The Internship

"We are quite different," Marcus chuckled. "You've got his picture beside your bed, so I can well confirm we're different."

"And yet it was the qualities you share with him that attracted me to you. Marcus, you need to pay attention to that. Jim is a great person, and he will be a great man. He's going to help our entire county. You should search out those parts of yourself and give them reign."

"Well babe, I'm not sure that's going to help you much with him. Maybe he's going to feel like, "Okay Beth, you didn't want to throw me away for something completely different" meaning you just didn't want him. But I can assure you he won't be flattered that you took a lover because he and I share some of the same attributes. As a matter of fact, there's no attribute of any lover that he will condone, because he's never going to get past you taking a lover.

"Look, this is a no-win explanation. To say you took a lover because he had the same traits as the man you love, who wasn't around, isn't going to put him at ease. That you searched for those traits and slept with the first person who had them seems to indicate you really like those traits, but the guys who give them to you are kind of interchangeable.

"In other words, if you lead with you didn't really want to get rid of him, just replace him for a little while, the point he's going to take away is that he's replaceable."

He heard her coffee mug hit the coffee table with a loud clack. Marcus realized Beth had to slap it down before she dropped it. Her hands were shaking. He went to hug her, though her glare warded him off.

"I didn't mean to replace him at all! I didn't even mean to augment him. What have I done? I'm sick. I'm scared to death I'm going to lose him! It's not just that I need him to function, that I need something from him; I need HIM. I came here to improve my worthiness of having him!

"I felt very vulnerable, I hoped this was the cure. I was determined to come but no one, I mean no one, thought I was making a good or wise decision. It must have taken a lot more of my nerve to stand up to everyone than I thought. M-My mother had to explain to me all the various ways I had messed up my... my marriage. She was shocked I didn't see it for myself. So was I, and frightened. Honestly, I never thought I was going to lose Jim, and I think this goal, this prize, had become so big I couldn't back away from it. Suddenly it was sort of win or die because I let it get way, way, too big. After that talk with Mom, I understood I was clearly more screwed up than I thought. Spending the first few days here alone already had me way into the redline.

"I was at work and close to losing it. It seemed like a lifeline was thrown to me: you. Here were some of the traits I needed from Jim that I depended on so much, and I needed them more than ever. I saw something of him in you. I felt like it was a miracle. Without getting to know you, most folks are just going to look at the physical differences. Jim's very well-muscled. You're very well-toned. He's a gifted athlete. You're taller. Your skin ... couldn't be more different. But your eyes are happy and kind. Jim's are knowing and wise, and since I pulled this stunt his eyes are always tinged with a small bit of pain he can't hide from me. I guess in the beginning, even though I was attracted to your inner similarities, all the physical differences were kind of exciting, just because they were different.

"That's a major theme. I was happy to see something different, and I guess try something different. It's not that the folks back home are closed minded. Really, that's not it at all. But they all spent time in the city and experienced the difference enough to know without doubt this wasn't for them. To their credit they also know folks from here would be fish out of water at home. To each his own, you know?

"For me it had always been hearsay and not experiential, which may be the root of my disconnect. Everyone there has experienced something different and so they know the value of what they have. For them now the idea of wanting to experience something different is a non sequitur. I took everything I ever wanted with me when I left home for college. Jim and I went together. I never had anything different. Never having lived it myself I wanted to experience different things for the sake of being different."

"Well honey, you have sampled something different. I hope I didn't disappoint."

Beth felt dizzy.

She surely had experienced something different. No one at home would be able to make sense of this. They'd never believe her that Marcus had traits like her beloved. No one would believe she'd cheat and abuse the love of a man she said she loved -- if she truly loved him. She'd made Jim think she may be rejecting him. That's all anyone would see after all her discordant decisions involving Jim. Is there any greater way to reject a man than sleeping with another? All of a sudden, images of Jim in a delivery room looking at his new son that had no earthly resemblance to him crystalized in her head. She shot off for the bathroom. Unable to reach the commode she tried to hurl everything into the tub, the choice of the wider target was wise.

