CHAPTER IV
GROPING AND COPING

I began young adulthood as a sleep walker. It remained for me to bump my nose a few times in the dark, before I would occasionally open my eyes. There seemed to be four main forces which over time would awaken me: marriage, employment, divorce, and simply growing older. Divorce was the heaviest thump on the nose that I was required to endure as a young adult. Before I get to that, however, perhaps I had better sketch the journey immediately after college graduation. 
A few weeks before graduation, I re-made the acquaintance of a young man who would become my roommate when I got out on my own.  I had first met Ray Bainbridge a year earlier when he was rooming with a mutual friend. At the time, I had been impressed. Ray was one of the few engineering students I knew who actually seemed to know how to tinker with the electronic hardware of our profession. He was fascinated with high fidelity sound equipment, having designed and built much of his own. In other ways, he was also an odd duck. He had spent six years in the Navy before entering college. When he graduated a year ahead of me, he was almost 30 years old, having attended three different engineering schools. 
During the spring of my senior year, Ray returned from his job on the San Francisco peninsula for a visit at the college. I was then struggling to complete a large engineering research project, spending many of my evenings over a soldering gun and wiring diagrams in the computer laboratory. Ray dropped into the office to talk, and we sat up until the early hours of the morning to discuss the merits of two job opportunities he was considering. 
He asked my advice on which of the two jobs he should accept. Though I did not understand why, this 30 year old seemed to trust my judgment of the engineering profession more than that of the practicing engineers under whom he worked. This might have had something faintly to do with my working as a teaching assistant, though I doubt that explanation. More likely, Ray simply liked a good bull session and I was a good talker.
When I completed school and moved back into the San Francisco Bay area, an opportunity developed to share an apartment with Ray. His then-current roommate suddenly moved out to get married and Ray wanted to reduce rent expenses. He phoned to ask my plans, and we were soon shopping for lodgings convenient to our two jobs. We moved into one of the many near-identical rows of apartments along the freeways of the San Francisco peninsula, shortly before the Labor Day holiday. 
The next few months were busy. Ray was working with a large electronics firm, a few blocks from our apartment. I had signed up for a delayed enlistment in the Air Force, to begin in the spring of the coming year. In the meantime, I was employed by an electronics concern on a special short-term project. Our work hours were long and often irregular. However, life was not all spent at work. 
Ray and I were both enthusiastic about mountain walking. On occasional weekends, we hiked. I dated a girl whom I had known from college, as well as visiting my parents frequently. He also had a few social involvements. In the midst of this whirlwind, my contribution as a roommate was primarily financial. I was so rarely home during the dinner hour that it was a major event when I cooked. 
On one of the trips which Ray and I made into the woods, events occurred which were to make a lasting impression on him. As we drove into the mountains, I remarked casually that I had an odd sense of anticipation concerning his family. I really didn't know why, but I just had the feeling that something would come up soon which might change his rather distant relationship to the Bainbridges. This was one of a number of "intuitions" I felt at the time, and did not seem particularly more pressing than any of the others. But as we drove back from our trip, Art had a growing feeling that he should call his parents' home and talk with them. We pulled off at a roadside phone booth.
When he returned to the car, he was a bit pale. A few hours before, his father had been injured in a fall from a ladder. The older man was hospitalized, and Mrs. Bainbridge had been trying to reach Ray at home. 
After unloading me at our apartment, Ray sped south to the family home in Monterey, California. He remained there several days, as his father passed through a medical crisis. For months thereafter, Ray harbored a strong curiosity concerning the "hunches" I occasionally had about people.
 	Ray's reconciliation with his family was temporary. There had been conflict in the family for a long time. Their differences were not easily put aside. His early decision to enter the Navy rather than continue school had been prompted by a mixture of pronounced teenage rebellion and his dislike for what he considered to be the favoritism shown to his younger sister by both parents. After he had left the Navy to return to school, a subtle tug-of-war continued over values and lifestyles. 
The Bainbridge clan was large and had considerable money. Ray's interests, however, lay in other quarters. He became deeply involved in a series of religious studies and movements, searching for a sense of unity and purpose in a world which often seemed to him to lack such qualities. Ray felt that his parents' concern for social status was overbearing and out of proportion. They, on the other hand, were puzzled concerning his restlessness. They wondered why he had not, in his early thirties, found a nice girl to marry and settle with. 
As I learned in long talks, Ray's relative social detachment was rooted in a deep shyness and intertwined with a strong ambivalence toward his younger sister, Ellen. The girl had been born eight years after Ray and had grown up very much as the darling of her father. Ray and his brother Boyd had experienced early limitations which Ellen could not imagine and for which she had no sympathy. Both boys had early memories of the 1950s, when their father was struggling to establish himself in a profession and the family was in considerable financial hardship. Both boys had known patched jeans. 
However, Ellen Bainbridge -- or so her brother said -- had been pampered. This was not unrelated to the fact that she had grown to be a startlingly attractive girl. She was one of those who quickly become high school cheer leaders, and for whom boys wait in line for a date. At age 22, she was socially at ease, often pursued by men, and had long been aware of her impact on admirers. Ray secretly resented his flirtatious sister. At the same time, he felt guilt over not having measured up to the expectations of his father, who spoiled the girl and sometimes strongly disapproved of Ray’s choices and behavior. 
I was soon introduced to the Bainbridge family and met Ellen in person. As the Christmas holidays approached, Ray was invited to a party at the Monterey house. He asked if I might also come, and an invitation was graciously extended. During the evening I spent with the Bainbridge’s, I was -- to say the least - impressed. These were refined people and their house among the Monterey pines reflected a quiet good taste. 
Ray's father was an engineer in the aerospace industry, working with the Navy. His mother was a loan officer at a local credit union. Relatives who flocked to the party came from "better" parts of California: Stanford and the San Francisco and Berkeley hills. If any gathering could be quite the opposite of the society where I had grown up, this had to be it. 
A photograph taken that evening summarizes my first impressions of Ellen very well. The picture shows a tall, slim, flamingly red-haired girl with a cocktail glass in one hand. Her head is tilted back in a coquettish laugh. To one side of this siren sits a young man on a bar stool, his gaze riveted to the girl and a look of dumb fascination on his face. I went through that evening in a kind of heady daze.
 	Just before I departed from the party for our long drive back to San Francisco, Ellen consented to give me her private phone number, in case I might have time to get back down to Monterey in the coming weeks. "Sometime soon", however, proved to be the next weekend. Curious about Ray's new living arrangements, she drove up for a visit.
An attraction quickly built up between Ellen and me. Over the next three months, we saw each other most weekends. Very soon, we became intimate. I commuted 100 miles to Monterey on Fridays and Sundays (sometimes early Monday mornings). We spent a weekend skiing in the Sierras. There was another party in the Bainbridge home. Sometimes we simply went to a movie and back to her apartment and to bed. She again visited us on the San Francisco peninsula. This last visit was hard for Ray. He found it difficult to deal with the idea of his sister and his roommate making love in the next bedroom. 
I gradually built up a picture of the kind of person Ellen was. We were very different in almost all of the important parameters. She was a social sparkler and a flirt. I lacked both physical and social self confidence. She had been out of school and working for almost two years, and had developed a sense of career. I was just starting out, about to plunge into a completely new situation in the Air Force. There were also signs -- unnoticed at the time -- that our emotional economies were very different. Ellen was somewhat wild. I was much more introverted. She was a pusher, with strong opinions on many subjects, capable of taking deep offense when those opinions were not acknowledged or accepted by others. 
Ellen seemed more sophisticated than I. She had rather early in life become aware of her attractiveness to males, and seemed to use this attraction quite deliberately. For several years during her mid teens, she had conducted a prolonged affair with an older -- possibly married -- man. There were also lesser flirtations. In one instance, I suspect (though she never acknowledged) that an early job promotion may have depended on her sleeping with the correct boss. She did not readily volunteer details about her past life. She considered it none of my business, and perhaps she was in principle at least, correct. 
In her profession, Ellen was highly competent. She had trained in business management and computer science and worked in both areas. She was hired away from one employer by a client who proposed a better position and then raised his salary offering until the job became irresistible. In the later years of our marriage, she would manage a department in a sizable manufacturing concern. She was a clear thinker, capable of aggressive, hard-headed common sense in her business relationships. 
Looking back on our courtship, I wonder how much effect was wrought by the distance we traveled each weekend. When we shared time, it had to be as a result of specific effort and planning. We did not experience at first hand, many of the random ups and downs that accompany the pressures of work, household maintenance, and day-to-day interaction. When we were together, our mental and emotional hair had figuratively been combed. Each of us missed or overlooked much about the other that may have been more obvious had we been living in the same city. 
On the other hand, living closer together would probably have made little difference in my reaction to Ellen. I was still a very young man. Ellen was the first female with whom I slept regularly over an extended period. The physical sensations were new and powerful. Likewise, I was so shy and emotionally insecure during that period, that I suspect I may have "latched onto" the first female person to come within range. I was primed to invest my feelings in one person, and Ellen became that person. 
In many ways, I clung to Ellen when we met and continued to do so for the years of our marriage. If we had lived closer during our courtship, my clinging might have caused enough irritation to end our affair before marriage. Had this occurred, however, I would probably have repeated the pattern at the time, clinging to some other strong female. Of course, none of this insight or hindsight is certain. Only in later years did I come to understand that distance had shielded each of us from important realities of the other's nature. 
As winter passed, I began preparing to leave for Air Force Officers Training School in Texas. This placed additional pressure on my connection to Ellen. I felt I was losing an opportunity with her which I might always regret thereafter. My way of coping with my unease was indirect. On the eve of departure, I asked Ellen to consider for a few weeks, the possibility that the two of us might eventually marry. It was a very indirect proposal -- perhaps so couched because I was uncertain of her answer to any more forceful move. When I departed, it was with anxiety over our "understanding". Much between us had gone unsaid. 
In Texas, I was in for a rough ride in a high stress environment.  There is an ironic sense in the term "90-day wonder", applied to the Second Lieutenants who survive this obstacle course. After our class weeded out its "infant mortalities" in the first three weeks, the rest of us settled down to a steady grind of books, marching, athletics, military courtesy, and Iearning to spit-polish shoes. Our days were typically 18 hours from reveille to lights-out. We skimmed through a twelve inch stack of literature and survived academic tests too numerous to mention, after being vaccinated against every disease known to man. 
During OTS, I lived in an emotional pressure cooker. It is not greatly surprising that in this environment, my letters to Ellen became a kind of life line to normality. Telephone bills to Monterey were soon astronomical. The pressured atmosphere prompted subtle changes in my expectations and needs of Ellen. When I left California, I had asked for no specific commitments and she had volunteered none. However, a little over three weeks after training began, the Air Force offered to support my education toward a Masters degree in engineering. My first thought was to call Ellen and ask what she thought of the idea of having someone in her life that was committed to a seven year hitch in the Air Force. 
To Ellen, my request for advice was at first confusing. In effect, I had made my proposal of marriage definite, while leaving the date indefinite -- and both, without asking "will you be my wife?" When she recovered, she advised me to continue my education by whatever means I could. In the days which followed, I redoubled my studies as well as my letter writing. Without really being aware of my effort, I tried to cement bonds of expectation which I had laid on Ellen. 
In retrospect, it seems that Ellen herself may not have been truly aware of what was happening between us. When I had left California for OTS in Texas, she almost immediately resumed her “normal” social life. She enjoyed partying and she enjoyed the people whom she met while partying. Within a few days of my departure, she dated a bartender whom she met at a party thrown by friends. Though she never said so, I later suspected that she slept with him, and felt considerable ambivalence over that turn of events. Then, she began to receive my letters from Texas. When I phoned to ask her opinion on further schooling, she found herself drawn into my hopes and plans in a way which she had not anticipated.
	She may have been as much flattered by my attention as she was affected by me. I was a young man who presented at least the appearance of a good deal of promise, paying her the considerable compliment of planning my life around her. In the weeks which followed, she gradually withdrew from the party circuit and began to catch up on evening reading. By the time I graduated from Officers Training School, we had talked ourselves into engagement. This seemed to unfold one step at a time, without either of us really understanding what was going on. 
Coming home in August on graduation leave, I traveled to Monterey, rather than to my parents' home in the San Francisco bay area. The Bainbridges threw an elegant engagement party for us. We declared our commitment before our families and friends, leaving our marriage date open until we knew more about my next Air Force assignment. 
As always, Ellen sparkled at the engagement party. Likewise, I had returned from Texas in far better physical condition than when I left. Push-ups had put muscles on my shoulders, and the Texas sun had tanned my face several shades. Though my hair was still burr-short, there was something firm about me which compensated for the waves lost on the barber's floor. Ellen was pleased and a little fascinated. The next ten months tested that fascination. If either of us had been fully paying attention to what we were doing, we would likely have failed the test and broken our engagement. However, we were not attentive. 
