Matthew Perry has detailed his failed attempt to lose his virginity to ex-girlfriend Tricia Fisher and how alcoholism impacted his sex life in another excerpt from his new memoir.
The actor, 53, who has been spilling candid memories in Friends, Lovers and The Big Terrible Thing, revealed he suffered from impotence-induced anxiety after alcohol left him unable to perform when he first tried to have sex as a teen in his native Canada.
In a passage obtained by the New York Post, the star said he was left ‘soft and sad’ after attempting to have sex with Tricia, now 53, who he began dating aged 18 in the 1980s.
Oh my: Matthew Perry has detailed his failed attempts to lose his virginity to ex girlfriend Tricia Fisher and how alcoholism impacted his sex life in another excerpt from his new memoir (pictured together in 1987)
The star detailed how before leaving Ottawa for LA aged 15, he tried to have sex, drinking ‘six beers’ for courage but couldn’t perform, writing: ‘By then I’d been drinking for a few years. I failed to make the correlation between the booze and my private parts not working.’
Perry said he spent years ‘walking around the planet thinking sex was something for other people’ and hiding his ‘great ugly secret’ of impotence.
He began dating Tricia, the half-sister of Carrie Fisher and the daughter of Eddie Fisher, and described the couple’s valiant attempts to have sex – all to no avail.
He wrote: ‘Nothing worked; nothing. Horrified yet again, I forsook the loving arms of Tricia Fisher and padded my slim, naked body over to a chair in the apartment.
Candid again: The actor , 53, who has been spilling candid memories in Friends, Lovers and The Big Terrible Thing, revealed he suffered from impotence-induced anxiety after alcohol left him unable to perform when he tried to have sex as a teen
‘I sat there, soft, and sad, my two hands cupped over my lap like a nun’s during Vespers, doing my best to cover my embarrassment and maybe a tear or two.’
He revealed that Tricia helped him conquer his problem, writing: ‘She walked over to me, took my hand, led me back to bed, laid me down, and sure enough … sheer glory, for two whole minutes!
‘That night, by the dint of a miraculous universe and the ministrations of a beautiful young woman who deserved better, I finally first misplaced my virginity then lost it altogether, and impotence has not been part of my vocabulary since, just as she promised it wouldn’t be. Everything about me — at least physically — works just fine.’
The pair dated on-off for several years before Perry dumped Tricia due to his ‘old fears creeping up’.
Perry has spoken openly about his battle with addiction to alcohol and pills which nearly killed him.
At its worst, his addiction had him drinking a quarter bottle of vodka a day and taking 55 Vicodin, methadone and Xanax.
Perry has been kissing and telling all over the place in his new memoir, with the star also revealing he had a ‘long make-out session’ with Valerie Bertinelli when her husband Eddie Van Halen was passed out.
Bertinelli and Perry were working together on the TV show Sydney which aired only in 1990.
Valerie’s marriage with Van Halen lasted from 1981 until 2007.
Embarrassed: Perry has been kissing and telling all over the place in his new memoir, with the star also revealing he had a ‘long make-out session’ with Valerie Bertinelli when her husband Eddie Van Halen was passed out
Perry writes in his memoir that his stint as Valerie’s brother on Sydney got intense because he ‘fell madly in love with Valerie Bertinelli, who was clearly in a troubled marriage.’
He adds, ‘My crush was crushing; not only was she way out of my league, but she was also married to one of the most famous rock stars on the planet, Eddie Van Halen.’
Perry details how intense his infatuation with the actress was, leading him to plan out a future together.
‘It is important to point out here that my feelings for Valerie were real. I was completely captivated — I mean, I was obsessed with her and harbored elaborate fantasies about her leaving Eddie Van Halen and living out the rest of her days with me,’ he writes.
Things finally escalated when he was invited over to Bertinelli and Van Halen’s home, at which he was ‘just hanging out and gazing at Valerie, trying to make her laugh.’
‘When you made her laugh, you felt 10 feet tall,’ he gushes.
But ‘Eddie had enjoyed the fruits of the vine a little too hard, one more time, and eventually he just passed out, not ten feet away from us,’ Perry says, adding that, ‘This was my chance!
His idol: Perry and Bertinelli on the set of Sydney in 1990
‘If you think I didn’t actually have a chance in hell you’d be wrong, dear reader — Valerie and I had a long, elaborate make-out session. It was happening — maybe she felt the same way I did.’
He claims Bertinelli even seemed to reciprocate his affections.
‘I told her I had thought about doing that for a long time, and she had said it right back to me,’ Perry says.
But when he confessed about the night with Bertinelli to his costar Craig Bierko, Bierko was cautious rather than optimistic and told him to watch himself.
As for Bertinelli, she ‘made no mention of what had happened and was behaving — as she should have been — like this was just a normal day.
On a permanent break: Matthew revealed he harbored a huge crush on co-star Jennifer Aniston both before and during their time on Friends – but was rebuffed by her ‘lack of interest’ (pictured 1995)
‘I quickly got the hint and also played the role I was supposed to, but inside I was devastated,’ Perry says.
Bertinelli’s professionalism allegedly led to sleepless, tearful nights for the future Friends star, and he saw the failure of Sydney as an escape from the obsession, as he ‘didn’t have to see Valerie anymore.’
The actor gives a Freudian explanation for his attraction to Bertinelli and other women who couldn’t love him back.
‘I have spent my life being attracted to unavailable women. It doesn’t take a psychology degree to figure out that this had something to do with my relationship with my mother,’ he writes.
Outing: Matthew was seen back on the promo trail for his memoir as he arrived at SiriusXM in NYC on Tuesday
Pals: The star posed up with Andy Cohen at the studio