Tenth date

Travelling two full days (a day each way) to spend two and a half days together sounds a little crazy, but it has been a magical weekend.

I had a trip to make for business. So I made a reservation for D at the same time, to come to the same city to meet me.

We're coming from different places, but we each had a really long flight. To make things more unsettled, we didn't really know until the day we left whether our planes would be flying or not. But at the last minute the day dawned clear and the skies were open and away we went.

We met in International City on Friday evening: got dinner, checked into the hotel. Saturday we strolled through museums and art galleries downtown, bought ice cream from a little shop on the street when the day got too hot, lingered in the late afternoon at an outdoor cafe over a couple of glasses of wine, stopped in at the big church downtown so D could attend Saturday evening Mass, ate a late dinner, and discovered a hole-in-the-wall jazz club where we sat until midnight sipping and savoring. Sunday we strolled all day through a huge park I had never before discovered in all the times I have visited International City, past families picnicking and children playing and lovers reclining on the lush lawns totally wrapped up in each other. We climbed to the top of a tall observation tower that swayed in the wind, ate lunch and drank wine at one of the little cafes that dot the inside of the park, and found a soft spot on the lawn where we could lie back with each other and whisper sweet nothings into each other's ears and drowse. Then Monday morning, D flew back home to her crazy job, and I went into the office to do the work that my company is paying me for.

And the sex was wonderful -- intense, passionate. We had so little time together, and (unlike some times) we did plenty of other things. And yet somehow we managed to make time for each other: Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday night, Sunday night, Monday morning.

(deep contented sigh)

And we talked.

We talked about the job D had applied for -- in our town teaching at the school where the boys now attend (and where Son 2 will still go next year). She was turned down for the job, and she told me that she sees a silver lining. Although her current job is lunatic on many levels, she realized that teaching so nearby would put a great strain on Son 2. After all, there's no way Wife could avoid knowing, and these days Wife has nothing good to say about D. So how would Son 2 withstand it, when D would be pleasant to him every day (even if she didn't teach him directly) and then Wife would fill his ears with poisonous lies about her every night? Son 2 is a kind, sensitive, caring boy; better not to put him in such a bind.

We talked about my someday divorce, and D acknowledged that -- for all the impatience and insecurity she has sometimes expressed, for all the immediacy we both felt for it -- the thing won't happen right away. It's going to be a couple of years in the future, at any rate, maybe once Son 2 enters high school. But it won't be tomorrow.

We talked about all the times D has told me she admires my kindness to Wife. I explained that I assume this is humbug -- that D often says this sort of thing when she is obviously depressed, and that it sounds to me for all the world like, "Sure, you're kind to her! Never mind that I'm the one who really loves you; just go right ahead and ignore me. I don't mind ...!" D admitted that she often says this when she is depressed, but added that she really does mean it. She explained that when she gets sad and morose and self-pitying, she has trained herself to look for something -- anything -- that she can describe as positive. (This may explain her thoughts about not getting that job, above.) So this is just a part of that.

And we talked about sex.

D reminded me -- joyfully -- that only 3% of the population has sex every single day. I have no idea where she gets her statistic, but she obviously relishes it when she can join that small elite.

D explained that every time she has ended a relationship, it has been over sex ... basically, because there wasn't enough of it for her. And yet, she went on, what she has always wanted out of the sex has been stimulation and union on every level: physical and orgasmic, but also intellectual and spiritual. She went on to say something kind of odd: that whenever she has had a relationship that was "just about the sex," then "the falseness showed up in other aspects of the relationship, outside of bed." I don't know what this means, and I may not be remembering it right. (We had both been drinking a fair bit of wine by then.) But I think I want to mull it for a while.

And D added that she finds sex profoundly revealing -- that the act of fucking has brought every one of her lovers to reveal exactly who he really is. I wanted to know what she meant, and of course I hoped she might tell me what she sees in me. But the example she gave built on things that we have earlier discussed about Wife: namely, that her lying immobile and unresponsive during sex is directly related to her passivity in the rest of life. When I pressed the question about myself, she smiled and said it seemed to her that my love had really changed in this date -- that I was a lot closer to her, that I was putting less distance between us, that I was not reserving my options the way she felt I had done before. Gosh, have I really changed? Maybe not, she admitted. Maybe it is just that only now is she willing to believe that I really do love her. Maybe it is just that only now is she willing to put down her fear of disappointment and trust in the love that I express to her.

Maybe that's it.

In any event, it was a magical weekend. We'll have to do that again some tme.