Chapter 59: Old Friends and New

February 16, 1992, Chicago, Illinois

“So, what’s the topic for this afternoon?” I asked as Michelle and I sat down on floor pillows in the ‘Indian’ room.

“It’ll probably be all over the place again, if that’s OK.”

“It’s your dime,” I chuckled.

“You said something and I don’t want to wait two weeks to discuss it. The difference between intimacy and sex.”

I smiled, “You think they’re the same thing, right?”

“Yes. That’s what I was taught, but you obviously don’t agree and I’d go crazy thinking about it for two weeks!”

“THIS is intimacy,” I said.

She was silent for a moment and then I could see realization spread across her face.

“That simple?” she asked.

“That simple. Baring your heart and innermost thoughts to someone else. Sex is intimate, but so are other things. I think society has done itself a grave disservice in formally equating the two. Think about what that would mean for two men who are not gay.”

“Oh!” she gasped. “That level of sharing, that closeness, would imply sex! Oh my!”

“Yes, and so what happens?”

“They don’t do it! The whole ‘macho’ thing!”

“It’s part of it,” I said. “What are men taught about emotions?”

“That they’re a sign of weakness. Wow. Another reason they can’t do this! How did you figure it out?”

“I didn’t,” I chuckled. “I’m just as blockheaded as the next guy. A woman taught me!”

“No, I don’t think so,” Michelle said.

“That a woman taught me?”

“That you’re blockheaded.”

“Get to know me better,” I chuckled.

“I think I’m getting to know you intimately!” she replied with a smile. “And you are NOT a blockhead.”

“I certainly have been in the past. It’s been pointed out by plenty of smart girls, including the one who taught me about intimacy. The sad thing is, someone showed me that when I was fifteen and I more or less missed it completely.”

“Will you tell me?”

“It was after my Swedish girlfriend had died. I was depressed, probably clinically, but it was never diagnosed. One day, I was with this girl who was about a year older than I was. I broke down crying. When I finished, I went to take a hot shower, you know, to clear my sinuses and stuff. She got into the shower with me and bathed me. I never even saw her, if you know what I mean. It was intimate, not sexual.”

“Had you been with her before?”

“No. That’s just it. That was the first time we were naked together, and it had nothing at all to do with sex.”

“The same as a month ago in your great room.”

“Yes.”

Michelle smiled and blushed slightly, “But you saw. And you liked what you saw!”

“Guilty as charged,” I admitted. “I told you last time I’m still a guy, even if I do my best to avoid acting like an idiot.”

“May I tell you a secret? But you must promise NEVER, EVER to share this.”

“That’s what intimacy is about.”

“I feel so guilty about this, but that curiosity? It was to see you. And I liked what I saw!” she blushed deep red.

“If you felt guilty, then you need to confess it,” I said.

“I did. On Friday. I was going to tell you about it. In fact, our last conversation pretty much made it clear I had to tell you, because my conscience was beating me up about it.”

“So now you regret participating?” I asked. “And you confessed that being naked was a sin?”

“No! I had a long talk with my priest afterwards and got a lecture like you wouldn’t believe!”

“Oh, I’d believe it,” I said with a wry smile. “I had a similar lecture from my priest back in Milford, Ohio.”

“Anyway, I confessed what I told you, but decided that participating in that wasn’t sinful. My reaction to it was.”

I smiled, “Then you learned another lesson I’m trying to teach you, and others.”

“That nudity and sex don’t HAVE to go together.”

“Correct. What did your priest have to say?”

“Just what you would think. Lust, sex, sin, immodesty. You know the conversation if you had it. May I ask when?”

“When my mom discovered I was sexually active and insisted I talk to the priest. I was fourteen. I refused to confess and repent so he denied me communion. Well, more properly, advised me not to receive communion until I was ready to repent. And he removed me from the list of altar boys.”

“I bet that made your mom happy!” she laughed.

“Let’s just say it only served to reinforce our relationship.”

“It was that bad?”

“Nightmarish,” I said.

“May I ask a very personal question?”

“If not here, then I don’t know where,” I said.

“Your first time. Did you think about it?”

“I was fourteen. She was twenty-three. She offered. How long do YOU think I thought about it?” I smirked.

“A nanosecond, if that!” she laughed. “As I said, pure, not ignorant!”

“My turn for a personal question,” I said.

“Anything.”

“Have you ever had a boyfriend? Kissed?”

She smiled, “No to both. I’d be reticent to kiss anyone I wasn’t thinking seriously about being married to. It’s far too risky.”

I chuckled, “Pure, not ignorant!”

“Would you jump out of a plane without a parachute?”

I laughed, “No. I’ve made about sixty skydives and on every single one of them I used a parachute!”

“Wow! That’s cool! Well, kissing a guy seriously would be just as dangerous to my virtue as you jumping out of that plane without a parachute would be to your life.”

I laughed hard. I couldn’t help it. All I could think about was Jesse and ‘kissing’.

“What so funny?” she asked, taken aback.

“Jesse is going to be six on Wednesday. A couple of years ago he figured out that kissing was, in some way, related to making babies. To him kissing and intercourse were the same thing when done by adults.”

