by Jack Fisher
Mary had read this text dozens of times before. She always heard Sister Angela’s voice when she read it, not her own. She never doubted the older woman’s commitment. The nun sincerely believed that she could help everybody overcome these ‘destructive urges,’ as she called them.
She wasn’t like most nuns. She’d avoided getting overly religious, never becoming too preachy with anyone or saying they also needed to adopt the mentality of a nun. At the same time, her piety often made her difficult to relate to, in spite of her past. She claimed she understood, but that understanding was limited.
She found herself re-reading the last sentence a few times. The idea of understanding her behaviors and overcoming the urges had made sense when Mary had first entered the program. After re-connecting with Peter, though, she wasn’t so sure anymore.
“I’m way behind the curve when it comes to urges. That’s for damn sure,” Mary said. “Understanding the nature? I guess I’m not so sure where I stand there.”
She continued flipping through the brochure, reading over all the tips and tricks she had learned over the past year. They ranged from saying certain prayers to keeping a journal. Mary had tried some of those methods. Some had helped, but none had made her feel like she had truly dealt with her problem.
“Maybe I need a new approach,” Mary said. “What I did before wasn’t working. What I’m doing now with Peter? I guess it’s working, but I’m not sure I understand it.”
With parts of her body still tingling from her orgasm, Mary set the brochure aside and got dressed. She had a new goal for tonight’s meeting. She needed to discuss this with Sister Angela and Peter. Taking things one day at a time was no longer an option. She needed to get more proactive.
Mary threw on some underwear, a pair of jeans and a red T-shirt. She still had an hour or so before she had to leave for the meeting. That gave her time to pay a few bills and take care of some menial tasks, ensuring she could focus all her effort on the challenge at hand.
She was about to get going when she heard her cell phone go off. Assuming it was someone from work, she checked the caller ID. To Mary’s surprise, the number belonged to Sister Angela.
“This can’t be a good sign,” she said with dread.
She contemplated letting it go to voicemail. She purged that thought from her mind and answered it, as anyone in the Chapman Hill Addiction Outreach Program was expected to do.
“Hello?” Mary said anxiously.
“Mary, I’m sorry to call you like this, but we have a situation. I need to speak with you at the community center as soon as possible.” said Sister Angela in an urgent voice.
“Why? What’s going on? And why call me?”
“I…I can’t say it over the phone. Someone called me, and…it’s just too awful. Please just…just get over here! You need to see it for yourself.”
Chapter Ten
#xa0;
“Wow. I’m not impressed by much—being a recovering sex addict and all—but seriously… Wow!” Mary said in utter astonishment.
“I know. It’s terrible, isn’t it?” lamented Sister Angela.
“That’s not the only word I would use to describe this, but, in this context? Yeah, I’d say it’s pretty bad.”
A recovering sex addict could expect to encounter many problems over the course of their treatment. Mary had certainly endured more than her share, but she’d never run across anything like this. While Sister Angela anxiously paced around the empty meeting room at the community center, Mary watched the problem play out before her on a laptop computer screen.
Susan Michaels, the same woman who had claimed to be a beacon of renewed chastity a couple of weeks before, had fallen back to rock bottom in a very graphic way. In a video that had been uploaded to the Internet less than six hours ago, this middle-aged woman was engaging in some extraordinary acts of sexual excess that included bondage, submission and gangbangs.
Even by Mary’s standards, it was pretty extreme. Susan had exchanged the overly conservative attire she’d often worn to meetings for the garb of a full-blown Dominatrix. This included thigh-high boots, a corset that exposed her breasts, a spiked collar and crotchless panties. Even at her most depraved, Mary had never worn something that bold. However, the attire didn’t shock her nearly as much as how Susan used it.
On the video, which Mary had watched twice already, Susan had some masked man bound by handcuffs and pinned the floor. She had her heel on his neck while firmly tugging on a chain connected to his collar. It caused the man discomfort, but he appeared to enjoy it in a perverse sort of way. As she dominated him completely, she used a leather-studded whip to spank him repeatedly on his partially exposed ass.
“That’s right! Take it! Take it like a good slave!” spat Susan, her voice the complete antithesis of the mild-mannered woman Mary knew.
It only got worse from there. After she’d finished whipping the man, two more had entered the area, which had been decorated like a medieval dungeon. They each wore the same leather masks as the man she’d whipped. Together, they orally pleasured her. One sucked on her nipples. The other flicked his tongue in and out of her vagina. This further emboldened Susan and she struck the man under her even harder.
“Yes! Don’t you dare stop.” she said menacingly. “You will pleasure me. You will give me what I want. If you don’t, I’ll just have to punish you even more.”
Even Mary couldn’t help but blush. She kept on watching until Susan forced the man going down on her to lie on his back so she could fuck him. He did so with the utmost obedience, letting Susan ride him with a dominating fervor that seemed unfit for a woman of her stature. If her loud moans were any indication, she had kept this pent up for quite some time. She made noises that Mary had never heard before during sex. Even after watching it more than once, Mary still couldn’t believe it.