"Whoa!" Marcus extolled, following her quickly. He rubbed Beth's back as she vomited again.

She choked out between convulsions, "I've always been a good girl. I wouldn't have expected myself to be excited about a physical difference. And I shouldn't have even been in that position. I take pride considering myself Jim's woman, and yet..." She began to cry, "and yet I have your essence inside of me right now!"

Marcus truly wanted to help her, "I haven't liked it, Beth, but you said condoms were the rule. Think darling, I haven't broken that rule. I gave my you word."

She looked up at him appreciating his desire to be kind. Then she looked ruefully at the situation saying, "And thank you for that, but I did suck you off rather eagerly and I did swallow."

He nodded feeling like the entire floor around him had been seeded with landmines. What could he say that wouldn't cause an adverse reaction? "What else are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that this infidelity isn't only big enough to break Jim and me up, but that it would break Jim's heart. Almost worse, I fear it would destroy some of the traits in him I most dearly love. He's a measured optimist not a Pollyanna, but if he thinks he can do something, he plans it out and gives it his very best, and damn it, he normally succeeds. This would take the seed of sadness I planted in his eyes and grow it into perpetual sorrow."

Beth looked as if she might vomit again, she grit her teeth and continued, "He gave his full heart, love, and trust to a woman. He won't be able to see what I've done as anything less than a complete rejection of him. He used the word "repudiation" in describing what I'd already decided. What I've done over the last seven days would not only break that fine heart; it would make him cynical. It would make him hate the world."

Suddenly Beth looked back over her shoulder, latching onto Marcus' eyes with her own, "H-He's done everything right. He-He's been upstanding. He's tried to understand me when he couldn't convince me. When he still didn't understand me, he still gave me his heart and sabotaged his own future by scrapping his own plans, to give me the best chance to succeed at my new plan. He'll feel I've ruined him and sold all he was to jump into bed with men I don't really know."

Beth's eyes continued to bore into Marcus. "He had no defenses set up against me, he trusted me that much. There's no conjecture, I've already done more than enough to destroy that fine man. I've already done it, yet I swear I love him; I'm not just clinging to what he is and what he's given me." She shook her head at herself for the thousandth time, "No wonder he couldn't understand: this defies reason."

Beth turned her gaze back into the tub watching her vomit trail towards the drain. It was symbolic of her and her time in the city. "T-This was a mistake, every bit of it, even my considering the internship in the first place. Jim supported me and look what I've done to him. There's no way looking at it from his perspective that this hasn't been an abominably huge mistake.

"I don't know what to say about the fact that I ended up with a lover. The truly mind-blowing facet is that we started the first place. I like you, a lot, which you obviously noticed, though no offense, nowhere near enough to take you as a lover. Sure, you're easy to be around and easy to, ah, love," Beth tightened her grip on the tub again fearful she was going to add to its fetid contents.

Beth started the water to run the mess down the drain. "Being easy to be around shouldn't make me easy to bed, but I was easy for you. I wasn't a total slut, but I was enthusiastically ... easy." She shook her head, "Perhaps not exactly easy ... I was needy!"

Marcus saw the disgust on her face and thanked his lucky stars it wasn't directed at him.

Beth thought for a second, "I'm not supposed to be here. Certainly, there isn't supposed to be another lover. There isn't even supposed to be another guy. I wasn't supposed to take this internship. To show up now, even with merely a guy friend, even if you were five foot tall and highly effeminate, would worry the folks at home that I had a friend here I hadn't told them about."

Beth cried to the point of hyperventilating. "But to have a lover? This fast? After fourteen weeks? It almost looks like I had you here waiting for me." Her expression changed to one of panic, "Oh Jesus in heaven, they'd think you were the reason for my taking this internship all along. So, I could live with my lover!"

Marcus pondered the timing. He'd met enjoyed and left several women over that period of time and done it more than once. Their differing expectations staggered him. Except she felt so much for Jim. It seemed he'd missed the bus somewhere. Besides his sisters and mother, he'd never felt half as strong for another woman as Beth felt for Jim. He listened to her start again.

