Chapter 46: Japanese Wisdom

May 10, 1994, Chicago, Illinois

“I’m pretty sure I know your answer Tiger, but how do you feel about Illinois executing John Wayne Gacy?”

We were taking turns in the shower on Tuesday morning. Gacy had been executed by lethal injection just after midnight at Stateville.

“I have a serious problem with giving the State the authority to take a life. The Constitution clearly contemplates it, so it’s permitted. I’m just not sure why we think it’s a good idea. What’s the purpose? If it’s retribution, I want no part of it. Deterrence? For that to work it would have to be swift and public, and it’s anything but that, and given how often verdicts are overturned for various reasons, I’m not sure it can ever be swift. Punishment? I suppose, but I think life in prison is a more fitting punishment in an allegedly enlightened country. That said, if there ever was a poster child for the death penalty, I can’t think of many better than Gacy. Does that answer your question satisfactorily?”

“It does. You know my take on it.”

I nodded, “You’re a Texan. I’d be shocked if you opposed capital punishment. You’d support gun control laws before you’d oppose the death penalty!”

“Something confuses me,” Kara said. “If someone were to seriously hurt any of us, or your friends, you would kill them in the blink of an eye. But you oppose the death penalty. Why?”

“I’m a complex man,” I grinned, rinsing shampoo from my hair. “I suppose the answer is, in the end, I don’t trust the government with that power any more than I trust them for anything else.”

“Would you really kill someone who hurt us?” Jessica asked.

“I have no idea,” I said. “Yes, I’ve made those statements in the past, but until I’m presented with the situation, I can’t be sure what I would do. I did exercise restraint with Josh Benton. And in the end, poetic justice took over and he died of penetrating trauma.”

“As should all rapists,” Jessica said. “Or feed them gonads first into a food processor.”

“That would, indeed, prevent recidivism,” I said, getting out of the shower and accepting a towel from Kara.

We moved to the bedroom to dress for work.

“The other thing to consider,” I said, “is cases like that of Darby J. Tillis. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1979, only to be exonerated in 1987. The case got big play in the newspapers then, as you can imagine. What would have happened if he, like a few others in US history, had been exonerated posthumously? How do you give the man his life back? It’s bad enough the guy spent years on death row, but at least they could let him out. Which goes to my point that you can’t be swift without running the risk of executing an innocent man.

“But it’s not just the death penalty. We’re quickly moving to a system designed to convict every single offender, even if it means convicting some innocent people as well. The system was meant to do the opposite - allow a few guilty to go free to ensure the innocent are not wrongly convicted. Once again,” I said vehemently, “the intent of a government policy is turned on its head and brings about the opposite. The only way out of THAT trap is serious reduction in the size and scope of government.”

“Jess, see what you did?” Kara said reprovingly. “He’s in one of his moods now! We haven’t heard an anti-government rant in weeks and you go and ask that question!”

I took a deep breath and let it out, “It’s OK, Kara. I should be able to control my visceral reactions. It’s the one thing that’s always worried Bethany. I’m sorry. Jess, you didn’t do anything wrong. It was a legitimate question. It was my reaction that was wrong. I suppose I should have just said ‘Rant #4’ from Pete’s list and left it at that.”

The girls both laughed and we headed downstairs for breakfast.

“Tiger? Was there a rant about the ‘f’ word on the list?”

I chuckled, “How could there not be? It’s number zero - ‘Fair’ is the one true ‘f’ word! He didn’t have that on the list and when I pointed it out, he and Kurt agreed it had to be the first one. But they didn’t want to renumber the list. So zero it is.”

“You’ve been a really good sport about that whole thing.”

“I believe Penny said it best when she said that Pete had me described to a ‘T’. I am pretty predictable in that way! My only real objection was to ‘Rant #11’, which isn’t a rant.”

“Which one was that?” Elyse asked. “I don’t have my crib sheet.”

“True intimacy is not about sex,” I answered. “The others are mostly directed at government or society in a negative way. But I’ll give Pete a pass on that one because I do say it often.”

“Do you have a guest count for Saturday?” Elyse asked.

“Figure around eighty, including most of our friends, and the students.”

“Are you really going to try to prevent anyone who didn’t show up on Sunday from coming to the party? That could cause an ugly scene.”

“I think it’ll police itself,” I said.

“And Becka, Claire, and Marie Annette’s offer?” Elyse smirked.

“Declined. And not because I’m becoming some stick-in-the-mud, fuddy-duddy, ‘no-fun’ guy. I like all three of them, and they’re friends, but there’s no intimacy there. It would be, hang on to your hat, empty.”

