Chapter 38: It’s A Small World

August 13, 2000, Chicago, Illinois

“Consider this set of parallels,” Jennifer said as we sat in my study on Sunday morning. “April and Jennie; Francesca and the Swedish Birgit; Kelly and Becky; Cynthia and me, or maybe Melanie is a better example because Cynthia isn’t struggling with her sexuality as far as I’m aware.”

“No wonder he’s confused and concerned,” I replied. “History repeats itself, but unless Cynthia is going to do what you and Melanie did, and Jesse goes along with it, I don’t see him turning into me. Sure, maybe he and Cynthia experiment and have a threesome, or whatever, but do you think she’s going to start pimping him out the way Melanie and you did with me?”

“It was that, wasn’t it?” she replied, but then cocked her head and smirked, “Do you think he’d complain?”

“He’s as red-blooded as I was at that age,” I chuckled.

“Was?” Jennifer asked with an arched eyebrow.

“I’m in a ‘transitional period’ at the moment.”

Jennifer shook her head, “If you say you’re going to ‘walk the earth’, I’ll shoot you myself!”

“In all seriousness, he’s not me. He has his shit together, which is not something I could say about myself at age fourteen.”

“Or me, but we had our reasons.”

“Sure, and he doesn’t have those reasons. And as such, I seriously doubt he’s going to repeat that particular mistake. And I’m not blaming you, by the way, I went along with it.”

“I don’t recall you complaining, at least in High School!”

“No, but we all made a lot of mistakes related to our circumstances. I don’t see Jesse, or any of the kids for that matter, making that set of mistakes. He won’t allow himself to be pimped out, if that’s what Cynthia has in mind, but he might well go along with some of her suggestions for experimentation, but if he does, he’ll exercise self-control, something with which I had serious problems.”

“Had?” Jennifer smirked.

“Had. You know, from our talks, that for about thirty months I didn’t have anyone except my wives, Maria Cristina, and Liz.”

“Implying that recently you have?”

“Carefully considered opportunities for ‘random deflowerings’, a couple of ‘dalliances’, and a girl you’re going to be seeing a lot of.”

“Suzanne, right?”

“Yes. And you don’t know this yet, but both Maria Cristina and Liz are bringing our sexual relationship to an end.”

“Interesting. I figured Liz for starting to date once she finished law school, but I expected Maria Cristina to keep things going through Residency. I remember Jess at that point.”

“Actually, if Maria Cristina HAD gone along as most medical students, I’d say that’s what would have happened. But we worked to make sure she wasn’t like most medical students. She’s not stressed about life the way Jess or some of her classmates and medical students have been.”

“True. She’s WAY more together than Jessica was when you first met her.”

“That’s not exactly a high bar,” I replied. “Thank Loki we’re past all of that.”

“So St. Martin was the ‘kiss off’, so to speak.”

“It wasn’t planned that way. Lieutenant Knox asked her on a date at the Fourth of July party.”

“He’s that new hunky guy, right?”

“Asks the committed lesbian!” I chuckled.

“I didn’t say I wanted to fuck him, you idiot!” Jennifer laughed. “I assume she put him off until she could talk to you?”

“Yes. And it’s all good. Liz was asked out by a guy in the Public Defender’s office. She met him a couple of years ago when she was interning for Melanie. He expressed interest and she told him she was too busy with law school. They ran into each other and he’s still single, so he asked her out. She put him off, but only long enough to talk to me. I met him on Friday and he seems like a nice enough guy.”

“I guess Suzanne will be the third?”

“Maybe. She’s more properly the first true disciple of the Church of Steve.”

“Hah! I worshiped at that altar for YEARS!”

“Things are very different from how they were in High School. This is really about finding a kindred spirit for the subversive cadre. I’m hoping to find a few more, but Suzanne is the first true convert and believer.”

“Steve Adams, cult leader?”

“That’s been said about NIKA, and it’s not far off. But if you think about it, the whole ‘cult of personality’ thing is very common in tech firms - Steve Jobs being the primary example.”

“You think you’re Steve Jobs? Seriously?”

