Chapter 63: Mindfulness

March 8, 1992, Chicago, Illinois

Michelle and I were sitting in the steam-filled sauna with sweat pouring from our bodies. I had been surprised by her request, but honored it, and as she’d asked, we’d just sat quietly for the first ten minutes. Eventually she broke the silence.

“Did you think about what I asked you to?”

“Yes. And I think I’ve solved the question of hugs. I don’t hug my guy friends. I don’t hug my parents. Other than my kids, I only hug women who have been, are, or are likely to be, lovers.”

“So hugs are sexual? This from a guy who doesn’t think nudity is sexual?”

I chuckled, “I hadn’t thought of it in those terms, but I think that’s probably the case.”

“Is it body contact?” she asked. “Or something else?”

“If I had to guess, it’s because my dad is not physically expressive. As long as I can remember, even when I was little, he wasn’t. And my mom, well, she makes ‘Mommie Dearest’ look like a saint.”

“That bad?”

“My mom wasn’t physically abusive, but she was certainly abusive in every other way. My sister and I bonded out of self-defense from her and my pedophile brother.”

“Pedophile? You’re not joking?”

“Complete with a felony conviction for exposing himself to prepubescent girls. And that was the second time. My dad managed to get the charges reduced to misdemeanor public indecency the first time.”

“I thought your dad was OK.”

“I guarantee you he pulled those strings to try to keep some semblance of marital harmony. My mom is certifiable. But my dad loves her, so at this point I tolerate her presence, but that’s about it. My brother is obviously prohibited from being anywhere near the kids. My wives made that quite clear to her when my mom tried to get him involved in their lives.”

“Wow. That’s just crazy!”

“Indeed! Why do you think I’ve been seeing a psychologist off and on for most of the past fifteen years? Mostly on, actually.”

“Do you have a mental illness?” Michelle asked.

“Severe mood swings were a serious problem in the past, but they’re mostly under control due to diet, exercise, sufficient sleep, and counseling. My sister has the same problem.”

“I can imagine! But we got off topic! The hugs?”

“It’s been swirling in my mind while we were talking, and I’d say you were right. Sitting in here naked with you would be LESS sexual than hugging you. Now if that isn’t crazy, I don’t know what is!”

Michelle laughed, “So, I strip off my bathing suit, and that’s all cool? I hug you fully clothed and it’s not? I’d have to agree that’s pretty much the definition of crazy!”

“Is that an offer?” I chuckled.

“Taking off the bathing suit? Or a hug?”

“Your choice!” I grinned.

“See, now THAT is you. I LIKE you for who you are, even if I don’t agree with your choices. I’m not some China doll. Pure, not ignorant! Just don’t be crude. I think I’ll keep the suit on,” she said with a smile.

I nodded, “I think that’s a wise idea.”

“But I would like a hug. Can you do that? Without any connotation other than friendship?”

“I can’t promise what thoughts will or won’t run through my head.”

“Can anyone? The key thing is, you’re honest. And that’s the first step to changing your thinking and your behavior.”

“You’re talking about Marie now.”

“Yes.”

“I cannot, for the life of me, come up with a single argument, based on my ethics or morals or whatever you want to call them, that convinces me that it’s harmful, disrespectful, or wrong.”

“So, taking a girl’s virginity is no big deal?”

“Not if it isn’t to her. Well, that’s not quite right. If being a virgin isn’t important to her. It is to you, so that would be a big deal, and be wrong.”

“So the only thing that keeps you from wanting to get undressed and rut like animals right here and right now is because I think it’s wrong?”

“That’s kind of harsh, don’t you think?”

“Is it?”

“Not from your perspective, no. From mine, yes.”

“So what are the limits? Are there any? An endless string of girls? Two or three at a time? Anything you and they want to do with no restrictions?”

“The limits are whatever the people involved consent to do. That said, I do have some guidelines, as we’ve discussed. I would never, ever be with someone who was in a committed relationship, and I’d even seriously question being with someone who was in a semi-serious relationship.”

“What makes that different? You’re in a relationship like that. Several, in fact.”

“I could seriously harm their relationship, and because I have no way of verifying if it would harm it, I don’t do it.”

“Good. Now take that to the next logical conclusion.”

I smiled, “I have no way of verifying if having sex with a girl will harm her or not.”

“See, even YOU can learn,” she grinned.

