Eighteenth date: Follow-on story

There's a part of the story of my eighteenth date with D that I neglected to write up at the time. Fifteen years later, I have finally written it. Naturally there is a chance that some of the details might be a little foggy at this point, but I'm pretty sure the gist of the story is solid.

You can find it here.

      

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 ....

What should a guy wear to bed?

Oh, I almost forgot. D wanted me to ask all of you a question, as an opinion poll.

Thursday night, when I was so depressed, I was also cold; so I put on a white T-shirt when I climbed into bed. In and around the rest of our discussion Friday morning, D carped about the T-shirt.

"What?" I asked. "I was cold."

"So we'll put another blanket on the bed, but come to bed naked."

"Does it matter that much?"

"Absolutely! Ask your friends who read your blog whether a man should wear a cotton T-shirt to bed or be stark naked. They'll all tell you he should be naked ...."

You realize, of course, that it wasn't a serious disagreement -- we had serious things to discuss that morning, and that wasn't one of them. But hey, she asked me to ask you (smiling as she did so), so I'm passing the question along ....

Seventeenth date 5, Fun and games

I spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in the office, so we didn’t have a lot of time for play. Still, we did manage to have fun. Wednesday night we had dinner at a wine bar, where we managed to put away four carafes of very excellent wine in addition to a little bit of careful and elegant food. The final tab was in excess of $150 – so much that there’s no way I can expense all of it, and I had to ask the waiter to split the check in several parts. What’s more, D found she could hardly walk under her own power back to the car, and then from the parking lot into the hotel. She told me later that she didn’t think she had ever drunk so much. From her stories of dinners with Rog, I think that can’t be exactly true; but it is very likely that on those other nights she ate a lot more food, to buffer the wine better. Still, it was a lovely meal.

Thursday night we went out to a play, a delightful new comedy recently off-Broadway. We both enjoyed it immensely. Of course, that was the night that I later fell into my deep depression, but we both now think that was probably the result (at least partly) of our stopping in afterwards at a very noisy bar for some after-show drinks. I don’t do well with noise.

Friday, as I mentioned, we stayed in bed and talked. I called down to the front desk to get us some more time before we had to check out, and then we ordered breakfast. After breakfast, we fucked like demons. In the middle of all this the front desk called back asking when exactly we were planning to check out – great timing, guys! I had enough breath to answer and therefore did. (D was gasping enough she couldn’t possibly have answered the phone.) Anyway, we wrapped up a while later, got a shower, and finally checked out of the hotel with about five minutes to spare before our absolute deadline.

From there we went to have lunch – a very pleasant meal whose conversation I have already described. And then it was time to drive back to the airport. Only … well gosh, we were a little ahead of schedule as far as our flights were concerned. So somewhere along the way we stopped at a very pleasant-looking lake, got out, and walked around. There was a path leading right up to the water’s edge; and while the road was nearby (and a McDonald’s parking lot was just over yonder), we couldn’t see a soul. The sun was dappled on the water, the air was warm, the breeze was soft. We sat down near the bank, and began to kiss. And kiss. And kiss! In the end we didn’t have a lot of time, and we were very exposed, so D just loosened her bra and I played with her nipples for a while. (She is frequently orgasmic when her nipples are stimulated, and on this occasion she sighed most satisfactorily.) As we climbed back into the car, she said a little wistfully that she was trying to figure out a discreet way to slide down her pants … then finally concluded that sliding down her pants would be indiscreet however she did it. Still, it was a delightful way to wind up the week.

And then we got to the airport, and flew to our respective homes.

