Matthew Perry reveals his sex shame: ‘A great ugly secret’

Matthew Perry has revealed he suffered from impotence the first two times he attempted to have sex, saying he was riddled with shame over his inability to perform.

The beloved actor, 53, made the candid admission in his new memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” on sale Tuesday, recalling his attempt to get down and dirty as a teen in Canada.

“Back in Ottawa, before I’d left, a girl had tried to have sex with me, but I was so nervous that I drank six beers beforehand and couldn’t perform,” the “Friends” star writes. “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 was unable to get it up, and spent years harboring the “great ugly secret.”

“No one could know about this — no one,” he recalls in the candid autobiography.
“So, I was walking around the planet thinking sex was something for other people.”

Eventually, the budding actor began dating Tricia Fisher — daughter of Eddie Fisher and half-sister of Carrie Fisher — and the pair eventually attempted to get intimate.

But, once again, a nervous, virginal Perry was unable to perform.

“Nothing worked; nothing,” he candidly writes. “Horrified yet again, I forsook the loving arms of Tricia Fisher and padded my slim, naked body over to a chair in the apartment. 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.”

However, he recalls that a defiant Fisher wasn’t going to give up on him, writing that she helped him defeat his impotence anxiety.

“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!”

The “Nine Whole Yards” actor continues to recall his romp with Fisher in detail, penning: “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.”

Perry and Fisher dated for several years, before Perry eventually dumped the Hollywood scion.

“She didn’t abandon me, but old fears crept up, and I ended the relationship,” Perry candidly admits in the tome.

Fisher — who is now married to actor and musician Bryan Thames — has not yet publicly responded to the intimate details in the memoir.

The sex story is one of many intimate memories Perry unlocks in the book, which has been making headlines for weeks.

In a separate section, he reveals he had an unrequited crush on “Friends” co-star Jennifer Aniston, and in a different chapter, confesses to have a steamy make-out session with married Valerie Bertinelli.

Meanwhile, the troubled star — who has battled drug addiction on and off for decades — recently revealed that his struggles became so severe that he “nearly died” a few years ago at age 49 when his colon burst from opioid overuse.