Brian Merndan

Chasing That High

*The following may be is triggering to those affected by substance abuse/addiction.

Five. That’s the number of pills I had left.

I stared at the baggy, shocked by how many that meant I had taken that day. I must have miscounted, and somehow, the second time I opened the bag, five more pills would surely appear right before my eyes. But this was not the case.

I shoved the bag into my pocket as my girlfriend walked in and asked if I was ready to go. We had planned on going to a friend’s party later that night — something we both always looked forward to. She knew about the drugs, or at least what I decided to tell her. To her, I was simply a guy who liked to get high once in a while. She had no idea as to the extent of my addiction — the toll that it took on me emotionally, physically, and even on our own relationship.

After spending the night drinking at our friend’s house, we decided to Uber to hers. Feeling the positive momentum of the night, we started hooking up as we sprawled out across her oversized fluffy bed. I could tell she wanted to have sex, and I did too. But instead of relishing in that reality, I felt a wave of fear wash over my mind.

How many pills had I taken that day? Would I even be able to get hard? Would I enjoy myself at all?

This was the part of my drug use that I had to constantly hide. How it left me feeling so aroused, but barely able to get hard. Sometimes I couldn’t even cum. I would go at it for two hours hoping and hoping that I’d finally be able to finish, only to end up having to fake an orgasm. The drugs were stealing from me the thing I valued most: connecting with her in one of the most intimate ways I knew how.

I briefly considered giving them up and returning fully to the girl I loved, before a flurry of fear and self-doubt quickly pushed all hope of quitting far away. I knew I could never truly give myself to her while I was high, and I constantly lived with that guilt.

Half of me tried to blame her accepting nature for my addiction — as if I would quit the second she told me to, absolving me of all responsibility for my actions. Deep down I knew this couldn’t go on forever. One day we went up to San Francisco during Christmas break to spend the day shopping and eating. I couldn’t have been happier. Everything was decorated beautifully. I was getting to experience it all with the girl I loved the most. It looked like something out of a movie. Yet I still found myself sneaking away for a moment to slip my hand into my pocket, fish out a pill, and quickly swallow — no water needed. I was an expert by now.

The guilt I always felt was quickly replaced by shame. I had everything I ever wanted in the world right in front of me, but I still felt the need to get high. Even worse, I knew that no matter how much we both enjoyed each other’s company that day or any other day, the experience would never culminate in the deeply passionate sex I used to know.

I wish I could say the problems I experienced ended with the physical, but that was just the beginning.

After a while I found myself needing more and more pills to feel as good as I used to from one (you all know how the story goes). Whenever I didn’t have enough to keep me high, I would look at her with pure contempt whenever she spoke. When I was craving, everything about the girl I supposedly loved left me with a feeling of rage, my mind preoccupied with how I was going to get that next pill. I’d lie almost constantly, making excuses to leave her so I could pick up. I would go to the bathroom sometimes twice during one meal. Eventually, everything came to a boiling point.

I experienced a rare moment of clarity and decided that it wasn’t fair to either of us for this to continue. I promised myself that that was the last time I would allow a substance to get in the way of what was probably the best thing that had ever happened to me.

The following two weeks were hard, but as I felt myself being purged of all the drugs, I knew my decision was the right one. When I looked at my girlfriend, that rush of endorphins that was once so familiar returned and I was filled with a euphoria that no drug could ever come close to producing.

Our sex life became full of the passionate vigor that I always wished for, and my body finally felt clean and free. I realized that the high I had been chasing was right in front of me the whole time, and it blew everything else out of the water.

As cliché as it may sound, love can be a drug, and without it, I fear I would have never been able to break free from my addiction.

Photos by Haley Hasen.

Living His Truth

The first weekend of my freshman year of college: a culmination of a week’s worth of forced binge drinking with the people on my floor, celebrated by more binge drinking.

I had gone from an all-girl’s boarding school of 200 in rural New England to a university of more than 10,000. While the changes that first year weren’t insurmountable, they were substantial. Gone was the one pizza restaurant and lone gas station; in their place, bars and clubs and good restaurants. Alcohol was abundant, and so were boys. They existed in school for the first time in four years; they lived across the hallway and went to the same gym and appeared in class.

I wasn’t the only one who seemed to notice… my boyfriend did, too.

The first Saturday of the first weekend of my freshman year ended with a crying, drunk boyfriend slumped in front of my door. He was apologizing profusely for kissing one of the people on my floor, Keith.

“Keith?” I remember asking, puzzled. “But Keith is a guy.”

I’d been prepared well by friends, family, and Cosmopolitan magazine about the precarious situation of a high school relationship carried into college. I’d thought that, if anything, I would end up cheating on him or he’d end up cheating on me. Most likely, I thought we’d grow up and out, two seedlings planted side-by-side, intertwined for a season before reaching towards separate suns.

But this? I didn’t know the natural course of action for this situation, and I certainly couldn’t ask friends what to do without outing him. So I turned to Google.

“Boyfriend bisexual advice.”
“Is my boyfriend gay?”

If Google were a person, they would’ve sent me directly to a therapist after this rain of queries. Even worse, after every fervent Googling session, I emerged empty-handed. There simply isn’t that much online about this subject.

Meanwhile, IRL I told him repeatedly that if he wanted to go try new things, he was absolutely free to do so. I wanted and continue to want nothing more than his happiness. I suggested he should try dating men, hooking up with other people, specifically men… all ideas he shot down immediately.

