And so it began.

It was just waiting for the right opportunity, which was not, of course, going to be there and then, on the wet pool deck of my swim club, trunks around the ankles, writhing and moaning in the face of appalled exercise buffs. In the open shower, it was my turn to keep my back turned, feeling like I was back in high school and couldn’t trust my defiant penis. We shook hands in the parking lot and I ignored it when he scratched my palm with his middle finger, not yet knowing the secret signals between closeted homosexuals.

“We should get together soon for drinks,” he said, making it obvious that he meant alone, not with our wives.

“Give me a call,” I said, hoping he couldn’t hear the nerves in my voice.

“Didn’t you say last night you’d be back Wednesday?”

I told him I had a late-afternoon flight out of Atlanta after my lunch meeting with the distributor. Great, he said, telling me where to meet him that evening.

That night I attacked Alice enthusiastically. Once wasn’t enough. Twice didn’t satisfy me. Long after midnight, Alice pulled the twisted sheets between her legs and sipped a glass of wine.

“You ought to exercise more often,” she said.

A week later, she waited for a reprise. But that night I fell asleep during 60 Minutes, not to awaken until seven the next morning. Everything had changed in those seven days.

I’d called home from the airport Wednesday afternoon and left a message on the machine, complaining that I’d missed my flight, that it was ridiculous to get routed through Columbus, Ohio, and the next nonstop didn’t arrive until after midnight. Don’t wait up. Love you. Miss you.

I thought his choice of a bar was a little odd. The Tara Lounge at a Holiday Inn on the outskirts of Winston-Salem? His briefcase was in plain view and he’d placed a thick ratings book on the table, evidence of a pure business purpose in the highly unlikely event someone who knew him stumbled upon us in a dark corner in the empty lounge in that tacky backwater. We started with beer and moved quickly to bourbon, straight up. It wasn’t long before enough alcohol had flowed to excuse his shins touching mine under the table. I didn’t pull my leg away and he pressed lightly, just enough to confirm it was intentional.

“How long have you and Alice been married?” he asked.

“Eight years.”

“That’s a long time.”

“Longer, really. We met in college. Freshmen. Been together thirteen years.”

“Hard, isn’t it?”

“What?”

He went to the bar for another round, and, when he returned, he kept his legs tucked beneath the seat. I slid my foot across the floor until it nudged his shoe. He put his hands on the table and looked me in the eyes.

“What do you think?”

There was a key, Room 206, between us on the table. I panicked, admitting I’d lied to Alice, told her I’d missed my flight, she might call Nora and find out I was not far from home, meeting him for a beer. He laughed so hard the bartender looked away from the television.

“Are you fucking crazy? Nora thinks I’m in D.C. and won’t be back until tomorrow night.”

I called Alice at six in the morning, creating some preposterous explanation as to why I’d been forced to wait for a morning flight. See you tonight. Let’s go out to dinner. Your choice. Miss you. Love you. I was never that careless again.

I learned a few things that night. First, big hands and big feet do not necessarily mean big everything. Just as well. Christ only knows how I would have reacted, what flashbacks would have overtaken me, if he’d unzipped his pants and pulled out a long red snake. As fate would have it, Brian Wilkins was the proud owner of a short brown snail. Second, I learned how my body could respond to a touch I truly desired. And, for the first time, I felt the fissures in the fault line of the life I’d created and the potential of my dry heart to crack and split.

Years of hindsight have taught me it wasn’t love I felt for Brian Wilkins. I didn’t know better at the time. What else but love could cause me to despair when I didn’t hear from him for days, constantly debating the pros and cons of calling to break the silence? What else could explain the physical rush of elation whenever I picked up the phone and heard his voice? Only love could have inflated Brian Wilkins like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon hovering over my every waking moment while shrinking Alice, like her namesake, to a two-dimensional shadow to be accommodated, gently, during the intervals between my secret rendezvous. Yes, hindsight brings wisdom. I know now it wasn’t love. It was fear, an absolute, abject fear, that, without him, I’d be back in the box, snapped shut, sealed tight, labeled HUSBAND, and returned special delivery to WIFE.

He tried hard to appear sad the night he told me he’d got the transfer to Pittsburgh. But the sex was bad, hurried, obviously one more chore before departing, like registering a change of address with the post office. We had a last supper together, the four of us, their last weekend in North Carolina. I tried to make eye contact over the table, hoping to pass secret signals, looking for some sign of regret. But Brian was having none of it, never letting the conversation drift from market demographics, advertising revenue streams, and the necessity to adapt to survive against the threat of the cable news networks. I waited a week to call him at his new station. His secretary put me on hold for ten minutes after I gave her my name. Great to hear your voice, he said, sounding distracted and, worse, irritated. He told me he’d stay in touch. I never heard from him again.

The box couldn’t hold me for long. It took a while, six months, until one night, alone in a hotel room in Dallas, the King of Unpainted Furniture safely snoring in a suite on a different floor, I called a cab and gave the driver the address of a bathhouse where many hands touched and stroked me before the sun came up.

The urge would lie dormant for weeks, months, only to rear its ugly head when I was stranded in a room in a budget motel, not because the King of Unpainted Furniture scrimped on the expense accounts but because moldy carpets and damp bedspreads were the best the town had to offer. The voices on the television at the foot of the bed sounded as distant as a conversation in a different state. I’d stand in the shower, listening to the eleven o’clock news, hoping the hot water would induce drowsiness and dreams.

Still wide awake, I’d log on to my laptop, find a chat room, and send my room number to aging lonely hearts, down-on-their-luck hustlers, even the occasional hunky college boy with too many hormones charging through his bloodstream. Or I would put on a clean shirt and navigate the rental car through the side streets of the seedy section of a town I didn’t know. I’d debate myself-go back, stay here, go back-until a beat-up Honda or Toyota vacated a parking spot a stone’s throw from the entrance to the “Buddies” or “Players” or “Side Traxx” in every town or small city with a dealer for Tar Heel Heritage pine furniture. I’d chug the first beer, chase it with a shot of tequila, drain another bottle, not relaxing until the room was in soft focus and I found the nerve to light the cigarette of the man sitting next to me. I’d struggle to make conversation, waiting for an indication of any possible interest. If I found it, I’d rush, growing anxious because the clock was ticking away, desperate to seal the deal, dreading driving back to my motel alone.

There was no turning back, not even when Nora Wilkins called to tell us that Brian had passed away, stricken by a pneumonia from which he never recovered. Nora had left Pittsburgh and was back home in Minnesota. She and Alice made a vague promise to see each other soon, a sentimental gesture appropriate to the moment.