Riding an escalator in a crowded department store is a silly way to meet old acquaintances, since you may be going down while the other person is going up, and the escalator relentlessly keeps you moving in opposite directions. But that is exactly what happened one Saturday afternoon as Barbara Weston and I suddenly recognized each other halfway down (or up) the escalator. We cried out, almost grabbed each other, then thought better of that, and Barbara was good enough to travel all the way up and then down again so that we could talk to each other after a lapse of nearly five years. Before long we drifted to a coffee shop on the main floor and sat in a booth and talked. We had worked in middle management positions for the same firm a number of years, and then Barbara had married and left town, and now she was back. She was now with a management consulting group, and she was evidently doing quite well. Her husband was an attorney in the local office of an international corporation. As for myself, I was (and still am) a public relations specialist, except that now I work only as an independent contractor.
"You look wonderful," Barbara said. She was in her mid-thirties, a few years younger than me, with lovely shoulder-length auburn hair and a bright smile. As a committed bisexual (out to certain people only), I'm always physically interested in women, but Barbara was straight and married and we had never been more than casual acquaintances. But I looked. She was something to look at, with a lovely face, full lips painted scarlet, and a generous bust. Looking is harmless; you can always entertain your libido by just looking.
"And you look wonderful too," I replied. I'd always liked her, and it was pleasant talking to her again. We gossiped about this and that, and soon the conversation drifted to personal circumstances. Her marriage was still intact but they had no children yet. As for me, I was still unmarried (after an earlier divorce), and I intended to remain that way. I lived alone and I enjoyed it. I had several ongoing relationships, lovers of both sexes, but there was still no one I would care to have as a permanent partner.
"Good for you," Barbara said, when she learned I was alone and happy that way. But I suspected she was merely being polite. Most married women think unmarried women are unfortunate creatures, and I did not know Barbara well enough to know if she thought otherwise. But then she added: "Sometimes I wish I were single again. Marriage is not all roses, you know."
I shrugged. "It never is, is it?" I was hardly surprised. I was aware of too many marriages, including my own early marriage, that went nowhere except downhill. Barbara evidently needed to talk about her problems.
And so she began talking. I think if we had known each other better she might not have said so much. But since we were only casual acquaintances, maybe she felt more comfortable talking to me rather than to a close friend. I'm a good listener, and I listened. I've always thought trouble in marriage, as in any intimate relationship, is caused by money or sex or both, and in Barbara's case, as she revealed the details, the problem was apparently sex.
"It's good for me when it happens," she said, "but for Gordon it seems not to be the right kind."
"Is he gay?" I had never met him and knew hardly anything about him.
"No, definitely not. He's not interested in men."
"Then what do you mean by not the right kind of sex?"
Barbara sighed. "Gordon has confessed to me that he's been seeing a dominatrix twice a month and he's been doing it for nearly a year. Now that we're back in Chicago, he intends to find one here and start up again. He says he considers it psychotherapy. He says there wasn't any real sex with the other woman, and there won't be any real sex with her replacement. He says he loves me and he doesn't want our marriage to end. What in the world do I do with this?"
"Do you love him?"
"Yes I do. Very much. Do you know anything about this sort of thing?"
I had a choice at that point. I might have said I knew nothing about it and suggested she see a marriage counselor. Instead I revealed more about myself than I probably should have, although later events proved that I did the right thing.
"Yes, I know something about it," I said.
"You do?"
And I told her. My early first (and only) marriage had ended in divorce because my husband turned out to be a submissive who required a sexually dominant woman, and at that time I was not willing to play that role, at least not the way he wanted the role played. I became willing toward the end of the marriage, but by that time it was too late and I wanted the marriage to end. After that, in all my relationships with men, I was sexually dominant, sometimes in an extreme way. And the same was true in my relationships with women.
By this time, Barbara was sitting upright with her eyes wide open. "You're bisexual?"
"Definitely bisexual."
"Oh my."
I had to smile. "It happens, Barbara. It's not a fatal or contagious disease and I do enjoy it."
She gave a short giggle. "I'm just surprised, that's all."
"So now you've met one. We're human, you see."
She extended her hand across the table and touched my wrist. "Oh, that's not it, Katherine. My sister's as gay as a lark. She's an out-of-the-closet dyke and I love her dearly."
Now it was my turn to be surprised. "Really?"