Sexaholics (31 page)

Miki

More than one year later

I
t was early September, the very
beginning of fall, though the stubborn summer temperatures still held on tight
as the late day’s heat clung in the motionless air. At The Addiction
Center, the Sexaholics meeting for the evening was a special one, with a guest
speaker that Rachel Cummings had invited personally.

The meeting was held in the theatre-style auditorium in the main complex of
the rehab center. The comfortable, cushioned seats were jet black. The new room
with a stage was added to the complex less than two months earlier.

There was standing room only. Miki sat in her shiny new wheelchair on that
stage, ready to address the group. And everyone was all ears. The theme for the
evening’s meeting was
Make Your Mess Your Message.
Not a member
was stirring. You could hear a pin drop.

“I was just a shy kid, and very, very skinny,” Miki told the
dozens and dozens of people. She wore all white, with silver jewelry and silver
flats. Her hair was freshly straightened, and her sheer makeup was flawless. Her
eyes were wide, and her face gave off a humble glow. Her expression almost
seemed pure. “But I grew out of both, as most who knew me a year ago can
attest to. My younger sister, Adore, has always been thin. Built like a
twelve-year-old. Her slender little self is right there standing near the
wall.” People followed Miki’s gesture at her sister, who stood in
the back of the room with a soft smile. Also standing in the back was
Miki’s mother, with a face identical to Miki’s. “My sister got that body from my mother, who’s back there also.” She nodded
to her mom. “She helps
take care of my seven-year-old son, and my niece, who’s my sister’s
fourteen-month-old. Yeah, my mom is just hitting sixty, and is still one hundred
eighteen pounds, just like she was when she was in her twenties. But for some
reason, especially when I was younger, I was handed the body of the women on my
father’s side. Hippy and rumpalicious. They say I was built like a cross
between JLo and Janet. I’ll admit that I used my body to my advantage. In
my case, the boys never noticed me before I started to fill out. But I quickly
saw their attention as my fuel. It drove me. It gave me what I didn’t
have. I got noticed.

“I worked as a topless dancer, once I got some serious breasts after
high school, and then I stripped for a while. That got me paid. I never went to
college. I wasn’t very smart like my baby sister, but I got by. In my mind
it was dumb to spend another four years in school when I didn’t end up
graduating from high school until I was nineteen. I was held back twice.

“I was the fast one, not my sister, Adore. Right around the time I
started developing and my attention-getting booty made its long-awaited
appearance, I would sometimes sneak out of the house. I’d go to the homes
of boys in my neighborhood and give them blow jobs. I’d have phone sex
with girls from school while they masturbated. Girls whose voices I knew, though
I couldn’t even tell you what they looked like. I just took their calls
and got them off. I even had threesomes the summer before ninth grade. Needless
to say, I became very popular. By the age of thirteen I lost my virginity and
lost my mind. I loved sex. It was heaven on earth. I immediately craved it after
the very first time. My first-time sex partner was a virgin, too, but we took
each other to fuckdumcum. It was all I could think about afterwards. I came four
times. He came five.

“What I knew for sure was that sex was the one thing I was really,
really good at. I used it to my advantage. Call me a ho or a slut, but I admit
that I got what I could from men because I believed they’d surely try to
get what they wanted from me. I saw my vagina as valuable. Not my mind. But my
vagina.

“No one could have ever really given me what sex did for me. And no, no
one raped me when I was little. No one assaulted me. My father or uncles never
tried to do freaky things with me. I will say that my father was a little
distant. A little constipated as far as communicating his emotions. More so with
me than with my baby sister. Or so I thought. Some will say that is the root of
it all. But I say, the bottom line is, he was there. My mother made up for his
inability to connect emotionally. I don’t think I ever blamed myself, like
something was wrong with me. Yes, my sister and I battled for attention and
wanted what the other had. Maybe I thought she had Daddy and I didn’t, but
nothing earth-shattering happened until I crossed the line and pushed the limits
with the ultimate sister betrayal. I slept with her now ex-husband. As I said, I
just didn’t care. Some say I was a nympho. I mean like Samantha from
Sex and the City
, I had to have it. But, I say I was just hypersexual
with one hell of a nerve. Plain and simple.

