A Mangled Affair - Part V
I was disappointed to learn that I’d need a science credit to earn my degree at Boston University, but the lady in the registrar’s office assured me that I’d be in for a big surprise if I enrolled in a specific Geology class. I had no idea what she meant until a week later, when I met my professor.
THIS IS PART 5 of a SIX-PART STORY
Image: Taisiia Shestopal
I had no interest in Jerome Kleinfeld, skinny, talky ex husband of my close friend Madeleine, and yet I slept with him anyway. How on earth did that happen? Easy as falling off a log. We had dinner, a few drinks, a long intimate conversation about the state of our lives, the dearth of romance, and voila, next thing I knew I was in his arms and we were kissing. He’s not a very good kisser, I remember thinking, and yet I let him continue. That was the puzzle about me. I’d be with guys I wasn’t attracted to, almost as if it were a kind of punishment for something I didn’t understand.
In fact, what I understood was this: it was easier to get drunk and have sex with the various men I went out with than to fight them off. That was the way it was with Jerome. I didn’t want him to go on kissing me, but I somehow didn’t have the guts or strength of character to tell him to stop. The sex with him was indifferent. We were together one night and then I never saw him again.
This was after a month or so of hanging out with him and our children. I truly regretted the physical involvement with him, but in the general scheme of things it didn’t seem to matter that much as we had no real emotional interest in one another. What had happened was nothing but a brief, uninspiring roll in the hay.
I figured the event would be quickly forgotten, and Jerome and I would continue with our friendship intact. But I was wrong. Jerome went straight from my bed to his ex, my good friend Madeleine, telling her he and I had begun an affair. He did this to get back at her for all the woes of their erstwhile marriage and divorce, using me as a pawn.
Once he had told her about our lacklustre night in bed, he dropped me like a handful of change, but -- here’s the moral of the story -- she dropped me as well. For my stupid little indiscretion, I lost two friends.
And I lost the good buddy with whom I’d tootled around town in search of fun and adventure, the person in whom I’d confided all my secrets, particularly those pertaining to geology professor, Dabney Withers Caldwell. From here on in I was on my own.
Image: Wim Van T’Einde