During the summer, I returned to Texas for several weeks' duty on the OTS staff, pending acceptance at a graduate school for the fall term. Two other second lieutenants found themselves in the same situation, waiting for school. We jointly requested permission from the base commander to move from our insect-infested on-base junior officers’ quarters to a garden apartment on the edges of San Antonio, Texas. 
Despite circumstances limited by our lieutenants' pay, the three young ''military men" enjoyed their new digs enormously. The place was populated by wall-to-wall running stewardesses. The lieutenants were frequent attendees at pool parties. Returning during the early evening hours from a field exercise in our fatigue uniforms and boots, we found ourselves surrounded by blonde-haired sirens more than willing to massage sore feet. These circumstances prompted a few flirtations for each of us and for me, one short but serious involvement with a married woman several years older. I never told Ellen of these detours on the pathway to presumably married bliss. 
It seems possible, as I think about this period from the vantage point of years more experience, that Ellen may also have had involvements. She did not volunteer very much concerning her non-working hours, and I did not ask. As the summer passed in San Antonio, I knew only that each of us was growing subtly edgy and uncertain. I scheduled a week of vacation leave between my San Antonio assignment and school, sensing that we badly needed time together. 
Though neither of us could have described precisely what was happening, we were subtly losing each other. Ellen was alone and felt trapped by my expectation that she remain committed to me while I was a long distance away. I felt uncertain that I was ready to handle the expectations which marriage to this complex female seemed to imply. Our week together in Monterey was difficult. We found ourselves arguing over inconsequential things. We were obviously distressed with one another. Our unresolved feelings made it difficult for us to make love. Ellen tentatively voiced the uncertainty which we both felt: perhaps it would be better to simply call off our engagement. 
I was deeply pained. We had come so far together and made so many obvious commitments. Though I did not voice the thought at the time, I wondered how I was to explain our sudden breakup to the friends and family who had so sincerely wished us well, only a few months before. I believe now that if I had spoken of this feeling, Ellen would have broken our engagement. The expectations of others should have played little part in such a decision between the two of us. 
I responded to our uncertainty by proposing that we wed in a little over three months, during the Christmas academic break. My reasoning at the time was that our problem was the open-endedness of our relationship. I proposed to solve that problem by setting a date for marriage. My proposal temporarily alleviated the uncertainties which we both felt. When I departed for school, I left a much happier fiancée who had begun to purchase small items for our household-to-be. 
After a week of apartment hunting, I settled into an older building in a quiet neighborhood. Registration and graduate classes quickly immersed me in a familiar academic grind. The ten weeks of the first academic quarter seemed to pass in a quick blur, punctuated by letters from Ellen and by the arrival of several pieces of furniture from Monterey. Our apartment began to fill up, taking on a feeling of home. Almost before I knew it, I went through my first quarter final examinations. I was ready to return to California. 
The wedding, as I might have anticipated, was a ritual exercised in quiet good taste. Ellen's parents opened their home to the marriage ceremony, and then hosted a reception and sit-down dinner in a local hotel. The bride dazzled the guests in a gown of raw silk, designed for her by a dress maker who had sewn many of her clothes over a period of years. The families gathered to fill out a carefully balanced guest list; every floral arrangement was "just so". I would learn years later that my half brother Daniel stood quietly to one side during the reception, multtering to himself: "Little brother, you have no idea what you are getting yourself into!" He was correct, but five years would pass before I began to understand what he had dimly foreseen. 
Immediately after the wedding, Ellen and I departed Monterey on a driving trip of several hundred miles to school. Our journey into a new life began with hauling a rented trailer full of furnishings to our apartment. Our honeymoon was permanently postponed. Very soon after our return, I plunged back into my studies. I had not done well during my first quarter. As a result, I spent the next two quarters on academic probation, struggling with graduate mathematics. 
Ellen sought and soon found employment as a small business consultant. She traveled widely in the metropolitan area near my college, and sometimes worked long hours installing small computer systems. We both found ourselves under a lot of stress, and it began to tell on us. 
At first, we had minor arguments over household finances. My habit of spending money thoughtlessly on small indulgences offended Ellen's sharp business sense. We needed furniture and there were vacations away from school which she considered more important. These larger purchases seemed to me at the time to be a threatening extravagance. I was unused to managing large amounts of money in a monthly budget. 
We had few acquaintances in the area. Because of the consulting nature of Ellen's work, her contact with business clients tended to be transitory. Though I was loosely attached to a group of Air Force students at the college, I was too busy drowning in equations to be interested in off-hours parties. Thus Ellen and I had time to get to know each other without the distraction -- or entertainment -- of a lot of casual friendships. Sometimes we were not altogether pleased to discover just what sort of people we had married. 
This probably seems a quaint admission in a time of sexual revolution, but during the years of our marriage, I do not believe Ellen and I ever really discussed sexuality with each other. This reticence was related to a strong sense of ambiguity in our love making. I entered marriage quiet inexperienced and physically shy. Ellen, by contrast, felt she had certain "standards" to uphold. One of these turned out to be that she expected her lover to know how to satisfy her desire without being led around by the nose and instructed. She felt that if she directed me concerning her sensations, she would be demeaned by my catering to her tastes. Things were just supposed to "take care of themselves" as we got to know each other and I grew more confident in my role as a married man. 
For five years, things decidedly did not take care of themselves. Our sexual couplings became a ritualized routine with which each of us was emotionally uncomfortable, but about which neither of us quite knew what to do. 
Other factors added to our unease with each other. Ellen's business acumen had a tendency to lap over into more personal areas of her life. She expected people who were close to her to see as clearly as she did (and in the same way as she did), the right and wrong of social situations. When others did not perceive the world as she did, she grew frustrated with their lack of common sense. After all, facts were facts, weren't they? It was unfortunately not obvious to her that feelings might be a category of facts to which special and less linear rules sometimes applied. 
In part because of the lack of communication between us, my uncertainty and insecurity concerning Ellen became more pronounced over time rather than less. I never knew quite where I stood with her. I sought repeated reassurance. The very act of my seeking was a source of disappointment and distaste to her. I developed the infuriating habit of coming into our apartment from school I ate in the afternoon, and bellowing "LOVE YOU" toward the rear of the house. Ellen sensed a mixture of both declaration and hidden demand for confirmation in this mannerism. Thereafter, our love talk, such as it was, withered. 
Such patterns deepened after I completed my degree and we moved to my first "real" Air Force assignment. After a long trip across the country, we rented an apartment near Boston. Like other young couples, we spent our share of time shopping for items large and small which we felt a gracious home required. I found, however, that it was Ellen's taste and style which largely set the tone of our surroundings. I was consistently overruled when I offered suggestions. 
At the time, I attributed this pattern to the natural consequences of Ellen's well-to-do background. Later reflection suggests that an equal factor was my unwillingness to oppose Ellen in anything she decided, and her rigidity in deciding or controlling a lot of things that didn’t really need her control. I was quite intimidated by her. 
Two years after arriving at my assignment, we moved into a home of our own. The house was a bit further from Ellen's place of work than from mine, but had a lovely yard and much more living space. However, the move was itself a source of problems. Two weeks after we made a down payment on the house and began processing our mortgage loan, I was suddenly alerted for a 13-week military school to take place in another state. I was forced to leave before we could move into the house. Thus, as I studied Air Force leadership skills, Ellen single-handedly moved our goods into our new home. This was a crushing workload, undertaken with great irritation over my disappearance in a critical moment. 
When I returned from school, we started a marathon of fix-up projects in and around our new home. Though the structure of the house was sound, it was old and needed interior paint and decorating. I rebuilt the heating system, and replaced most of the plumbing in our two-story project. Several months passed with our kitchen in total disorder as I replaced cabinets, counters, and appliances. I spent a week laying a patio, and another week landscaping a garden area. The roof had to be replaced when our first winter revealed leaks over our redecoration projects. 
At the time, the activity was welcome. I was finally providing Ellen with a home closer to the style she had grown up with. It was a new setting for us, providing a sense of progress. However, there was an undercurrent in this progress. The projects on the house were as much a postponement as a preparation for an important and long delayed goal: children. 
Early in our engagement, Ellen had told me that she hoped to have two or three children of her own and to adopt two more. This declared goal left me so completely astounded that I had no reply to offer. How did she intend to manage her life -- and mine -- to the degree required for her to remain active in her profession while raising such a large family? Such questions went unasked and unanswered as we struggled with more immediate problems. Year by year, we put off having children as our conflicts continued. 
Then, in the spring of our fifth year together, relations between us seemed to improve. We had settled into the house. We were both well employed and out of debt. We seemed to experience a rebirth of our attraction to each other. For the first time in years, she seemed willing to meet me part-way in our love making. 
We had earlier discussed Ellen's need to temporarily discontinue her use of birth control pills, as advised by her gynecologist. Without specifically talking again about this plan, Ellen stopped taking her pills and allowed her natural fertility cycle to re-establish itself. She chose to overlook, or perhaps deliberately acted to increase the chances of a pregnancy during this period. I have never been completely certain of her intentions. Thus I was a little surprised -- even if pleasantly -- when Ellen arrived home late from work one evening, to inform me that she had seen her doctor and had I earned she was pregnant. So far as I knew, we were not specifically trying to have a baby, and I felt we still had a few emotional problems to work out.
 From this mixture of feelings, on being told of our ''blessed event", I failed to do something which was to have far-reaching effects: I did not immediately rush to Ellen and take her in my arms. When I did kiss her a few minutes later, from her point of view, an irreparable damage had been done. She had noted and would long remember my evident reserve when hearing her good news. She never forgave this hesitation, nor did she tell me of her hurt. 
The months passed quickly as the birth approached. I built a cradle and dressing table, and redecorated a bedroom as a nursery. Ellen and I went to childbirth classes for several weeks and read several books. We arranged for a local woman to come in to help immediately following the birth. 
I also found myself traveling a great deal for work. A large contract proposal was being evaluated in Florida, and I was on the evaluation team. This took me out of town for several weeks. Fortunately, the wife of my supervisor attended childbirth classes with Ellen and me. A casual comment between the two women prompted my being brought home early, some three weeks before the expected birthing. 
As we prepared for our child, Ellen and I diverged once again on important emotional issues. Ellen felt very protective of "her special child". She asked me to keep the fact that we would soon be parents secret from people with whom I worked. This secrecy lasted only a few weeks until I found myself unable to contain the news. I shared my anticipation with two or three friends and later told Ellen that I had done so. She felt deeply wounded by my indiscretion and lack of faith. She complained that I had felt it necessary to "check out with my friends", this new event in our lives. She refused to accept the idea that a desire to share might be based on joy as much as on doubt. That I felt a mixture of the two feelings was to her a further mortal insult. 
Caroline arrived within the week her birth had been predicted. Though it was not an exceptionally difficult labor, the baby started down the birth canal facing in the wrong direction. After several hours of labor, the doctor intervened and I was forced to wait outside the delivery room while Caroline was turned and the birth assisted by forceps. 
Staring at this wiggling bundle a few hours later, I saw a red-faced little monster with ink-stained feet and a shock of dark hair soon to be even redder than her mother's. In two days, we took her home and I began learning to be a father. From the start, I tried to participate wherever possible. When it was time for Caroline’s early morning feeding, I rose from bed to take her from her cradle to her mother's breast. When I was at home and she needed changing, I pinned diapers. She was what I think most parents would call a "good baby". We had no more than the usual share of first-child anxieties over her. 
Unfortunately, we grew to have much worse concerns over each other. Ellen's parents came for a week-long visit. Arriving home from an argumentative afternoon at work, I stumbled into a meaningless -- if brief -- dispute with Ellen over family finances for the visit. Ellen found herself intensely embarrassed before her parents. She recorded yet another example of my indiscretion, which proved impossible to forgive. 
As weeks passed toward spring, I began to anticipate renewed love making with Ellen, remembering the quickening which had occurred between us before her pregnancy. Ellen at first held back and then declared that she had little sensation. She had been torn internally during labor and healing was slow. I gritted my teeth and attempted patience despite feeling very closed out of Ellen's attentions. I suggested that we should try to add a little variety to our sex lives with a change of technique. Surely there had to be some position or pleasantry which was comfortable and good for her. 
Ellen was very put off by my advances. What I put forward as a sincere offer of change was interpreted as a clumsy demand. We fought loudly, quieting only when Caroline began to cry in the next room. As we talked through much of the night, it developed that most of our argument had little to do with sex. 
In only a few months, we would be moving again, to California. I was going back to graduate school. For the first time, Ellen spilled out her fears and reservations concerning this move. School would commit large amounts of my time to study, during a period in which she both wanted my help in parenting Caroline, and hoped to re-establish an active professional life. My studies would likewise commit us to more years in the Air Force, a prospect which she dreaded. She had long resented the amount of travel required by my chosen work. Further, she felt she had little in common with Air Force wives whom she had briefly met. These women impressed her as simpering, dependent, uninteresting cows. 
