Born that Way

"Then I found out I would have to go back to Boston in another week, and I realized that Boston was a whole different world. I changed my EyeContact profile to Boston, and sure enough they sent me a new batch of profiles. So when I went up there . . ." Her voice trailed off. We both knew what she'd done.

I tried to think back to the days right after we'd gotten married. I definitely remembered the first trip I had to make to the West Coast after our honeymoon because I couldn't wait to get back to Susan. The time of her first trip to Boston wasn't as clear, but I think it couldn't have been more than a week or two later. Less than a month after our honeymoon and she was already cheating on me!

"So every time you went to Boston . . ." I let the question hang there, and she just nodded guiltily.

I decided to go in a different direction. "What about Missy and Briana?" I asked. "Did they know?"

"Oh, yes," she said, "we've been together so long that none of us have any secrets from each other."

"And they didn't care?" I asked.

"Oh, no, they got the benefit of . . ." and then she stopped abruptly.

But I'd already guessed what she was saying. "So you passed your men along to them," I suggested. "After you'd had the first taste, you gave them to Missy and Briana."

She blushed. "Well, it's not like there was anything wrong with them," she said.

"The Three Miss-keteers," I thought. "More like the three little sluts. No wonder they didn't want to split up their happy little household!"

I turned back to her. "One last question, Susan. Why? Why did you have to have all those men? Why couldn't you stop, why couldn't you just love me?"

"I don't really know," she whispered. "When I got to Vassar, they voted me the hottest woman in the freshman class. At first it was great – I loved all the attention and the sex. Then an upperclassman wanted me to go steady. That was fun at first, but then it became kind of routine, so I dumped him. I tried going steady with another guy, and the same thing happened. By then I knew what the problem was: I liked the excitement of a new man. Being with a guy for the first time was like a thrill ride: every one was a surprise. After that, I went out with a different guy almost every week, and I loved it."

She looked at me slyly. "Missy and Briana loved it too."

"Anyway," she went on, "when I graduated, Daddy found me this job in investment banking. The job was great but the hours were long and most of the guys in the office were married, so there weren't many opportunities for me. I tried going to singles bars, but that was so random: a lot of the guys were real low-lifes. Then I tried the online dating thing, and that worked better. Then I found EyeContact, and most of their members were primo. Every week there'd be a new set of profiles in my inbox. It was like my own private smorgasbord."

As she'd been speaking, she'd grown increasingly animated. I suddenly realized that she was as hooked on this sexual cycle as surely as if she'd been snorting coke.

I stood up. The half hour wasn't quite over, but I'd heard all I wanted to hear.

She rose when she saw me stand. "Baby, I know I hurt you real bad, but I do love you. You really are special. I know it's not a traditional kind of marriage, but if you could just get past my little need for some extra excitement, we could be so happy together. It could be really good, baby. I could even fix you up with Missy and Briana if you wanted."

I felt sick at my stomach, but before I could say anything, Susan's father and her attorney re-entered the room, accompanied by my attorney. The Devereaux attorney handed me a sheet of paper and a pen. "I believe this agreement covers exactly what you wanted, Mr. Morrison, and your attorney has no objections." I glanced up at him and he nodded. I reached across the table, picked up my grandmother's rings and slipped them into my pocket. Then I took the proffered pen and signed and dated the document.

As I stood up, I saw Walter Devereaux staring at me curiously. "I may have misjudged you, young man," he said and stuck out his hand.

"That may well be," I replied. "I certainly misjudged your daughter. But I believe my assessment of you is spot on." With that I ignored his hand and walked out the door.

I caught a lucky break: the fellow from Google who had been living with Mickey and Beth got transferred, so I was able to move back in with them. They were great: both of them were very solicitous of my feelings and emotions, and whenever I got particularly blue, which was often, they tried to find some way to cheer me up. On the day my divorce was final, they held a big party at the club where Mickey worked. I was probably the only straight person in the crowd, but I still had a ball.

Despite their efforts, I couldn't help feeling that I was a loser. I'd tried to play the dating game and had lost. I tried love and marriage, and again I had lost. Even moving back with Mickey and Beth felt like a loss, not because of them but because I was right back in the same place where I'd started.

I saw Susan once. I had to attend a meeting downtown that had run very late. By the time it was over, I was hungry, so I dropped in to a little place that was giving off a lot of light and noise. I knew I needed more of that in my life, so I went in and sat down to order some food. I spotted her on the far side of the room. She was laughing and flirting with a nice-looking guy a couple of years younger than me. Then I heard her giggle in that way I'd learned meant that she was horny. I lost my appetite and left; she never saw me. I had no reason to expect that she would change, but the fact that she hadn't just depressed me even more.

So I guess I was ripe a few weeks later when I got a call from a headhunter. If you work at a hot shop like Google, calls from headhunters are a pretty common occurrence. This guy was looking for someone to head up network security for a major hospital chain. There's was a huge push to digitize medical records so the various departments and specialists could share them easily. Now the hospitals were just beginning to consider the network security implications.

It sounded interesting enough, but what really caught my attention was that the job was in Nashville. My old hometown had emerged as one of the leading centers for hospital administration. "I wonder what Walter Devereaux would say about that?" I thought wryly.

They made me an offer and I decided to accept. New York had lost its taste for me, and this offer came at just the right moment. It was time to move on.

As I looked at my bags lying on the floor of the living area of our apartment, I was surprised at how few possessions I had. "I'll bet I'm the cheapest relo this company has ever had," I thought with amusement. The only difficult thing about the move was leaving Mickey and Beth. They'd seemed so offbeat to me when I'd met them; now they were achingly dear to me.

I reached out to shake hands with Mickey, but he grabbed me in a bear hug that reminded me just how big and strong he really was. "Don't forget us, Peter," he said solemnly. "We won't forget you." I had been planning to say something flip, but I couldn't do it. "I won't forget you, man, I promise," I swore to him.

Then I turned to Beth, and once again I saw tears in her eyes. I couldn't speak for fear that I'd start crying too, so I reached over to give her a kiss on the cheek. To my surprise, she turned her head so that I wound up kissing her on the lips. Then she hugged me tightly, turned away and ran into her room. There was nothing left for me to do but gather my bags and go flag down a cab.

Nashville Redux

Nashville felt both foreign and comfortable to me at the same time. I missed the non-stop excitement of the Big Apple, but I loved the Southern hospitality of the people in Nashville. Equally important, I loved all the greenery. In New York, all you see is concrete, except for the occasional tree forlornly growing out of the sidewalk, but in Nashville grass and trees were everywhere. I hadn't realized how much I had missed that.

I wound up buying a hundred-year-old home in East Nashville, in an old neighborhood where young families were buying and remodeling. In addition to my bungalow, I now owned a couple of huge old trees plus a small lawn to mow. It felt right.

Once I'd settled in, I found time to resume running, something I'd had a hard time doing in New York. I wound up joining a runners' club, which gave me the chance not only to exercise regularly but also to meet people with similar interests. A lot of them were female, and so I slowly re-entered the dating scene.

And that's how I came to pass that gay nightclub that Saturday night, only for my date and I to see a female impersonator performing on stage.

She looked up at me. "I don't understand. Why do they want to do that?"

I couldn't help thinking about Mickey and Beth, and I remembered how odd and unconventional they had seemed when I first met them. But then memories of Susan came back to me, and it struck me that she was the one who was the greater enigma. I still didn't understand her, and I doubted that I ever would. I remembered that night in Grand Central Station, and I decided that maybe Lady Gaga's answer was as good as any. I turned to my date and shrugged my shoulders.

"Maybe they were born that way."