Dinner with the Consultant

I had dinner with the Consultant a couple nights ago.  It was a lovely place -- elegant food, fine wine, nothing but the best when the company is paying for it.  We talked a lot about the things going on in his life: he is very busy from a work perspective, but his new wife's children by her first husband are proving a major trial.  We talked briefly about Wife and home.  And we talked about my relationship with D.

I explained that I have been having doubts for some time (see e.g. this post and the first part of this one), that we really haven't seen each other more than twice since the two of us saw him last year, and that the philosophical bickering is getting tiring.  (The latest topic is that D is taking me to task once again for dissenting even slightly from her opinions about environmentalism.)  He didn't say a lot other than that he was there for me to talk to, but I think it was useful for me to articulate in words a lot of what I was feeling.  Oh, I talk to myself of course; but this is different.  

Not a lot more to say on this front, except that I think my dinner with the Consultant helped me formulate the letter that shows up in my next post. 

Nineteenth date

I'm late posting: this happened a month and a half ago, right at the end of June. Time flies ....

I had a short trip to Faraway City: two week days and a weekend. Still that's something, right? I guess. In the end most of what I remember was the drama.

We had dinner one night with the Consultant. It's the last time he'll be doing any business with my company, as he is being reassigned. It's too bad: he's fun and easy to work with. Besides, he's the only one in real life who knows and socializes with both of us as a couple. So D and I went out to dinner with him one last time, drank plenty of wine, told stories and had a great time.

The next morning I woke early to find D was not in bed. Huh? The room was dark and for a moment I thought she must be in the bathroom, but there were no noises from that direction. I sat up and saw a thin ray of light coming from the door. I walked over to it, and found D sitting in the hallway reading the paper, holding the door ever so slightly ajar with her foot. I stuck my head out and made a quizzical noise; she looked up, saw I was up, and came in.

I asked if something was wrong. D looked a little uncomfortable, and then said, "Well it's really ironic."

"What is?" I asked, thinking that whatever it was couldn't be good.

"Well for all these years we have laughed about how crazy Wife is for complaining about your snoring, because all the times we've been together you've never snored."

I knew what was coming then, and felt ... how do I describe it? A pit in my stomach? Two inches tall? Loathsome and unworthy? All of the above? Fighting about sleep and snoring is an old, old theme between Wife and me, and it has left me feeling chronically both despicable and bitter. I allude to it in all these posts, and discuss it most fully in this one. Hearing it now from D was just a nightmare, but all I did was stare at the floor and wait for her to spell it out.

"But you know, lately you have gained a lot of weight. And now, ... you snore. Yes, you do. And I couldn't sleep."

Take me now, Lord. Strike me with lightning, buffet me about with terrible winds, sink my feet in a river of boiling blood, it can't be any worse than this. Gaining weight is what D has always said killed her desire for her husband (see here) though I have begun to suspect that can't be the whole story. (I think I've said this a couple of places, but this is one.) And snoring ... dear God, not this again.

We talked. We must have. I don't remember a word of what we said, until dawn finally lit up the sky and I got dressed to go into the office. D reassured me she still loved me, of course, but I was completely in a daze.

And when I got back to the hotel at the end of the day I was still deeply depressed. I asked D kind of pro forma what she wanted to do this evening, but my heart wasn't in much of anything. D for her part had a very definite agenda in mind. It was Friday night at this point. Our dinner with the Consultant had been Thursday night, but we hadn't fucked then. (Too much wine.) This means we had had no sex since Wednesday night when we arrived, two whole days ago. And what were we waiting for? True, I was too depressed to have much interest in anything; but the great thing about sex is that once you start, even if you think you are uninterested, the sex itself takes over. So for an hour or more (D told me later that she looked at a clock and it was more) we both had a delightful time. And as we lay in each other's arms, basking in the afterglow, D felt in love and at peace with the world and I slid right back into the depression where I had been before.

Really, this wasn't crazy. The problem is that I was feeling worthless because of the snoring issue, and I had no reason to think that would go away. My only hope was that I could make it less intense by not drinking -- and so, for what it is worth, I didn't touch a drop of alcohol for the rest of the trip. (I actually stayed dry for about a month thereafter as well, although I haven't been so careful the last couple of weeks.) D, for her part, couldn't understand how anybody could be depressed after great sex, and it was truly difficult for me to tell her. The whole topic made me feel too worthless to be able to put it in words.

