret or double life.
I wish sometimes I can go back, slap the crap out of myself, and get my shit together. Anyway, that’s not helpful so I wont dwell on it.


1 My parents had a large oversized waterbed that had a support structure with drawers. There was a tunnel in the back behind the headboard, and another tunnel down the middle that you could get to from the back one.
2 You have to read the previous blog if you haven’t already.

Young love at it's best

We left Germany for a much different life in Natick Massachusetts. While I was in Germany, I longed to be a “normal American kid.” I’m not sure of all the underlying reasons why I felt the need for some normalcy in my life. I had a romanticized idea of what an American boy should be like. I thought at least I should have a bike, a tree house and a girlfriend1. I actually got just that when I was in Natick but that didn’t help me as much as I thought it would.

When we arrived in Natick, I was in the middle of my sixth grade year. In Germany I was attending an elementary school where sixth grade was the highest grade in the school, “big man on campus,” as my dad put it. In Natick sixth grade was in middle school all of a sudden, I was in a school situation that I was not prepared for. While I liked the different classes and electives that middle school offered, I was behind the power curve socially. I didn’t really fit in the cliques that existed. If I had been there during football season, I feel I would have made a name for myself but I felt like a fish out of water in a semi hostile area. Some of the cliques of kids were downright mean to me, calling me a Nazi because I had lived in Germany and once at recess I was beat up by a group of about six kids.

On the bright side, I loved my new neighborhood. I quickly made friends with several of the boys my age in the government housing area. The housing area looked like a regular neighborhood with single-family houses, all painted government brown or tan of course. The cool part was that somebody who lived there before had built a large tree house in the backyard that bordered the woods. I was living part of my dream already.

Another part of my fantasy of being a normal boy came true as well2. I became friends with an older boy who lived across the street from me. Jerry was a giant but he had downs syndrome. He was a tremendously loyal and sweet kid to have as a friend. While it’s great to have a good friend, Jerry’s sister Becky was an absolute beauty.

Becky was about a year younger than me, she had long dark curly hair and unbelievably pretty face. She was also a great person to talk with. Despite her beauty she was like me, she had problems growing up and other struggles, and best of all she liked me. It was immediate, as soon as I realized that she liked me I asked her to be my girlfriend and she agreed. I wanted my relationship with Becky to be different then my secret friends in the past. Fist of all it wasn’t secret. The boys at school couldn’t understand how the freak from Germany was dating the girl who had turned them down and didn’t seam to like boys. I didn’t really understand either but I didn’t care. We held and talked everyday, we shared our dreams and kissed gently. We were best friends and we were in love. Our relationship was everything I thought a romance was supposed to be. I still think back on it with amazement.

We never became inappropriate sexually. It’s not that I didn’t want Becky that way, I did. I believe she was somewhat molested by her father, and I was very gentle with here physically. I really wanted to keep our relationship appropriate for our age and I was committed to do so3. I had a great deal of respect for Becky and treated her as well I could. She was extremely loving toward me in return. It’s not to say we didn’t have a physical relationship because we did. It included, kissing deeply, touching, caressing, some petting, and cuddling but not sex. We even talked about it sometimes. Were available physically but we both felt that if we were ready we would be sexual. It just never happened. This surprisingly was OK with me. We even went skinny dipping at a near by river often. I loved seeing Becky naked and I loved embracing and kissing while we were nude but we never took it further. I feel that our relationship gave me the strength to keep my boundaries with her.

Sadly, as it goes in a military family, Becky’s family moved after a year of our relationship. We wrote for a few years and tried to remain true to each other from a distance but it was not meant to be. We never saw each other again.

To say I was devastated over the loss of my first love would be an understatement. Here I am 25 years later and I’m not sure that I don’t think about Becky at least once a day. I became depressed and broken. I didn’t date again until I was a junior in high school.

1 Clearly I watched too many movies.
2 The having a girlfriend part (I did get a bike too). Keep reading.
3 We met when I just turned twelve. She turned eleven a few months after we stated dating. When she moved away I was thirteen and she was twelve.

The preteen years of a sex addict

I knew bringing the note home would end badly. My third grade teacher told me that I was doing good in class. I walked home as slow as I could clutching the note that would get me in big trouble. I wasn’t in a hurry because I knew a whipping would be coming. It felt like a fat man was sitting on my chest, my eyes were weepy and felt like I was going to puke. I had a hard time swallowing as I made the climb to our government issued family apartment on the fourth floor.

When I realized that nobody was home, I was somewhat relieved. I had some time. I grabbed my bike out of the basement and headed my cub scout meeting1. I would face the music when I got home, but for now, I was free.2

While we were in Germany I started third grade at the DODDS3 elementary school that was in the housing area across from “Centerville,” where my family and I lived. The class work was much more than I was ready for and the reports home often lead to beating sessions with my dad followed by long term grounding.

My circle of friends in the housing area were all latchkey kids like me. We mostly spent our time after school in the large playground and fields between the apartment building and parking lots of the housing area. It wasn’t entirely unhappy, as a group, we were tight. As we got older, into our pre-adolescent and teen years, hide-n-go-seek was replaced by tackle football5 and kissing games.

Many times somebody would buy a porno magazine from the German convenient stores, or find a stash that was thrown out in a near by dumpster. We would take these into the wooded path and find a spot to look at the adult material we found. Often the guys and girls would talk about sex on the path. Sometimes we played showed off our private parts to each other; and sometimes the kissing games would lead to heavy petting. I missed the girl in California and long to resume the secret sex life I had.

I don’t remember where I met Margo. She was a half-German girl who lived in the “economy,” or German houses right off the path of the government housing area. Margo became my secret friend. Unlike the girl in California, Margo was more than two years older than me. She was pretty and more developed then the other girls I had seen in private before. I liked her and developed what I thought were real feelings. We never went out in public together. We spent most of the time in her attic playroom. It started much like the “play” that I did with the girl in California, but ended differently.

Margo began to learn how to get me aroused on a normal basis. I also noticed that Margo’s private parts would get wet if things got a little exciting. When I was eleven and she was about thirteen, we managed intercourse but without ejaculation. It was both extremely exciting and somewhat disappointing. I didn’t know how it was supposed to feel, but I felt that it should be more intense and less clumsy than it really was.

I left Germany at the peak of my relationship with Margo. I promised to write and so did she, but we never did.


1 I stared scouting in Cub Scouts; my father was the local Boy Scout master so he made me. It was good though. Learned a lot about how to be a boy and overall it was a very positive experience. I stuck with it and nearly earn the rank of Eagle Scout. Dad was a great Scout Master. He treated my brother and I like the other Scouts while we were involved with it.
2 Dad whipped me with belt until I clearly had open wounds on my rear.
3 Department of Defense Dependent Schools.
5 We played both neighborhood tackle football as well as organized football with the youth recreation program.