Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [78]
For a minute I think I haven’t heard her correctly. Of course Jake’s feelings for another woman played a role in the breakup of our marriage. Hadn’t she been listening?
“Well, of course, Jake’s feelings had everything to do with it! The divorce and, ah, everything that happened afterward, it was all his idea.”
“No, Mira, we are talking about your feelings here,” she says, looking at me squarely and pointedly flexing her foot again.
“What do you mean, my feelings? I love—loved Jake!”
Dr. D-P leans in, puts the clipboard down on the table, then sits back in her chair. “Look, Mira, I realize that you may not have acted on these feelings, but recognizing them is an important step in dealing with them. Many women, and men for that matter, get to your age and realize that they’ve had feelings for members of their own sex. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. What may help you come to terms with all this is for you to acknowledge that these feelings did play a role, either consciously or not, in the breakup of your marriage. I’m sensing some unresolved feelings. An element of jealousy, perhaps?” She makes a note on her pad and continues. “Has it ever occurred to you that you may be jealous, not of Jake, but because of your feelings about Nicola—”
“Excuse me?” I’ve sunk into the recesses of the deep sofa and now, as she is speaking, I struggle unsuccessfully to regain my equilibrium and sit upright.
“Have you ever thought that it might be Nicola instead of Jake?”
My mind is going a mile a minute wondering what she could possibly be picking up on. Sure, I had looked at her legs, but what else was I supposed to look at? The sofa was so deep that they’d been about eye level. Has she somehow, within minutes of meeting me, identified some latent desire that has gone undetected for the last thirty-eight years? “No—wait a minute!” I cry, finally righting myself. “What makes you think that?”
She nods in the direction of the questionnaire that is now sitting on the table between us and continues speaking. “Many people are not exclusively heterosexual or homosexual. It’s useful, I think, to regard one’s sexual inclination on a continuum. We’ve learned that much from Kinsey’s research.” I snatch the clipboard from the table and scan the form.
“Of course, if you are not comfortable talking about this now, that’s okay, too. Mira, I didn’t mean to upset—”
Aha! There it is, number 22a: “Would you describe your sexual orientation as exclusively heterosexual?” to which I had carelessly checked the “no” box. “No, you don’t understand,” I interrupt.
She is silent now, leaning back in her chair, waiting.
“I didn’t mean to answer this way,” I tell her. “I wasn’t paying enough attention. I just, you know, started checking all the ‘no’ boxes.” She doesn’t say anything for a minute, and I look back at the questionnaire and notice that there are also a couple of other things I had failed to notice. For instance, question 22 reads, “Do you feel comfortable with your sexual identity?” and to this I also had answered no. She holds out her hand, and I give her back the form, which she takes and re-checks.
“Okay, fair enough,” she says with a brief smile.
Fair enough? What’s that supposed to mean? Now she probably thinks that I’m either a severely repressed lesbian, or worse, a raving homophobe. Or both.
“Of course, I have no objection to being gay,” I tell her, and she nods. “My best friend is gay.” Even though this is true, it sounds like the weakest of lies, the sort of thing Pat Buchanan might say when pressed on the issue of gay marriage. Right before he says that “the gays,” friends though they may be, are still an aberration in the sight of God. This isn’t how I feel, of course, and I have no idea why I have reacted this way, but suddenly I’m momentarily