This feeling of worthlessness made me skittish for the rest of the visit. We were walking around downtown and I mentioned a movie that she hated; she replied by vigorously telling me what was wrong with it and I flattened myself against a wall as if she were going to smite me. I sulked and brooded as she tried one way and another to coax me out of it. All the time I kept hearing in the back of my head, Whatever you are doing, Hosea, it is wrong.

And then, our last afternoon in Faraway City, I actually made her mad.

We were out walking and had gotten caught in the rain. I had something in my pocket I didn't want to get wet ... I think it was a receipt. D offered to carry it in her purse, but really it wasn't going to get wet where it was and I just wanted to push on till we could get back to the hotel and dry off. She went stonily silent ... and then when we got back to the hotel she started packing her things.

I asked her what was wrong, and at first she wouldn't tell me. She snapped sharply about how I didn't value her and didn't care about her, suggesting I was only in it for the sex ... and I was surprised at how calm I was. It was as if I felt, OK fine. Go ahead and break up with me if you want to. At this point the weekend can't get worse; and if you break up with me there is just that much less drama I have to worry about in my life. I'll lose the outrageous highs, but I'll also lose some of the bumps in the road and maybe it's a fair trade. I didn't say any of this, of course, but I was thinking it. And I still didn't understand what was bugging her.

And then all of a sudden her anger cracked and she started to cry ... and with that she explained what was going on. "Hosea, when we get together you do everything for me and you pay for everything. When we met at the airport you carried my luggage. This afternoon you wouldn't let me pay for the movies, you wouldn't let me pay for the popcorn, and you wouldn't even let me carry your receipt in my purse for you .... Hosea, you never let me do anything for you, and what does that make me? I'm not an independent equal in this relationship, I'm just some kind of kept woman, ... and you buy things for me so you can have sex with me. What does that make me if not some kind of prostitute? And how do you think that makes me feel about myself when I look in the mirror?"

Oh, so that's the problem. I would never have guessed. After our wrangling about money at the end of last year (see, e.g., here and here and even the very beginning of here), I really have tried to pay for everything because it was the only way I could see to keep D from thinking I'm a cheapskate. But now I guess I leaned too far the other direction. I don't know, sometimes the middle ground can be hard to find.

Somehow I calmed her down and reassured her. The next morning I made sure to let her pay for breakfast, and to carry her own bags when we got back to the airport. And in the end I guess we were all right again. But I sure hope that next time we can tilt the balance in the direction of more sex and less drama ....

Fifteenth date

Gosh, have D and I had fifteen dates already? Sometimes I stop and realize that the number is getting kind of large; then next I wonder why I have made a point of writing about each one? I’m not sure of the answer, except that it forces me to slow down a little and pay attention. And it sets the event in my memory, in a way that probably wouldn’t happen otherwise. Maybe it’s not important to keep up. But paying attention is always good.

Our fifteenth date was actually a couple weeks ago, when I was at the office in Faraway City for one week and she was able to join me from Saturday afternoon through Monday evening. (And we have another date coming up in another two weeks. I think we are making up for that long dry spell from last September into January.)

We met at the airport, and right away the visit got off to a bumpy start – for a couple of reasons.

The first reason – I should mention that it took a while before D was prepared to explain either of these to me – was that I had dressed sloppily for the trip, and I hadn’t complimented her when I first saw her on how she looked. I mean, she looked nice, … but hell, she always looks nice. And even if she dressed like a slob (which I suspect would be constitutionally impossible for her), I’d still think she looked nice because I love her. But she reminded me how important looks are to her, and explained that she puts a lot of effort into dressing nicely for me. So she wants to be appreciated. The other side of the same token is that when I dress the way I usually do for travel – and if I am going to spend a lot of time in airports I dress for comfort and function, period – she thinks to herself, “He doesn’t even respect me enough to put a little effort into his clothes.” And of course that makes her sad. Ooops, that’s not what I meant, naturally. I agreed I’d dress better next time.

