Sixteenth date

Only a month after our last date, D and I met again, in International City. Two days, three nights, all over the weekend before my actual work started. Naturally Wife wondered why I had to be gone so long, and I tried to suggest that spending the weekend there would help me get over jet lag. Uh huh. I think this excuse is getting weaker and weaker, even though it turns out to be true.

Much of this date was like many of our others: we went to museums, we walked around, we discovered new restaurants, we talked endlessly, we fucked. So far, so good. Let me try to identify a couple of the points that were maybe a little different from the normal round.

D asked me if I had made any decisions on the question I described here. First I explained that Son 2 will definitely be attending the class at the Shakespeare Festival; then that Wife has said that as long as our finances are separated, she can't afford to go. D asked if I plan to pay for Wife to go there, and I said I hadn't decided yet. Then she asked if I had asked Wife about D herself also attending.

I fumbled a bit and then told her that I had asked the advice of some friends (that would be you) and had gotten several people all saying exactly the same thing, namely that it was a really bad idea. Why hadn't I told her before now? She proposed the theory that I had in fact already decided to pay Wife's way so we could make a lovely family event of it, and that I was being dishonest with her by not owning up. I tried to explain that no, I really haven't thought about it yet; I suggested that cowardice and dithering are better explanations for the delay. Well then, why at least didn't I tell her that all my friends thought it was a bad idea for her to join us there? After all, she added, she too had thought it was a bad idea (not that she said this at the time), so what was the big deal? Good question, I guess. We bickered about this for longer than we should have.

D also added that I have to assume Wife has been denigrating both of us to the boys consistently enough that I probably can't reveal the relationship right after separation, because her image will have been poisoned in their minds. She said I had better be prepared for it to be years, until the boys are older and can look at everything with different eyes ... and that our relationship will have to remain a clandestine affair till then.

In the process of bickering about this subject, as I explained myself by emphasizing my cowardice and indolence, I mentioned that when I sit down to write about what is going on in my life (meaning here) I often emphasize those parts of my character that are least admirable, as if I were setting out to look my worst instead of my best. I just tossed off the remark with an "Isn't that silly?"

D: Well, obviously you need a father confessor. You should look for a Jesuit.

Hosea: Yeah, right.

D: I'm serious. In fact there is a retreat house not too far from where you live, staffed by Jesuits. I looked it up to see if I might come out there some time, before ruling out any visits to your area. [She smiled.]

Hosea: Oh good. I can just see starting that conversation off. 'Father, there is this married woman I'm involved with, and I'm not treating her very well. How can I do better?'

D: And what do you suppose is the single most common thing they hear about in the confessional?

Hosea: I have no idea.

D: Infidelity. You're not going to shock anybody.

Hosea: Maybe not. But isn't there kind of a difference between 'not being shocked' and 'aiding and abetting'? I'd be looking for someone who didn't mind aiding and abetting our affair, after all.

D: That's why it has to be a Jesuit. They are uniquely good at ... ummm ... understanding how to engage with the World.

O-kay-y-y ....

Our last evening we went out drinking at a jazz club. Plenty of wine, lots of fun. Somewhere in the course of the evening I mentioned that if you handle it just right a MFM V-shaped triple can work out well enough, especially for the woman in the middle. Then I had to explain how I knew this (ancient history, back in the days of Boyfriend 1 and, later, Boyfriend 4) and D got very thoughtful. For a while she seemed concerned, as if sex with her (as just one person) might somehow be too boring for me. (As if sex with someone as passionate as D could ever be boring!) But I also think it set her to pondering. When we got back to the hotel, and had taken our clothes off, and were deeply enmeshed in each other, she suddenly said, "Open the door."

Huh?

"Open the door."

So I did. The hotel was silent, because it was so late. We didn't have an audience. And we wound up as passionately as ever. But later D simply said, "If I'm going to have to hide our love for years and years, until your boys grow up, then tonight I was prepared to show it off to anybody that walked by." Of course we are abroad here, so they would all have been strangers. And in any event nobody walked by.

But I have thought about that night a lot ever since then.