“Years ago I left my son’s father after being with him for four
years, but I kept on seeing the few men I had on the side the whole time I was
with him. He moved on and got married. I didn’t care. I continued to let
him give me what I needed physically. He desired and pleased me. That was all
that mattered.

“Over a year ago I was sleeping with—no, I was
fucking
,
a fellow SA member. The sex was really good. He was my cohort in crime as far as
falling off the wagon. The benefit in being with him was, again, that he was
someone to please me and temporarily fill my feelings of worthlessness with
being unlovable. It was just another means to cope, I suppose. The thing is, I
never took the time to stop and ask him if he was available. I just didn’t
care that I was fucking someone else’s man.

“I was even fucking a woman. My best friend, who I never noticed had
fallen in love with me. In a roundabout way, I pushed her right into the arms of
my boyfriend. I didn’t notice that, either. But what the hell, I mean I
did bring her into our bed.

“I also had an older sugar daddy. He handed over the cash when I needed
it and I’d break him off some pussy, so we were good. He was way old
enough to be my father and threw down well enough to keep my attention. He could
have been on Viagra, I don’t know. Like I said, I usually didn’t
take the time to ask questions. I didn’t assume his wife knew about it.
After all, she was suffering from dementia, and from what he told me, their
marriage was sexless. He got what he needed. What I needed was new clothes,
jewelry, and the latest shoes. I was his mistress and I used him for my
financial benefit.

“I’d just finished fucking him in a suite at the hotel where I
worked, on the night before my boss was going to fire me for having sex in the
hotel rooms during business hours. That day, I was wearing a pair of red Manolo
Blahnik shoes I’d bought with some cash my sugar daddy had given me not
long before, as well as a diamond bracelet he’d just put on my wrist, when
his daughter, who definitely did not have dementia, sped what I’m told was
the family’s black Benz CL5 straight into me at forty miles an hour as I
was about to get in my car, and smashed the curves of my lower body right up
against the metal of my SUV. She’d spied on her dad when he called me and
waited in the parking lot of the hotel where he and I had just screwed. That was
the day her mother died, right after her father left their home to be with
me.

“To this day she has never been found. And he, my sugar daddy, moved a
young black woman into his home about three months later. But thirty days after
that, he drove off a cliff in Malibu and committed suicide, probably from the
stress of his wife dying, and because he yearned for his missing daughter.
He’d changed his will and left everything to his live-in lover. And so,
here I am, cured of my addiction, though I’ll never walk again. But I
still say, even with all the guilt of that, that day I got hit was truly the
moment I hugged a new day.” She took a deep breath and gave a deep
exhale.

“By the way, my girlfriend and my boyfriend are now a bona fide couple.
The night of the accident, she ran to my bedside quicker than he did and even
confessed her love for me. But I pushed her away once I remembered the phone
call we’d had seconds before I was hit. Her call waiting accidentally
became a three-way, just like the three-way in my bed, and I overheard them make
plans to meet that evening at their regular spot. Or maybe she meant for me to
hear. I’ll never know. They’d been seeing each other behind my back
for who knows how long. And the funny thing is, as bad as she wanted to be a
mother, she got pregnant by my man the very first time we all slept together. I
remember the no-condom moment well. They have a three-month-old son named after
my ex. The baby is the spitting image of his biracial face.

“But see, all of that has to be okay, because it’s the same thing
I was dishing out. They were freaks just like me, and when you take risks and
push the limits anything can happen. It’s part of the pursuit-of-sex game
we played day after day. For me, I didn’t give a damn about anyone. So
turnabout is fair play, right?

“As far as my situation personally, I can never have another genital
orgasm because of the extreme nerve degeneration to my body. Though some can
experience that, I cannot. I will never again feel a penis inside of my vagina.
I can never mount a man and bounce like the stripper I was years ago. I am a
paraplegic, the result of a complete spinal cord injury, having no voluntary
motor or sensory function below my waist. I have use of my arms, but I have no
feeling in my legs whatsoever.