Michelle laughed, “That’s really funny, especially when you consider what I just said.”

“But you’re smart,” I said. “If you don’t play with fire, you can’t get burned.”

“Exactly. And my priest thinks I was playing with fire.”

I nodded, “He has a point, given what you were thinking.”

“I know,” she said. “He told me never to come back here.”

“But you couldn’t stay away from my den of iniquity?” I grinned.

“Nobody talks to me the way you do! Or has conversations the way your friends do! Can you imagine the nuns at my High School walking in on a conversation like that? Their heads would explode!”

“I have no doubt. But you’re going to have a serious struggle. And I do NOT want to be the one to cause a chasm to develop between you and the Church.”

Michelle smiled, “This isn’t the Middle Ages. They can publish the ‘Index’ all they want. Or even bring back the ‘Legion of Decency’. But there are some things that just have to be done. I told my priest that he should talk to you and see that what I’m telling him is true. He certainly thinks otherwise.”

“He thinks I’m engaged in either an attempt to destroy your faith, or in some round-about way to get you into bed. Or both.”

“Yes,” she nodded. “He said so directly.”

“Of course he did,” I said. “On the first one, if someone asking questions destroys your faith, it wasn’t worth having in the first place. Try telling him that.”

“I did. He disagrees. The thing is, you haven’t shaken my faith one tiny bit. How could you?”

“I couldn’t, if it’s real. And you are, perhaps, the first person I’ve ever met where it IS real. No, I take that back, I think Jorge and Trish have real faith; they just don’t have quite the same conviction as you do. And that’s not meant to demean them, just to say that I’m in awe of your faith. There are times I wish I could have it.”

“And the second one?” she asked with a knowing smile.

“I believe it would be the gravest sin possible to even think about doing that with you,” I said. “It would be so disrespectful of you and your beliefs, that I could never, ever do it.”

“Despite giving me a nice up and down look?” she grinned.

“I simply was appreciating a VERY fine female form,” I chuckled. “There’s a difference between a fleeting thought and considered thought.”

“Also what I told my priest, but I’m sure you understand he completely rejected that notion.”

“A man who is sworn to celibacy says that no guy could not think about getting you into bed? Either he’s dissembling or he’s totally forgetting the implication of his vows!”

“Or the third option, that he’s a ‘Man of God’ and thus believes he’s immune to such things. But you and I both know that’s not true!”

I chuckled, “I’ve run into plenty of charlatans who called themselves ‘Men of God’.”

“And if I told you, that after all of this talk, I wanted you, right here and right now, what would you do?”

“Get up, leave the room, and ask one of the girls to make sure you got back to the dorms safely. Then I’d tell Laurie you probably should never come here again.”

She nodded, “My faith in you is not misplaced. You really DON’T want to have intercourse with every woman who comes along!”

“I wouldn’t go QUITE that far,” I chuckled.

“May I ask another personal question?”

“You don’t have to ask. Just ask. At this point, I have nothing to hide from you.”

“Nor I from you. You don’t have to answer, obviously, but you’ve slept with most of the women in that Rap Session, haven’t you?”

“Yes. At one point or another. But not all. I won’t name names, though.”

“That would be crass, and I wouldn’t expect you to. I was just curious. Why do you do it?”

“That’s a somewhat difficult question to answer, but it comes down to consummating friendships and bonding tightly to girls. A therapist once told me that if I were bisexual, I’d cement my friendship with men the same way. She’s probably right. BUT, and this is important, I’ve set a course for myself to make good, intimate female friends where sex is not only not part of the relationship, but not even possible.”

“The way you’re doing with me.”

“Yes. And with a new doctor friend of mine. It’s a very, very new experience.”

“Wait a minute! You’ve had sex with every female friend you’ve ever had?”

“Close.”

“Wow. So two dozen was a low number?”

“By at least a factor of four or five, yes.”

“Then I am very, very special and very, very lucky.”

“You are?”

“That you’ll let me get this close to you without having to get THAT close to you,” Michelle said with a smile.

She’d just hit on EXACTLY why I liked her and wanted her for a friend. Sometimes those seemingly innocuous decisions paid off handsomely. Our time was up, so she left, and I went to help make dinner.

After dinner, we put in the tape I’d made of the Daytona 500.

“That’s just wrong,” I sighed. “Bill Elliott is #9, not #11. I suppose Budweiser is OK, because that lets them paint the car red, and a red car is better than blue. But driving for Junior Johnson after what Johnson did to Kulwicki? I am NOT pleased about that. At all.”

“Wow, Tiger, he’s in the front row! I thought you’d be happy!”

“You KNOW he has to whine about something when it comes to NASCAR!” Kara giggled. “Nothing has changed in years!”

I DID have something to whine about when on lap 80 a huge crash was caused by Ernie Irvan and Sterling Marlin. Bill, along with about ten other cars, including Alan Kulwicki, were caught in the melee.

“Fuck!” I said as cars and parts of cars littered the track.

