“You’ve never seen a room clear so quickly,” she said, in an attempt to distract me from the shame that flushed her cheeks.
The couple went into a spiral, which they tried to correct with a semester worth of marriage counseling. With a few new tension-breaking hat tricks in their arsenal, Dean eventually moved back from the den and into the bedroom. Soon thereafter, convinced they were cured, the couple had their first child, a beautiful girl just like her mother. Things settled down after the baby and Lindsay returned to work prepared to reenter corporate competition. Between the newborn and Lindsay’s career, however, Dean once again began to feel untended to. Looking to avoid the pitfalls of the past, he nobly moved to proactively rekindle the relationship. He presented Lindsay with a diamond necklace, hung from a bottle of champagne on a romantic weekend getaway he had arranged. The weekend was a small advancement in a lifetime of setbacks, yielding both a commitment to keep trying, and the conception of another little girl.
The second pregnancy was harder than the first and by the time the baby was born, Lindsay had little energy or patience for much of anything. Dean, comfortably convinced that two new children assured domestic harmony, returned to his unfortunate routine. Lindsay’s disrespect for him once again began to flourish and in borderline premeditation, she volunteered for sales accounts that were likely to get her out of town and away from home.
While her relationship with Dean was again on the decline, her relationship with Dean’s parents grew into a foundation of Lindsay’s life. They continued to fill the parental void that had characterized her childhood. Dean’s mother recognized Lindsay as inheriting her old job, and loved Lindsay for being there to take care of this grown but still needy child. Lindsay relied heavily on her in-laws as grandparents, making up the difference as she ventured out of town more and more.
Again on the road, Lindsay found the excitement of infidelity and began a year-long affair with a co-worker in Dallas. His name was Michael and he also was married. Glasses of wine turned into late-night dinners and then quiet confessions during walks back to the hotel in which they would both be staying. Soon thereafter, kisses turned into sex, and sharing a room after making the required goodnight phone calls to their respective spouses became routine. I asked her if it was easier to cheat the second time around.
“Only in that it made me question the sort of person I was. I wondered if I was simply incapable of monogamy.”
She mentioned nothing about disrespecting her husband.
The affair soon turned eerily reminiscent of her relationship with the athletic directors as the underground couple carelessly allowed their relationship to grow too obvious. Michael’s wife left him, taking his children and for the most part the life that he realized too late that he still wanted, even under the spell of Lindsay’s magnetism. Dean, on the other hand, was happy to resurrect his role as the victim and coaxed Lindsay back to take care of him and the children.
“I told myself ‘never again’ after that one. It was a mess. Dean told his parents. His mom sat me down for this long talk. I really felt like I had let everyone down.”
Committed once again to walking the straight and narrow, Lindsay, with the encouragement of her mother-in-law, reentered marriage counseling with Dean and tried for a final time to refocus on her husband. The effort was futile as the past continued to roar in between the otherwise constructive sentences that they had been advised to use. Lindsay sought happiness in the distractions of her daughters and her job, and Dean remained clueless.
Lindsay’s final act of adultery occurred two years later, the last secret interlude in an eighteen-month-long affair with yet another colleague, this time named Brian, and again with a family of his own. She characterizes it as such because it was the evening prior to that in which Dean asked the question and Lindsay decided to no longer deny it.
“He had been growing suspicious as well he should have been. We hadn’t slept together in months. So of course he started asking. Finally, I just stopped trying to convince him otherwise. He got it.”
A week later she asked for a divorce, returning Dean to the den, his sleeping quarters for the three-month duration of their remaining time under the same roof. Lindsay finally pushed him out and into the effort she claimed would do him the most good: taking care of himself.
As I heard her story, I realized that when I first noticed Lindsay flipping through a magazine while standing in front of the gate podium, I guessed her younger than the thirty-eight years she actually was. She had a spirited glow about her, like she had just finished a weekend at a spa where the treatments include salt baths and optimism wraps. She was wearing a pair of tan riding pants that hugged her lean thighs, a black sleeveless top and tan suede jacket that matched perfectly. She still had the long golden hair that I imagined she wore through her youth, now tied back in a ponytail, refined yet certainly reminiscent of younger days.
She was returning from a long weekend with Brian. He too had separated from his spouse to formalize the affair. Each of them had children, complicating matters significantly as neither was free to relocate. Like Lindsay’s, Brian’s departure from his spouse was not painless. His wife had retained custody of their children and the idea of living twelve hundred miles away was not an attractive one, no mater how much Lindsay meant to him. Lindsay did have custody of her daughters, however her pending divorce agreement stipulated that she would not be permitted to move them away from their father.
“They are so close with Dean’s parents, I could never take them away even if I was allowed to.”