The longer we talked, the more upset we both became. I was shocked by the hurt and resentment she had built up, and by her unwillingness to talk about our problems and reach solutions. She was even more angry and hurt that I had not sensed her disappointment and acted on my own to improve the bad behaviors that she felt had compromised our relations. We seemed to be going beyond the point where we could deal with each other without help from some other quarter. 
I suggested that in the weeks we had remaining on the east coast, we should find a counselor and begin sorting out our lives and our marriage. She shrugged off this suggestion out of hand, pointing out that we would soon begin preparing for our move. Perhaps there was something to be done after we reached California and she had her feet on the ground again. Again, I was brought up short. I felt anguish, and wanted to start some kind of remedial action soon. "Good grief, Ellen! If that's the way you feel, maybe we should be apart for a while to think things through..." 
Her response was all too immediate. No, that wouldn't do at all. She didn't want to run her life from limbo. If we were going to separate, we should make it final. This was a totally unanticipated blow, which reduced me to tears. Further words were choked off by a lump deep in my throat. There was little sleep that night, as we lay side by side in our large bed. In the days following this crisis, Ellen's resolve firmed. She had finally, in some way not obvious to me, turned a comer. Though she regretted being unable to repair our broken relationship, she did not feel regret sufficiently to talk further about the events and feelings which had led to the rupture. I felt unable to reach her, incapable of saying what I truly felt.
During much of this period, I later came to believe, Ellen may secretly have hoped I would find a way to convince her to remain in our marriage. However, she felt the initiative had to be mine and that she could not tell me of her hope. This followed the pattern of our six years together. I felt unable to take any initiative at the time, uncertain of what my next step should be. Seeing my indecision, Ellen's moment passed and she drew back. 
Totally stymied in dealing with my wife and increasingly in anguish, I turned to a friend. I needed to talk and to cry. Jean had been a casual confidant and occasional companion at office lunches, for several months. She was one of those whom I told of Caroline's impending birth. When she learned of the turmoil unfolding in my life, Jean made time to hear me, when there was little else that anyone could do to help. 
We talked through several lunch hours. We took a day off from work and drove to a cabin Jean and her husband owned in the Berkshire Mountains. Sitting under the greening Birch trees, I struggled to describe the grief and loss I felt. I had fathered a child, only to see both wife and child snatched away. Just as I had begun to hope I might finally make my marriage work, I was cut off by influences I did not understand. Through my pained catharsis, Jean was silent but supportive. 
In the weeks which followed, I lived in a state of suspension. Ellen and I continued to sleep chastely in our large bed, while spending our waking hours cleaning up the loose ends of six years of marriage. The house and one of the cars had to be sold and our other possessions divided. Most of the time, our negotiations were remarkably civilized. Ellen did not wish to impoverish me, but she needed resources to re-establish her own life and make a transition to single motherhood. There was no question of my taking custody of Caroline or fighting a divorce. I was too shattered and Ellen knew it. At times, I wondered how she was able not to feel anything. 
In her businesslike way, Ellen assured herself and our daughter of the resources she felt she needed to start over. This resulted in my buying out her interest in furnishings which we had jointly purchased. When the accounting was done, she had taken possession of about 75% of our savings and all of the profits from sale of our house. She drove hard bargains, and I had little heart to oppose her. To her credit, she did not seem at the time to bargain with vindictiveness or a desire to do injury. 
At work, I stepped into a different and no more real environment. I finished my technical projects and prepared for the upcoming reassignment. A few people in the office were aware that I was experiencing a very trying time in my life, but most did not seem to notice. The most obvious change in my work patterns was that I dropped out of a lunch-hour Bridge group, to spend time talking with Jean. I seemed to walk through my days in a cloud, unaware of much that occurred around me. 
Perhaps inevitably in this period of pain, I was deeply affected by Jean, who tried to help in an almost impossible situation. For a time, I was physically and romantically attracted to her. However, she had the sense to recognize this attraction for what it was: a reaction to my losses. Her loyalty to her husband and family were always made clear, and I respected that loyalty. At the same time, I reciprocated her caring in ways which she must have found at times a little unnerving. We became very close, but avoided any physical involvements. Possibly in compensation, our mutual understanding occasionally approached something which might be called “psychic.” 
Late in my transition out of Boston, I became aware that Jean was also going through some difficulty of her own. She had told no one of her concern, but I knew without being told that there was something which disturbed her peace. As I voiced this intuition, she listened, her face expressionless. I phrased my intuition rather strangely: I "sensed", I said, that there was a blockage or tangle somewhere deep in her guts and that she was concerned about it. 
She then related that she had undergone a yearly checkup with her internist, the week before. He had detected a lump in her lower abdomen. A few days after I was to leave Boston, she would be going into a hospital for exploratory surgery. She had not wished to worry me with an additional concern at a time when I had enough al ready on my mind. She did not ask how I "knew" of her difficulty, or why I had phrased this knowledge in quite the manner I did. We understood each other well enough to accept the strangeness with grace. As we talked further, I told her that though I was naturally concerned, I felt calm about her anticipated surgery. I sensed she was in good hands and would be guided to do whatever she needed to do. 
The day arrived when the separation from Ellen became physical as well as emotional. Ellen planned to pack our household goods for shipment to the west coast. She would then fly with Caroline to Monterey, to live with her parents while looking for a job and new circumstances. I would drive across the country to Los Angeles, visiting several national parks on my way across the continent. Ellen helped pack my bags and get our household goods organized. I gave her telephone numbers to call if she had difficulties with the movers. We had an early breakfast and I prepared to leave. Many feelings moved just beneath the surface, but none broke through. The moment passed, as I drove away. 
My cross country drive was punctuated by stops which would have been more fun, had there been another person with whom to share. I saw parts of the mid west, visiting Lincoln Country in Illinois. I slept in a cornfield in Kansas, when night found me far from any promising town. I toured the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, then swung north into the snow-bound Rockies National Park and continued into Wyoming and the Grand Teton. In May, the snow was just melting on the mountain trails. There were few people in the back country. It was a quiet time, when I needed quiet time. 
Arriving at Grand Teton, I found a crystal blue sky overlooking the lakes at the base of the mountains. Two to three feet of snow lay on protected slopes and trails were post-holed with the footprints of previous hikers. I hoisted my backpack and started out about 10:00 o'clock in the morning along Leigh Lake. It was to be an eventful walk, in some rather odd ways. 
All around me was a gorgeous mountain Spring. I saw tracks of moose and elk. I kept a watch for bears, known to be unpredictable and dangerous in the lean season just after emergence from hibernation. 
My start was later and the snow deeper than I had expected. Pushing my way through the trails, my inadequate boots got thoroughly soaked. My jeans were wet to the thigh. I missed a fork in the trail and had to retrace my steps several miles, to reach the campsite marked on my maps. It was well after dark when I came to a ring of fire stones. There was little firewood in the area and I had packed in none. Thus I made a cold supper on sandwiches and crawled into my sleeping bag, to fall asleep almost instantly. 
I awoke intermittently in the morning hours. The ground was hard, despite my hip pad. Spring temperatures dropped well below freezing through the night. I had entered my sleeping bag in still-moist clothes, and I discovered belatedly that the bag was not completely draft -tight. I began shivering almost uncontrollably. It seemed too cold to get up and light a fire, as I lay suspended between dreaming and waking. I began to wonder if I had done something dangerous by not drying off. Possibly, I was becoming feverish.
In the early morning hours as I shivered, something occurred which was to profoundly affect me for a long time thereafter. This occurrence also touched Jean, and neither of us ever found a good explanation for it. Between dreaming and waking, I seemed to feel that Jean "came to me" in some way. It seemed for a brief time that she lay close behind me in my sleeping bag, warming and cradling my body with her own, her long hair wrapped about us both. My trembling ceased. I dropped into deeper sleep. 
In the morning I awoke to find a rim of ice on the can of water left at my fire pit. The inside of my bag, however, was warm and dry. I started shivering again only as I scrambled out to start a small morning fire from dead twigs. Cups of hot tea and oatmeal seemed a feast. I spent a second day on the trails around Leigh Lake, refreshed and invigorated, all signs of fever gone. I encountered a cow moose with her calf, and beat a hasty retreat out of their vicinity. I had lunch on a granite boulder overlooking the lake, watching a large hawk engaged in a similar activity, fifty yards down the shore. 
Late in the afternoon, I came out of the trees at the edge of the parking lot where I had left my car. After stowing my gear, I drove into Jackson Hole, Wyoming for a night of bed rest and a good meal. That evening, I called Jean. As she picked up the phone, she seemed to know immediately who was on the line. She said she had been thinking of me, interjecting into her words, an undertone which suggested something unusual was going on. I spoke briefly to her of my dream. 
After a silence of several heartbeats, she told me about her own night. She had been awakened in the early morning hours, she said, to find that I "was there". She saw a dim image, seeming to hang in mid-air over the end of her bed. I appeared as if in an old photographic portrait, save that I grinned as she sat bolt upright in bed. I wasn't supposed to be there! Her husband was asleep right next to her, and what would he think? With a slight nod in her direction, the image disappeared. She spent the remaining hours of darkness awake, concerned that I might be in some deep trouble. The image did not appear to her again, but she had been hoping for my call. She was relieved to learn that I was well. 
We talked for a while about the surgery she would be having the next week. I assured her that when she went into the hospital, I would be "with her in thought". She requested quite seriously that I not repeat the visitation she had experienced the night before. To say the least, she didn't need a case of heart failure. A deeply religious person, Jean found the visitation disturbing. I assured her that if I had anything to say about the matter -- which I was far from certain I did -- I wouldn't "show up" in quite so visible a form. Though there was an element of the fantastic in our conversation, there was also a mutual humor. It seemed that we had acquired our own private telephone extension into the unknown. 
In the next few days, I continued my drive through Yellowstone National Park and onward through Reno and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, into California. My vacation was coming to an end and it was time for me to get back to the business of my disorganized life. Finally, I rolled up the driveway of the home of my adopted big sister, Irene, on the southern San Francisco peninsula. She and her husband Jack and their two boys were a happy household which opened its arms in unreserved welcome after a four year separation. Like my half brother Daniel, Irene and Jack had expected the marital troubles I was experiencing. Like Dan, they were kind enough not to share that insight during this early visit. 
I was with Irene and Jack for three days. During that time, Jean went into the hospital. Irene understood my concern for Jean and provided me a private space in which to think and pray during the morning of the surgery. Irene appreciated the role Jean had played in keeping my head together during a very bad time. Though the two women had never met, Irene felt at the time that she had acquired a sister in spirit. 
On the day when Irene was to enter surgery, I sat on Irene's couch, 3000 miles away. I cleared my mind as much as I could of everything except Jean. About twenty minutes before she had indicated the operation would begin, I simply listened. I heard no particularly informing news, but in half an hour I felt satisfied and at rest. I got up and went to shoot pool with Irene's boys. 
I called Jean two days later in her hospital room. I told her I had "sensed" her being brought into surgery about twenty minutes early. She confirmed that she had been wheeled into the operating theater as she drifted into anesthesia, at precisely twenty minutes before the hour. I said that I had "sensed" the doctor going in, but that my perceptions stopped at that point. I had a feeling of satisfaction and ease, but no specific details beyond that. 
She informed me that her internist had made a small exploratory incision and inserted a fiber-optic "scope". He discovered that the lump that he believed might be a tumor was actually an old and harmless lesion in the mesentery of her lower intestine. He had closed the incision with no further work, in less than 40 minutes. 
In the hours immediately after coming out of anesthesia, Jean reported having "felt" me very strongly around her. Fortunately, the presence had not been visual. As we talked, I made a few guesses about the arrangement of her hospital room, but for the most part found myself in error. We left matters at that, as we ended our call. It seemed that I had known what was useful to know, but no more. She was glad for my concern. I was glad for her quick recovery. 
The experience of visitation and connection which Jean and I shared over 20 years ago was to be repeated in various forms over the next few years. She was several times visited by a faint, life-sized image, occasionally very clear and complete. After her initial consternation, she came to view these "trips" with tolerance and even humor. She was somewhat perturbed that her visits to me were sometimes received with erotic overtones. But she could cope with my heresy. If I believed that I felt her presence physically, that was my case of weird jollies. 
In the meantime, our sharing served a need for each of us. Jean too went through serious marital difficulties. Though she did not discuss details of her 20-year relationship, she said enough and I picked up enough between the lines, to realize that she was lonely much of the time. Jean's husband directed most of his energies outside of their home. Their teen-aged daughter became almost impossible to live with. The man refused to engage with either of them to work out solutions for family problems. 
Eventually, Jean's life partner chose to abdicate from further household responsibility and moved out. For several years, her deep religious convictions kept her from cutting the few tenuous ties which he permitted between them. When it finally occurred, their court battle was a bloody one that substantially reduced his standard of living, while exposing an astounding record of extramarital misbehavior. Such splits in Jean's life, however, were a development of later years. At the time, I was more concerned with splits in my own. 