Statistically speaking, his behavior wasn’t irregular: a 2013 Pew Research survey notes that 84% of individuals who identify as bisexual end up in heterosexual relationships.

Still, I wondered how I could ever be enough. I wondered if he could ever be truly satisfied without at least trying to have a relationship with another man. Would I have to introduce strangers into our admittedly adventurous and fulfilling sex life? Did this mean he was now naturally inclined to polygamy? Would I wake up at 40 to find my husband had run away with a man, realizing after all this time that he was actually gay and not quite as bisexual as he’d thought, wasting my time?

While he confronted his own sexuality, I was forced to confront mine.

“How is this any different from all those times you’ve drunkenly kissed your friends,” he asked, often frustrated, “what about lesbian porn? Checking out other girls?”

According to 2016 statistics from The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 17.4% of women admit to having had sexual relations with other women, compared to only 6.2% of men.

How was my behavior different?

I had to admit the perception of it was. Gay porn is still considered taboo while lesbian porn is considered universally sexy. Not to mention I’ve never had to confront my own sexuality in such boot-strapping, earth-shattering way like my boyfriend did. For me, kissing my female friends and finding girls sexually attractive had never seemed, culturally or personally, strange.

Maybe the key difference is this: for him, being attracted to his own sex had the potential to be ruin a relationship. For me, and for a lot of women out there, same sex relations are considered hot. Maybe even encouraged.

Today, having being together for four and a half years, I’ve come to view his bisexuality as just another aspect of his already complex humanity. These days, I’m worried a lot more about finding a job and paying off my student loans than his running away with a man.

Some words of wisdom: monogamous people will continue to be monogamous people. Your sexuality doesn’t change how likely you are to cheat on someone—your choices do. You don’t have to label the sexuality of others in order to understand them, and maybe most importantly, you don’t have to label your own.

*This post is co-published with Bitter Blush, a platform that strives to discuss topics that traditionally make people blush. You can follow the blog on Instagram at @bitter.blush.

My Pledge Sister Is Dating My Assailant

The title makes me laugh and I know it shouldn’t… but it does. Anyways, the title is pretty self explanatory so I don’t need to write much, which is good in my opinion.

“Honey, no…” are the first words that came to mind when my boyfriend informed me that my pledge sister (a girl I went through the new member process with when I was rushing my sorority in college) is dating the boy who sexually assaulted me freshman year.

I entered college in 2014. When I arrived on campus I felt cultured and sophisticated from frequent travel, yet somehow depressed because I now found myself in a small college town. I went to a rush event; however, I do not need to explain why I chose to smoke and drink and I refuse to explain why I pointed to my assailant and said, “He’s cute I kind of want to get with him,” to my friend. What does matter is that I remember my consciousness going in and out while in my bedroom and having my phone pushed away from me as I tried to read it and text my friends for help. I remember saying no and hearing the reply, “Why? You’re so beautiful?” I had never felt uglier.

The negative comments I received over the next year and a half were heart breaking. Very few people believed my story and wanted to believe that it was a cry for attention. Let me ask the public: why would I, or any woman want that kind of attention? Please fill me in because if I could go back I would not have told a single soul. In fact, it was HIM who told everyone why he was being suspended for two weeks and it was him who told several people that I was “crazy” and a liar. The counseling I received helped me significantly, as did the support from my true friends. Some of those friends included my sorority sisters. I pledged with 14 extraordinary girls who came from diverse backgrounds and had a lot to offer the sorority. I opened up my wounds a full year later with these girls, and felt at peace with everything that had happened.

Now as a 23-year-old kick ass woman, I find myself on my typical early 20s Manhattanite path. I attend graduate school in NYC, go to brunch on Sunday’s, attend overpriced workout classes, and student teach with some of the best educators the state has to offer. One day I wondered: “Why I am blocked (yes, there is an app for that) on Instagram by one of my pledge sisters?” I turned to my boyfriend and shrugged. “I guess she is over me then,” I said, laughing it off.

The next day my boyfriend found out why she blocked me on Instagram (oh, and Facebook too): she is dating that boy from the paragraph I JUST FINISHED ANGRILY TYPING ABOUT. My first thought was “Honey, no…” then my brain did that thing where it processes information (how dare it). I got angry. I got flashbacks of what happened freshman year, and I got angry at HER. I cannot blame him for being interested in her. She’s blonde, has a cool nose piercing, and is pretty alternative. But she also used to be one of my close friends, and I couldn’t wrap my head around why I was more mad at a fellow woman than I was at the man who violated me.

Then it came to me: she is a hypocrite.

This girl was an orientation leader, a tour guide, a sorority sister and an advocate for social justice. The boy who violated me was a hermit who did nothing but grow his hair to an ungodly length and a mustache that did no benefit to his face. He did nothing to make anyone else think that he gives a shit about anyone other than himself. Sure, he was an athlete *slow clap* but he convinced the rest of his team that I was a liar and that I made everything up. But this girl I considered a friend had the audacity to BLOCK me. It is not about losing a follower and it is not about losing her as a friend, because frankly I don’t want to know someone like her. It is about her assuming that she has the authority that she can block me from finding out what she is doing. On top of that, she does not have the right to decide that I cannot handle seeing his face. That is not up to you and it never will be.

To my former sorority sister: you are not an advocate for anyone or anything but yourself, and that is fine, but don’t you dare try and say you respect women if you are dating someone who calls your pledge sister a liar.

*This post is co-published with Bitter Blush, a platform that strives to discuss topics that traditionally make people blush. You can follow the blog on Instagram at @bitter.blush.