“But that’s a recipe for inaction if we apply it to every facet of our lives! No matter what we do, someone could get hurt by any decision or action we take!”

“Yes, that’s true. But you aren’t obligated to become sexually involved with girls. You are obligated to make decisions to run your business, for example. Do you see the difference?”

“Yes, but again, I choose to do a lot of things I’m not obligated to do. And so do you. These conversations aren’t obligatory and your priest certainly thinks you’re going to be hurt by them!”

Michelle nodded, “True.”

“In the end, with regard to decisions, we can only worry about what we can control. I make decisions every day, and if I worried about every negative outcome to the point of inaction, my business, my family, and my own life would suffer serious harm. You can do harm by NOT doing things. That’s a decision as well. And maybe that’s the bottom-line difference. I say ‘do no harm’ or as little as possible. You say ‘do good’, as much as possible.”

“Don’t both depend on definitions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’? Or ‘harm’, if you will.”

“Yes, but I think my way provides far more freedom, and that’s one of my core values.”

“To be free to do as you please, with nobody telling you what to do?” she asked.

“Yes, precisely.”

“But you submit to the laws.”

“Some because I believe they properly respect the principle of ‘do no harm’. Others because the government will enforce the law even if it is not right or is unjust. They have more guns and power than I do. But then again, so did the British in 1776.”

“You are seriously anti-government.”

“Yes, I am. Voting doesn’t suddenly make something that is wrong for me to do personally, right, just because the majority agree it is. Abortion is a perfect example. We agree it’s wrong. A court ruling or a majority vote to make it legal doesn’t make it right.”

“But you think it SHOULD be legal!” Michelle protested.

“Actually, it’s a bit more nuanced, and the nuance is important. I don’t think it should be illegal based on my own desire to be left alone.”

“But you agree with me that life begins at conception! Isn’t the baby harmed?”

“Yes. Would you care to put that to majority vote? And abide by the result, accepting THAT as truth?”

“No.”

“Then you understand my point. And you actually agree with me, just from a slightly different perspective. If you had to choose between the Church’s teaching and following the law, what would you do?”

“Follow the Church’s teaching,” Michelle said with a smile.

“Why?”

She laughed, “For the exact same reason you have your positions. My conscience. I’m going to listen to it, not to some politician or a majority vote!”

“Yes.”

“And because your conscience, based on your core principles, sees no problem with sexual relations, the only way I’ll ever convince you is to change your core principles.”

“Yes.”

“Which wouldn’t be respecting you.”

“Impasse,” I grinned. “We respect each other, even if we disagree. And we both will make our points, hoping to get the other person to understand us, and we’ll challenge each other’s beliefs, not to necessarily change them, but to ensure they are properly formed and truly grounded. What the Bible calls iron sharpening iron.”

“But isn’t this one-sided? I’m going to try to get you to stop being promiscuous, but you aren’t going to try to talk me into bed.”

“Do you WANT me to try to talk you into bed?” I smirked.

“No!” she laughed. “But doesn’t it bother you if I try to convince you that you’re wrong?”

“Not at all! What harm does it do to push me to reconsider? You aren’t condemning me. Well, not out loud, anyway. Your moral system does, and that’s fine. So, by all means, push me to think about things. What’s the worst that can happen? I decide to have fewer sex partners? That’s not exactly a serious hardship!”

“I really enjoy these conversations. I hope we can keep doing this.”

“For as long as you want to,” I said. “Remember, next week I’m out of town.”

“I remember. How about a hug?” she grinned.

I nodded, and we stood up, and hugged. And it felt like I was hugging a friend.

March 9, 1992, Chicago, Illinois

“What’s on tap for today?” I asked Jessica as we walked to the hospital.

“Same as usual! Whatever happens to come through the door!”

“And you, Bethany?”

“More meetings to explain what I’m doing. I had a few cases last week. One was a rape victim who didn’t want to report it to the police. I convinced her to make a report and helped her set up regular counseling sessions with an outside counselor. I consider that a win!”

“Did you get the training classes you want to do set up?” Kara asked.

“That’s a task for this week. My goal is to train every nurse and as many doctors as possible in how to handle any kind of abuse case. It’s shocking how little training the medical profession receives.”

“In med school it was one module on dealing with sexual assault in one class on patient care,” Jessica said. “There was a bit during my psych rotation and a bit during my OB rotation. But all of that was really laughable. You’ll get good cooperation from the nurses. Doctors are going to be a bit trickier.”