As I returned to graduate school, many of the early connections in my life were being severed. New relationships were growing up helter-skelter, in their place. Fundamental changes were looming in front of me, and I wondered where I might find the wisdom to make those changes.  The setting for my mid-life revolution was a very special and perhaps strange place: Los Angeles, California. Though I arrived there nominally to study engineering, I quickly found myself engaged in a less formal course: I needed to graduate into full adulthood. 
Los Angeles' culture and variety would itself have been a challenge, following on the heels of several years living in the relatively calm and conservative Northeast. To this challenge was added the stress of a difficult program of academic study, the pain of partings from my wife and daughter, and the stimulations of new romantic relationships. These factors would combine over time to produce a very much changed individual. 
My new "job" was to complete a Ph.D. degree in systems engineering at one of the universities in the Los Angeles Basin. My first task was again to find housing. Despite an apartment shortage in the area, this proved to be relatively easy. I had arrived in late May, at an ideal time. Apartments across much of the city become vacant during that period, due to the student summer migration. 
I found a pleasant retreat on the airy west side of the urban sprawl of Santa Monica, California. The atmosphere of the place was relaxed. Late in the afternoon, it was common to find groups of people lounging on the patio of the complex, sipping wine coolers or soaking in the sun. An occasional blonde giant carried a surfboard past my windows, on his way to the beach a mile away. 
However, I missed a lot of this vacation atmosphere. I was almost immediately too busy to appreciate it. My initial problem was reentering school after a four year layoff. The transition was wrenching. My mental rustiness was further complicated by the terms of my Air Force educational grant: I was expected to carry at least twelve graduate course credits in each academic quarter. The summer session was set up in two academic quarters, compressed from the usual ten weeks to eight. Thus I found myself with the equivalent of 16 "normal" credits, selected from the limited offerings in the summer catalog. 
I stepped up to the plate with Linear Algebra (a kind of formal mathematical logic), Theoretical Calculus, Applied State Space Methods, Theory of Topology, and a fourth course which remains to this day, a blur in my memory. Such a mountain of mathematics presented in sixteen weeks can affect a returning student in a manner similar to standing in front of a fire hose or in the middle of a rock fall. 
For a variety of reasons, I was less than fleet of foot. Shortly after I found my new apartment, the place was turned into a gypsy camp by the arrival of the furnishings from my three bedroom home in Boston. My bedroom was piled with boxes to the ceiling, and I slept on a fold-away bed in the living room couch. I had agreed to store this collection until Ellen could find a job and a home of her own in northern California. It was three months before she found a position. During those months, the disorganization of my apartment was a frequent reminder of similar conditions in my life overall. As some of my neighbors commented at the time, I seemed to spend a lot of my days "spinning my wheels." 
Sorting out my life was not helped by some of the social connections I created in these early months. I rather quickly awoke to the fact that recent times in my life had been pretty barren of intimate relationships. I also learned that in California in 1973, it was not difficult to attract a partner for sex, fun and games. In the easy atmosphere of Los Angeles, there was ample opportunity to meet females who for one reason or another had no man currently in their lives. My natural dispositions pretty much took care of matters from that point. The problem was that these matters got taken care of repeatedly, as I looked for intimate relationship and my playmates opted for uncommitted fun. 
My relationships to most of the women I met were tenuous. I was mostly out of tune with the girls through whose beds I blundered. Some of them didn’t quite know how to deal with someone who was hurting in ways which I seemed to be. Others seemed themselves not to be very good at coping with life. I was amazed at the number of "walking wounded" females who seemed to inhabit Los Angeles. 
Out of the jumble of this period, two positive influences emerged. First, I became briefly involved with a woman who was undergoing a form of psychotherapy. She was sufficiently sensitive to suggest that I wasn't dealing with emotions very well and might profit from seeing someone in the profession. This led me to seek out a counselor. My formal therapeutic process was to continue in various forms, for the next three years. 
A second piece of remarkable luck was meeting a lady named Brigitte. I tripped over this treasure rather close to home: she was my neighbor across the stairwell which separated our two front doors. We met at a patio party that she held to celebrate a job promotion. Hearing the rapid flow of several European languages outside my apartment window, I drifted out and in my broken high school German, asked what had brought this group to Los Angeles. I was invited to sit down to hors d’ oeuvres, made a part of the gathering, and introduced to the hostess. 
In the remaining hours of the afternoon, I met a fascinating group of people. Many had lived in southern California for several years. They smiled at the state of my German -- carefully delivered but with abominable grammar -- as they related their travels and backgrounds. Brigitte was a legal secretary and case researcher in a Los Angeles law firm. As I later learned, she doubled as confidential secretary to the leading partner in the firm and in all save formal degree, was well qualified to argue cases in international maritime law. A close friend of Brigitte's was employed by the international branch of a large bank. Another had promoted a career as a fashion model into a comfortable marriage to an American businessman and ownership of a Beverly Hills boutique. One of the older men who dropped through briefly, recounted stories of escaping from Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia just after World War II. Yet another was a professional ski bum. 
In this milieu, Brigitte was very much at home and at ease. She had come to America in the late 1950’s as the 19-year-old bride of an American serviceman. When her marriage foundered, it had been natural for her to turn to other Europeans in the area. They had convinced her to remain in a land of opportunity and warm sun. Her friendships multiplied in the intervening years. She became a regular guest of Beverly Hills matrons filling out their party invitation lists with interesting people. She fit that role well, having begun life under difficult conditions and survived considerable adversity by skill and cunning. 
Some of Brigitte's earliest memories were of the War years. As an adult, she occasionally woke from nightmares of strafing administered by fighter aircraft of several sides, during the Battle of the Bulge. Her father had left home in Army service early in the war, and was reported missing in action in 1944. The family had spent fruitless years searching for any definite sign of him.
In the post-war years, Brigitte had been required to become tri-lingual. This was a consequence of living with her mother and sisters in a building taken over as an American officers' billet, in southern Germany. Her language skills had been polished by work as a courier in a black market operation across the German/French border, operating under the very noses of the soldiers who lived in her mother's house. Having suffered malnutrition in the war years, she retained a little-girl appearance which saved her from serious inquiries by police who nearly stumbled onto her mother's forbidden enterprise. 
As stories of the patio group unfolded, the afternoon hours drew on toward evening and the lively discussion moved indoors. I broke out a worn guitar and strummed a few highly extemporaneous bars. The instrument made the rounds of several more capable sets of hands, and I was quickly embarrassed by my musical illiteracy. I sat back to listen to recorded European band and polka music, as we exchanged anecdotes from our varied backgrounds. It was after nine o'clock when I left the party. 
It was also after nine o'clock before I realized that I had missed a date with a lady whom I was seeing intimately. Somewhere in the festivities, my calendar had simply been mentally mislaid. This was not appreciated when I called to apologize. 
I saw Brigitte and a few of her friends frequently during the next few days, as warm summer air brought us onto the patio late in the afternoons. I closed my books for a few hours to talk casually with this pixy-like female person who always seemed to have something intelligent to say. 
One of the women I had briefly met at Brigitte's promotion party often joined us. Astrid was going through a very unpleasant divorce. She was struggling to establish herself again as a single person, facing deep financial and emotional difficulty. The three of us commiserated. I knew something about that territory, being in it myself. Brigitte had a few years earlier survived a physically violent marital breakup. 
The women smiled tolerantly when I turned down a second or third glass of wine, claiming that my head spun from the vintages they imported. I found myself smiling increasingly in appreciation of Brigitte. She was, in a slimly compact and quiet way, a remarkable and pretty woman. She has a style and ease that I had rarely seen before, not even in Ellen. 
Time spent with Brigitte inevitably began to affect other connections in my life. I found myself drawn to her, at first subtly and then more powerfully. However, I was still sleeping with another lady who lived in the same apartment complex. If I was not always wise in my relationship life, I retained at least enough sense to know that playing musical beds was a game more likely to produce losers than winners. I refrained from chasing Brigitte. 
Eventually, my intimate friend began to pick up the signs of my growing preoccupation. We talked about the situation, two or three weeks later. I could see that I was being drawn away from our tenuously defined relationship. My casual lover could see that although I did not wish to do her injury or disrespect, I wanted to move on. She was upset, though not really angry about this turn of events. Few of her romantic relationships had lasted very long and I was only the most recent example. That evening, I recovered a stack of my phonograph records from her apartment, and we stopped seeing one another. 
A few nights later, I stayed on with Brigitte after Astrid departed. Our talk became more personal. Knowing of no more delicate way to broach the subject, I spoke directly of my growing attraction to her. Brigitte listened quietly. I said that I hoped we might eventually become intimate friends -- but would certainly not press for any immediate return of this feeling. 
She sighed. "So, you want to sleep with me?" she asked in an odd tone of voice. Completely unsure of how to reply, I stumbled on: ''Well....quite frankly, yes . . . if you want to put it that way. You are one of the most striking women I have met in a very long time."  Sighing again, she reached over to turn out a lamp. ''Well, I am alone myself. So come along to bed" She walked to the bathroom to bathe and brush her teeth. 
Even from the vantage point of several years’ reflection, as I look back on my first encounter with this lady, I am bemused. It seemed very much as if I was an old friend invited to stay for an unconditional weekend. I was accepted into her bed not so much casually as "graciously". She offered no explanations or rationalizations, but neither was I made to feel used. She found a thick towel from the linen closet, showed me where to find soap and a shower cap, and then walked about the apartment to put the place to bed for the night. Doors locked, lights extinguished, she came to me. 
When we joined, it was explosively. I had not realized she also had also been going through a long and barren period. As we touched, there seemed to be something in our mutual chemistry which reacted. We were both more than a little surprised. As this reaction continued over the next few weeks, we were overwhelmed. I had never met anyone quite like her before, nor had she met anyone quite like me. For a time, we went a little crazy over each other, in a most delightful way. 
In the remaining weeks of summer, we grew very close. She became "Beegee" to me, a private familiarity which she permitted no one else. She introduced me to friends and colleagues in the Los Angeles area. I escorted her to several social gatherings of her law firm. We exchanged small suppers in our apartments, went to movies and symphony, and generally planned our weekends together. 
Our households merged for most purposes, though we continued to keep separate apartments. She was a relatively private person, working in a highly responsible position. She did not casually broadcast that she had taken a new lover, or that she and her lover were well pleased with each other. When she asked me for appearance sake to keep a low profile with her more casual acquaintances, I kept to my own rooms and studied. 
For once, both by situation and inclination, I was able to respect my lover's privacy. In graduate school, I needed study time. Likewise, I was sorting out much of my life and was not inclined to expose the still-uncertain details of a major new commitment. A few of my school colleagues became aware that I was seeing a lot of a particular lady. Not many met her, or became aware of the details of our arrangement. 
The impact which Beegee made on me was fundamental. During the next three years, she participated in my life as no person ever had before. With no particular intent to do so, she helped me to experience myself for the first time as a truly sexual being. It was not so much that she taught me technique (though we learned a few things, together). It was more that she was genuinely and caringly accessible. She was involved vulnerably in my life. The physical chemistry between us derived from and amplified a real emotional intimacy.
After years of subtle -- and not entirely undeserved -- feedback from Ellen that I was a clumsy and ineffectual human being, Beegee saw me through an entirely different set of expectations. She found me valuable and worthy of her respect. She genuinely appreciated having me in her life and in her bed, and expressed her appreciation in a multitude of ways. I bloomed under this sincere flattery. I came to respect myself more, both as a physical animal and as a human being. Beegee taught me lessons for which there cannot be a price. 
The depth of our feelings for each other was tested more than once. Neither of us was a perfect individual, and the unfinished business of our prior lives came back to haunt each of us. Very early in our love affair, she must have been sorely tempted to break off and run for the hills. She would have been justified in doing so. A little less than three weeks after we first made love, I began to display the painful symptoms of sexually transmitted disease. When gonorrhea had been diagnosed and treated, I told Beegee what I had learned from my doctor. I assumed that she had been the source of this affliction. 
Having had no symptoms and no lover in many months, she was shocked and offended. She sought treatment and was found to be -- as far as medical testing could determine -- free of the disease. Only later did a more sympathetic and knowledgeable doctor inform me that the incubation period for this bug can vary from five to twenty days. My former lover was the likely source. 
One of the more difficult things which I have done in my life was apologizing to Beegee and then informing my previous lover of the likelihood of her infection. My former companion was shocked that I took so long to inform her of the potential danger. My new companion had been deeply wounded by my initial tone of accusation, concerning "our" problem. Though she sincerely tried to forgive this monumental gaffe, Beegee was never quite successful in the attempt. The incident continued to be a reopened wound in occasional arguments, for as long as we remained lovers. 