The second reason was a little stranger. When we met at the airport I tried to kiss her, but she only allowed a light little peck. I tried to hold her hand or touch her as we drove in to the hotel, but it was clear she didn’t feel comfortable. Once we checked into our room I tried to embrace her or at least hold her hand, and she flinched visibly away from me. What’s this? Are you angry with me?

D was a little shocked that I should think her angry with me, so I asked why she was unwilling to touch me. That’s what I would do if I were angry. And what she said was very odd.

D explained to me that she had become very confused about the strength of her own sexuality. After it took total control of her for two hours during the last evening of our fourteenth date, D said, she has been really spooked by her own sexual energy. She said she doesn’t understand it – not the power it (obviously) has over her, nor the power that it appears to have over others.

NOTE: This last remark needs a little explanation. D lives in a duplex; her neighbor in the other half is a divorced man in his eighties. D spends time visiting with him to be sociable, going to church with him on Sundays, and generally helping out because he is somewhat infirm. For his part, he has responded by asking her directly to fuck him, and by telling his children and other relatives that he plans to marry her once she is divorced from her husband. D was a little aghast at this: he is in his eighties, with partial paralysis in some parts of his body, … and he wants her in his bed? Well it’s no surprise to me that he should want her there, but I have to admit I find it a little odd that he could expect her to want him. More and more though, D tells me, he seems trapped in orbit around her, in a way she finds somewhat disturbing. Then recently her daughter persuaded her to join a “couch-surfing” network, maybe as a way to travel on the cheap. Recently she hosted her first guest, a middle-aged man coming through the area to visit family. They spent one evening talking over dinner, and he told D all about his two failed marriages. When he left she gave him a hug goodbye, … and he told her then that he had never felt in love with anybody, but he wished once in his life he could be hugged like that by somebody who loved him. It might make all the difference.

Anyway, over the past few weeks, between our previous date and this one, D had been feeling progressively more and more disturbed by the power of her own touch, of her own sexuality. What is more, she felt that she understood it less and less. She told me she had gotten to the point of feeling almost like the character Rogue, from the X-Men – someone who can’t even touch others without draining some essential power out of them.

It’s a remarkable story, and it is certainly consistent with her backing away when I wanted to touch her. But frankly I have a little trouble understanding how this story can be true. D isn’t some newly-pubescent girl who is still discovering that her body reacts in new and different ways. She’ll be 57 this year, for heaven’s sake, and she admits that her sex drive has been remarkably powerful her whole adulthood. How can it possibly be confusing her now? Shouldn’t she have it pretty much all figured out by this point?

I would think so, but she said that she understands sex a lot less now than she did (or thought she did) back when she was 20. Also, a lot of her earlier understanding was filtered through a lens of Christian theology, and now she’s not so sure that’s a very helpful way to approach sex. Anyway, the upshot is that she was skittish about touching me, so she said, for fear that her fundamental sexual nature might explode on her or something. (And of course in the end we did hold hands while talking in the hotel … and a little later we were tearing each other’s clothes off and fucking for dear life.)

We fucked a lot this visit. I am happy to report that I didn’t have the same erectile problems I had last time. (Maybe I was just out of practice?) Between sex and dinner (and more sex) we pretty much accounted for the evening and the morning. As we walked to a restaurant for breakfast, I spelled out for her my idea about the Shakespeare Festival.

Then D mentioned that she had told her sister about me. More precisely, her sister called while D was en route to the airport.

“What’s that noise in the background? Are you driving?”

"Yes.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Faraway City.”

“Why are you going there?”

Long pause. “To see the man I’m dating.”

D said that her sister was very positive and affirming – “I’m so proud of you!” – and that she wants to meet me. And indeed I have heard so much about her that I’d like to meet her too. (It’s these kinds of emotions that made me think up this idea about the Shakespeare Festival in the first place. But everyone whose opinion I have asked has told me it is a skull-crushingly stupid idea.)

Back to the hotel … more sex. Then we went out to a play in the afternoon, and afterwards to a wine bar where we had plenty of wine, and some elegant hors d’oeuvres, and talked.