Seventeenth date 4, Fidelity and infidelity

We talked about sex and fidelity. D has a very close friendship with one of her colleagues, Rog, a young and handsome man who is new to the school this year. She describes their friendship as a kind of mentorship, but it means that the two of them often dine together and sit up long into the night over bottles of wine talking. Naturally I have sometimes wondered if that’s all they were doing. And sometimes I have told myself that it is best to assume they might be fucking too, so that I won’t be taken by surprise if it ever turns out to be true. But other people have noticed that this friendship seems really deep, and really intense. D’s next-door neighbor, who is in his eighties and dearly wants her in his bed, is outrageously jealous of Rog. Then there is another woman on the faculty who is clearly in love with Rog, and she has stopped speaking to D. When D tells Rog that maybe they should withdraw just a bit, Rog says the idea that anyone could misunderstand their friendship as sexual is absurd. But D can tell that when Rog socializes with other faculty members (and especially the woman who is in love with him), he seriously downplays the time he spends with D or the depth of their long talks.

So what is the reality? Are D and Rog really lovers? Alas, no. D also told me, rather wistfully, about jokes Rog has made about some of the other faculty members, indicating that he thinks the idea of sex among old people is just disgusting. How old is “old”? Well, Rog is the same age as D’s son, the younger of her two children. D is, quite literally, old enough to be his mother. To be sure, she keeps herself in remarkably good shape. She is exquisitely beautiful for a woman in her late fifties. And as you all know she is a remarkable sexual dynamo. But still … she could be his mother. Old enough? Yeah, ‘fraid so.

Well what about this question of fidelity? D was reading a long essay by Wendell Berry that discussed sexual fidelity in the context of the story of Odysseus’s return home to Penelope. What kind of fidelity did each of them show? Penelope rejected the advances of all the suitors; so far as we are told, she lived a sexless life in the twenty years between her husband’s departure for Troy and his return. Odysseus couldn’t quite say the same thing. The nymph Calypso held him trapped on her island for seven years; and while he spent every day weeping and longing for home, he spent his nights – Homer is quite clear about this – in Calypso’s bed. And yet, in the end he rejects her offer of immortality and eternal bliss, choosing instead of return to his own little island, his hearth and home, and mortality. And in this he shows a kind of fidelity to Penelope, regardless whom he was fucking in the meantime.

I’m not sure I followed what D said about the Wendell Berry essay, but I picked up this theme of fidelity to hearth and home. I pointed out to D that her affair with me does not fundamentally betray her home or her husband … he no longer wants sex with her anyway, and she would never wish him harm. What she has with him and what she has with me do not conflict in any meaningful way. By contrast, my Wife’s infidelities were more destructive; in the case of every single lover she planned, at one point or other, to leave me and run away with him (or her). Every single lover was an excuse to attack me, to denigrate me, to vilify me, to make plans (to my detriment) behind my back. And in the end, I suppose you could say that my affair with D has similarly betrayed Wife, insofar as she has given me the ability to imagine a life beyond my marriage, and the desire to get free of it. (All I can say in my own defense was that by the time I fell together with D, the marriage had suffered enough damage to be terminal.)

So I told D that I thought this concept of fidelity to the relationship was critical. A new love who makes you abandon the old love (or war against him) – as Aegisthus conspired with Clytemnestra to butcher Agamemnon – is a betrayal. That is infidelity. But a new love who inspires no such abandonment – Calypso with Odysseus, as over against Penelope – is no betrayal, and no breach of the fundamental fidelity to your common love for each other.

Why raise the subject at all? Neither of us has a new love on the horizon. Heaven knows D won’t be getting lewd suggestions from Rog any time soon … or any time ever. Well, I told her, we can never predict the future. Sometimes surprising things happen. And if she ever finds a beautiful opportunity drop into her lap (so to speak), vows of fidelity to me would leave her only two choices: pass it up, or lie to me about it afterwards. I told her that both of those choices seem bad to me, and I want her to be free to accept such a delight without having to lie to me.

You know, she reminded me, I am in my fifties. That kind of offer isn’t likely to come along very often at this point.

I know, I told her. But let’s not rule out the possibility of a happy miracle. And so I want you to know where I stand, and that I want love and joy for you … just in case.