“And yes, I’m here to shock you. I’m here to plead with
you. I’m here to beg you. Please don’t end up like me. The very
thing I craved is the reason why God has me right here in front of you. To be a
benefit to those for whom it’s not too late.

“Believe it or not, I’m comfortable in my own skin now. I thank
God for that. The devil in my head that kept me lusting is gone. So in a strange
way, I don’t blame the young woman who ran me down. It was a blessing in
disguise. I thank God for my life, and never again will I fail to say
I love
you
, or to tell someone that I care.

“I pray that you find an easier way to kill the devil in your head than
this. I may never take a step again, but you could be one step away from sexual
healing. It takes just one step at a time. Don’t leave here seeing it as a
game. Don’t give up. Don’t lust.

“As the lovely Rachel Cummings says, you’ll always be a
sexaholic. But the first day of the rest of your life starts now, with making
sure the anniversary date of your sobriety is today.

“By the way—though, as I said, I don’t have feelings in my
lower body—let me tell you just because I can’t control my hip and
vaginal muscles, I do, however, have nerve endings above the waist. And baby,
the senses in the tongue, lips, hands, and on the skin, mainly face, neck,
shoulders, and back… watch out.” Miki snapped her right-hand
fingers, which generated snickers from those who she spoke to. She managed a
cute grin. “I give new meaning to the term
oral sex.
The mouth
can do glorious things. And touching, kissing, and cuddling never felt so good.
And the breasts respond… please believe me.” Her smile widened and
then narrowed. “Sex is what you do. Sexuality is what you are. I’m
still sexual. It’s a part of our nature to be sexual. But sexuality is
about the whole person, not just the genitals.

“I do have feelings in my heart. Those feelings are reserved for my
family, my sweet little second-grade son, whose stepmother is now my friend, and
for the only man I have sex with now and forever, my husband, who is sitting
right there.” She pointed her head and touched her heart with her fist to
a man with curly hair, about ten years older than her, sitting on the end in the
first row. He smiled large, flashing his deep-set dimples as people strained
their necks to see him. He touched his heart with his fist back. “He
won’t stand. He’ll tell you it’s not about him. I met him at
the hospital the day my mother and sister and niece and son came to take me
home. He was an orderly who wheeled me out into the parking lot, and we’ve
been together ever since. He loves me, including my atrophied legs and my
catheter. He’s amazing. And yes, this might be too much information, but
even though I told you I’d never feel a penis in my vagina again, that
doesn’t mean there hasn’t been one in there, okay?” She
grinned at him and they both blushed. “Plus, he’s smiling like that
because I’m much more of a giver now. I get my pleasure in many ways. And
believe me, he ain’t complaining.

“Please know that I wouldn’t change a thing.” Miki glanced
down at her digital wristwatch. “I’ve been sober for three hundred
seventy-nine days, thirteen hours, and fifteen minutes. I’ve also been a
whole woman for that long.

“My name is Miki Summers Bolton. I’m Marcellas Bolton’s
wife, and I, like you, am a sexaholic. May God grant you the serenity to accept
the things you cannot change, courage to change the things you can, and wisdom
to know the difference. Thank you for listening to my story. And good
night.”

The crowd sprang to their feet and began to applaud as Miki nodded. Her face
lit up with a smile that led to a laugh. Her husband approached the front of the
room and stood next to Rachel Cummings who shook his hand as he waited for his
wife to give him the signal to escort her offstage.

Standing in the front row was Dwayne, clapping loudly. Next to him was a new
female member, very young, very shapely, and very pretty. He leaned toward her
and whispered in her ear. She giggled, looking shy. He laughed, looking proud of
himself, took in a quick view of her cleavage, and then continued to look toward
Miki, still clapping.

And a few seats over was Teela, with tears streaming down her face as she
wiped her green eyes and sniffled. She caught Miki’s eye, and they gave
each other a wink.