“You’re back to looking for meaning in sex? You haven’t really done THAT since Jennifer!”

“Anala, actually,” I countered, realizing what I’d just said to and about my wives. “Jess, Kara, we should probably talk about this tomorrow with Doctor Green.”

“It’s OK,” Jessica said. “I’m not exactly the poster girl for healthy relationships.”

“I don’t think you’re being totally honest with yourself,” Kara said carefully. “You do find meaning in that kind of intimacy, but only when you have the other, more important kind first. That’s why you mentioned Anala. But you had that with Elyse, too. And me. And don’t forget Michelle and Samantha. I love your concept of intimacy, but when you try to divide one from the other completely, you end up with an improper understanding. I will agree that in most cases you didn’t have that. Let me ask you this, would you say your sex with Tina Hoff was empty?”

I chuckled, “No. She probably knows me better than anyone other than the three of you. We still haven’t missed a month for our letters since 1980.”

“There were others, too,” Kara said, “just perhaps not fully developed because of circumstances. Kimmy, Jacqui, and Liz come to mind, not to mention Tara.”

“OK, maybe I was wrong,” Elyse said.

“And me, too,” I said. “I need to get this straight in my mind before I do anything with anyone. Well, present company and Michelle excepted.”

“I suppose you have something to do during your ‘me time’ tonight,” Kara said.

“I do. And thanks for not getting upset with me.”

“There’s no reason to. I know you love me. You, being you, give meaning to my life.”

I nodded, “Our song.”

“Just remember that,” Kara said, “and everything will be fine.”

May 11, 1994, Chicago, Illinois

“I have a topic I think we need to discuss,” I said to Doctor Green on Wednesday evening.

“Shoot,” he said.

“We’ve discussed my views on intimacy many times, but I realized I’ve been making a false dichotomy, and because of it, yesterday, at breakfast, I said something that could have been very hurtful.”

“Explain, if you would.”

“Fundamentally, it’s a good thing to understand the separation between emotional intimacy and physical intimacy, but I went too far, and by elevating emotional intimacy, I more or less excluded physical intimacy from having meaning. And, as usually happens with my big mouth, I said that out loud to Kara and Jessica, saying the last time I had meaning from physical intimacy was before we married.”

“I’d say ‘hurtful’ barely scratches the surface of how devastating such a statement could be. You’re damned lucky both your wives know you well enough to let you work your way out of a hole like that one. Talk about pointing the gun at your foot!”

“Oh, I know all about that,” I said with a wan smile. “I spent a couple of hours with my journal last night and I think the problem stems from me being too logical. It’s my programmer’s mentality. Every problem can be broken down into discrete steps, each of which is executed individually. There’s an almost exact parallel in how I do my karate kata - I break them down into moves and make sure I perfectly execute each move.”

“Losing the concept of the whole and forgoing beauty for technical correctness. In a sense, to use an old aphorism, you can’t see the forest for the trees.”

“Exactly. I’m so focused on getting the steps right, that I miss the point. It’s something Jorge was always trying to tell me, but I totally missed. He was an excellent dancer, and when he tried to teach me, I was so focused on doing the steps that I could never get it to flow the way he did. To me, getting it was about getting it ‘right’; to him it was about making it ‘beautiful’.”

Doctor Green shook his head, “You may have missed your true calling!”

“I’m pretty good at diagnosing myself, but not anyone else.”

“But you know the questions to ask,” Jessica countered. “You do that at the Rap Sessions. It’s just like with counseling - you ask questions and lead people to their own solutions, while giving them guidance and tools to help them. You know yourself that the best solutions come from your own thinking. Well, barring real mental illness.”

“I resemble that remark,” I grinned.

“May I ask what brought this on?” Doctor Green asked.

“Oh, the usual,” I grinned. “Three young women propositioned me.”

“In what timeframe?”

“You misunderstand, the three of them wanted to be with me. At the same time.”

Doctor Green sighed and shook his head, “I don’t know if I should be afraid, jealous, or angry! I’m hoping you had the good sense to turn them down.”

I chuckled, “I did surrender my ‘Man’ card on the grounds that no red-blooded American male would pass up a foursome with three cute college girls.”

“Funny, but that kind of thing concerns me.”

“Me too, Doc. That’s why I turned them down.”

“Good. As a quick aside, how is Michelle?”

“She’s fine. Why?”

“Would you mind if I spoke to her?”

“Of course not. I’ll have her call your office.”

