Profound Revelations

Our home on the range in the “M Streets” neighborhood of Dallas.

It was close to 11 o’clock, the time my husband usually returned home from the late shift at The Dallas Morning News.  Mase worked on the city desk as an editor, reviewing news stories for the next day’s newspaper and interacting with reporters.  As a journalist, he had a trained eye and could easily put a story together as it revealed itself. 

In this instance, the latest revelation continued when he turned his forest green Ford Maverick into the driveway of our home, his headlights providing definition to the yellow Toyota hatchback parked further up under a large Bur Oak. He would not have recognized the car, but got a glimpse of my brown Honda Hatchback parked in front of it.   

The only lights on in the house were in the living room at the front and the kitchen in the back.  The times I have relived the scene in my mind I imagine he parked in what was left of the driveway, which would not have left much wiggle room between his car and the traffic on McCommas Avenue.  As he was wont to do, Mase walked up the side of the driveway to the back of the house, making his way to the kitchen door.

All the while, I was in the bathroom for a quick pee, thinking I was headed back to the guest bedroom, where I had been heavily making out with the emergency room nurse whose assignment from the two friends at the French restaurant had been to lesbianize me.  

Sara had been at my house for many hours, ever since an afternoon lunch, where the two gals had charged her with this lusty task.  She and I came back to my place and spent the rest of the afternoon, then evening, listening to what was known as “women’s” music at the time. But the lyrics made it pretty clear: it was lesbian music.  Before coming over, Sara picked up a couple of albums from her house, specifically Chris Williamson’s iconic album, The Changer and The Changed, released a few years earlier in 1975.  

The songs were classic, gentle folk-rock – Waterfall, Sweet Woman, Song of the Soul, Shooting Star.  Soaked in women’s love for each other, the lyrics also had a spiritual goddess-ness mixed in. At this time in history, this genre of music called out to young women like me who were slowly emerging from the closet, claiming their souls, finding the essence of who they were, and then discovering the magic spell of sex — ahhh — with a woman.  The lyrics spoke to an eager place in me that wanted to bust out.

Hours before Mase returned home, and before the heavy make-out session in the guest bedroom, I quizzed Sara.       

“How long have you been out?  Have you ever dated men?”  My questions for her were just the facts, ma’am, just like her answers.

“Always been out.  Never was in.  Never dated men or teenage boys.”  Sara scrunched up her face and shook her head with a gentle “no.”  She knew I was married. In fact, she told a mutual friend she would not date me for that reason.  But there we were in my living room, getting ready to take the big next step.  We weren’t paying much attention to the time because, of course, time was standing still for us in those hormone-driven moments.

It had been fun trading our personal stories, but soon enough, we stood up, walked ourselves to the guest room, fell onto the bed with our clothes on, and a kissing fest commenced. After a recent send-me-to-the-moon kiss jamboree with Sara’s friend, the county medical examiner, I was totally hooked and craving as much as I could get from Nurse Sara.  But then I had to pee like a racehorse, no way to hold it anymore.

My lips slipped away from hers and I spoke softly.  “Sorry.  Gotta pee.  Be back in no time.”  I scurried out of the guest room and down the hallway where the bathroom door was open and beckoning me.  I closed the door, unbuttoned my blue jeans, pulled down the zipper. I was squeezing tight and praying the pee would stay put until I sat my butt on the seat.  Ah, what a relief.  Then my mellow got harshed.

“Hi, Mase.” I heard Sara call out to my husband.  I was mid-pee. Then I wasn’t. I quickly got my jeans zipped and buttoned and reached for the door handle.  My husband had met Sara once or twice at a bar on Henderson Avenue in Old East Dallas, on a Sunday after softball practice.   

Sara later told me that after I went into the bathroom and closed the door, she heard keys jiggling in the kitchen.  She knew it must have been Mase unlocking the door, so she walked into the hall and towards the back of the house, and that’s when they met up and I opened the bathroom door.

“Hi, Sara,” he responded with a slight smile, then a slight nod my way, as I emerged from the bathroom. I don’t remember him smiling at me.   

The three of us found ourselves standing together in a teensy-weensy space in the hallway.  A dodgy spot to be.  There must have been a slew of mood enhancing pheromones swirling about in our tiny mundo at that moment in time.  Maybe Mase caught a whiff, though he never mentioned as much to me.

Gotta wonder why in the world I invited the softball player, lesbian-conversion artist to my house knowing full well that if she didn’t leave before 11 o’clock, she and Mase would meet once again.  For some reason, this did not cross my mind.  But why?  I believe that maybe, on a deep, intuitive level, I trusted my husband for what I knew he would never do – raise his fist at me, gaslight me, put me down in front of others – things too many men do to women to enforce the patriarchy, which Mase was the antithesis of.

So, I wasn’t surprised at all as he kindly and in slow motion bowed out of our marriage as time went by, but never once said he was leaving or that he wanted a divorce.  Maybe he was steadfastly holding out hope for a change of heart in me.

“I think I’ll go into the kitchen to get a beer,” he said. “Can I get either one of you something?”  Mase had lovely manners and he loved beer, often describing it as “nectar of the gods.”  The very thought of drinking a beer made him happy, but probably not this night, when he came home from work and found me there with Sara in a situation that, at the very least, was steppin’ out, which often leads to puttin’ your boots under someone else’s bed. What did Mase call it?  Was he willing to wait until my boots got scooted under before it became cheating?