"If I told them my male friend would spend the night, on the sofa, even with the traits that I just mentioned, they'd wonder what the holy hell was going on?! One of the first things they'd ponder is what they did to turn me against them and their way of life."

Beth forced herself to calm slightly, "When I told them about the internship, they all asked me "Don't you like what we offer? We built it for you. What we've built has us in it. We're offering you all of us. Are you rejecting us? Don't you love us?

"That's their worry. I'm not sure how I could explain. I can't even explain myself to me.

"I came down here to push the envelope and become more capable, but this certainly is not what I meant or what I wanted. It's certainly enough to invalidate any good thing that comes of this internship.

"Once again, let's say you're five foot tall and constantly talk about dancing and sweaters. If after the marriage, my husband finds out that I had a close friend that spent the night once or twice, even if the sex never happened, having never told Jim about you he'd be really concerned. If he asked why I kept you a secret, I can't say "Oh, I didn't think that was an important detail." Somebody spending the night at your place, even on the couch, is a detail that you know your spouse would want to know!"

She swallowed a big gulp, "If in my absence, my boyfriend had another girl sit on his couch and watch a movie, or hell if his aunt came over to stay with him and play gin rummy, I'd expect to hear about it. What would he make of the fact that I've got a full-grown man, one a couple of years older than he is, over here?

"Oh my gosh, all his fears are coming true! These are his greatest fears because in his mind they all mean I don't love him. He'd never find a way to reconcile them with the notion that I do love him. I've sucked your cock and liked it. I've ridden your pole, in my own bed. I controlled those actions. They would rip his world to shreds. You'd expect that outcome for a man who loves a woman. And Jim loves me a lot.

"It's too horrible to contemplate and exactly what's happened. I wanted to push my boundaries and learn some new things, and I sure have. But now I'm questioning myself every bit as much as my family did for wanting to come here. I think if I tell Jim about you, we're over AND his life is smashed. It's so much worse that I sent him on this trajectory! My mother and father would be shocked, dismayed, and even angry at me for doing that to him, and for going against values that I hold with them. And very much for making myself such an easy virtue.

"It would've been bad enough if I broke up with Jim and then moved here, but that would've been honest. You just happen to be the one to hit the Beth lottery and ended up with all of me." She kept her head bowed looking at the dark swirl of what her life had become as it churned down the drain.

Marcus was sympathetic, "Baby I'm going to let you roll, because you need to vent, but I don't have all of you. I don't have the most important parts. You've never let me near them. You talk about Jim more than any other subject. Yes, it confused me when you were open to being with me, but I never had any illusion I was going to unseat him."

"Well, I've sure gifted you all of my hoped-for husband's private stock!" She was furious at herself.

Beth ruminated, "I've heard of girls taking exotic trips or maybe a wild spring break and ending up with a lover. They were overcome by intoxicants and intoxicating romantic settings. It smashes the relationship back at home. Guys do it too. I don't think it's a gender thing; you're in some new wondrous place and you want to experience it totally. So, you give yourself to the place and the moment, although unfortunately also to someone else in the doing. Claiming that experience for yourself is in fact a selfish betrayal of the person still supporting you at home."

Beth quickly paused dredging up other memories, "Back in college, girls loved to study a semester in Europe. The guys just rolled their eyes. The women saw it as fairytale land while the guys remembered their grandfathers saying how lucky they were to escape. I'm just saying women here have this whole fantasy notion about Europe while guys tend to see it as good riddance. It's two very different takes on the same subject and neither is likely to convince the other.

"The girls who went abroad to study took with them a very romantic notion. They often wanted to capture that sentiment of romance. Sometimes the romance of the place and the absence of their boyfriends was overwhelming. In the end there was a convergence of many needs and desires. The romance of it all, of wanting to be swept up in it, the whirlwind of being overwhelmed by the difference and the separation, missing the man who held their heart, spelled too often a surrogate for a night or longer. The existence of which their love at home could never tolerate. In fact, what the guys saw as merely a tawdry hookup invalidated the worthiness of the woman as the romance of the trip was never a factor for them in the least."