“Not at all! I was just using that as an example of the cult of personality. Look what happened to Apple when he was cut loose. I could go with politics - JFK would be a perfect example there.”

“Minus the bullet to the temple from the grassy knoll.”

I chuckled, “Yeah. Minus that. Good to see you agree with me on that.”

Jennifer laughed, “I emotionally support all conspiracy theories because they’re fun. That one, though, is pretty much hard science. He was shot in the temple. The physics doesn’t work any other way, despite all the hand waving.”

“I agree. Back to our Little Duck, I think he’ll be fine. He’ll experiment a bit, but he won’t go off the rails.”

“I agree.”

“You do know he absconded with my copy of The New Joy of Sex, right?”

Jennifer laughed, “I wondered why he hung back a bit when we left your study. Cynthia might be in for a wild ride!”

“We’ve both talked to him about consent, so if she is, it’s because she laid out the cash for an ‘E ticket’!”

“I seem to recall buying an ‘E ticket’ about twenty-five years ago!”

“And has the ride been worth it?”

She smiled, held out her arms and we embraced. We exchanged a very soft, very loving French kiss, then held each other for about ten minutes.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” I said quietly.

“You should.”

August 14, 2000, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota

“You know the drill,” Doctor Mary Whittaker said to me on Monday morning in an exam room at Mayo Clinic.

I nodded and stripped down to my briefs and climbed onto the exam table.

“Maria Cristina? Will you please do the exam?”

“Is that OK, Steve?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Did something change?” Mary asked.

“I went on a date with a Navy lieutenant on Friday night.”

“I thought you and Steve were going to stay together until your Residency!” Mary protested.

“Nothing changed, Doctor Mary, except sleeping together. But I couldn’t pass up a date with a young man I liked.”

“No, I suppose you couldn’t. Steve gave permission, so go ahead.”

This was the fourth time Maria Cristina had done the basic exam and she performed it well, saying each finding aloud.

“Grossly normal, and no real changes from last year,” Mary said once she’d recorded all of Maria Cristina’s findings. “Any dietary changes?”

“No. I’ve been following the plan you created religiously. No more than 35 grams of carbs, and if I ‘cheat’, I ensure no other carbs, and do it in a very limited way.”

“He does,” Maria Cristina affirmed.

“Good,” Mary replied. “Exercise?”

“I run every day, but I’ve missed a lot of karate because I’ve been traveling, plus the guests we had last week.”

“Sleep pattern?”

“I get plenty; I’m well rested in the morning and not overly tired at night.”

“Sexual function?”

“Nothing defective there!” Maria Cristina exclaimed before I could answer. “Fully functional, expert in all forms of pleasuring, and generally operating according to manufacturer’s specifications!”

“So he’s Commander Data?” Mary laughed. “Steve, are you still on sabbatical from dalliances?”

“No,” I replied. “There have been a few new girls since January.”

“You should tell her about Liz,” Maria Cristina said.

“She’s going on a date this Friday,” I said. “She’s here with me for our last nights together. She’ll join us for dinner.”

“Hmm. I’m not a psychologist or psychiatrist, but I need to ask about your bipolar disorder and your sex drive.”

“No mania or depression,” I replied, “and my sex drive is normal, and not out of control. I have had some new partners, but the circumstances weren’t ones that indicated self-medication.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s true,” Maria Cristina said.

“OK. I’m going to call the phlebotomist to draw blood. I assume you fasted from midnight last night?”

“I did.”

Ten minutes later the phlebotomist drew three tubes of blood, and then Mary, Maria Cristina, and I went to the lab where I had my EKG, MRI, and CT scan, then drank the sugary liquid for the glucose tolerance test. A few hours later, I had a light snack, and after that, a cardiac stress test.

“You are still the healthiest person I’ve ever seen,” Mary said at the end of the day. “Tomorrow we’ll get your psych eval, cognitive tests, and you’ll have your session with our sexual health researcher.”

I chuckled, “If she’s cute, I’m more than happy to give a demonstration!”