My confusion over what I wanted of Beegee also contributed to our difficulties. Just beginning a divorce, I was uncertain whether I wished to be married again. However, I felt a deep emotional attachment to Beegee. These contrary influences produced a kind of yo-yo effect, as I alternately declared my appreciation and joy in her, and then demanded privacy and space for myself. Beegee suffered from a kind of emotional whiplash. 
More mundanely, I was uncertain of how to break the news of my new relationship to my parents, who continued to feel heart-broken over my separation from Ellen and Caroline. I was living close enough that they could telephone frequently. However, I found myself sleeping several walls away from my phone. My "solution" to this dilemma was to provide Beegee's number to my parents, under the guise that she was manager of the apartment complex. This thin deception quickly unraveled when my mother asked Beegee if she was the manager's wife. My lover was again offended, and rightly so. 
Beegee's emotions, however, were also mixed. From that mixture, she permitted a situation to develop which became deeply painful to us both. A few months after we met, a man resurfaced in Beegee's life, to whom she had been mistress for several years. She had hoped to marry him, only to find herself jilted for another woman. Unexpectedly, Beegee’s former lover phoned and asked her to dinner to talk over old times. When they returned to her apartment, he stayed over. They spent a sleepless night in her home, as I spent – differently -- a sleepless night in mine. 
When her guest departed the next morning, Beegee and I sat over coffee, to sort through the fragments of what we had both considered a very committed relationship. I simply could not handle being part of a threesome with her paramour, and said so. She was uncertain why she had permitted events to go so far. Her ex-lover had returned to her because his wife of two years had left him. His visit was essentially casual, but Beegee had permitted herself to be used. Why? 
Answers to these questions unfolded over the next few weeks. In part, Beegee had continued to feel anger over my early episode of venereal disease. Not knowing how to finish her anger over this incident, she had found an indirect way to hit back. Likewise, she was still smarting from being jilted by her former lover. She wondered if she had not been sexually "enough" for him. Finally, she had wanted to test the feelings of both of her men. Only on the morning after, did she consider more deliberately, how hurtful an arena she had chosen for this testing. 
Gradually, these angers and hurts became visible as we talked over the next several days. Gradually, tears washed away some of the hurt and confusion. When Beegee's ex-lover called to invite her out again, she decided that there wasn't very much appeal in what he had in mind. She would be the only one who took any serious risk in their relationship. He called a few times, but eventually stopped as she repeatedly refused his invitations. 
In the Fall, I finally began to make my commitment to Beegee more visible. With no small trepidation, I invited her to join me on a Christmas visit with my parents. I also informed my parents that this lady was becoming rather important to me. I wanted them to meet someone who might be in my life for quite a while. I made it clear that "being in my life" might or might not mean marriage. 
Particularly for Mom, all of this was a little confusing. She knew that other people’s unmarried kids lived together, but it had never occurred to her that I might also be susceptible. Swallowing hard, she asked, ''Well, Son....shall I make up the bed in the spare room and the couch in the living room?" I paused. ''Mom, you may as well know if you didn't al ready. Brigitte and I are not strangers in bed. But we'll abide by whatever is comfortable for you in your own house." When we arrived for Christmas, Mom had made up only the spare bedroom. 
The visit was an eye-opener for all parties. Mom quite obviously did not know how to deal with Beegee. Dad looked on in amused good will as the two women politely circled around each other in conversation. He took me aside to say that as usual I seemed to have my hands full. I told him that though I cared about this lady, I didn't know yet if I wanted to be married to her. He accepted my position with good grace. On the subject of women, his life had been sufficiently irregular that he could perhaps appreciate my situation. Beegee and Dad got along famously. She later remarked that one of her chief impressions of the trip was the twinkle in Dad's eye. 
At the same time, my companion got a first-hand dose of a side of America that she had never seen before. My parents lived on a rather run-down ranch in southern Oregon. The chief virtues of the place were a grove of trees close to the house, and the fact that the property was 800 miles from the violent neighborhood where I had grown up. The house was an 85 year old wreck full of termites and possibilities, which Dad was gradually repairing. Beegee was surprised by my parents' open-armed hospitality, but likewise a bit shaken by the disorder and age of their home. There was a large gap between her experience and theirs. She began to see that in some ways, the world from which I had come was very different from hers. 
The Christmas trip helped Beegee and me get over most of our earlier distresses with each other. This was fortunate, for I was soon called upon to deal with other difficult events. Beegee stood with me and shared some of the burdens. Others, I had to take up on my own. The immediate hurdle was the process of severing legal ties to Ellen. Though the legal mechanics were easy enough, the process was very emotionally trying. 
The State of California pioneered what has since come to be called "no fault divorce". It was possible even in 1973, for two disaffected spouses to legally part with very little judicial interference. If the two parties could agree on property settlement and child custody, they did not even need a lawyer. Many bookstores carried paper-bound volumes of instructions and legal forms. There was a six-month waiting period to establish residence in the county, a simple filing process which required a few weeks of waiting, several minutes on the benches of a municipal court, and about 90 seconds before a judge who asked a list of standardized questions. In another six months, the final decree of divorce was recorded. Meanwhile, all one had to do is survive emotionally. 
When Ellen and I started our divorce, we agreed I would file the papers. Some of these needed her signature. Thus, I visited with her twice during the fall after my arrival in Los Angeles. We met once on the grounds of a park in San Francisco, and once in Ellen's newly rented home. Caroline played in her stroller. Less than a year old, she did not recognize me after months of separation. Yet, as I held the child and watched her play, I was torn at heart.
 Ellen was carefully correct with me but distant. As Caroline crawled about on the floor, we chatted about their new life. Ellen's company had promoted her and she would be doing some traveling. Caroline was being cared for by a local woman who had two other children and needed to bring in extra money. Though Ellen's work hours were occasionally long, she felt confident that her daughter was being well supervised. I returned from this visit, as always, with a mixture of feelings. 
As the months of the divorce ground on, Ellen was only distantly in contact with me. Her relationship to my parents was in some ways stronger. To my surprise, she volunteered to visit Mom and Dad, taking Caroline to be ooh' ed and aah' ed over by the proud grandparents. She wrote Mom and Dad regularly, describing her readjustment to single life. By contrast, I heard from her almost entirely through them. 
Just after I started school, I was too busy to seriously consider regular travel across the four hundred miles which separated Ellen and me. Later, as the final decree of our divorce came nearer, Ellen's outlook seemed to change. When the break became official, Ellen did not welcome my efforts to visit with her and with Caroline. Indeed, she became vehemently opposed to having anything to do with me. 
The final turning point occurred during a visit she and Caroline made to my parents' home. I arranged to join them over a weekend. It was the first time in a little more than six months that I had been able to be with them and the visit proved to be filled with conflict. 
Caroline was generally cranky from an outbreak of allergies. When I inquired concerning what treatment the child was receiving for her rash, Ellen was abruptly dismissive. I wasn't around to help "treat" Caroline, so my interest was really not helpful. Later in the visit, we had a major disagreement concerning our last jointly filed Federal tax return. Once again, I found I was to pay the lion's share of our expenses, despite the fact that Ellen had earned more than half of our income during our marriage. 
As Ellen and I argued, a number of unrelated issues seemed to emerge. Ellen had been trying to keep hidden from me and from my parents, a boiling anger. She had begun to realize just how injured, put-upon, and used she felt during the years of our marriage. She voiced her injury in a series of put-downs of me, my career, and my self-confidence as a man. Finally, rather than deal with more unreasoning outbursts, I took a tearful Caroline outside for a walk.
In my absence, Mom finally reacted to Ellen. Why, she asked, had Ellen bothered to make the long trip to see Caroline's grandparents, if all she wanted to do when she got there was to bad-mouth their son? Likewise, had she not contributed to a few of the troubles she described? Ellen was reduced to silence. She had not realized how vindictive she sounded, or how obviously angry she was. When I returned with Caroline, she was exceptionally quiet and remained so for the remainder of the weekend. 
A few weeks later, a final decree of divorce was signed. In those weeks, I attempted to see more of Caroline. The little girl was becoming old enough now that I felt some hope of being recognized from month to month. My schedule was more forgiving of an occasional weekend trip. This, however, Ellen would not permit. Having at last become aware of the depth of her anger, she wanted to do battle, to hit back. Failing that, she wanted to have me permanently out of her life. 
Ellen arranged to be busy on the weekends I had available. She refused to arrange time in advance for my visits. When I pressed her on this matter by phone, she voiced her most basic feelings. She would really rather that I passed quietly out of her life and Caroline's, altogether. 
What, I asked, was she thinking about? A child is more than just a person. A child represents a permanent bond of blood obligation, a perpetually unfinished commitment. Did she seriously expect me just to walk away? Ellen grew threatening. Yes, she most certainly did. If I tried to see Caroline over her objections, she would make quite sure that the little girl wanted nothing to do with me. 
I was surprised by the depth of Ellen's bitterness. I asked only one more question; perhaps one too many: "Ellen, when you come right down to it, why did you decide to have Caroline in the first place? Surely you must have seen as much as I did that we had a shaky marriage." Yes, she replied. That had been pretty obvious. But after all, she figured she was due something for six years of wasted time.
Looking back on this conversation after several years of reflection, I cannot now believe that Ellen planned the devastating effects of her remark, in advance of our conversation. She was very angry and reached for an effective rebuff to my increasing interest in Caroline. In the heat of battle, she struck with the first barb which came to hand. 
At the time, however, I lacked this perspective. I was crushed, hurt, frustrated, and angry. I believed Ellen had deliberately used me for stud service, to father a child she had intended from the beginning to keep from me. I believed she had simply waited after Caroline's birth for an excuse to walk away from the inconvenience of a husband for whom she no longer felt any affection. Thus her sharp rejoinder had its desired effect. I stopped trying to see Caroline and withdrew from Ellen's life. 
What Ellen did not know at the time, was that I also withdrew into depression. For several weeks, I slept poorly, studied poorly, and was generally miserable to be around. Beegee tolerated a lot of blue periods in those weeks. Fortunately for both of us, I had a larger support system on which to fall back. I had entered Gestalt group therapy. Other people in my therapy group understood my situation and helped to guide me through the bad time. I cried a lot and screamed a lot in those evening sessions. I also did some hard growing up. Eventually, the depression passed and I began to function again. 
As I emerged again into a larger world, I began to be more aware of the people around me. Apart from Beegee, most of my acquaintances were from school. Some of the characters I met, were a real resource in coming to terms with my semi-bachelor life. Likewise, a few of them provided horrible examples, against which my own difficulties appeared small. 
The theater in which a lot of this small drama transpired, was a crowded academic office on an upper floor of the University engineering building. Our office was a kind of United Nations for Doctoral and Masters Degree candidates. There were representatives from around the world, and some of them were pretty odd characters. 
One of the office desks was occupied when I arrived, by a dark-haired, bearded older man who was then in the final stages of his dissertation research. He had been working solely on this paper, for a little over three years. He physically resembled no one quite so much as an old portrait of the Russian monk, Rasputin -- for whom we named him, when he was not listening. When we asked what events had lengthened his research, so we might avoid similar pitfalls, he smiled an evil smile and said very little. He completed his work and departed a few weeks into my first term. 
Rasputin's place was taken by a small, intense Japanese fellow, studying for his masters’ degree under a grant from one of the Japanese industrial conglomerates. The young man anticipated returning to his islands with a credential which would greatly enlarge his chance for early promotion and status in his industry -- whether or not he ever applied his technical background in an engineering position. 
Three other individuals made my life in Academia very interesting for much of the next three years. They were respectively, Hassan, Abe, and Gerhardt. Hassan was an Iranian student, working under a partial grant from his government and loans from his well-to-do family. Abe was a brilliant but erratic information science theorist, a citizen of Mexico, a Jew, and a collector of mind-blowing experiences produced by strange smelling powders. Gerhardt, our second émigré from south of the border, had been born in Poland and brought by his family through Germany, to settle in Mexico City. He was fluent in at least four languages and had traveled widely. 
This diverse assembly convened many a late night discussion session, while we waited for the University Computer Center to process our programs and produce our output data. We gradually evolved a political debating society of some little sophistication. 
Hassan was a left-leaning member of the relatively small middle class of Iran. He had come to study in America only after being sent for a year by the Iranian government, to teach junior high school in a remote area of his own country. This earlier experience had crystallized his extreme dislike for both the regime of his Shah, and the heavy-handed conservatism of the Islamic ayatollahs who for practical purposes governed the rural areas of Iran. He managed to ignore the fact that he had been sent to the provinces partly because of his mediocre performance on College Board examinations. 
If Hassan was to have status as a person of substance in his own country, he had to have an education. He was sent to America to accomplish that end. On his way to his degrees, however, Hassan joined a radical Iranian student group and became involved in a series of disruptive demonstrations at various Middle East consulates. He was at the time I met him, under indictment for his role in an assault on a diplomat. In his better moments, he was convinced that his revolutionary fervor would be vindicated in court. In darker moments, he was also scared silly-pea-green of being convicted. Deportation into an Iranian prison loomed on his horizon. 