“Thanks. Now, back to this issue of your mechanical approach to things. Being able to break down a problem into its constituent parts is a good way to find a solution, but you need to think about the aggregate as well. A good, solid solution to each step might not result in the optimal solution. The sum can be greater than its parts.”

“Yes. And this is, I think, part of the reason my Sensei is sending me to Japan next month. He wanted me to go for six months, but that’s not even remotely possible now, nor would it be for probably twenty years, and only if I could take my wives, and probably Michelle.”

“You expect her to still be around in twenty years?”

“I think we’ll know the answer to that in a couple of years. It comes down to the question of whether her maternal instinct is stronger than her desire to only ever be with one man for life.”

“As you’ve said, there are many similarities with Kara, and perhaps Michelle will make the same choice Kara believes she would have made - being with a second man would be acceptable to be a mom, but in no other case. Jessica is a bit different.”

“That’s putting it mildly, Doctor Green,” Jessica said with a smile. “Mine was about no man being worthy of the privilege of entering me, and it had more to do with how guys treated me in college, and worse, in medical school, than anything else. I wasn’t interested after the incident with my friend until the incident with my pseudo half-brother. And that incident led me to focus on studies, rather than guys. The way I was treated only exacerbated the problem.”

“But Steve was worthy?”

Jessica laughed, “If I’d known then what I know now, it wouldn’t have taken Doctor Barton shoving me into this relationship. He’s that good!”

“I’ll make a note of that,” Doctor Green said dryly. “The three of you seem to be doing OK despite Steve’s ‘open mouth, insert foot’ moment yesterday.”

“He’s changed,” Jessica said. “He’s quick to acknowledge his mistakes, and he’s listening to advice from his closest male friends. I’m half-tempted to tell him to say yes to those college girls as a reward!”

“Please don’t do that,” Doctor Green implored. “I know you’re teasing, but the three of you have made excellent progress and I don’t want to see you throw it away by reverting to some of your poor behavior of the past.”

“We’ve actually talked about that, Doc,” I said. “That is how we came to that moment yesterday where, in effect, we had a breakthrough.”

“Just be careful that you don’t get overconfident; there are still plenty of snares waiting to trip you up.”

“Oh, I know all about that,” I agreed. “That fickle bitch, Fate, is always lurking around the corner.”

May 14, 1994, Chicago, Illinois

“I am SO happy to see you guys!” I said to Sofia and Stavros when they arrived for the party.

“You know what the PGY1 year is like,” Sofia said with a frown. “Sometimes I feel like Alexa never sees me.”

“Two more weeks, right?” I asked.

“One. Then I’m taking two weeks off. We’re going to Greece. I’ll start my second year when I come back from vacation.”

“Excellent!” I said.

“Frederick and his girlfriend are meeting us there.”

“Cool,” I said, then turned to Alejandra, “And how are you?”

“Burned out,” she said. “I need a month off, but I only have a week. We’re going to lock ourselves in the apartment and get to know each other again.”

“Have you heard from Leila?”

“She married a bank president last month. He’s about twenty years older than she is.”

“That sounds like Leila!” I agreed. “Anyway, the party is just getting started. Dave, Jamie, and Karl are manning the grill. We’ll have burgers and brats ready in a few minutes.”

We went to the back yard and by the time we started eating, most of the guests had arrived.

“What time does the orgy start?” Stacy asked with a smirk.

“You’ve clearly come to the wrong place,” I chuckled.

“Bummer! But at least there are some hot looking Navy guys here!”

“And you can’t decide which one?”

“Supposedly the best option isn’t available.”

“And who is that?”

Stacy laughed, “You, of course!”

I sighed, “Who have you been talking to?”

“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. Forget I said anything.”

“It’ll take me all of three minutes to figure it out, because it can only be one of four people, two of whom would never say a word.”

“Claire and Becka,” she said.

I smiled to put her at ease, “Those two are serious troublemakers. Please be careful.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve listened to you for the past year. And I’m not quite as innocent as I seem!”

I grinned, “And yet, I knew for sure you’d be at the Rap Session last Sunday.”

“What? How?”

“You do a reasonably decent job of hiding it, but I knew you had some experience. In fact, if push came to shove, I could probably tell you how experienced everyone in the Rap Session is and be confident that I’d get it better than 90% right.”

“How?”

“You learn to look for clues. I’ve missed some in the past, but those experiences helped teach me how to see them.”

“OK, Smart Guy! Tell me!”

I nodded, “You’ve had two, maybe three lovers. Your first time was in High School, probably your Senior Year.”