D told me she thought I wasn’t being completely honest with myself about my own feelings. Huh? It turns out that she was talking about my argument linking sex with community and friendship (see for example my discussion here). But she wan’t thinking of the abstract argument so much as she was thinking of my suggestion (which I have tried to intimate only very gently) that it is hardly fair for her to be stuck so much of the time with no sexual companionship, and that physical fidelity is not necessary (or at any rate is not something I ask of her). She said that she thinks I have been so badly hurt by Wife over the years that I have really come to believe there is something about me that is simply not “good enough” – whatever that means. So to try to get me over that, she said that she thinks I need a lover to be absolutely faithful to me, so that I can come to understand that I really can be good enough to please her.

I told her that I’m not so sure I agree, and that I have in fact spent a lot of time thinking about questions of fidelity and infidelity.

“I’m not surprised that you have. Is this because of who I am?”

In retrospect I am not quite sure what she meant by that question. At the time I assumed she was referring to her abundant sexual energy, and that she was therefore hinting (as never before) at a level of experience inconsistent with strict monogamy. Later on I thought of a more mundane explanation: viz., that she is somebody else’s wife, so the only way for us to be together at all involves infidelity. I like the first explanation better.

I answered, “Not only that, but because of my own past with Wife.”

“Of course.”

So I summarized my essay that sex creates a couple where there wasn’t one before, and that “betrayal” means betrayal of that couple-dom, of the promise of mutual refuge that you make to each other. But I added therefore that what I would want to know (if she ever were to fuck somebody else) is “Where do I stand?” And if my own position were secure, then maybe it’s not betrayal …? I can’t remember everything we said – that’s one problem with discussing these things over little food and lots of wine. I don’t think we ever got far enough for me to say that it seems selfish of me to trap her sexuality all for myself, especially when we see each other so little; or that it is somehow a denial of a grand, divine gift because her sexuality is so exuberant. But I have said some of that before, I think.

One thing she said that made me feel better is that when she promises me she is only mine, she doesn’t necessarily mean forever. She means for now. She is not saying she’ll never, ever, ever take anybody else to her bed, but only that for now she won’t.

Anyway, after we polished off a half-carafe and a bottle, we left to come back to the hotel where we fucked some more – very intensely and passionately. She fell asleep, I got up to do a little work, and then lay down next to her and slept a good nine hours. There was a party in the hallway (some little kids’ hockey team and their parents) but we both slept through them. She also said that after the noise we (she) had made earlier in the evening, she would have felt awkward about asking them to be quieter. But no need.

The next morning we got up and ate; looked up some flights to plan for my next business trip; then I read to her while she ironed my shirts. Some time later the Consultant called. I had known he was going to be in town (albeit very briefly), and by the greatest coincidence he was going to be flying out the same time she was. So gosh, why don’t we meet at the airport for a bite or a glass of something? We made the arrangements as D finished my last shirt and threw her few things into her bag. Was it really time for her to leave? So soon? Sigh …. Well, maybe we had time for one more kiss. So we started kissing again … and then in a flurry threw our clothes off one last time. I never got hard this time at all; but D for her part moaned intensely enough that it turned into a scream before she covered her own mouth with a pillow. Ahhh, … much better. We dressed and drove to the airport, where we met up with the Consultant to share an hour of wine and talk. He left. She left. I waved at her softly, and then drove back to the hotel. And it was time to get to work ….

The Consultant has married his girlfriend

I just got the e-mail this morning. He told us (D and me) back here that he had popped the question. The photos show them looking radiant in a church with a Christmas Tree.

Eleventh and twelfth dates

Over a span of eight weeks this summer, I spent fourteen nights with D. When I stop to do the math like that, it’s quite a lot.

I’ve had two business trips in that time. For the first one, back in late June, she was able to join me for an unprecedented ten days; then this trip, early August, the other four.

I’ve tried to think if there were any overriding themes for either date, but all I can pull together are odds and ends. Still, maybe that’s better than nothing. A few of them follow below.

From our eleventh date: ....

I discovered that D has very sensitive toes. Magically sensitive toes. Normally our fucking is so intense and all-consuming that they get bypassed; but on a whim one evening I began sucking them slowly. And the most delightful tremors rippled up through D’s body, and then burbled out in her voice: “Hosea, don’t do that – aaah! You’ll never let me do that to – aaah! – you because you’re so ticklish – aaah! This is really embarrassing – aaah! Oh my God!”