Bill ended up 27th, and Alan managed a 4th as his car wasn’t too badly damaged. Not an auspicious start to the 1992 Winston Cup season.

February 18, 1992 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

“Game tickets are on your desk, the two client meetings are set for this afternoon and two more in the morning. John Kyle will be here by noon.”

“Perfect. I assume Ralph and Patty are also available for dinner and the game?”

I’d asked Mario to arrange a team dinner, with no significant others, and a team outing to the game with Ned Jenkins being the only ‘outsider’.

“Yes. And I called Ned Jenkins this morning to confirm that he’ll meet us at the stadium. I figured you would check the game schedule before you picked the day to come!”

I chuckled, “Of course I did! Unfortunately I’ll probably end up making two visits when it’s not hockey season, but maybe I can squeeze three in during the season! How are things with Marie?”

“Moving along. The wedding is set for the end of the summer. Just a small family thing. Our real issue is whether or not she can find a job in the Pittsburgh area. If she can’t, the wedding has to wait. I’m sure as hell not going anywhere!”

“I appreciate it, but at some point, push is going to come to shove.”

“I’m trying to encourage her to get a teaching job and do research. CMU has some government research contracts, as I’m sure you can imagine. She’s looking into it. We’ll figure it out.”

“Anything else going on?”

“The guy from the phone company was here to do a site survey for the phone system. It should be installed by March 1st. That’s pushing it a bit from their usual timeframe for installations, but I’d hate for John to have to work in Chicago to start with.”

“That’s the backup plan. Kimmy already has a plan in place if that happens.”

“Of course she does. She’s totally on top of things. We’d be lost without her paying attention to all the details so the rest of us can do our thing.”

“And that’s why she’s paid as well as anyone else. Neither Elyse nor I could do our jobs without her.”

“Shall we talk business?” he asked, and when I nodded, he continued. “I have a couple of fairly irate BLS customers who don’t like our software and specifically went with BLS. We’ll probably lose them to Lone Star just on general principles.”

“I’m not surprised. Are they big?”

“Enough. But I was involved in both competitive situations. My opinion is let them go. If they’re happy with Lone Star, great. If not, then we try to win them back.”

“Do you want me to talk to them?”

“If you want, but I don’t know that it will do much good.”

“Then I won’t waste my time. Anything else?”

“Some griping about the higher support costs, and some serious pushback on the cost of SQL Server and the hardware. We may have to make some kind of allowance there.”

“We have to pay for both,” I said. “There isn’t much choice. Microsoft and IBM or Dell will want their money. And given we’re already doing the conversion as part of the maintenance they’ll be paying, there isn’t any savings on installation or anything else we can pass on. I think the best we can do at this point is remind them that they have two years to convert. And if any of them are interested, they can use the ‘Light’ version of 5.1 which will cost them less in maintenance.”

“That’s what I thought was the case after talking to Cindi. It hasn’t become ugly, and because Lone Star is using SQL Server, we won’t lose people over that issue, unless Lone Star tries to buy the business.”

“We haven’t seen that,” I said. “That was a BLS tactic. Lone Star seems to understand just how dumb that is and they’re competing with us on features, performance, and value. They’re far more dangerous than BLS ever was. Though BLS with a huge pile of cash could have really sunk us by undercutting us on price in a serious way.”

“That whole thing was a nightmare waiting to happen. I’m glad it turned out the way it did. It’s still a nightmare, but you know what I mean.”

“As the full-time CEO, I DO know what you mean,” I complained.

Mario laughed, “Remember when we were trying to work out of your house?”

“Hey man, we made that work. Did Cindi tell you we have to move again? We’ll be out of space in less than two years.”

“She mentioned that. It’s hard to believe. But I’m a happy man!”

“You and me both! Let me call the office and check messages, then we’ll continue the conversation and take John to lunch.”

It was a busy day, and after lunch with Mario and John, meetings with clients, and a team dinner, we finally sat down in our seats at the stadium just before the teams took the ice. The game was enjoyable in the extreme. It was so lopsided that eventually I was simply laughing. Joe Mullen scored three goals, Ron Francis two, and Paul Coffey and Kevin Stevens one each for a 7-1 Pittsburgh win.

“You sure know how to pick the game to come to!” Ned laughed as we left the ‘Igloo’ after the game.

“What do you think? Back-to-back Stanley Cups?” I asked.

“That’s a tough thing to do, but if anybody is going to do it, it’s the Pens with Lemieux and Jágr.”

“Jágr didn’t play and Lemieux didn’t score! And they still won 7-1!” I said.

“Super Mario had three assists,” Ned said. “That’s three more points in the scoring title race.”

“True. And Barrasso looked good in the net. I’m feeling confident. Maybe I’ll get a dream series and it’ll be the Penguins and Blackhawks!”

We said ‘good night’ to Ned, and the NIKA team walked back towards the office where the rest of the team had their cars parked. John and I turned off to head to the hotel and agreed to have a drink in the bar.

“Thanks for the game,” he said. “Mr. Jenkins was right! You sure picked a great night for a game!”

“You’re leaving Dallas just in time to miss the North Stars moving there,” I said.