Sara and I both said no thanks to the offer of beer.  Mase turned and walked into the kitchen while I followed her down the hallway to the living room.  But, wait, let’s pause here.  

It strikes me as odd, or perhaps weird, that I did not do what most every other wife on the planet would have done – felt compelled to do – and that’s to shoo the other woman on down the hall and walk into the kitchen to check the temperature of her husband who just (maybe?) caught her stepping out on him. 

I wonder if, in that moment, Mase expected me 1) to follow him into the kitchen or 2) walk off with Sara to the living room.  Most likely he had no expectation one way or the other, he just let it unfold.  

Surely sadness tugged at him, that moment in the kitchen when he pulled a cold beer out of the fridge; and there were the many more moments to come as I pulled away over the months ahead. 

I have little doubt that he knew “something was going on.” But what does he do with that?  Attempt to ignore its presence?  Hold out hope that it was a phase?  I don’t recall him asking questions. And my recollections are that I did not let go a word to him about my predilections, bathing in the silence from him. We were both complicit in the deafening silence as things were unfolding.

In the living room, Sara sat on a chair across from the sofa, where I was, and in front of an oval coffee table defining the seating area.  She and I exchanged glances.  

I’m not sure what emotions were revealed in my eyes, except maybe the raising of my left eyebrow, as in “Hmmmm?”  Inside, though, I was not particularly nervous or concerned about “getting in trouble.”  My sense was that Mase would not bring up the subject.  And I felt safe with that.  In retrospect, I expect he considered it my responsibility to answer to what was transpiring, instead of waiting to be asked. 

As we waited for my husband to walk in from the kitchen with his beer, Sara projected calm and cool, as would be expected from an emergency room nurse at Parkland, the public hospital in Dallas.  She was a boss lady.   But when it came to spending time with me, she was a little nervous.  A lesbian friend later told me that, when asked if she was interested in dating me, Sara adamantly said, “No way.  I am not dating a married woman.  Plus she’s on TV news every night.”  That did not, apparently, stop her from getting to know me better. My guess is the free-flowing wine at the French restaurant probably vaporized any boundaries she set around dating married women.

When Mase appeared, beer in hand, he sat on the sofa, leaving some space between us, so as not to disturb two throw pillows.  “So what have you gals been up to?”  If there wasn’t a bit of sarcasm fueling his question, there should have been.  

That evening, the three of us spent about half an hour talking.  I brought up events of that day, telling the story of the lunch Sara and I had with the two other gals, indulging in several bottles of cold, crisp Chardonnay while nibbling rich French food that probably included escargot.  The cheese was Brie, my favorite on warm baguette. ​​  

Mase seemed politely interested in what we recounted, then gave us a cursory review of the day's news events.  Nothing to write home about. 

I took a drag off a newly lit cigarette and picked up the lagging conversation with more of our doings at the French restaurant. I made sure not to mention the part of the lunch conversation where I declared my friends’ accounts of lesbian sex to be “titillating." 

Time to wrap up the night.  It was pretty darn late at this point, which, combined with the alcohol Sara and I imbibed throughout the day, gave Mase pause to invite the softball player to hold off on driving her car.  He suggested she stay overnight in our guest bedroom.  I thought better of that idea because I did not want to wake up the next morning to her in our one and only bathroom.  I also didn’t want to lie awake in bed thinking of her in the other bedroom while Mase lay awake thinking of me thinking of her, or something like that.

She said, “That sounds like a good idea. Thank you,” and stood up from the chair.  “Goodnight, I’m off to bed,”  she said, before walking down the hall to what had been our make-out room.  

I headed off shortly after that to crash in the bedroom Mase and I shared, while he headed out front to move his car so Sara could get out in the morning when she left.  I lay in bed listening to the Ford Maverick moving into a different space.  

Falling dead asleep was not going to happen. I had now enjoyed two heavy make-out sessions with two different lesbians, this one with Sara, the other one a few weeks earlier with a Dallas County medical examiner.  I knew the lesbian scene was definitely for me – not straight life, not a husband.

Sara most likely gave it 15 or 20 minutes once Mase came back inside the house and went to our bedroom. Then she opened the back door and crept out into the darkness. She later explained to me that she was a little embarrassed and didn’t want to be there when he and I got up in the morning. Besides, it was the polite thing to do, she said.  But she forgot to take her lesbian music with her.    

I don’t remember Mase bringing up this matter of Sara’s visit the following day, or ever.  But I did. The very next evening.  And my way of addressing it was to quickly share the lesbian music with my musician husband.    Seriously, Kay?  Yes, in retrospect, I realize that, on some level, I wanted to share this part of my life with him – the man who had always been good to me and respectful of me.  I loved him, and suspect I wanted to make the break as easy and peaceful as possible, perhaps show him who I was becoming.  Seems naive.  But trust was there. 

 I had not (and could not have) charted this journey in advance. It was  free-form, unfolding, captivating my sense of being. The notion of future make-out sessions drove my hormones wild – a frisky little filly, hair flown back in the wind, hooves kickin’ up dust.   Yee-haw!