I also insisted on slowing down enough that I could play with her underwear – bite it, tug on it, really play with it – before finally sliding it off of her. She didn’t expect this. In fact, after I had paid so much attention to her toes, she had even forgotten she was still wearing any underwear. But it piqued her interest: after we both returned home from our eleventh date, and before our twelfth, she told me one day she had specifically gone shopping for sexy underwear.
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The weekend of this date, we had what must count as a perfect Sunday. In the morning, D suggested that we go to services at a local Orthodox church. She is Catholic, but she knows and loves the Orthodox liturgy and I knew nothing about it. So sure, hell, why not? Well, the Orthodox liturgy turned out to be very long, and it is all sung. But it was a peaceful, contemplative, devotional experience. Besides, D commented afterwards, “When you go to an Orthodox service, you really know you’ve been to Church today!” And then she laughed.

We stopped at a local delicatessen for lunch. It was a lovely summer day, so all the (many) patrons were enjoying the tables outside. From there it was a short walk to the theater where a new play was opening. I had secured tickets for two for the Sunday matinee, so we spent the heat of the day in a dark, air-conditioned room watching a remarkably inventive new story unfold.

After the play we wandered the streets a while talking. And then, about the time we were thinking of going back to the hotel, we heard what sounded like music coming from somewhere down that-a-way. We turned down that street, walked another couple of blocks ... and came upon a street fair we had read about but had not been able to figure out how to find. And here we had found it. A band was playing, booths were selling food and drinks and face painting, kids were running about playing, adults were talking, and everybody was having a lovely time. So we found a table near the music, bought a couple glasses of wine, and sat down.

Time passed, a new band replaced the old one, we had a few more glasses of wine and finally some food. The new band was playing strongly-danceable music, so D got up to dance. I’ve never been very good on my feet, but after enough wine I didn’t care so much; so I joined her. And it was fun. Before I realized how late it was the sun had set, and the folks organizing the fair were putting up a huge screen. The band finished, and the fair proceeded to show a movie (“Star Trek” 2009) out under the stars, for anyone who was still there.

We got to bed awfully late – actually that was true several other nights as well – but it was a perfect Sunday.
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But I also started to wear out, and my exhaustion came to light as bouts of depression. Up until this date, D has always reacted pretty badly when I get really depressed, backing off as if I were growing a green exoskeleton and bat wings. Finally this time she explained that I really do look physically different to her when that happens: my eyeballs get rounder (that’s what she said!) and my posture gets hunched and stooped. And she admitted that she found it scary.

But of course having her back away in fright just made me feel even worse, so it became a vicious circle. And we talked about more constructive ways for her to react. First, I told her, you can’t back away. Stay with me, hold my hand, talk to me, something. But don’t back away. Second, try humor. I spend a lot of time trying to make stupid jokes; humor is a very big deal for me. So make a stupid joke, even at my expense. If you can get me to laugh, it’ll get better.

At the very end of this date, as we drove to the airport, D told me that she was reflecting on the lessons of the trip. Two of the three were those two, right there. The third was just that our time together is finite. Unless we live to statistically improbable ages, we are both in the second halves of our lives. So we should treasure the time and not waste it ....
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And we talked about infidelity. This came up in a couple of ways. But actually, now that I sit down to write about it, I think the topic deserves a post to itself. So I’ll leave this remark here as a placeholder, and come back to the discussion later in more detail ....
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From our twelfth date: ....

We talked about attractiveness – who is attractive, what makes them so. D has given this a lot of thought. And it is great to listen to her talk about it. When D warms up to the subject of sexual attractiveness, her eyes shine and her face beams and her voice carries the echo of inexpressable yearnings. Nor does it matter whom she is talking about: old or young, male or female, black or white. Don’t misunderstand – there is no doubt that D is straight, as far as that goes. But Beauty and Attractiveness are things that delight her and entice her and compel her attention, whoever owns the body from which they radiate. She cannot help herself for loving Beauty, and to hear her put that love in words is a thing lovely in itself.
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D thinks I drink too much coffee. Maybe this is because I wasn’t very hungry for breakfast Sunday morning, so I drank five cups of coffee while she ate. Then by dinner-time I was famished, so I scarfed up most of the bread on the table while we were waiting for our meals. She later reminded me that this is not a healthy way to eat.