The office provided two contenders in the debate with Hassan. As a representative of an American military which had aided the Shah to consolidate his hold on Iran, I was a logical target for Hassan's ire. Likewise, because Gerhardt was being assisted in his education by a well-to-do Mexican family, he was accused of building a career on the backs of the poor and down-trodden. 
Hassan was convinced that the future of his country lay in a leftist revolution, followed by a "dictatorship of the proletariat". Our reply to this proposition was basic: "What proletariat? Hassan seemed not to understand that he was atypical of most Iranian citizens. He also failed to see that the major forces at work in Iran were not so much political or economic as religious. Gerhardt and I were accused of not playing fair, as we pointed out that no revolution has ever successfully increased the political freedom of a majority, by imposing a "dictatorship" administered by a minority. Hassan was stymied by the dynamics of the old principle: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 
Our arguments with Hassan proved to be prophetic when the Shah was overthrown by conservative Islamist riots, not by leftist revolution. I imagine this must have been a crushing blow to him. However, I was not present to see the impact of such events. By the time I left the University, he had long since dropped out of his graduate studies in engineering, married an American girl, and gone into business managing a small fast-food restaurant in West Los Angeles. I seriously doubt that Hassan now says his prayers six times a day. I also doubt that "Das Kapital" occupies a prominent place on his bookshelf. 
If talks with Hassan tended toward the political, my interaction with Gerhardt led into an unpredictably broader territory. By family connection, Gerhardt was Jewish. By cultural heritage, he was a mixture of European, Latin, and a little of everything else. By personal inclination, he was indefinable. I do not believe I have ever met anyone quite like him. In the three years we shared an office, I cannot remember Gerhardt ever explaining or justifying anything he ever did. When asked the "why" of a position he had stated, he would simply look the inquirer in the eye and ask "why not?" He was a dense, dark shadow of a man, with a dry sense of humor. 
Away from school, he was equally unexplainable. He took up residence in a Hollywood apartment which displayed no two walls at a right angle.  He shared the space with a voluptuously plump, florid-faced woman named Angie. She was then studying for a degree in psychology, though I cannot imagine what result she received from application of her techniques to Gerhardt. The two of them were an odd pair. Their apartment came equipped with two telephones, so that Angie would not accidentally "blow Gerhardt's cover" with his Jewish family – who knew nothing of their arrangement but would strongly have disapproved. Angie's opinion of this arrangement is not recorded. 
Somehow, they lived in relative harmony. After he finished his degree, Gerhardt moved to the American southwest to accept a job. He moved Angie with him and later supported her through a program in professional nursing. They bought a house together. When he resigned from the electronics industry to start a manufacturing business, Angie supported him financially for well over a year, as he got his company on its feet. Over ten years later, with Angie in her late 30’s, they had a child. They remain unmarried, and I'll be damned if I can figure out how they make such a relationship work. 
Gerhardt had a mind with interesting comers. He was irreducible and brilliant. By comparison, Abe was fractured and brilliant. The short, curly-haired Mexican seemed to be a walking box of complexes. Abe's early life had been rebellious. He had left home with an abiding desire to succeed on his own, a very high native intelligence to apply to that job, and a deep insecurity over whether he would ever be able to live up to the expectations of a distant and demanding father. He married a young woman of at least equally tangled background. Understandably, the pair had their share of marital problems. 
Abe's relationship to his family went through a series of crises as he decided to seek American citizenship and remain to work in his chosen field, rather than return to a country which was no longer home to him. His brilliance in his field produced a series of published papers, spun off from his research even before he completed his dissertation. He received a job offer from a US aerospace company and was advanced a part of his anticipated wages so that he might finish his degree. However, Abe’s advance promptly bought a status sports car: the reward, he said, for years of grinding along in obscurity. He seemed always to be on the thin edge of stability. Sometimes he wavered on the far side of that borderline. He became involved in the so-called "recreational" use of marijuana, amphetamines, and cocaine. 
When I left the University, Abe had still not completed his degree. His perfectionism was getting in the way of completing his dissertation, and he was in danger of defaulting on conditions of his pre-employment financial advance. He and his wife were considering separation, to his intense pain and embarrassment. His life was a mass of tangles. 
However, after losing track of Abe for almost three years, he later surprised me completely. As an element of my job in the Air Force, I was asked to help evaluate a group of technical papers for a conference in which Abe was a group leader. He and his wife had moved to Monterey, from which he now commuted by helicopter and car, to a responsible job in San Francisco. Abe's spouse had recently born a child. He had decided, one day, that he could no longer tolerate the chaos which cocaine was creating in his life. He walked away from a potential addiction before it got its hands around his throat, and never looked back. He was happy, he said. I would be welcome to visit. 
Abe, I wish you long life and many children, if such is your wish for yourselves. Your recovery surprised me -- I sincerely hope it has been sustained over time. 
The many discussions between Gerhardt, Abe, Hassan and me were comic relief from an academic grind which in some ways resembled an extended version of my Officers Training School program six years before. To continue that parallel, I learned a lot of things in graduate school which doubtless lay outside the formal curriculum. 
The course work of a Ph.D. program in engineering can be quite formidable. There are usually about sixty quarter credits of course study, distributed across three academic fields. In my program, I waded through a bewildering array of control systems theory, information theory, operations research (sometimes called "management science"), applied physical mechanics, and enough math to try the patience of a saint. Combined with the other events in my life, such a program kept me frantically busy. 
Surprisingly, I actually learned something by being immersed under this fire hose. My previous job background helped me fit the pieces of my program together into a coherent pattern. I acquired an expanded technical vocabulary and carne to understand the nature of problems which could be described and solved by use of such vocabulary. I could not always solve such problems myself, but at least I had an idea which problem might be solvable by a computer expert by applying enough machine time. 
With my office colleagues, I weathered four distinct hurdles in the University obstacle course. There were, first of all, the core courses. Although they were a grind, the sixty credits could be accomplished by long hours and memorizing. The next barrier was a two-part written examination designed to determine if one has 1earned anything in a year and a half of course work. If the student has passed his courses on the strength of short term memory -- as I did -- this exam is a terror. Many Ph.D. candidates flunk the exam and must wait six months to take it again. Under the terms of my Air Force grant, this would not have been an option. I suspect my professors forgave my miserable performance on the comprehensive exams partly because of this factor. I also had some distinguished company on the lowest third of the test score sheet, which the reviewing committee decided were "having a bad day". 
After the qualifying exam, a Ph.D. candidate selects a field for independent research. He or she is expected to develop some method or application of engineering knowledge which is new to the field. This process can take from 18 months to four years. In practice, the project may become a desperate search for a topic large enough to be "interesting" to a supervising committee, yet small enough for one person to accomplish alone. If one is not a brilliant mathematician -- which I decidedly am not -- such work can be difficult to find. 
After research, writing, computer programming and much rewriting, the tired candidate assembles his work for the review of a faculty committee in a stand-up oral examination which generally requires one to two hours. He or she is then asked to leave the room, while the committee deliberates. 
In my case, the ten minute discussion may have been a heated one. I had presented a piece of work with a strongly "applied" flavor. This is another way of saying that 18 months of research produced 250 pages of text, of which very few comprised original ideas of my own. I cast a little light on a minor problem having to do with a kind of aeronautical autopilot. I am sure the committee found my paper quite pedestrian. They probably chose not to reject it because my academic sponsor suggested that an Air Force officer was unlikely ever to apply for a university teaching position. When their deliberation was concluded, I was invited back and congratulated on my entrance into their club. 
There were a lot of stops and starts along my road to the sheepskin. I narrowly passed my comprehensive examinations. I then spent six months looking for a research problem, making two costly false starts on problems either too large or too well covered by existing literature. When I finally settled on a topic, I had to back up and learn a new computer programming language "from scratch." 
I then settled into several months of battle with an IBM mainframe computer. The program which I developed to demonstrate my research, stubbornly refused to produce the answers that I knew must lie buried within it. The time remaining until the end of my Air Force grant, grew short. 
My schedule for six days of each week became a predictable rhythm. I rose from sleep at noon. After a light brunch, I spent the afternoon at a desk in my apartment or my academic office making notes. After a brief supper at a college cafeteria down the street from my office, I started work at the Computer Center. 
Evening hours passed into morning as I ran programs during slack time usually kept free of the undergraduate math and psychology majors who waited in line for their output by day. By four in the morning, I was ready to quit. I drove home, making a stop at one of the local 24-hour restaurants for breakfast. To the waitresses in these establishments, I became one of the "regulars". I fell into bed as dawn broke. 
This routine naturally worked its effects on the rest of my life. I was under prolonged, unremitting stress. My psychotherapy entered a difficult period as I struggled to cope with both old and new problems during my group sessions. The combination of many factors led me to live apart from Beegee for several months. She and I were having emotional conflicts, and I lacked the energy to resolve our difficulties. 
Connections to Beegee were strained for a variety of reasons. One of the more subtle of these had to do with the way she and I occupied our respective household "spaces". I found that Beegee seemed to be rather uncomfortable in my apartment. I was welcome in hers and was invited often. But when she came to visit with me overnight, she grew restless and uneasy. I did not understand her reservations on this subject, and she was never able to clearly articulate her feelings. 
This situation was aggravated when I outgrew my one-bedroom quarters and was prompted by a rent increase to seek another apartment. Though I moved my belongings only two blocks, it seemed at times as if an ocean had opened up between our two households. Beegee rarely visited my new apartment. I stayed at hers frequently, but my resistance to this lop-sided arrangement gradually increased. 
I also found that Beegee’s acceptance of and interest in me had a less appealing side. When we were together, I was generally required to give her my entire attention. It was impossible to read or relax, to be quiet, indeed even to share space without interacting. When I needed to study, she created small distractions to draw me out of my books into conversation or love making. To get time for study, I was forced to work on summer afternoons which I would rather have spent otherwise. To have time for thought and sorting-out that I needed, I was forced to withdraw from Beegee's apartment. Though I tried to explain this growing problem, she did not understand. She felt hurt by my withdrawal. 
This dynamic continued into our physical intimacy. We both worked hard, she at her job and I at my studies. This understandably left us both fatigued at times. I did not always feel like making mad, passionate whoopee until the early hours of the morning. Moreover, neither did Beegee. However, she refused to acknowledge her fatigue or to give herself time for rest. Instead, she struggled to keep her eyes open in the later hours of the evening, eventually dragging me off to bed and love-making -- only to be asleep almost before we had completed touching. I came to feel that she was not really "there" in some of our couplings, and told her so. She felt threatened by my attitude, sensing a judgment in my resistance to sex when she was less than a full participant. 
As I entered the most critical period of my dissertation research, these irritants came together in a series of minor but unsettling arguments. We found ourselves unable to be intimate with each other. Though I did not dislike Beegee, I found I disliked some of her emotional habits. Though she did not dislike me, she did not understand my emotional distance and was uncomfortable with my presence in her bed. Our times together became less frequent. Though we talked on the phone relatively often, we rarely shared dinner and altogether stopped sleeping together. Though we cared for each other, we could see no way to live harmoniously under one roof. 
As Beegee and I drew apart, I came to be more fully aware of the surroundings of greater Los Angeles. I made other, more casual connections. After almost two years in Los Angeles, I finally began to experience the city at first hand. It was a unique time, in what proved to be an occasionally strange geography. 
There is no easy way to succinctly describe an atmosphere like that of southern California. There is no single feeling which neatly encapsulates the area. There are many cultural and social climates, seemingIy mixed and often mutually competing. 
On the west side of the urban area where I lived, one finds block after block of apartment houses, palm trees and districts of small businesses. The area is heavily sprinkled with students and young people. Further to the south, the texture and color of the population changes. Around EI Segundo, faces tend to become black or Latino and houses seem not as well maintained. There are pockets of moneyed isolation like Marina Del Rey that have little in common with run-down areas such as Venice, just blocks away.  A "patch-work quilt" seemed to spread across the Los Angeles basin. One could never quite predict how a neighborhood might appear, before visiting there in person. 
The physical variety of the city was echoed by a cultural and social diversity in its people. One is frequently surprised by meeting entertainment celebrities. While jogging one morning down San Vicente Boulevard, I was passed by a small man in an undistinguished sweat suit. A block later, a light turned on in my head as I realized that I had seen Johnny Carson, or his double. I found myself pushing a shopping cart in a local supermarket, side by side with a veteran character actor from film and television. Late one afternoon, I recognized a retired football star as he washed his car in the alley behind my apartment -- no doubt on his way to make another hamburger commercial. One of the people in my therapy group was an actress sufficiently accomplished to earn major supporting roles opposite Kirk Douglas and Barbra Streisand. 
