put you in me. You can’t tell the difference?”
“No, I thought I was between your legs.”
“Thanks.”
“You raped me,” he laughed.
“Not one man on a jury at our rape trial would believe your testimony - you can’t tell when you’re inside a woman.”
“Rape. That’s it. You raped me,” he said.
“It’s impossible for a woman to rape a man.”
What had I gotten myself into? I lay there wondering how a man with a corner office on Wall Street and three kids could be that clueless in bed.
CHAPTER 4
February
A fter that weekend, Len began to call more frequently to meet for dinner, and inevitably, we’d end up at some instantly forgettable motel near the restaurant and have sex. Our sexual relationship felt pretty lame at this point. While Len expressed how thrilled he was I could excite him, he didn’t begin to know where to start to return the favor.
Soon he began to call almost every day and like all new lovers we would talk for hours. We continued to meet halfway on a weeknight at some motel, and fumbling around my body, he struggled to please me. We even skipped the pretense of having dinner together when we couldn’t wait to get into bed.
“I want you to know that I’m dating other women,” he told me one night, after we had sex. “I’m just out of a long marriage and feel entitled to play the field.”
“You are still responding to ads? Do you tell them what you told me? And if you feel entitled to play the field, then I’ll be heading back into the clubhouse.”
Lying on his back, covered with a white sheet and looking at the ceiling, a smug look filled his face.
“It’s been good. I took one woman to Café des Artistes, one of the most romantic restaurants in New York. We should go there.”
“What an idea.”
“I always check these women out. I have a security agency investigate them. Can you imagine one woman told me she was forty years old and when I met her I was absolutely sure she looked at least fifty. The agency looked into and she was fifty-one. She was lying and I was right, ” he said.
“Have you investigated me? Did they uncover my two speeding tickets, my three parking tickets?”
• • •
“There’s an inn in Connecticut, the Stony Field Inn…would you spend Friday night there with me?” Len asked on the phone Sunday evening.
“I’d like that,” I responded knowing that Friday was Valentine’s Day.
We met around eight that evening and Len seemed to be grossly uncomfortable about something.
“What’s the matter? Why are you staring at that young woman?” I asked.
“She’s from my office. Can’t imagine what she’s doing here.”
The woman walked over to us and Len cringed.
“Hi Amanda. This is Kate. So nice to see you,” he smiled and immediately ushered me to the table. I could not be part of his public persona yet. Dating, the sex, the intimacy were still under wraps. What would people think of him?
We had a quick, quiet dinner downstairs at the Inn. Since Len appeared so unnerved to have this woman just a table away, we rushed through the courses and headed up to a small room decorated in early New England. The room, although tiny and quaint, seemed a vast improvement over the motels we had been frequenting.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” I said as I gave Len a pair of red silk boxers.
He opened the box, delivered a perfunctory smile and set the box on the bedside table. He offered nothing in return, not even one red rose.
We lay down side by side on the four-poster bed.
“Look, I am really uncomfortable continuing our sexual relationship as long as you are dating other women,” I said.
He lay there, apparently structuring the deal.
“I guess we have four choices. One, we can stop seeing each other altogether. Two, we can stop having sex and keep dating. Three, I can sleep with other women and you. Four, I can stop seeing other women, ” he said.
“Do you understand that I prefer being in a monogamous