“She’d be very happy but then very fired!” Mary laughed. “The rules for the psych staff are extremely strict in that regard.”

“I was teasing, obviously. I know from Doctor Mercer how strict those rules are and why. What time are we meeting you and Don?”

“7:00pm at the steakhouse. Where is Liz?”

“At the hotel. We paid for very early check-in. She was going to explore the city today.”

“Well, we’re done for today, so I’ll see you both at the restaurant.”

Maria Cristina and I headed back to the hotel. She went to her room and I went to the one I was sharing with Liz.

“How was your day?” I asked after we hugged and kissed.

“Good. I walked around, then took a drive in the rental car. How did things go for you?”

“Same as always. This is really more about data collection so they can see if something has changed, and to have a solid record when they can finally do an autopsy to find out what’s really wrong.”

“How can you say that so casually?” Liz asked.

“Because I won’t give a damn at the time,” I chuckled. “I didn’t say I was looking forward to dying or that I was going to die anytime soon. My goal is to live at least as many years as my dad, and he turns 83 in just under two weeks!”

“You don’t think they’ll figure it out before then?”

“They’ll need a new test of some kind, or they’ll need to find another person with the same ailment so they can look for common factors. Maybe there’s a DNA marker, but with only my DNA, they have nothing to compare it to.”

“What time do we need to be at the restaurant?”

“7:00pm. It’s only about five minutes by car, so we have some time. Maria Cristina isn’t expecting us until about 6:40pm.”

“Could I interest you in ‘adulting’ for an hour or so?”

“You could,” I replied with a grin.

Freshly showered, we knocked on Maria Cristina’s door just under an hour later, and the three of us left the hotel for the steakhouse where we met Mary and Don. We introduced Liz to Don who had a quizzical look on his face, causing me to wonder if Mary had deliberately not mentioned her presence, or, perhaps more likely, hadn’t mentioned that Maria Cristina and I were no longer ‘involved’ in that way. I suppressed a chuckle at the thought he was thinking I would have both of them in my bed later in the evening.

We had a good meal, and when we finished, Maria Cristina, Liz, and I headed back to the hotel. Liz and I bade Maria Cristina ‘good night’, then went into our room, undressed, and got into bed. Liz snuggled close and we cuddled.

“I’m going to miss this,” Liz sighed.

“Me, too,” I agreed.

“Have you ever thought about doing anything other than what we normally do?”

“No. I very much enjoy what we call ‘adulting’. Are you asking for a specific reason?”

“I was just wondering,” Liz replied.

“Have YOU thought about doing other things?”

“I have wondered if you thought about them.”

“I think what we do is about love and closeness, not about sex, in and of itself. ‘Adulting’ is our expression of love for each other, and I think doing anything else would diminish it. Or am I missing something?”

“No, you aren’t. It was just if you wanted...”

“What I want is to fulfill your request to have a few nights together.”

“Then love me, please.”

August 15, 2000, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota

On Tuesday morning, after breakfast, I went to Mayo alone, leaving Maria Cristina and Liz at the hotel. They were going to spend the day together while I was having my psych eval, cognitive test, and interview with the sexual health researcher. I was shown into the office of a man who looked to be about forty, wore glasses, and had curly black hair.

“Good morning, Mr. Adams, I’m Doctor Tony Saunders, a clinical psychologist on staff. Have a seat.”

“Good morning, Doctor Saunders. I’d strongly prefer you called me ‘Steve’.”

I took a seat in a comfortable chair which faced his desk.

“Steve, then,” he said with a smile. “I understand you’ve been under the care of Doctor Fran Mercer in Milford, Ohio, for some time? And that you’ve also seen, at one time or another, Doctor Eugene Bradford, Doctor Alvin Fremd, and Doctor Wilbur Green?”

“Yes, that’s right, though Doctor Green was for marriage counseling.”

“How long did your first marriage last?”

I chuckled, “I think you missed something already.”

“What do you mean? I see a Kara Blanchard and a Jessica Wilton listed as spouses.”

“Yes. Spouses. Plural. Nobody told you?”

“Told me what?”