In the restaurants where I often ate breakfast, one encountered a different but no less unique stream of characters. At five or six in the morning, these people were sometimes a bit unbelievable. There was a mailman who wore sandals and a twenty year old Hawaiian sport shirt in all kinds of weather. When it rained, he dripped into his coffee. A silent bag lady sipped tea and nibbled Danish almost every morning in a corner booth, with her six shopping bags arrayed about her. A fragile woman with stringy blonde hair seemed a candidate for Drudge of the Year, after cleaning office buildings all night. There were the inevitable truck drivers on their way to deliver produce to the awakening city. There was also a dark, quiet little man who filled the coin-operated newspaper dispensers outside the restaurant. I watched one morning as he efficiently disabled two younger men who had attempted to vandalize the publications of which he was guardian. 
On an occasional free weekend afternoon, I walked on the beaches and cliffs of Santa Monica. The long Santa Monica pier stretches out into the ocean, decorated by the fishing lines of deadly serious anglers supplementing small incomes with a saltwater supper. The beach is combed and groomed by large machines each week, to facilitate the athletic young people who lounge and play volleyball there. 
Further back from the water, a strip of sidewalk concrete wanders in gentle curves through the sand. Bicycles race  over thirty miles from Malibu toward Long Beach on this ribbon. At Santa Monica, the bike path passes a special corner in which groups of body builders, jugglers, and gymnasts compete before an appreciative crowd. Children of all sizes, shapes, and colors scamper through this changing riot of faces. This was a relaxed, easy place to be. Some of the photographs I took on those summer afternoons, I still consider prizes. The time was itself prize enough. I found a "foreign" culture in my own country, and life was richer for the discovery. 
As summer and fall marched toward the winter of my third year in Los Angeles, my walks along the Palisades were curtailed. I was nearing the end of my educational grant, and my dissertation was still incomplete. Life had narrowed down to a steady grind of work and worry over the computer program which was so essential to my research. Combined with my irregular eating habits, the schedule I kept had produced a growing fatigue and a susceptibility to head colds. Ignoring my symptoms, I pushed myself toward pneumonia. A doctor at the University health center advised me either to get more rest or risk being hospitalized. To use a phrase popular at the time, I was finding myself between a rock and a hard place. 
On a February morning, I found that I had reached the end of my personal resources. I needed to learn something which did not seem within my power to absorb. It seemed to be time to take an entirely new look at where I was going with my work. I chose to seek that perspective with the guidance of a friend: Ruth, the facilitator of my Gestalt therapy group. 
Ruth and I sat down in her studio as the February S\m filtered weakly through the trees outside. I was tired and ill. Having returned after several weeks away from the therapy group, it was apparent to Ruth that I had spent too much time in labor. She was concerned. After we exchanged pleasantries and updated ourselves on current events, I got directly to the problem. 
''Ruth, I'm going through a really bad period, right now. I'm exhausted and sick, and absolutely log-jam stuck with my dissertation. I've been plugging with this monster for over five months, and I seem no closer to solutions now than I was three months ago. I have a feeling that what I need to do is to 1 earn how to learn, in some way very different from what I've attempted before." 
"I have the intuition that there is somewhere in my soul, a place which 'knows' everything which I need to know in order to deal with my research -- maybe even with my life in general. I really need to reach that place now, and I don't quite know how to approach it. But I have the feeling that some form of meditation may be a route. So I've come to ask you to teach me how to meditate to a solution for this problem." 
We talked about my request for a few minutes. Having worked with me in many sessions of group and individual therapy, Ruth was convinced that I already understood several forms of meditation and did not need to complicate my process by learning a new technology. I should use some previously explored avenue which was at least somewhat familiar. What came to mind was simple prayer. With some trepidation, I agreed to share a time of prayer with Ruth. It did not seem important at the time that she was an agnostic Jew, and I was a once-Christian heretic. All I knew then was that I needed to enter a strange territory, and Ruth seemed to be an accomplished guide to take along on the journey. 
As we sat together, I reached out and took Ruth's hand. I needed an anchor in the here-and-now, for I sensed I might be going somewhere else. As she sat listening at my side, I spoke to a Presence around us both; a Presence perhaps more hoped-for than believed, to which I had not talked in several years. 
"God, I know that You are here and that You are not silent. I am fully present in this moment. I need to hear whatever it is that You would speak to me. I give You my full acceptance and attention, trusting that whatever is needful will be made manifest to me." I prayed aloud on this theme for a short time. When I felt myself come to a natural end, I stopped and listened. 
As I listened, I found myself transported in some unfamiliar way, into a slightly different reality. It was as if an unseen power had drawn a heavy drapery around Ruth and me, a few feet away. Though I was aware of the bird sounds coming from outside the studio and of the drift of dust motes in the sunlit air around Ruth and myself, these phenomena ceased to be distractions. I seemed to sink into a well of silence. I remained connected to the world through Ruth, but this too seemed unimportant. 
After a few seconds, I seemed to feel a person standing directly behind me inside the curtain. This figure was sensed, rather than seen or heard, much as a very quiet individual might be sensed behind one's back in day-to-day experience. However, this seemed to be no normal individual. Without knowing from what source I knew, I was aware that this Figure was extremely old. In a way which surpassed knowledge, He was wise. 
The Presence stepped to within a few inches of my back and seemed to drape me in what felt like a weighted cape. For a few seconds, I felt a gentle, reassuring pressure on my shoulders. Then, the Figure moved back again into an indistinct background. After a few more seconds, the curtain around us was also withdrawn. I returned to the here-and-now. 
I was deeply moved and melted by this visitation. For a time, I could do no more than cry and shake. Something had happened to me. I described haltingly to Ruth, the sense of quietness in the Figure which had emerged from behind and within me. She too was moved, her eyes moist. She related that she had felt a remarkable surge of heat and power through my hand, as she sat with me. I told her of my feeling of being "cloaked", and that I continued to feel a light weight on my shoulders as we talked. 
Still digesting this experience, we concluded our session and I departed for my campus office. The moment I walked out of Ruth's door, I confirmed that something had indeed happened to me. In marked contrast to the period just before our session, I found that my sinuses were clear for the first time in several days. I could smell Laurel and early blossoms from several feet away. My head felt lighter, more open. As I started my car and drove through Hollywood, I continued to "wear" the cloak, whenever I gave attention to the sensations of my body. 
Returning to my academic office, I permitted myself to do something which I had felt too busy and frustrated to attempt in several weeks: I stopped trying to "solve" my problem. I gave myself permission to stand back from it for a time, to see it in entirety. For several hours I sat at my desk, laying out a complete diagram of the steps and equations in my computer program. The chart covered a floor-to-ceiling swath of paper. I found as I sketched, that it was as if I was taking the problem out of my head and laying it aside long enough to let its essentials become clear. By the dinner hour, the chart was complete. I had still not localized my problem. But I left the diagrams on the office wall and went home for a quiet meal, unburdened. 
Driving back to the office for the evening, I mentally reviewed the many aspects of the program on which I had been working for so many weeks. I had been observing erratic behavior during program execution. Until this time I had been searching for a coding error or "bug" which might account for the behavior. But what, I wondered, if the bug was not in my code, but in the basic theory or the equations I had used? I could be telling the computer to do something classically stupid, such as dividing by zero. 
As I considered this possibility, my attention was drawn to a particular area of the complex code. I needed to verify the arithmetic sign of an important variable, as the program ran. When I checked this information -- sure enough - there was a tell-tale sign change. The computer was trying to divide by zero, at which point my program "blew up". 
I reviewed my equations and changed one assumption in the method. After a few minutes of programming, I fed the changes back to the computer with an example problem for which I knew the right answer. In a few seconds, the answer spilled out onto the computer room floor, accurate to three decimal places.  During the remaining hours of that night and the next morning, I completed over half of the examples I needed for my dissertation. The paper was complete except for typing, within a week. I wore a cloak of silence during the entire period. 
In June, I became a full-fledged Ph.D., presumably qualified to write appropriately simplified equations and to ask learned questions of other engineers. I also moved into new offices at an Air Force base only a few miles away. It was time to return to the "real" world of work and bureaucracy. 
I returned to uniformed Air Force duty, as a changed individual. Though I gradually lost the immediacy and protection of the spiritual in-dwelling I had experienced, I retained a tempered resiliency that was new. I experienced more solidity, more emotional confidence in my life. I trusted myself more. Having passed through a "valley of the shadow", I emerged into here-and-now experience with many of the same issues to be resolved but also with an expanded inventory of personal coping tools. My calmer approach to life had an observable impact on others. For a short time, the foremost of these others was again, Beegee. 
Shortly after I reported for my new job, I got an unexpected phone call from Beegee. It had been several weeks since we had talked, and I detected immediately that she was very shaky and scared. She asked me to come to her apartment and share dessert. She needed to talk. When I arrived, I found a much-altered Beegee. She had lost five pounds from a frame already pared slim. Her eyes were hollow from lack of sleep. As we talked, I learned that she had a few days before been told by her doctor that she needed surgery for a suspected tumor. She might be forced to have a partial hysterectomy before her 37th birthday. The prospect of entering a hospital terrified her. She had long experienced nightmares from a childhood incident in a hospital. 
Her doctor had postponed her surgery for several weeks, due to prior commitments. Now, however, she was having sharp internal pain and cramping. She had been unable to reach her doctor by phone. Uncertain whether the symptoms were emotional or physical, she was near panic. However, she was adamant that she would not go to a hospital emergency room. After many hours of talking, she was near sleep. Drifting off, she asked me to stay close in case she awoke later. I stayed overnight, and returned several times during the next week. 
Beegee weathered the immediate problem of her cramps. A phone call from her doctor and a brief examination assured her that most of the cramping was due to a heavy menstrual cycle. She was relieved, even if the longer term problem of the tumor had not yet been alleviated. 
In the following weeks, we again became lovers. The rich chemistry of our former relationship seemed, if anything, heightened by her impending encounter with the surgeon. She clung to the vitality she felt in sexual coupling, almost as if through love making she might cling to life itself. Her visit to the hospital, when it finally arrived, was thankfully brief. A small benign tumor was removed and hysterectomy proved unnecessary. Additional extensive blood tests indicated that some of her emotional ups and downs were probably being heightened by hormone imbalances and the extreme stress of her work. She was told that she needed to de-stress her life. 
This was no easy assignment for Beegee. She felt required by finances, to continue at her present job. At the same time, she deeply resented the office politics imposed by her work for several competing bosses in a series of complicated legal cases. She felt unable to change the conditions which placed such intolerable pressure on her. 
For several months, we continued to be lovers. While I redirected my work life into a new Air Force assignment with its normal business travel, I found that I came home to an increasingly upset and ill Beegee. I shared as much time with her as I could spare from a hectic schedule, and it was good time for both of us. But many of the old issues between us continued to be irritants. 
Such issues were inflamed by Beegee's approach to the problems identified during her hospital stay. She tried as much as possible, to ignore the advice of her doctors. When work became too stressful, she found relief in too many glasses of wine, taken a bit too often. As a distraction from problems she felt she could not solve, she exhausted herself in excessive activity. When I pointed out that her approach did not seem to be helping, she was hurt and defensive. I suggested that she enroll in a course on meditation or bio-feedback, to learn something about stress control. She was deeply resistant. She believed such courses might nark her as a "problem person", compromising her suitability for the confidential work of her law firm. 
Our time together eventually came to an end. In a few months, Beegee and I again found ourselves at the point which had prompted our earlier separation. We could no longer function as lovers. The situation seemed clearer to me than to Beegee. Thus, as gently as I could, I refused her invitation to more intimate activities and withdrew quietly but firmly from her life. 
In the months that followed, I watched from a distance as Beegee continued to flounder. flounder. Her life seemed an unmitigated disaster. Plagued by recurrent illness, she was finally forced to look for other employment in a less stressful field. When I last heard from her, she had still not found work in which she was satisfied. Nor had she found a lover of any constancy, or a pattern of living which satisfied her wishful dream of romance and world travel as the companion of a "good man". I remain uncertain of the path her life has taken. I can only hope that she eventually finds some way to help and nurture herself. 
During the three years of my Los Angeles assignment, I was also required to learn how to help myself. I finished psychotherapy and moved on into other interests. I learned for the first time in my life, to live alone. I experienced some of the freedoms and hazards of bachelor life. For a time, I walked along the fringes of the peculiar sub-culture of America which has come to be called "singles life". In this culture, I was prompted to do some further growing up. 
When a lot of non-Californians think about that state, their attention seems riveted on Hollywood. They imagine a wide expanse of rolling, green-brown oak-shaded hills used in old cowboy movie sets. They fantasize about sweeping white sand beaches inhabited by surfers, beach bums, and lithe young women clad in vanishing-small bikini bathing suits. People not fortunate enough to be born in the Golden state visualize an easy life in the warm breezes which sweep from the mountains down a transplanted Broadway called Santa Monica Boulevard. 
