Getting Off: One Woman's Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction by Erica Garza (

Description: Getting Off by Erica Garza "Erica Garza has written a riveting, cant-look-away memoir of a life lived hardcore…In an era when predatory male sexual behavior has finally become a topic of urgent national discourse…Getting Off makes for a wild, timely read" (Elle).A fixation on porn and orgasm, strings of failed relationships and serial hook-ups with strangers, inevitable blackouts to blunt the shame—these are not things we often hear women share publicly, and not with the candor, eloquence, and introspection Erica Garza brings to Getting Off. What sets this courageous and riveting account apart from your typical misery memoir is the absence of any precipitating trauma beyond the garden variety of hurt weve all had to endure in simply becoming a person—reckoning with family, learning to be social, integrating what it means to be sexual. Whatever tenor of violence or abuse Ericas life took on through her behavior was of her own making, fueled by fear, guilt, self-loathing, self-pity, loneliness, and the hopelessness those feelings brought on as she runs from one side of the world to the other in an effort to break her habits—from East Los Angeles to Hawaii and Southeast Asia, through the brothels of Bangkok and the yoga studios of Bali to disappointing stabs at therapy and twelve-steps back home. In these remarkable pages, Garza draws an evocative, studied portrait of the anxiety that fuels her obsessions, as well as the exhilaration and hope she begins to feel when she suspects she might be free of them. Getting Off offers a brave and necessary voice to our evolving conversations about addiction and the impact that internet culture has had on us all—"a profoundly genuine, gripping story that any reader can appreciate" (Vice). "In reading Garzas insight into her own experiences, we better understand ourselves" (The New York Times Book Review). FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography Born in Los Angeles to Mexican parents, Erica Garza has spent most of her adult life traveling and living abroad. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter. Ericas essays have appeared in Salon, Narratively, BUST, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, Refinery29, Bustle, Alternet, Vivala, HelloGiggles, the Los Angeles Review, and Australias Mamamia and The Motherish. She has appeared as a guest on BBC Radio 4, Thom Hartmanns The Big Picture, and August McLaughlins Girl Boner Radio. In 2010, she earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Columbia University. Her memoir on sex addiction, Getting Off, is her first book. Excerpt from Book Getting Off one THE GOOD GIRL I grew up in the early eighties in Montebello, California, Southeast LA, where teenage pregnancy was on the rise and every Mexican restaurant claimed to have the best tacos north of the border. Living rooms were adorned with framed pictures of Jesus or the Virgin, and everyone believed in heaven and hell--not as abstract ideas, but as very real places. It was the kind of place where you could pick up your holy candles with your milk and bread at the local supermarket and you always knew someone celebrating a baptism or First Communion soon--giant events requiring ornate outfits and tres leches cake and a sense of relief on everyones part that things were good with God, no one was going to hell just yet. I rarely met anyone who wasnt Catholic. When it did happen, it was whispered about. Did you know Mrs. Gonzalez is a Jehovahs Witness? Isnt that weird? If you werent Catholic, to whom would you turn for help? No priest? No Bible? It was unclear how a person could distinguish right from wrong without the Commandments. And I didnt even want to think of what happened to them after death. I imagined babies dying before they were baptized and shuddered at their unfortunate fates. I often tell people now that I come from LA, or sometimes East LA if I want to hint at my Latino roots. LA is Hollywood glamour, money, and prestige; East LA screams danger, gangs, and irrefutable street cred. In truth, my life had neither. Montebello and all Southeast LA, home to cities like Bell Gardens, Pico Rivera, and Norwalk, were small, mediocre, boring. My dad, a mortgage broker, helped low-income Mexicans buy first homes, while my mom, a housewife, made sure our home was intact. They balanced their checkbooks, and we bought clothes at Ross, and the only place we traveled to outside of the country was Tijuana, which my mom often said "didnt count" since it was only two hours south. My brother, Gabe, and I ran through sprinklers in the summer or laid down giant plastic trash bags for slipping and sliding. Katie Wilkins, a white girl, lived next door to us, which was rare in a predominately Mexican neighborhood, and Id often peer at the swimming pool in her backyard from my bedroom window with envy. Mediocrity, which I felt was directly connected to my heritage, was my first source of shame. But, in retrospect, we seem more privileged than I realized. I vacationed in Hawaii and Walt Disney World. I attended private Catholic school, from kindergarten through high school. My dad owned and ran a mortgage company for nearly twenty years until he sold it for a large sum and bought himself his dream car, a flashy Corvette that looked like the Batmobile, and a vacation condo in Maui. And by the time I entered high school we had moved into a house with a pool. I never knew what it was to go to bed hungry or face eviction, but shame has a way of being irrational. I looked at our life and I wanted more. I simply couldnt understand why my parents would want to live in such a boring place. There seemed to be nothing but strip malls and taco stands, nail salons and bail bonds. But to them, and to other Mexicans, Montebello was a big deal. In the late sixties and early seventies, when they were growing up, Montebello was nicknamed "the Mexican Beverly Hills." Housing prices were more expensive and the streets were safer than those in nearby East LA, where my mom spent her formative years. Tomas Benitez, the Chicano author and activist, said in an interview with LAs KCET, "Montebello was mythic when I was growing up in the 1970s. It was the place where middle-class Mexican-Americans lived and came from. It had that quality, if you could get out of East