I just got off a Zoom video call that I never imagined or thought about. I think the need to talk about this here is something of a 'check-in,' a phrase we sex addicts throw around as an introduction to a circumstance or behavior that concerns us enough to want other addicts to know about it so they can hold us accountable. There is also, at least for me, an element of writing them down out loud so I can realize it either is not that big a deal, or find out it is a big deal and I need to walk carefully, or stop walking completely. I have every intention of sharing this with my sponsor and maybe my next 12 Step meeting, but I'm starting here for documentation as much as anything else.
It started a few days ago when the hosting company of my ESandHope.org website reached out to me with an email asking whether I'd be willing to have a Zoom call with them. I figured that, at worst, this was an attempt to upsell me on some new feature. At best, maybe I had drawn a lucky card and could get the ear of a company Customer Relations person with whom I could share some of my concerns and ideas about their platform. I replied that I'd be happy to do the Zoom and even made a comment that I thought would reveal whether I was exchanging emails with a computer or a real person.
She was very real. I'm still assuming this was just a marketing thing, so I cooperated with her requests to record the call, to have me identify myself on the recording, and a couple of other things that felt pretty routine. Then it started, the weird part.
This Zoom was not a random conversation with a random customer. Neither was it a conversation about the topic of my website (sexual addiction) other than to acknowledge the sensitive nature of the subject matter. It seems their computer had kicked my site out as doing some unique things, and she wanted to ask me detailed questions about the why and how of what I was trying to accomplish. She said that she would then pass that information along to the coders and programmers and powers-that-be in a corporate effort to be responsive to customers' needs.
I explained that any examples of my uniqueness probably had more to do with my 'duct-tape mentality' of solving technical issues and not some kind of creative webbing. The fact that I would use the word 'webbing' should explain that well enough. She asked very appropriate questions about what would make my site life and my webbing easier, and it turned out to be quite a good conversation for me in terms of new understandings of the mechanics, features, and potentials of my website.
Somewhere in there, I began to understand that this young lady's questions indicated that she had actually spent time on my site preparing for this meeting. Again, she never got outside of her professional box with any of her comments, but I suddenly realized that I was talking with someone who had read about the most sensitive — and, yes, shameful — part of my life. In just a few seconds, my emotions bounced around from embarrassed to horrified to titillated to impressed that two strangers could have a legitimate conversation about technical issues under a cloud of sexual addiction. I was pleased that I was in this situation without being even close to going off the rails. I had even formulated an escape plan (internet connection issues) if the conversation took an inappropriate turn. I was also pleased that this company rep could have such a professional conversation without ever getting close to showing judgment or discomfort about the person she was interviewing.
Whether it is true or not, I left the video meeting with a sense that the world might not be completely against me and that it might still be possible for me to have 'normal' interactions with professionals of the opposite sex. I mean, if I can talk about a sexual addiction recovery site without sex ever being mentioned, perhaps it is not unimaginable that I could take an order at Mcdonald's without hitting on the customer, in my mind, or across the counter. Wouldn't that be a big step toward recovery?
Would you like fries with that...?
–JR
Give me some straight talk, straight talk
Don't sugar coat it please
Straight talk, straight talk
Sounds sweet enough to me
–Dolly Parton, "Straight Talk"
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