“Yes, but you, Alicia, Marjorie, and a couple of other ER Residents are on board. That’s a start. It’ll be the older, male doctors who are the difficult ones. And I’m not being sexist here. They have the least training, and their perspectives come from whatever medical schools taught in the 60s, which appears to have been nothing.”

“There has also been significant change in social attitudes,” Jessica said. “It used to be the case that if a girl was dressed sexily, or flirted, or went to the wrong place, she ‘wanted it’, and that made her fair game. Not to mention societal views on rape, which kept girls from reporting it.”

“Sadly, there’s still a lot of that,” Bethany said. “The stigma of being a rape victim can be pretty tough to deal with. Fortunately, I found a guy who didn’t view me as dirty or ruined or whatever.”

“Because it’s violence, not sex,” I said.

“You see?” Bethany laughed. “He DOES listen! He IS trainable!”

Kara and Jessica both laughed, and I joined in.

“Sweetheart, if you recall you didn’t have to teach me that you weren’t dirty or ruined.”

“No, I just had to worry about you having my rapist killed, or killing him yourself.”

“Your point being?” I grinned.

“You did have him beat up!” she protested.

“I did. And I’d do it again. Jess, that’s not in my journal, for obvious reasons.”

“Because that’s so much worse than incest? Or breaking the age-of-consent laws?”

“Remember, in the 70s and early 80s, I was either underage myself, or within the bounds of what would have been called statutory rape and wouldn’t have resulted in conviction as a sex offender as society calls it now. Heck, I’d probably have been able to plead to contributing to the delinquency of a minor back then. Now? Not so much. As Melanie pointed out at the time, Illinois made the laws stricter and the punishments much more severe in 1984. And it keeps getting worse.”

“The problem is,” Bethany said, “that it’s difficult to distinguish between real abuse cases and truly consensual ones.”

“Yes, and we’ve stood American jurisprudence on its head. Now we pass laws to ensure that not a single guilty person escapes, even if we convict some innocent ones along the way. It’s supposed to be the other way around. Add in the fact that punishments become ever more severe because you win elections by being ‘tough on crime’, not on actually doing justice, and it’s the perfect storm of injustice. And it’s getting worse by the day.”

“Is that on the list?” Kara giggled.

“It is,” Jessica laughed. “I can’t remember for sure, but I think it’s Steve Adams Rant #4!”

“How do I get to see this list?” Bethany asked with a smirk.

“Ask Pete,” I said, shaking my head.

We reached the hospital, and after kisses and hugs, Kara and I headed home so that I could go meet Gina for our run.

“Did you enjoy Friday night?” I asked Gina when we met at the Y.

“Yes, I suppose so,” she said grudgingly.

“You made some new friends! Birgit and Stephie like you!”

“Yes, but hanging out with toddlers is not my idea of an exciting Friday evening!”

“So I should take you out and get you drunk and get you laid? Is that it?”

“Now THAT sounds like a plan. But we need a guy who’s willing to work at it, you know? Most guys eat pussy like they’re trying to win one of those pie-eating contests at a fair!”

“You know, this whole ‘girlfriend’ thing isn’t quite what I expected!” I chuckled.

“Do you know why women can’t judge size properly?” she grinned.

“No. Why?”

She held her fingers about three inches apart, “Because they keep being told this is eight inches!”

I laughed, “Nice. I tend not to go around measuring dicks, you know?”

“We do! Length, thickness, shape. It all matters.”

“Now we’re ABSOLUTELY in ‘too much information’ territory.”

“But you know what? So long as it’s sufficiently sized, it’s more about what you do with it. I was with a guy who was really big, and he thought just having seven-and-a-half thick inches was all that was necessary. He didn’t make me cum once! Another guy, with maybe five, and way less girth, gave me a dozen orgasms!”

“Now you’re just doing everything you can to mess with me!” I chuckled.

“I could tell you about the ruined pair of panties from Saturday because my pad leaked.”

“I think we need to run! At least then you don’t talk so much because you’re huffing and puffing from being out of shape!”

She laughed and we finished our stretches, then ran. She was getting better, but I would still need to run on my treadmill when I got home. That would probably be true for the next two months until we got her distance and speed up to something reasonable. When we finished, I decided to put my thinking into action and hugged her before she got into her car.