The idea that the same woman Mary had envied a few weeks before would do something like this was shocking enough. The idea that she’d live-streamed it over the Internet made it all the more astounding. Mary couldn’t begin to speculate what had changed between the tearful speech Susan had given to celebrate her one-year milestone at CHAOP and the moment she’d decided to shoot BDSM porn. Whatever had occurred, the possibilities were both distressing and intriguing.
“I still can’t make sense of it,” said a distraught Sister Angela. “I’ve been praying about it all morning. I’ve looked at it from every possible angle.”
“Not sure some angles should be scrutinized here,” Mary said, still fixated on the video.
“Susan made so much progress in this program. All those tearful confessions…all that intensive therapy… Why would she just throw it all away?”
“Are you asking me? You think I know something you don’t?”
“I’m hoping for any kind of insight at this point,” said Sister Angela. “I knew she had intimacy issues. She even shared those issues with the entire group.”
“I don’t remember her talking about this kind of intimacy,” Mary said.
“Which makes this…this relapse of hers all the more troubling,” she said.
The older woman was having a hard time wrapping her head around what had happened. Mary could hardly blame her. Sister Angela had praised Susan’s progress time and again, holding her up as an example to others in the program. Now she was more a cautionary tale than a success story.
As the nun continued to pace, Mary finally tore herself away from the video and closed the laptop. She gazed toward the part of the room where the program conducted its meetings, focusing on the exact spot where Susan had stood just a few weeks before. This relapse, as Sister Angela called it, put Mary’s ongoing struggles into a whole new context.
The notion that this program was working for everyone else except her had been shattered. The misery and doubt that Mary had been experiencing lately no longer felt odd. How many other recovering sex addicts had these kinds of relapses? How many of them manifested like this in spite of the prog
ram? Was it possible that these outbursts of sexual excess manifested because of the program? These were important questions to consider, because the answers were sure to affect Mary at some point.
She continued contemplating them as Sister Angela stopped pacing and retrieved the laptop. She then gave Mary one of the skewering glares that only a nun could give.
“That brings me to the second reason I called you—and you alone—to discuss this,” she said.
“Oh boy,” groaned Mary under her breath.
“There’s no need for dread. I’m not going to interrogate you or anything. Tell me that you haven’t engaged in any perverse activities and I’ll believe you.”
“I haven’t, but that’s not the point here, is it?” Mary said.
“No. It isn’t.”
Sister Angela set the laptop aside and sat down in the chair next to her. That penetrating gaze of hers waned. She once again became the woman who tried to be everybody’s friend. It made her difficult to hate. Mary didn’t bother trying, letting the nun reach over and grasp her hand, as if to keep her from running away.
“Mary, you’ve come so far since you joined this program,” said Sister Angela, as sincere as anyone could be. “I still remember what led you here. I also remember how angry you were at yourself.”
“And I was this close to forgetting,” Mary said dryly.
“I know it’s been hard, sticking to this program and all its tenants. Even with my decadent background, I won’t claim I understand what you’ve been through.”
“That would be a first.”
“But this situation with Susan troubles me because you’re coming up on the same milestone. At the end of this week, you’ll have been in this program for a full year. I don’t think I need to remind you how important that is. In the history of this program, over eighty-five percent of those who make it that far don’t relapse.”
“Or maybe they’re just smart enough not to put it on camera,” Mary said.
“I’m serious, Mary. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m serious, too…at least partially.”
The nun squeezed her hand and gave her that penetrating gaze again. This time Mary didn’t avoid her scrutiny. Sister Angela was genuinely concerned. She looked at her as though Mary were standing on the edge of a cliff, just waiting for a reason to jump. She might not be entirely wrong, either.
“Mary, a few weeks ago, I saw you sit in this very room and glare at Susan as though she’d run over your dog,” Sister Angela continued. “You were tense, uptight, frustrated. You had more reasons to get up and walk away than anyone that night.”
“I was having a bad day. Actually, I’d had a streak of bad days going,” admitted Mary.
“Which is why I’m so worried about you. At some point, even a strong soul will crack under the strain.”
“You think I’m going to relapse, don’t you?”
“I think your soul is more vulnerable than most,” said Sister Angela.
“So what does that mean for me? Is it only a matter of time before someone sends you a link to some video of me fucking an entire college frat house?”
“I don’t believe that. I hope you don’t believe that, either. I still have faith in you—in everyone to overcome their demons. I just think you’re more vulnerable than most because you’ve struggled more to confront those demons.”
Now it felt like Sister Angela was psychoanalyzing her. Nun or not, Mary hated it when anyone did that. That was why she’d chosen this program instead of intense, one-on-one therapy. As much as Mary hated it, though, the older woman still made a valid point.
“When you first joined the program, you had already taken the hardest step,” said the older woman. “You’d uprooted your comfortable life of debauchery, moved back to Hartman County and removed yourself from that toxic environment. Many people don’t have the strength to do something that drastic.”
