Mr. Dependable (Part Four) - We're not in Kansas Anymore

I flew to Houston, a married woman, to be with my impending lover, a married man, two months after meeting him in New York. His letters had continued to arrive, sweeping me out of my reality and into his world, a world awash in ethereal colors and sensual pleasures.

The letters were innocent at first but gradually increased in intention and intensity. When the wind blew across his face, he would imagine it had just arrived from Oklahoma where it had blown through my hair. He wrote about business and baseball games but ever so delicately, interspersed throughout, were the carefully planted seeds, waiting to take root in me.

A month earlier, I had given a detailed account of the entire experience to Mr. Dependable. I told him of feeling vulnerable and having this man with a strong shoulder and tender, compassionate heart reach out to me. I told him of all the savory new tastes that seemed to still linger on my palate. I spoke of being enraptured by the city, the people, the excitement but mostly by this man who was able to cry with me.

I felt I was withering away, twisted, calloused and dying like a knotted vine, never to be unraveled again. I had set my sexuality aside, trading it in for a stable life. And yet, after New York, after the bombing, I could imagine new life; efflorescence was possible.

I pleaded with him to understand how the experience had changed me. We desperately wanted our marriage to work and we both felt this was going to be the catalyst for our new life. We could start taking small trips together, figure out what's wrong with us - see a counselor, go out to dinner, read some books, show some emotion, drink wine, be angry, make a decision, do something spontaneous, have sex for more than five seconds.

While he had declined my previous attempts to get him away from the TV and out on the town or to visit the much needed limp-schnoodle doc, he now seemed to understand our marriage depended on it. Keep in mind this was before all the hubbub concerning E.D. There was no Viagra or Cialis. Bob Dole had not yet made commercials about it. It was on the down low. A man was on his own to figure such things out and a wife was expected to be supportive and understanding.

Suddenly wife was awakened and horny so off to the counselor and Urologist we went.

The results came in with nothing permanently broken, thank God. Mr. Dependable simply had a wee problem with P.E. (and I'm not talking about 8th grade gym class). Both head doc and penis doc recommended the same protocol. He needed to desensitize himself by buffing the bat, you know, chafing the carrot, often, at frequent intervals, repeatedly.

Oh, that's all. Piece of cake, right?

Wrong.

Apparently when you're raised in Topeka Kansas, you are taught not to do such things. In his defense, I suppose it must have been really hard (or lack thereof) for him. While he seemed to embrace the opportunity to take our marriage to the next level, he must have been feeling rather emasculated by it all. I mean what husband wants their wife to essentially say, I want you to be more like him. He tried, God love him, he tried - but it was not to be. The course had been set.

Please don't think I did what I'm about to tell you because Mr. Dependable couldn't satisfy me sexually. This is a blog, there is not enough space in all the blogosphere to adequately explain why it happened. Further, I am not going to go into all the flowery details of the encounters because I am choosing not to glorify them and because I don't want this blog to turn into some pseudo paperback light-porn romance fiction.

I questioned myself, my God, my best girlfriend and Mr. Plentiful extensively before deciding to meet him in Houston. His reply, "I love witnessing the emergence of the total woman inside you. It is a most exciting and beautiful thing, and just thinking of it makes me yearn to see you fulfilled. If we are careful and thoughtful, I see only good coming from our having met. If it is at times frustrating or even torturous, that is to be expected, is it not? Would we all be better off not having been born because we knew someday we would die? I would love to continue our relationship within the constraints of our current situations until one of us decides that the pain outweighs the joy, if ever that should occur. I doubt, and certainly hope, it never will."

So, the little Okie girl flew off to Houston and began a six month affair. Before it ended, I would travel to see him in New York, Dallas and finally, in Boston. All the while, I remained twisted up inside that volatile vortex, thrust violently about, hoping to be thrown but then getting sucked up again. Like some floating piece of matter, I was an inhabitant of two worlds, side by side, each breathing a life of its own, their boundaries blurring and overlapping occasionally. One inhaled, the other exhaled. My reality was defined as I zoomed into one of them, that world becoming paramount, then logic was turned upside down as the other world expanded and engulfed me, defining a new reality.

.......to be continued (for the last time, I promise).