LA, Montebello was Nirvana, the promised land and Beverly Hills East all rolled into one location." For my dad, who was born under modest circumstances in Mexico City and whose own father was an orphan, to be able to live in the Mexican Beverly Hills as an adult was a big step up. He played golf at the citys country club every weekend and served as an important figure in the citys Rotary International organization. We often ran into people who knew and respected him wherever we went--restaurants, the bank, the supermarket--and theyd shake his hand with sincerity, reassuring me and my older brother, "Your dads a good man," in case we ever doubted it. My mom, on the other hand, was less interested in the community. She often complained about the citys lack of good stores and its seemingly endless pavement. Sometimes she even complained about its propensity for attracting wetbacks, always laughing after this admittance, especially if my dad was around, before shed lovingly touch his arm and coo, "Aww, I married a wetback." That term wetback, coined from those Mexicans who illegally crossed the Rio Grande to get to America, was not an accurate description of my dad, who had crossed the border legally and traveled by road, not river. But that didnt stop my mom from muttering the word whenever she was feeling playful, or worse, when she was feeling wicked. Even though she has Mexican roots herself, I always thought that her teasing meant she considered natural-born citizens superior to those who had been naturalized. She would have likely picked this idea up from her own dad, a WWII veteran whose own parents were immigrants, and whose dark skin made him feel inferior in a country that was even harsher toward Mexicans than it is today. The problem, for me, was that my neighborhood and my place inside it didnt resemble my preconceived notions of power. It didnt matter that my classmates at school shared the same Spanish-sounding last names and most of their grandmas didnt speak English either. I took note of the Mexican guy selling oranges on the corner, and the busboy picking up our dishes topped with messes of ketchup and crumbs, and I thought, No, thats not me. I even convinced myself now and again that I was superior to those kinds of Mexicans because my parents hadnt taught me Spanish. We were outgrowing our Mexican-ness, I thought to myself. Pretty soon it would be gone completely, forgotten like a dream. My feelings of superiority never lasted long. I knew my classmates and I were part of a minority, and I didnt like the sound of that word, sitting heavy in my mouth and mind. I wanted to be like the blond-haired, blue-eyed Tanner girls on Full House. I wanted the calm, sensible family talks like the Seavers had on Growing Pains. I wanted a family tree that stretched back to Europe. Maybe England or Ireland, France even. But not Spain. I got hooked on TV at a young age, marking the beginning of my intense bond with screens, and TV served as a window into the exciting world out there. I became obsessed with the families and neighborhoods I saw that were different from my own--which is to say, white. There was no George Lopez on TV then, no Sofia Vergara or America Ferrera. And I deemed the world "out there," on the TV screen and in the heart of glittering Hollywood, to be far superior to the Mexican Beverly Hills with its baldheaded gangsters, its teenage mothers, and its paleta men making their living selling sweet treats to kids on clean, suburban pavement. Unlike my dad, who seemed perfectly content with his roots and his chosen city of Montebello, I leaned more toward my moms chronic dissatisfaction and her fondness for escape. Like me, my mom also found herself captivated by screens. She loved foreign films--Cinema Paradiso, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Shirley Valentine--and Id cuddle up with her on the couch for countless cinematic escapes, placing myself in the films and imagining the adventures waiting for me in adulthood. Sometimes I would imagine taking trips with my mom. Its not that I didnt love my dad or that I wanted her to leave him forever, but maybe a few months? A year? I picked up on the tension that arose between my parents if my dad was working late again or on another client call. He usually returned from the office when we were already tucked into bed and was gone in the morning before wed had a chance to get up, always trying to get ahead at the expense of my moms growing resentment. My brother and I got used to having my dad around only on the weekends. But even then there were always more phone calls, more stacked files in front of him, and my mom found this difficult to accept, alternating between giving him the silent treatment and erupting in angry outbursts, depending on her mood. My moms moodiness became more pronounced as I grew older. Some days shed park herself in front of the TV, bored eyes glazed over by some daytime talk show or murder mystery. Other days shed take me to the mall to try on clothes and feast at the food court, deep-fried corn dogs with mustard and curly french fries. And yet other days shed be annoyed by everything--the dirty dishes, the piles of laundry, her lazy children--and Id think to myself, She just needs a break. If we go away for a little while, shell feel better. When my mom was upset, I sought solace in playing video games with Gabe, who was three years my senior. We spent hours toting machine guns in Contra, gobbling up mushrooms in Super Mario Bros., and scouring mythic lands for Zelda. I became obsessed with trying to beat him, frantically studying video-game magazines to learn the latest cheats, training myself not to blink, lest I miss a bullet or fireball and lose. When I wasnt playing, I was thinking of playing. Wh Details ISBN1501163396 Author Erica Garza Pages 224 Publisher Simon & Schuster ISBN-10 1501163396 ISBN-13 9781501163395 Format Paperback Imprint Simon & Schuster Subtitle One Womans Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States DEWEY 616.85830092 Short Title Getting Off Language English UK Release Date 2020-01-09 NZ Release Date 2020-01-09 AU Release Date 2019-02-28 Alternative 9781501163371 Audience General Series A Memoir on Female Sexuality Year 2020 Publication Date 2020-01-09 US Release Date 2020-01-09 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:120041108;

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