Lindsay told me she loved Brian and that it was different than anything she had ever felt.
“I can’t even imagine being with another man.”
“No offense, but I can’t imagine you not.”
She also claimed to feel liberated from the inconsequential, bearing the weight of only those efforts for which she still had enthusiasm, her children and her job. As true as this may have been, Dean however did trouble her. He refused to let go and made frequent pleas to return to his status as the rejected live in husband. The weekend with Brian had been her first acknowledged excursion, and no one seemed to be taking it very well, not Dean, not Dean’s parents, not even her two daughters who were with their father for the weekend.
“I hope you’re happy Lindsay, because I can tell you that nobody else is,” said her mother-in-law in a phone call the Thursday before.
“In many respects your story sounds like it should be told by a man.”
“I’ve been told that before,” she replied.
“Do you find that interesting?”
“I don’t, but I can see why others might, only because people don’t think of women as serial cheaters. Men are more acceptably fit into that particular box, the dogs that they are.”
“So you are the ultimate in progressive feminine behavior?”
“That would be exciting, but the truth is that I’ve been trying to get away from Dean since the day we got married. I’ve given him every reason to give up.”
“Trying to get him to be the one to say ‘I’m out’ and be the bad guy.”
“I’ve had three full-on affairs during the course of our marriage. I don’t think anyone will see Dean as the bad guy.”
“You don’t have much respect for him.”
“No I don’t.”
“Because he loves you?”
“He needs me more than he loves me. He sucks the life out of me.”
“Do you think it has anything to do with the saying about not wanting to belong to a club that would have you as a member.”
“Rebecca has said that. My therapist.”
“What does Rebecca think of your relationship with Brian?”
“She doesn’t make predictions.”
“What do you think about the fact that he cheated on his wife?”
“Who am I to judge?”
“Did he have affairs before you?”
“Yes, but again...”
“Probably not.”
“So what makes him any different? It might be the case that the two of you happened to be two of the very few who were justified in cheating and by some miracle happened to find each other, but the greater likelihood is that this has very little to do with your ex spouses and even less to do with your relationship with each other.”
“How can you say that? You don’t know anything about our relationship.”
“I know it sounds clouded by urgency.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means there is always a reason you have to be apart and time is always running out when you’re together. When you would secretly meet in hotel rooms, you would both have to go home in the morning. Now, when you visit for the weekend, someone always needs to return home. You have very little idea about what it’s like to be together without circumstances pulling you apart.”
“So you think I am going down the wrong road with this?”
“I think you are a walking red herring. You look like a thoroughbred who puts on a really good show, but really you’re an abused young girl who has been pounded with reasons for insecurity.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I think the road you should be on is the one about yourself.”
“That’s what Rebecca says.”
“Perhaps you should start listening to her, but then where’s the excitement in that?”
She looked over with her brown eyes, asking if her feelings should be hurt.
“Please tell me you’re not making fun of me.”
“I assure you I am not.”
“I’m already feeling like an ass for telling you all this.”
“You have my word.”
“But still you think I’m horrible for ruining my family.”
“I would never make that call, but I do think you get a rush from the whole thing, maybe something you use to find in sports.”
“Well, if I did, it’s past.”
“I have a question. You have two children, daughters no less. Why not stick it out long enough to get them into adulthood? After all, doesn’t their happiness take priority over yours?”
“It’s a great question and I’ve thought a lot about it. I guess in a sense I was going down that road, but one day it slapped me in the face when I heard my oldest talking to Dean in the same frustrated way I must have. It was a real heartbreaker to hear my tone in her voice and I knew I had to end it.”
“But yet you still wonder if you’re just being selfish?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know that I can say.”
“Well, other people don’t seem to have that problem.”
“You have bigger jobs than worrying about what other people think of you – like making sure what happened to you doesn’t happen to your daughters.”
“I don’t think cheating is hereditary.”
“No, but sometimes I think insecurity is.”
“You think all these things have happened just because I was more comfortable on a basketball court than in a prom dress?”
“You’ll have to save that one for Rebecca.”
“Do you think I’ll always be unfaithful, no matter who I’m with?”
“I hope not.”
“You’re not giving me much here. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
She waited, her eyes patiently pleading for anything that might ease her guilt.
“I’m thinking you never had a chance.”
The Contemporary
I lived in Los Angeles at a time when there was still a distinction between New Yorkers and Los Angelenos. Today this cultural divergence is less obvious, as is the case with each North American megalopolis. I liked Los Angeles back then, before it became a daily reminder of how lonely my life had become. I had an apartment on the Westside, a convertible and two favorite restaurants. One joint for breakfast, the other for dinner, each with waitresses that knew me by my first name and occasionally showed up at my apartment offering late-night dessert. Like the storefronts on a cheap B-movie set, my existence in LA was a pathetic illusion designed to deliver the most basic needs while serving as a place to call home. Looking back, it was perfect for me.