D smiled, and thanked me. We embraced. And then, after a pause, she said “Likewise.”

It’s a change from the intense jealousy on which she earlier prided herself, and I think it is for the good.

Seventeenth date 3, Depression, dignity, arrogance

D and I talked about my depression. I hit a really bad spell Thursday night, and Friday morning we stayed in the hotel talking instead of my going into the office. D repeated what she has said before (here and here) – that my depressive spells leave her feeling totally helpless, and therefore both frightened and angry. She repeated that I look different when I sink into them – that I hold myself differently, that I smell different, that my eyes change color. Honestly for a minute I thought she was going to compare me to Bruce Banner. (Turns out she didn’t know who Bruce Banner is.) And she asked why I don’t take more aggressive steps to manage my depression. Ummm, … I dunno, maybe because this looks normal to me? Maybe because honestly it used to be so much worse, back before I went on antidepressant medication, so it never really occurred to me that it could be still better? D had very stern words for the idea that this is “normal”, and she insisted that my depressive spells will affect any intimate relationship I ever try to have, be it with her or anyone. She also suggested that there was something wrong with the fact that I have never ever – not once – mentioned my depression to my family. What’s that about?

I couldn’t answer, but I thought about another connection. D and I have disagreed before about the concept of human dignity. As a committed Catholic, she feels that individual dignity and worth are non-negotiable facts about everyone alive. For myself (as I mention here), I tend to think of dignity more as a false front, a pompous face that we put on artificially to look impressive to others. I certainly don’t think that I have any kind of innate worth that entitles me to anything special in this world. I figure that everything good in my life is a gift, probably an unearned gift. What is more, it is hard for me to think there is anything wrong or pathological with seeing the world this way. Isn’t this attitude the surest protection against my becoming an arrogant prick? Arrogance would be such an easy trap to fall into, because all my life I have been on the receiving end of praise: from my teachers in school, for being bright and getting good grades; from my classmates, for being a nice guy; from my employers, for being diligent and serious and a team-player … whatever that is. Wouldn’t it be the most natural thing in the world for me to be insufferably egotistical about all this? But I try to avoid that – really, I do – and I think a key part of what allows me to be decent (when I can) is that I really don’t think any of this matters. Sure, it’s nice; it can even be convenient. But it doesn’t make me one whit a better person, it doesn’t entitle me to anything, and honestly the praise becomes so monotonous that I can’t hear it any more. It is far, far easier for me to see my faults than my virtues.

Over lunch, D suddenly turned to me and asked, “When you write about me on your blog, do you describe me as harshly as you describe yourself?” Of course, for the most part I assume that she has no idea what I say about myself here, but that she makes plausible guesses based on how I talk about myself when I am with her. And I had to assure her that no, I would never do such a thing. You, my readers, know it is true that I have some reservations about D that would give me pause at the idea (for example) of marrying her. But overall? Overall I think she is pretty wonderful. I hope that comes through in everything I write. I certainly hope I don’t describe her the same way I describe myself. Heavens, when I am writing here I figure that there will always be an unconscious pressure to flatter myself, to describe things from a partial point of view, to make myself look better than I really am. In an effort to achieve balance, to come closer to the truth, I compensate by trying consciously to paint myself in the least flattering way that is consistent with whatever story I am telling. I doubt I have much luck in doing this, and I think (or at any rate I tell myself) that at best I am balancing out subconscious self-flattery. But the short answer is No, I don’t write about her as harshly as I do myself. I hope.

And I wonder something else. I’ve explained that I don’t believe I have any innate dignity, any innate claim on the good things in life … that I don’t really deserve anything. Is that part of why I was willing to marry Wife? Of course it wasn’t the whole story … I know there was a lot more to it than that. But could that have been part of it? Could that have been part of the reason, over all these long years, that I have never left her? Because I honestly didn’t think I deserved any better? Maybe so. It is a sobering idea.