People also fantasize about a different aspect of the easy life. As my therapy leader once phrased it, "everybody seems to be looking for the zipless fuck."  People arrive in the Los Angeles basin from all over the world, half expecting to meet Mr. or Ms. Wonderful in their first twenty minutes off the bus. Thereafter they expect to stroll off into a wonderful Pacific sunset, where it is mutually agreed that in five minutes this happy couple will be coupled in half of the positions described in the Kama sutra. 
In the 1970's there was a kernel of reality somewhere buried in these fantasies. Before the AIDS epidemic generally raised consciousness about venereal disease, casual coupling was certainly a major element of the Los Angeles life style. Somewhat more difficult than coupling, however, was the business of finding that Mr. or Ms. Wonderful, with whom one could fall in love. 
In the many square miles which make up the Southern Wonderland, I wondered at times if there was anyone who claimed to be happy. Married people seemed continually to be getting unmarried. Unmarried people seemed to change partners as often as commuters on a cross-town bus. When they weren't changing partners, they were shopping for a new job, a new religion, or a new recreational mind-bender. Uncomplicated people were generally assumed to lack same essential gland between their ears. If one was not a disciple of Dream World Hollywood, then you were probably engaged in the Search for Happiness, the Journey to Truth, or the Race for Relationship. If you did not engage in such pursuits, you were strictly a civilian -- sometimes called a "straight" -- who did not greatly count in the cultural economy of the region.
 At times, Los Angeles impressed me as a thousand square miles of lonely. There was a lot of freedom to find one's own calling there -- to do your own thing, to explore consciousness. But there seemed to be a terribly large number of natives who approached such activities essentially alone. The institutions and opportunities which might once have provided a meeting place for average, non-searching "normal" people, were absent or not working. 
People in this electric blender of a society seem to relocate rather often between houses and/or jobs. If you recognize the neighbor across the hall in your apartment building, you are doing well. Knowing that person well enough to send a birthday card is a rare treat. Church, you can write off. Who ever heard of a barn dance in metropolitan LA? People certainly get together in group therapy -- but it seems rare for a couple to glue together a relationship which existed before therapy, much less to build a new relationship from the fragments exposed in the therapy theater. The lonely hearts clubs do a roaring business among people who manage to be alone while walking in a crowd. So, what does that leave for the rest of us? For quite a large number during the 1970s, it left bars. 
If a guy wants to meet someone after work, you hesitate to invite the lady to dinner. This seems a little "intimate" for a first introduction. For some people, it is also too expensive (after all, you may be doing this several times each month, as you search the population for your perfect mate). So you compromise. You meet for a drink in a bar. Maybe later in the evening, you will decide that this stranger is nice enough to share supper with, or even to invite home. All too often, however, the evening is spent fencing with words over poorly made hors d' oeuvres and watered cocktails. 
The circulating wolves are shy. Nobody seems to have much to say, though they trade strokes and small talk. Those who leave together I quite often do so as strangers walking arm in arm. Despite the hunger of thousands of people for "real love" and "relationship", it is sad how many will continue as strangers even after sharing a bed for weeks or months. In the 1970s, we seemed to forget the art of friendship. Our forgetfulness showed in bars which overflowed. In more recent visits to Los Angeles, I have noted that such establishments did not lack business, despite the claims of various writers and columnists that the times have changed.
If one is not a heavy drinker -- as I am decidedly not -- this smoke filled environment quickly becomes "the pits". It is simply boring. So, one looks for some other way to meet people. Perhaps you take a course in psychic phenomena, or join a folk dancing club. Possibly, if you are a little more cautious, you turn to a less immediate forum for searching out connections. You read the personal ads in the several small-format singles newspapers which are widely distributed in this tinsel town. 
At the news stands of Babylon by the Sea, there is a little of something for every taste. For a dollar in change, you can find a newsletter on anything from swap meets to mate swapping. In the latter category you will find personal ads to curl your hair. Depending on the intended readership, these ads mayor may not include pictures. In California, the border between pornography and advertising is a rather broad and wavy line. 
After a few readings, you begin to pick up the code. "Liberal younger couple interested in sharing good times with single girl, 18 to 25" is probably a bisexual or homosexual pair, looking for a playmate to stroke and photograph. "Golden showers" signals a rather messy practice which seems to do something for a particular kind of masochist. 
After weeding out the essentially pornographic interests, the codes in the mainstream papers are a bit more subtle. "Good Christian woman" is probably a lady who has been raised to regard sex as a tainted duty which is performed only for the father of one's children, and then without enjoyment. "Pleasant, gentle man of many interests" may prove to be twenty or thirty pounds overweight. ''Highly developed, independent lady of 35" may prove to be a bit shop worn and cynical. A "family man" or "once-married gal interested in good times and serious relationship" is often desperate to find a supervisor for two or three small children. "Response guaranteed to inquiries including picture" indicates a person who has had troubles with truth in advertising. It is amazing how many self-perceived diamonds in the rough come in packages shaped like bowling pins. 
During my time in Los Angeles, I was disinclined to clutter my already crammed schedule with night courses whose primary purpose was to camouflage a search for relationship. By this time, I knew that I wanted eventually to meet and marry a woman of quality. I was beginning to be aware of how difficult it was to meet unattached women, particularly at work. Thus, on the recommendation of an acquaintance, I subscribed to a singles paper and responded to a few ads. I quickly learned that females who advertise in such outlets are usually inundated in replies. So I took my chances with an ad of my own. 
The add read something like this: ''Male, 33, six feet two inches, 180 pounds, Ph.D. engineer with wide interests: photography, art, country walking, gourmet cooking, music (detest hard rock), PEOPLE. To meet a self-affirming female person age 25-40 and explore caring relationship. I've lived enough to learn self respect and loved enough to want to love again. Tell me about your life and hopes. Correspond box A-XXX". 
The last sentence in the ad provided inquirers with a blind box number at the newspaper offices. The paper forwarded replies, after checking for pornography and commercial material. The twenty dollars which I invested paid handsome dividends in new acquaintances. Rates for similar advertisements, of course, may have increased since I was last active in this marketplace. 
I met people from a variety of conditions. Rarely did these people fully reflect the letters they sent in response to my ad, but rarely was I completely disappointed either. The first time the piece ran, I got inquiries from 31 people spread across two hundred miles of southern California geography. Thereafter, I was careful to indicate my locale. Of the initial group, half proved to live reasonably within reach. This half comprised a human zoo. 
A twenty-four year old lady I met was in training to become a telephone line person. She raced motorcycles as a hobby, and regarded men as a sideline. She shared my studio briefly as a model, and my bed as instructress in the subtler arts. When I introduced her to my military boss, the latter very nearly dropped his eyeballs on the floor. She was -- to say the least -- flamboyantly equipped and inclined. We parted company shortly after her second drunk driving conviction and shortly before she managed to tear the handle bars off a trail bike on a hill climb. She survived, but the bike did not. 
There was a roundly pleasant lady of 38 who was "into Scientology this year" and between lovers. She wanted to play in the sun, and needed a financier more than a friend. One pleasant but temporary interlude passed with a lady of about my own age, who was raising a sixteen year old daughter and trying to manage several pieces of real estate which she had received in a divorce settlement. She was quite attractive in her way. But her accommodation was just a bit too obvious. She was afraid of being used for her money, but even more afraid of growing old alone. It was not an easy time for her. 
 	After a few weeks of dating, she came to me to explain carefully that she had just encountered again, a man with whom she had once felt madly in love. She wanted to shoot for the moon again and hoped I would understand. I heard echoes of a time three years before, when I had talked with an intimate acquaintance of the growing attraction I felt for another woman. 
I met a sprinkling of middle-aged women with children, struggling to make ends meet financially and to reconnect to some variety of decent man. I felt at the time and continue to feel an abiding sympathy for these people. Many of them were ill equipped for the fast-paced, sex-centered dynamics of a world into which they found themselves involuntarily plunged. A few of these women I learned to regard as "the walking wounded of the sexual revolution". They were hurt people, deserted by men in whom they had invested an all-inclusive trust. The greatest betrayal of all was being forced to grow up suddenly, while struggling with heavy burdens. 
In some cases, I encountered women who were not only in pain, but actively hurtful to others. In a few connections, I was used as an instrument for less than obvious agendas, or became briefly a user of others. Though I was rarely disgraceful, I was undoubtedly at times very unrealistic and artificial in my search for the "perfect woman". I encountered others staggering around the landscape just as blindly as myself. 
One lady with whom I briefly bedded, proved rather un-fond of men. She had been embittered by a series of husbands and live-in lovers. Though I did not at first recognize the fact, she was basically looking for someone who wanted no more than a pretty escort. In return for dinners and trips, she was willing to offer sex as a consolation prize. An accomplished actress in bed, she disguised from me for several weeks, her basic rejection of loyal relationship. I was led to believe important emotions were developing between us. 
Only after I had begun to hope that we might become not only intimates but emotionally lovers, did she disillusion me in the harshest manner. She invited me to join her for dinner at her apartment one evening, and then asked me to leave early because she was expecting another intimate friend. Coming as a complete surprise, the experience was shattering. 
I fortunately had a quiet place into which to withdraw and lick my wounds. I spent several weekends puttering about my apartment, mounting photographs, making small cabinets, and hosting an occasional meal for colleagues from work. The calm and quiet which I had created in my hare, served to soothe my confusion and feelings of rejection. I wore my household as a second hide, hunched up my shoulders, and for a time let the world roll off an armored back. When I was ready to emerge again, I had healed. 
In this period, I came to appreciate more than ever before, the value of a home of my own. I had moved from Beegee's immediate vicinity, to another apartment complex closer to my work. My living room window faced Pacific sunsets, overlooking a quiet street lined with small apartments and older but well kept homes. A fountain trickled its music in a central courtyard beneath my kitchen windows. Neighbors came and went, but the group was older and more settled than in my earlier neighborhood. I rarely saw the retired woman who lived below me, or the landlord who occupied the large house which bordered a quarter of our courtyard. However, when we did cross paths, it was cordially. 
When I came home from work, it was to a space populated with small works of art, pictures, statues, books, and music. The light was good in the afternoon, and I spent many weekends framing photographic prints in my small workshop. A restaurant around the comer from my front door became such a frequent stop that I was on first-name basis with the family who ran the place. The local hardware dealer decided that I was a "regular" and recommended a less expensive outlet for picture glass. My mailman introduced his replacement when he took summer vacation. 
People I brought to this private place were for the most part few and special. One of the particular pains I had felt in parting from my actress was that she had been a visitor at my table. I had felt violated by her duplicity. Some of the others who sat for my suppers came to be better friends, a few for years thereafter. 
I brought home a contractor's representative for dinner after a long day of negotiations and fed him a supper made of the leftovers of a gourmet meal of days earlier. After three months, his wife hosted us to a carefully arranged dinner which cost her a day of anxiety, in response to his raving over my food. They corresponded at Christmas for years thereafter. An Air Force contracting specialist from my office came to talk of her impending marriage. I wrote much of her wedding ceremony and then prayed for her a year later as the optimism of her mid-fifties fell apart in a nasty divorce. A dynamic Air Force major and his wife were a few times my guests for summer salads and beefsteak, as we talked of world affairs, economics, and life in the military. They have continued to be fond friends and correspondents through fifteen years of changing circumstances. A young woman whom I met through my singles paper advertisement brought her fiancé to meet me. Several of my photographs hang on their walls. When their work took them to Canada, they continued to write. For a long time, they were somehow close, across thousands of miles. 
While I lived in Los Angeles, I was able to establish real connections to people, in spite of the alienated atmosphere which seemed so typical of the city. I struggled with my own demons, mastered some of my own boredom, and learned to constructively occupy my own time. I met many potential partners and survived disappointments with imperfect and sometimes hurtful people. I established my own space in the world for the first time. If I was not always happy, I was at least unhappy on my own terms. I came to value my privacy, but also to respect the part of my life which others might share in a common experience. Not long before leaving Los Angeles for another assignment, I met Anne and her children: the people who would become my family and for the next ten years, my best and most beloved teachers. 
You might say I worked the kinks out of my system. 
The product of these experiences is not a perfect individual or a paragon of virtue. But this individual seems to be a person who can reasonably be called an adult. Well past my fortieth birthday, I have learned to trust myself, to step off into the dark areas of my life and grope for whatever answers I need. I have learned that I am capable of coping with events and people, as life brings them to my door. I can take my share of lumps and go on loving and learning. 
Sufficiency, in the final analysis, is much of what I would ask of life. Combined with a sense of meaning and significance, constructive survivorship seems to be enough. 
So now we come to a pause. I have not told the reader all there is to know of my life; even of my life until the present moment. The interpretive art takes us only so far, and I do not know all there is to know about my history. I'm a little better prepared to speak of things which I think I know about "right now" -- this moment, this circumstance. Such thoughts are the stuff of the second part of this book.