Eighteenth date

So soon? Well, yes. A week after I got home from Faraway City I had to fly out there again for another week. This time D was able to join me only Friday evening, after I had spent the week pretty solidly working (at the office in the day and writing up reports at night). We left again Saturday evening, so we didn't have a lot of time together. I probably wouldn't mention it at all if I hadn't gotten into the habit by now of writing about every single date we have. But I don't think I have a lot new to report.

But there is a little news. D has a new job starting in the fall -- she's been offered a position at another school several states away from where she lives now, a place whose administration seems to have its head on straight. That would make a welcome change, and she accepted the job on the spot without any thought how she is going to move this summer. So far the only people at school that she has told are her colleague Rog and her single favorite student (only because he was in the room when she got the call). Her favorite student, who is graduating this year, told her he was really glad she got this other offer because he had been planning all year to write her a long essay on his way out the door about why she simply had to get out of the school she's at today, because the environment is toxic in a dozen ways, and because it is run by crazy people. Now, he said, he wouldn't have to write the essay, and that was a big relief.

When D told her husband about this new job, and about how she would have to move even farther away from "their" house than she lives right now, he said he wanted to go with her. His work can be done anywhere he has access to the Internet, so location is no big deal. And he wanted them to move back in together, because he missed living with her. She pondered this for a while and then told him that her one condition before agreeing to this was that she wanted an open marriage -- meaning specifically the freedom to fuck other people (presumably meaning me). Her husband pondered this in turn, but finally agreed.

I'm not completely sure I understand what is going on between the two of them right now. D says she told her husband that the sexual part of their life together is certainly over, but she also says that he admitted to missing it. I don't know if she is just being high-handed with him, or if the reality is simply more complex. (I assume that it pretty much has to be complex, given that they've been married even longer than I have been to Wife.) In any event, she did say that he agreed to the open marriage. I suspect he won't be moving with her this summer, because it will likely take longer than that to pack up their stuff and sell the house. But perhaps in a while.

For what it is worth, this new job will put her several states closer to Faraway City. Of course, she may have less freedom to get up and vanish for a couple of days, in a brand-new job and all.

D remarked also that she mentioned this "open marriage" discussion to her daughter, whom I introduced in one post under the name "D Jr" or "Brittany". Her daughter replied that she saw two sides -- two forces, even -- inside her mother, fighting for supremacy. On one side there is D's deep, conservative religiosity; her obsessive workaholism; her austere, almost ascetical Jansenism. But on the other side, D Jr said she sees a longing for joy and beauty and freedom that seems to be pushing towards a goal that maybe is not even visible yet. And of course D herself is aware of this struggle too, painfully so every time she reflects that she no longer understands how she can go to church regularly while still involved with me. (I am reasonably sure that I haven't helped any with my occasional suggestions that there must be some way for her to see ecstatic sex as a component of a spiritual path.) One way or another, she is feeling a lot of transition in her life right now.

There's not really a lot of narrative to this date, though. (Dinner, sex, sleep, sex, coffee, sex, breakfast, walking and talking, used bookstore, airport.) Well, unless you count how difficult the flight back home was. Maybe I'll save the details of that story for another time. For the moment, suffice it to say that I must have had rocks in my head when I booked my itinerary through ... well, let's call it a major urban hub that has way more than its share of bad weather and consequent air travel delays. I did finally get home, at something like 2:15 in the morning, hours after I was expected. Maybe I'll remember and book my next trip along a different route.

A joke from Son 1

The last time he was home, Son 1 told me a joke he said he had heard recently. Right away he disclaimed any responsibility for it -- "I heard this from some guy in my dorm" -- which probably makes sense, all things considered. The entire joke consists of a simple observation:

When a girl says she went through a whole box of tissues watching a movie -- and when a guy says the same thing -- they are talking about very different kinds of movies.

Yes indeed, Son 1 is fourteen years old and in high school. Where else? And yet, I haven't quite been able to get past wondering at the incongruity here: Is my kid really telling me this joke? Really? Something a little odd there, even if I can't quite put my finger on it ....