She closed her eyes. "I've seen that happen and the choices available to those poor foolish women are stark."

"How did it turn out?" Marcus asked genuinely interested.

"Almost universally if the gal admitted her actions or if the boyfriend found out, they were done. The guys only saw it as betrayal, even if she'd done it because she missed him so badly. Most guys would pull out their hair at that reason saying, "I never wanted you to go." Sometimes if the girl rededicated herself to her eventual spouse and convinced him she truly saw her actions as a failing, they saved the relationship. Even in those rare circumstances there was tremendous drama, and it took a long time to overcome. I don t know of any couple in that circumstance whose relationship was ever as strong afterwards as it was before. The husband knew there were circumstances, especially ones he didn't respect, where she would betray him. They both lived hoping she'd learned her lesson well enough.

"And God help her if she ever had a gleam in her eye about that trip or that errant coupling. That was double-crossing him again. The guy she cheated on would invariably hate her. Other guys only saw her as a self-centered cheater. They wouldn't acknowledge any of the romantic haze sweeping her along. They all felt she'd betrayed true romance just as much as her boyfriend. Their logic isn't unsound. Instead of naming romance as the catalyst for her dalliance, most guys thought if she'd been true to romance, that she either wouldn't have gone or would've stayed true to the man she professed to love."

Beth was quiet for a while. "Damn, those scenarios all fit me to one extent or another. I ruined everything for an internship in a small city; I didn't even see Paris.

"Oh, Marcus, the fact that earlier I had to think about how I felt about that worries me. You shouldn't exist, I absolutely can't have romantic feelings about you. I was so relieved when I realized it didn't hurt me to think of you with other women. That's a blessing." She looked at the drain of the tub. The last of what she'd voided had almost disappeared.

"I'm going to speak words that will seem a separate betrayal of those I love at home, especially the one I love the most. Please try to understand that's not what I intend, words simply fail me."

Beth hesitated, she made a point of not looking at Marcus, "You have truly been a wonderful lover. You have been a fantastic friend; except I can't explain the friendship to my family without getting too close to the lover. I must give you up. I have to let you go. I truly NEED to let you go.

"I did feel the qualities I needed in you, but I need them from the man I still hope will be my husband. He's the one who made me feel and appreciate those qualities. He's the one that made me consider them and come to need them. I love those qualities because they are part of him. I never should have sought them out in anyone else, I guess I do naturally. I fell for them because they were the closest approximation of Jim. I don't mean to insult you while convincing you my heart is his; Jim is my future. Marcus, we have to stop, and we have to stop even more than ... being lovers.

"This internship was a mistake. I came here hoping I could develop wings and to learn to spread them widely." She almost broke down.

Marcus dared not comment on what else she clearly knew she'd spread.

"I was searching for something. I found something quite different than what I expected. When I found something I thought I needed, whether the opportunity or the parts of a man I left behind, I selfishly took it for myself. I hate knowing I can be this person, but knowing it, I must do everything in my power to never be this girl again.

"My mistake would hurt my family, destroy the man I love, and will hurt me for years and years, every time I think of you or my time here. I know that's not fair to you. You were very kind and considerate of me. Then again, you got a considerable reward from me as well. I feel bad doing this to you, but I need to stop thinking about myself. I must start thinking about the wonderful people I have endangered."

Beth made a point of looking back directly into Marcus' face, "Can you understand that, Marcus?"

"Yes, I can. You're a lovely woman. I never meant to hurt you."

"Oh Marcus, I know that. This mess is all my fault, it really is."

Beth paused for a while then thought aloud, "I can't ever tell the man I love what I've done because of how badly it would damage him. Which means I'll be hiding something from him the rest of our lives. I can see where that could be a great disrespect to him. I need to figure out if I can serve him well enough to make our union worthwhile for him, or if I'm just taking him, his life, and his desire to care for me and protect me, because I'm selfish.