It was a Thursday afternoon and I had just returned from a three-day New York run to finish some year-end business. Evenings in the big city were occupied by “business dinners,” the white-collar term for excessively spending company money to make up for the difference between what your bonus was and what you thought it should have been. In the most pretentious of restaurants, I would endure testosterone-charged tales about ex-wives and Arabian horse collections told by thick sweaty men spooning seventy-five dollar white truffle risotto onto their cigar smoke-incapacitated palates. I would watch them vie for the check with their corporate cards and then thank each other with hearty handshakes as if the money had been debited directly out of their kids’ college funds.
There was no confusion that my dinner partners were my opponents. Out of personal necessity, I learned how to subdue them early with oversized steaks and thick cabernet, leaving mentally flatfooted the morning after. While they retired for an early slumber, I would spend the second half of the evening replacing their stench with the redeeming fragrance of a woman.
Over the years, I had collected a number of New York-based “friends,” women that I would call when in town to occupy the latter part of my evenings. It was always at the last minute, and I always characterized it as a special event worth prioritizing over whatever plans they had. I would sneak in and out of their lives, under the radar screen of their current boyfriends, sometimes not calling for a year at a time. We always reunited with an excessive level of intimacy one would have thought reserved for more honest people. Clandestine encounters, each time was treated like it would be the last.
This particular trip had been unsuccessful in all regards. My business interactions had been particularly painful and my efforts at an intimate rendezvous fruitless. When the town car dropped me off in front of my Brentwood apartment building, I was ready for a long drink, a longer shower and the long legs of a beauty with a forgiving disposition. My apartment was an upscale version of the hotels I counted most nights in; bleached wood floors, stark white walls, coffee, vodka and the only three pieces of furniture I had ever picked out myself. I threw my carry-on and briefcase into the bedroom closet and stripped off my clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor. I headed into the kitchen to pour myself three fingers of Stolichnaya into an ice-filled crystal tumbler, and proceeded into the bathroom where I turned on the shower and climbed, drink in hand, into the black granite cavern. The alcohol from the inside and the water from the out, working in perfect accord, cleansed me of my last three days and washed it away down the polished brass drain. With each drop of water and each sip of vodka, I began a slow decline to the floor, coming to an eventual stop in a seated position with the hot water hitting my back and neck.
After forty-five minutes of soaking, I threw on a pair of jeans and a black mock turtleneck and walked the four blocks to a local pool hall called Q’s. I made my way to the bar and ordered a second drink from Ivan, the bartender, who knew me by both name and beverage of choice. For that, I considered him a close personal friend. Like most bartenders in LA, Ivan was an actor whose claim, as I knew it, was a small part in a Best Picture. In a place like Q’s, where most actors can only hope that their earnings amount to as much as their bar tabs, Ivan was a star.
I was keeping an eye out for Leela, a flight attendant who also lived a few blocks away. A blend of Mexican and French, Leela was poured in perfect proportions that resulted in dark drowning eyes, deceptively angelic fair skin and long black radiant hair that framed her dangerously beautiful face. She was a seductress, adept at manipulating women into the tangles of temptation, and very generous in using her skills to cater to my desires. Her targets were oft
en younger and always comparatively innocent. With assassin-like precision, Leela would gain the confidence of a waif de noir and convey an arousing interest in me, suggesting I was something better than I was. She did her job well, initiating little seemingly impromptu games, betting tequila shooters on pool shots with the loser licking salt off the winner’s neck and sucking a lime from their lips. As the evening wore on, she would lead the intoxicated mark into competition for my favor, frequently taking the contest artfully down to the wire. It was a perversely distorted symbiotic relationship that fed each of our demons, and the manipulation excited Leela far more than the notion of consummating our own relationship. In the end, I would guide the victorious stranger to my bedroom, an increasingly anticlimactic event that always came at the price of never learning Leela’s wickedly tempting touch. With only silent protest, I accepted this as if it were an understood boundary between professionals.
The evening was slow as I settled into my cocktail and made small talk with Ivan. A couple of regulars wandered in and took their places, ordering Corona long necks and tossing their Marlborough reds on the bar. By about 9:30 the room had filled with conversation, cigarette smoke and the sound of clicking billiard balls. I was eyeing a pair of young starlets who were drinking whiskey sours and commiserating about a waitressing gig when Leela entered the room with another woman. She spotted me and without hesitation worked her way into the bar space next to me. She gave me a look that suggested she was upset I had started the evening without her. I kissed her hello on cheek as I always did and then leaned back to allow her to make introductions.
Airplane Rides Page 6