“Or the incentive,” Mary said under her breath.
“Your reasons don’t matter. What matters is that you took that step. You put yourself on this path to recovery. It’s the next hard step that you’ve yet to take.”
“And which step is that?” Mary asked.
“One I thought Susan had taken but, sadly, I was wrong,” replied Sister Angela. “You see, I spoke to her the day before she claimed she had overcome her addiction. Her spirits were high. She was smiling and full of energy. At one point, I asked her how it felt to confront the scars that had driven her addiction. She responded vaguely, but I remembered her spirit faltering at that point. I didn’t think much of it, but now that I look back, I think it was a sign.”
“And are you seeing that same sign in me right now?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure what I see in you, Mary. I suspect you don’t know what you see in yourself. Why else would you be so frustrated?”
“You know, one of my old fitness coaches said something similar. I punched him in the gut. I don’t like people assuming they know what I think and why I think it.”
“I’m not assuming anything, Mary…although I thank you for not punching me,” said Sister Angela with a touch of humor.
Mary didn’t like this. It would’ve been the best possible time for someone to pull a fire alarm or something, but she continued to endure. She tried in vain to hide her discomfort while under this woman’s gaze. At the same time, she couldn’t help but be intrigued by her words.
For most of her life, Mary hadn’t scrutinized why she did what she did. All too often, she focused on setting goals, accomplishing those goals and enjoying herself along the way. Realizing that she was a sex addict had forced her to look at herself differently. Getting to that realization had been hard enough. Dealing with it was infinitely harder and Sister Angela seemed intent on kick-starting that process.
“I don’t think Susan fully confronted the scars that drove her addiction. That’s why she wasn’t able to overcome her deviant impulses. She may have made them worse by claiming she’d overcome them,” said Sister Angela.
“That or she was just really, really horny,” Mary said.
“Reckless impulses are very different from basic instincts. That’s the first thing we teach in this program. You’re strong enough to resist those impulses, Mary. I know that doing so has cost you. I imagine it has made things very difficult for you and your family.”
“With all due respect, Sister, I’d rather not talk about that,” Mary said in a more serious tone.
“I wasn’t going to, but what happened with them is a big part of what’s happening to you right now. All these things—these issues that make you so uncomfortable—they provided the fuel that drove your addiction. Even if you’re not acting on that addiction anymore, it’s still driving you. I’m sure it has affected you in ways you don’t want to talk about. I’ve no desire to ask about it, either.”
That came as a major relief to Mary. She would rather not tell a nun that she had been masturbating to thoughts of fire and Peter Rogers. Even so, it helped make Sister Angela’s point. Her addiction was still present and still very powerful.
“At the end of this week, you might be able to stand up in this room and tell everyone you’ve been in this program for a year. You might even be able to tell them it’s been a year since you last had sex,” said Sister Angela.
“I’d rather keep some of those details to myself,” Mary said.
“But if you don’t confront the source of what drives your addiction, you’ll never be able to overcome it,” said the nun. “The longer you draw it out, the worse it’ll get. What you just saw with Susan… It was an extreme example, but it wasn’t as extreme as it could’ve been.”
“I don’t doubt that. Even my mind isn’t that dirty.”
“And I’d rather not see something like that happen with you. So between now and our next meeting, if you have a chance to deal with something important, I urge you to make the effort. I’ll even help you in any way I can.”
Sister Angela squeezed
her hand a little harder, as if to keep her from joining Susan in her relapsed decadence. She squeezed so hard that it actually hurt, giving Mary even more incentive to take this seriously.
“That’s…nice of you, Sister Angela. I’m just…not entirely sure what you’re asking me to do here,” Mary said.
“I’m not asking you to do anything specifically. I’m just praying you’ll find the strength to confront the source of your problems. That’s the only way you’ll overcome your addiction,” said Sister Angela. “I know the temptation you feel is strong. Your ability to resist it must be stronger. Susan overestimated her strength. Don’t make the same mistake.”
“Believe me, I don’t want to. I’d rather not have my sexual proclivities immortalized on the Internet.”
“That’s just it. I believe you. That’s why I challenge you to do something more between now and the end of the week.”
“Something more? Like what?” Mary asked.
“I wish I could tell you, but you’re going to have to figure that out for yourself,” said the woman. “Look at the life you’ve lived. Look at the decisions you’ve made. Think about it. Pray on it. Dare to probe those wounds that drove you into the arms of addiction. You may not understand it completely. You may not be ready to confront it, but you’ll be able to say you made the effort. That’s more than Susan can claim.”
Mary saw a lot of distress in Sister Angela. Susan relapsing like this had really bothered the woman. She’d thought she had another success story for the Chapman Hill Addiction Outreach Program. Now she wanted Mary to be that story. It put a lot of pressure on her at a time when Mary had a lot to deal with.
Finally, Sister Angela let go of her hand. She clutched the rosary beads she wore on her wrist and prayed, as she often did when she got worked up. While Mary rubbed her sore hand, she thought about this challenge.