Dinner itself, however, was wonderful fun. The Consultant was in town; so we all ate together and compared notes on our lives. His divorce is complete, and he has asked his girlfriend to marry him. For my part, progress towards a divorce is on hold, and I am inclined to wait till both boys are in high school at any rate. But D and I still continue to see each other, naturally, every chance we get. The Consultant says he thinks being around D makes me calmer; he adds that he has no doubt she is a good influence in my life. We told a lot of stories (the Consultant, in particular, keeps a huge fund of them) and had a wonderful time.
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I spent several hours of the weekend reading aloud to D. It’s a very natural form of recreation for us when we’re not fucking; I love reading aloud, and D loves to listen equally well. I had also come to realize that a lot of our ongoing conversations seemed to hover around a number of the same topics over and over: education is one of these, religion is another. So I finally decided to start reading her Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. (I write this with a bit of trepidation, because I anticipate eye-rolling on the part of readers who have encountered one too many Pirsig-cultist over the years. But I do think his discussions are interesting, they are relevant to other things D and I have talked about ... and she has never read it.)

Reflecting on these hours after she got back home, D wrote, “In analyzing the weekend, I was struck by the polarities; your depression concerned me and left you battered and overwhelmed, yet those hours we spent when you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance stand out as some of the finest hours I have ever spent with another person; a genuine dialogue and engagement with an important work. I will treasure them for years to come and eagerly look forward to September when we will pick up the discussion. I am ever so grateful for the time with you, and your love ... which exceeds all expectations.”


We’ll see each other for a day or two in September, if our current plans hold. I’m looking forward to it.

Seventh date

Another business trip. D was with me all week. We walked and talked. We ate in nice restaurants and dives. We went to a play. And, as always, the sex was marvelous.

Two things were different about this date.

First, I introduced D to a colleague I work with. Strictly speaking, he is a consultant that I usually see only a couple of times a year but we enjoy each other and talk about a lot of things besides work. He made a point of telling me when he decided to divorce his wife of 35 years, and when he met his current girlfriend. He has also told me about his slow journey back to church after an absence that has lasted all his adult life. (The last time I wrote about him was here.) We usually go out to dinner at least once when we work together, and this time I brought D.

Well, D and the Consultant hit it off famously. He was glad to find someone who could really understand his religious journey, and who at the same time didn’t condemn his affair and subsequent divorce. She found him delightful company, and was pleased that he likes me so well. I don’t think the Consultant quite picked up on the fact that D and I are lovers, or perhaps he was giving us the benefit of the doubt to avoid the risk of guessing wrong. But it was crystal clear to him that we care for each other deeply. Since he also knows something about my troubles with Wife over the years, his only remark to me the next day was, “I really hope this works out exactly the way you want it to work out. Whatever that way is, you have been through a lot and I’d like to see you reach the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Second, towards the end of the week D started pressing me for when our next date would be. That in itself is nothing unusual, but the fact is that I couldn’t give her a date. Business travel is being cut back for me because of the lousy economy; at this point, I don’t have a single trip planned for the rest of the year. What is more, the drama at home seems to be accelerating; so I’m not really sure I am going to have the time or attention to spare for a date any time in the next few months even if the money just drops into my lap.

This answer made D very solemn ... then weepy ... and then angry. For several hours during our last evening together, it sounded for all the world like she was trying to break up with me. I don’t blame this all on D – when she started to get sad and upset, I began to talk frantically to patch things up. I have no solid recollection of what I said, but I’m sure I said things that made it worse. If you’d been sitting in the next booth at that restaurant, you probably could have leaned over and warned me, “Hosea, I wouldn’t say that if I were you because it is guaranteed to make her even more upset.” (But no-one did.)

On the other hand, somehow the things that I said sent her into a place I absolutely couldn’t follow. Back at the hotel she lamented that she couldn’t believe what a fool she had been all these months, that our whole affair had been a ghastly mistake, that I could never have loved her at all if I could say the things I had just said. (I sure wish I could remember what those things were – they must have been a doozy!) And then she calmed down, thought a minute, and said something that baffled me even more.

“No, I’ve thought about it and you are wrong. I know what I bring to the relationship, I know the constancy and love that I offer, and you are simply wrong when you deny it. You can push it off the table and say you don’t want it, you can walk away from it, but you cannot deny it.”