“I’m legally married to Doctor Jessica Adams, nee Wilton, but the two of us consider ourselves married in every way to Doctor Kara Adams, nee Blanchard. We were married in a three-way public ceremony on December 15, 1985. There was a private legal ceremony between Jessica and me right after the public ceremony.”

“You wouldn’t mind if I made a quick phone call, would you?”

I grinned, “No. Go ahead and call Doctor Whittaker and ask her why she blindsided you.”

He shook his head, picked up the phone, and dialed Mary’s extension.

“Mary? Tony. Did you leave out a key detail about Mr. Adams’ marital state?”

I heard Mary laughing even though Doctor Saunders had the phone close to his ear. He moved it a bit away and waited for her to stop.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” he said dryly. “Thank you.”

He replaced the handset, disconnecting the call.

“Believe me now?” I asked with a grin.

“Yes, and obviously I’m going to want to talk about that. I see seven children as well. Which belong to each of your wives?”

Now it was my turn to laugh loud and hard.

“Doc, they REALLY kept you in the dark. Jesse, my eldest, is my son with a High School sweetheart who, after a long struggle, came to terms with being a lesbian. Matthew and Michael are my sons by a very close friend, Elyse Clarke, who is the CFO of my company and who I’ve known since High School. Birgit and Stephie are my daughters by Kara, who has a PhD in Chemistry. Ashley and Albert are my children by Jessica, who is a medical doctor, working as a trauma surgeon in Chicago.”

He took off his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, then put them back on.

“This may take more than the two hours which were allotted,” he said, shaking his head.

“Why? There’s nothing wrong with any of that. I have an unofficial diagnosis of bipolar disorder which is officially recorded as ‘mood swings’ due to diet and stress. I have some strange hormonal imbalance which affects my carbohydrate chemistry and which has the potential for causing syncope in certain highly stressful situations if my blood sugar is out of whack. And I’ve had a pair of concussions - one from an auto accident and one from a skull fracture when I fell. I guarantee all of that is my records.”

“Yes, of course, but your family situation is, to say the least, odd. And it appears Doctor Whittaker kept the non-medical information purposefully vague.”

I chuckled, “She’s not the first doctor to do that to a colleague. And if you want to write ‘just plain nuts’ on the form and call it a day, I won’t object!”

“Probably not the best approach. It was Doctor Fremd who identified the possible bipolar disorder in 1991?”

“Yes. And he’s the one who really got us started on the investigation into my body chemistry.”

“Diet, exercise, and sufficient sleep, plus Vitamins C and D?”

“That was his prescription, worked out with Doctor Al Barton, who’s the Chief of Emergency Medicine at UofC. He’s Jessica’s dad.”

“Going back to your comment about your wedding, when you said ‘public ceremony’, should I take that to mean you represent yourselves as married in public?”

“Yes, with the exception of anytime we’re speaking to any government officials. Illinois doesn’t have any laws against claiming to be married when you aren’t, but they do have laws against actual bigamy. So our tax forms, and anything else official, show that Jessica and I are married. To the government, Kara is a ‘close family friend’ and the mother to two of my children.”

“And your eldest? What’s your relationship with his mom?”

“Jennifer is in a long-term, committed, monogamous relationship with her wife, Josie. They married, unofficially of course, in June of 1985. Jesse was conceived the previous month. That was the last time we were physically intimate.”

“But you had a sexual relationship during High School, right?”

“Yes. But it was something of a disaster because Jennifer was terribly confused about her sexuality. We’re talking small-town girl in the late 70s. She had her first lesbian encounter during seventh grade, but didn’t come to terms with it until she went to Stanford six years later. To call our relationship then ‘stormy’ is something of an understatement.”

“You obviously don’t think she’s bisexual.”

“She’s not. Being able to have sex with me, even fulfilling sex, has nothing to do with her orientation. She calls herself a lesbian and I don’t disagree. There is a distinct difference between orientation and activity. One can have heterosexual intercourse and still be homosexual in orientation. And in Jennifer’s case, I’m the only man she ever willingly had intercourse with.”