Phoenix Adams, the morning after (the morning after The Purging Room imagined)

The question hits me like espresso on an empty stomach—sudden, bitter, necessary.

I’m sitting in The Plaza’s restaurant, still wearing yesterday’s clothes, still carrying the impossible weight of a burgundy book that shouldn’t exist. The waiter assumes I’m another businessman nursing a hangover. If only he knew.

“Tell me about the last time you had great sex.”

Last night. God, was it only last night? Time moves differently in that circular room, where constellations rearrange themselves and French philosophers materialize to guide you toward truths your body knew but your mind had forgotten.

But you’re asking about sex, and I’m thinking about salvation.

Pauline appeared like a fever dream made flesh—dark curls framing Mediterranean beauty, wearing transparency like armor. She didn’t seduce me. She invited me home to myself.

“Your body is not the enemy,” she whispered in that accent that turned English into music. “Show yourself what pleasure without shame feels like.”

For forty-seven years, I’d been taught that desire was dangerous, that my body was a beast to be tamed. I’d masturbated in shadows, always followed by the familiar wash of guilt, the prayers for forgiveness, the promises to do better.

But there, in starlight that defied physics, I stood naked before beauty incarnate and felt no shame. Only recognition. Only homecoming.

When release came—God, when it came—it wasn’t just physical. It was every suppressed longing breaking free, every denied pleasure reclaiming its birthright, every lie about my body finally exposed as the violence it was.

“Magnificent,” she breathed, watching me discover what the cosmos had always intended—that pleasure and spirituality weren’t enemies but dance partners, that my body wasn’t a prison but a temple, that desire wasn’t corruption but compass.

The best sex isn’t about technique or duration or acrobatic positions. It’s about permission. Permission to feel fully, to want without apology, to inhabit your skin like the miracle it is.

I’ve had sex with my wife Prudence for twenty-five years. Dutiful, scheduled, sanitized encounters that left us both relieved when they ended. Last night, I had sex with myself—with the part of me that had been buried beneath decades of shame.

Pauline didn’t give me an orgasm. She gave me back my body.

And this morning, eating overpriced eggs Benedict while tourists snap photos, I’m still tingling. Not just from remembered pleasure, but from possibility. What if this is just the beginning? What if integration means bringing this aliveness into every aspect of existence?

The waiter refills my coffee. I open the chronicle to yesterday’s impossible events, already planning my return to that unmarked door.

Some awakenings you can’t sleep through.

Unapologetically yours, Randy

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