In the Covid era, a meeting at a golf course between two non-golfers makes as much sense anything else. It made more sense than meeting at our favorite local eatery, anyway. I was the one to object to an original plan of an airless interior versus an open space. In response, Joe, my friend, my co-author, suggested the nearby golf course, saying he wanted to “hit some balls”, possibly with double entendering purpose.
I’ve played golf about a dozen times in my life. Turns out Joe has played even less than that. No matter, it seemed as we got together, ostensibly to discuss our currently dormant writing project, entitled and herein promoted as Getting Real About Sex Addiction: A Psychodynamic Approach to Treatment. It isn’t dormant because we’ve got writers’ block and have stopped writing on it. It’s not dormant because we can’t find a publisher and are tired of rejection (well…). Actually, it’s dormant because we do have a publisher, who for the time being shall remain nameless, who is near dormant in his interest. He expresses support and enthusiasm—has done for over a year—but for one reason of another (especially since the Covid outbreak and subsequent restrictions), he cites delays owing to other priorities, suggests an indefinite time-frame for our publication, and even ignores requests for a publishing contract. With our shared penchant for innuendo, Joe and I agree that our publisher is like a careless lover, ever promising affection but never making a commitment. Regarding our book: he won’t put a ring on it.
Perhaps this is perversely apt for a book that is mostly about male sex addicts, because although female or pan sex addicts exist, they are not the focus of our profession’s “clinical attention”, much less progressive society’s thinly-veiled contempt. Hate. When it’s deemed righteous it’s called revolution, or a paradigm shift, or something like that. Clearly, based upon statistics and stereotype, the contemporary sex addict is wayward in his habits, slick and therefore elusive in his communications; at times compulsive, he is also calculating, gaslighting, opportunistic, and prone to ghosting. In a word, he is untrustworthy. In at least one more, he is heterosexual and of course male, because the most livid pathologizing is reserved for the most privileged. They are privileged with the “pathologizing” label of sex addiction, so-coined by an industry patriarch, Patrick Carnes, and since promulgated to the mental health colony, now dominantly feminine. The sex addiction label (not yet a diagnostic category) is controversial, in part because it is pathologizing, which isn’t nice, critics assert, unless it’s aimed at the privileged. The dominant faction of label recipients, men, are therefore further privileged to receive tender care and attention for their narcissism-fueled desires. Excuse me while I pause to laugh at the twisting rhetoric of my profession. This is my commentary, my satire, aimed as it is at the ideological undercurrents that live within the sex addiction field in particular. What are my qualifications? How well placed am I? How well placed is anyone to observe the sexual mores of our dystopian 2020? Is not lying concurrently in the beds of or before the laptops of millions stopping anyone else from having opinions? As Joe sat before me at lunch, at times eyeing a pair of golf clubs with which he’d hoped to get in some driving practice, I reminded him of these themes in our book, or within my slightly more numerous chapters, at least. See, partly because of delays, we haven’t talked about or even read each other’s chapters in ages. Gee, d’ya think it might be a good idea to remind each other of what we’re doing, I evinced.
Let’s go for a walk, I suggested, with Joe gleaning that I was about as interested in golf as a squirrel scrambling across one of the putting greens. He pointed to a path that seemed to wind its way throughout the course, there for players, and at least appropriate for pedestrians, we thought. Or, we didn’t think. Not really. We thought to take the clubs along so that I could swing at the air, take the head off a weed, or a stray daisy. To fidget with a toy; to self-sooth, as therapists are prone to observing. Play of another, less organized kind. Joe and I had too much to talk about, having not seen each other in months, but in spells, at least, we stuck to our task, and spoke of our embattled manuscript as we strolled along the sinewy path. At one point we stopped talking for a few moments as we were semi-politely shushed by a tall and patrician-looking man who was about to—how do you say?—make a drive? He thrust an open palm in our direction, signifying a genteel, yet officious displeasure. “Just…please, don’t talk”, he beseeched, containing an imperious disapproval. “Are you guys lost?” he followed up in a friendlier voice, having just taken a satisfying shot. Joe picked up on the meaning. I didn’t and was then treated to Joe’s assessing comments for the next few minutes. The man had reminded him of some in his practice, of the breadth of masculine Narcissism that has informed, darkened, but also fed private practice psychotherapy, and likely sex addiction treatment, in recent generations.
Soon, Joe returned his attention to our shared, if oft-interrupted endeavor. He asked after feedback given to us by early readers, which aren’t interested friends or colleagues, necessarily. I think we’ve managed to enlist one person whom we know to read more than a handful of pages. No, the more rigorous feedback has come from other would-be publishers, departments of review to whom we (or I) have submitted sample chapters, hoping to capture academia’s interest. Well, we received interest, I reminded Joe—some of it hostile in nature, which I found pleasing, as this is in keeping with the book’s adjunctively subversive aim, as far as I am concerned. However, the most salient critiques were based upon misunderstandings, of passages clumsily written by myself, and thus were necessarily and easily correctible. The reaction to opinions that are indeed irreverent and will hopefully remain so, or out of the mainstream, or “evidence-based”—that selectively applied principle—are yet to come, perhaps. In speaking of all this, Joe seemed a bit lost in our project, and needful of my re-orienting influence, especially if we are to have the requested latitude to further edit or re-write our material over the next year or so. By the end of our golf course, socially-distanced outing, my co-author was proclaiming rejuvenation: an agreement to revisit our dormant project; to revive it regardless of others’ interest, or our publisher’s interest, and to add updated material to its extant substance. A few topically relevant passages about therapy in the era of Covid, Joe agreed.
Near the end of our visit we were walking amongst a derelict section of the course, within a quadrant that featured an old gazebo, plus some manner of waiting area—a wholly undefined yet concrete structure. As we left its perimeter, we were approached by a golf cart driven by a smiling woman whose piercing gaze shot right into us. She pulled up uttering a query similar to the one directed at us by that superior-looking figure from the previous hole. Are you lost? was not quite the question she led with, and even if she had, its effect would have been quite different. Immediately, I was struck by her pleasant demeanor, and when she offered to escort us back to the golf club’s entrance—a suggestion made vague by an offhand turn of phrase—I quickly suspected that Joe and I had broken course etiquette, yielding a complaint resulting in this woman’s approach. This time Joe was slower on the uptake, which meant that I was quicker to the space next to our driver, while Joe sat on the end of the cart’s seat, which seemed designed for two. “Riding bitch” she said, which belied the air of flirtation I’d briefly assigned to her, or not. Was it an insult? A moment of manly teasing from a woman who has assimilated obnoxious golfing men? On the ride back via the sinewy, not-quite-the-pedestrian path we thought it was, our chauffeur pleasantly asked after our business. I replied that we’d patronized the club’s bar/sandwich shop, implying an entitlement to walk the grounds. Joe changed the subject, speaking of a club employee—a teenager, youngster, or something—who might be known this woman, and who might vouch for our decent characters, maybe. Actually, I’ve no idea why Joe was small-talking this woman about some kid who worked at the club. However, his distraction didn’t stop me from making, like a good, as in present therapist, the elephant comment of the moment: “I’ve a feeling that we shouldn’t have been walking where we were, that we’ve broken the club’s rules here”. Laughing, seemingly embarrassed yet keeping her dignity, the woman confirmed that “technically” we were walking where we shouldn’t have, but that it wasn’t a big deal. Not a big deal. What Joe and I were doing, on all levels, is not a big deal, I thought with a touch of angst, but a newfound bit between my teeth. “Treading on a few toes”, I later muttered, thinking of the year or so ahead.
Graeme Daniels Psychewriter 