OK, now I am confused. I know I must have been saying weird shit kind of at random out of panic at her growing levels of upset, but I’m damned if I can remember ever saying anything that could possibly be construed as denying her love and passion. (Let’s leave constancy out of the equation for just a minute, shall we? This may not be exactly the right time to bring it up.). Nor can I remember saying I didn’t want it. I thought she was the one accusing me of not loving her, because I couldn’t set a date for our next meeting. When did I ever deny her love?

By this time we were sitting on the bed, undressed for the night but clearly sitting apart. I tried to express my confusion, and for a while D just kept telling me that I was wrong if I tried to deny her love, that love was something strong and permanent, that ... oh, I forget all the details. Finally I said “But I agree with all that." D paused. Then she smiled, relaxed, and lay down on the bed. I wasn't quite sure whether the argument was over, but then she said, "You know, if we have only one more night together, then touching might be a good idea." So I stroked her shoulder for a minute ... and then we kissed ....

Did I mention that the sex this week was marvelous?

When I got home, late the evening of the next day, I got a brief rundown of the week. Wife and the boys were asleep, but I had asked Boyfriend 4 if he could stop in and help out. Boyfriend 4 lives out of town these days, but his cancer prevents him from holding a job so his time is kind of flexible. Also, I should clarify that I wasn't really worried about Wife's ability to do basic chores ... just about the likelihood of her doing something erratic and dangerous. But apparently she didn't. Boyfriend 4 hadn't gotten there till midweek, but he had called every day before then. (Also, you will recall that my parents visited once.) He made dinner, but without doing a lot of shopping. (This was a big relief to me ... while I would have wanted him there anyway as a stabilizing influence, I can't forget that the last time he stayed with Wife while I was gone, the two of them managed to blow $600 in a single visit to the grocery store. I still can't figure out how they did that.) Wife complained a lot to him about me, but apparently did nothing more serious. So it could have been worse, and this report encouraged me a fair bit.

So, onwards and upwards, no?
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Angelic voices in the office?

I spent the day at work with a guy I usually see on business maybe twice a year. It just so happens that this week is one of those times. And over the years we have talked about a lot of things besides business. I was one of the first people he told when he decided to divorce his wife. We've also talked about how we understand (or don't understand) the role of prayer and providence in our lives ... or the role of "chance" if you want to call it that. Last year I started to tell him something about Wife's mental illnesses, which is a topic I had (till then) rarely discussed with anybody. For people who only see each other twice a year, it is an odd kind of friendship and I don't know how to account for it without sounding a little odd in my turn. I mean, there was really no "reason" we should ever have met in the first place; his company just assigned him to manage my company's account "by chance" a couple of years ago when the former guy was unavailable. And the friendship has grown from there.

Why do you care?

Well, he told me this morning (as we were in the middle of a bunch of paperwork) that he had had a premonition when he got on the plane to come out here and see us. His premonition told him, "You know that stuff Hosea was telling you last year when you were out there? It has gotten a whole lot worse recently. Ask him about it." He asked, and over lunch I ended up telling him all about Wife and Boyfriend 5. (OK, maybe not all about. We didn't have that kind of time. But plenty.)

He related this to a lot of experiences he had had with his ex-wife. And then he said three other things. The first was that sometimes people are dropped into your life at a specific juncture to tell you something you need to hear right then. The second was that he would add me to his nightly prayers. And the third was that he didn't see any obvious solutions for me right away ... but I should tell as many people as I felt comfortable telling, to get as much advice as I possibly could.

I have to think about that. I haven't told many people: our marriage counselor, this guy, ... who else? I guess I mentioned it briefly to Boyfriend 4, but not the latest stuff. Nothing about money.

I am not sure how to go about this. None of this is something that it is really natural to bring up in conversation, and I think I would feel pretty awkward dropping it out of the blue into a discussion of something else. That's one reason I started an anonymous blog in the first place.

Or wait, ... there's an idea. Maybe I can point people to the blog itself. Some of them might catch on that there's a reason I did so. Even if they just leave comments on the blog and don't realize it's me, that could be a start.

I'll have to think about this. I'm not sure that it is a great idea ... it sound more than half foolhardy, in point of fact. On the other hand, someone once told me that sometimes people are dropped into your life at a specific juncture to tell you something you need to hear right then ....