As lovers, my three men could not be more different. Marco has the same selfishness in bed that he carries with him in everyday life. I dare say the loneliest I ever feel is when Marco’s inside me. It’s as if I don’t matter at all as he grunts toward his own pleasure.
Jason wants to learn, and so he follows my lead in all ways. I can envision some woman in the future thanking me for making Jason the lover he will become, but I don’t see myself ever saying that. He’s a work in progress and won’t be completed until well after we’re over.
Matthew’s a perfectionist in all things. I imagine he’s dedicated himself to his sexual technique the same way he told me how he worked on his golf swing or his Mandarin. As with everything else he’s attempted, Matthew is a master of his craft.
Like owning two dogs, two affairs aren’t much more trouble than one. In my case, juggling three men wasn’t difficult at all. All it took to keep Marco in the dark was to tell him that I was in rehearsal. He knows from prior times when I actually was prepping for a performance that it requires me to be at school until the early hours and unreachable, which means I can be anywhere, at any time, without giving rise to suspicion. And the truth is that MFA vocal students are always in rehearsal, but rarely do we perform for the public, so it’s a perfect alibi.
Jason doesn’t know there’s anyone else in my life. I told him that I needed to keep our relationship a secret because it violates the school’s policies, which prohibit sexual relations between students and teaching assistants. That was good enough for him.
Matthew knows about Marco, but he’s hardly in any position to complain that I share my bed with another man, given that he’s married. He doesn’t know about Jason, however. He likes the idea of cuckolding Marco, but if he knew I was comparing his sexual prowess to a twenty-one-year-old’s, I suspect that would be a different kettle of fish.
My venture, as the Eagles so aptly put it, to the cheating side of town, began in, of all places, a museum. I was at one of these benefits for the arts that the university makes grad students attend, staring at an out-of-focus photo of a topless woman, when Matthew walked up beside me and cocked his head at the blurry picture.
“I couldn’t already be this drunk, could I?” he said.
He was wearing torn jeans and a sweater with a leather jacket over it—and sporting a few days of scruff. I thought he might be an associate professor in the theater department, as he had that leading-man, “alpha” vibe about him. He was very handsome. Tall, sharp-featured, with a Roman nose and dark, curly hair.
“I think it’s the photographer who had a little too much,” I said.
“Good. For a minute, I thought I might be having a seizure. My name is Matthew.”
His stare froze me in his orbit. So intense that it blocked out everything else in my line of vision.
“Clare,” I said.
“So, are you an artist?” he asked.
“A singer, actually. And you?”
“Oh no.” He chuckled. “My only connection to the arts is as a lover of great beauty . . .”
Afterward, I told myself that it was just one of those things that happen, but I knew from the first words out of Matthew’s mouth that his goal was to get me into bed. When I chose to keep talking to him about the photo, it was because that’s what I wanted too, which explains how we ended up at the Four Seasons hotel later that night.
Of course, I knew that his taking me to a hotel meant he was, at the very least, in a relationship. During our second rendezvous, which took place a few days later, I learned he was married. At a different point in my life, that would have been a deal-breaker, but at the time, I found it something of a selling point. After all, I had a live-in boyfriend, and Matthew’s being attached meant the boundary lines of our relationship would be clearly demarcated.
Our normal routine is to meet on Tuesdays, a day that Matthew chose. I don’t know why he favors it. Probably because his wife is out that night, although he’s never said that to me. I imagine she takes a class. French cooking, maybe. Or a foreign language. Italian, if I had to guess.
Our sessions are normally three-act affairs. Then, as if he has an internal clock, at eleven he leans over to the nightstand to check his watch. It’s a Patek Philippe chronograph, because of course Matthew wears a $50,000 timepiece. Then he showers and is usually out the door by 11:15, 11:30 at the latest. I assume that’s because he has a midnight curfew. He always suggests that I stay the night and order room service for breakfast, even though he knows full well that someone is waiting for me at home too. The moment Matthew leaves, I shower and am back in my apartment by midnight.
Sometimes I add up the hours Matthew and I have been together. Six hours a week, four weeks. Twenty-four hours. Less time than Marco and I spend together every weekend, and yet the two time spans bear no similarity beyond the quantitative.
Matthew and I are completely consumed with each other during every second we’re together. We’re either having sex or talking after sex, which is just as intimate an activity. Sometimes we talk about our lives, the meaning of love, mistakes we wish we could correct. But other times it’s light—movies, television, music, and books. It’s not uncommon for him to have read something I’ve mentioned from the week before. Or he’ll binge-watch some television show I was already midway through so we can discuss the most recent episode.
As much as I acknowledge that I’m a romantic, I’m not totally without self-awareness. I know Matthew and I exist outside the rules of the real world, where the monotony of daily existence can overwhelm even the strongest relationships. But I liken our affair to being on vacation. You might laugh a little more and have better sex than you do when you’re home, but if all you do is have great sex and laugh, that’s got to bode well for your life back in reality too.
If I were halfway normal, I would find one affair—with my soul mate—to be enough complication in my life. But two months ago, Jason appeared during my office hours to discuss the progress he was making on a term paper. I hadn’t really noticed him in class up to that point. He’s attractive enough, tall and lanky, with sandy hair, a pleasant smile, and kind eyes, but nothing about him—looks or personality—is particularly memorable. He’s the very epitome of the kind of guy who blends into the background.
He was my last appointment of the day, and I surprised myself when I suggested that we continue our discussion about the finer points of Rodgers and Hammerstein at the Starbucks on MacDougal. After coffee came dinner at some taco place, with a pitcher of frozen margaritas that reminded me of my own undergraduate days. Two hours later, we were back at his place.