Free Love and Other Natural Disasters by Holly Shumas Page A

an
adult. Now try. Try right now." I watched in amazement as Luke screwed up
his little face in concentration, trying to summon his inner resources. Then to
me, "Maybe Luke could play in Jacob's room and you and I could talk
awhile?"
    Lil used to be an ER nurse. What
was happening with Jon and me wasn't even close to a crisis for her, something
I simultaneously appreciated and resented. "Let's give that a try," I
said.
    Lil and I were friends, but not
what I'd call close. I met her through Jacob. Luke and Jacob were, mostly, best
friends. They could both be headstrong, and every now and again, Jacob would
march into the kitchen—with Luke trailing behind—hollering that he didn't want
Luke coming over anymore, while Luke shouted that he didn't want to come over
anyway. According to Lil, this routine
was repeated at her house, only Luke was out in front. Lil and I had become
masters at mediation, and that was the common ground on which we'd forged a
friendship.
    But Lil and I were hardly kindred
spirits. She's the type of person who tells you the first time you're having
coffee I that her marriage ended because she was too sexually audacious,
someone who'd detail her latest conquest in whispered tones during a PTA
meeting. She was the only woman I knew who dabbled in the "Casual
Encounters" section of the Craigslist personals, the only woman who had
STD testing at least three times a year ("Whether I need it or not!"
she said cheerfully) despite buying her condoms in bulk at Costco. I
appreciated Lil's fearlessness, and that she was so completely herself in every
setting. But she wasn't my first choice of confidante.
    We sat down at the kitchen table.
It was funny, that we went to the kitchen instead of sitting on the living-room
couch, which was closer. It was like we just knew that women had been having
these sorts of conversations in I the kitchen since time immemorial.
    "Where's Jon?" she asked.
The directness of that opening was vintage Lil.
    "He's out with Jacob."
She continued to look at me, saying nothing. "He's staying with his
mother."
    "What did he do?" There
was nothing accusatory in her tone. She barely knew Jon, and she wouldn't have
been shocked if she knew him better; nothing men did surprised her. What I
admired about her was that she was matter-of-fact rather than bitter. She
thought women had to be prepared for certain realities when it came to men, and
the sooner they learned it, the better. "I wish I had a little girl,"
she'd said once. "Luke's great, but he's going to turn into a man no
matter what I tell him. But my daughter would turn into a woman who never, ever
let her self-esteem rest on a man."
    "He's been involved with this
woman Laney for a little over a year." Her name was like instant
indigestion. "She lives in Chicago. No sex, but he tells her everything.
Lots of e-mails and phone calls."
    Lil nodded. Without inflection, she
said, "That's bad."
    I felt a tsunami of gratitude. That
was all I'd wanted, someone to get that it wasn't a question of relativity. It
wasn't about whether sex would have been worse. This was just bad.
    "That's worse than sex,"
Lil said. "He's attached to her."
    I stared. I didn't want it to
actually be worse. "What do you mean?"
    "Well, sex can warp the mind.
And let's face it, sex with the same person can get boring. Sex after marriage
and a kid?" She waved a hand. "If he was having sex with this woman,
you could chalk the whole thing up to novelty. It could be that he was so
overcome by lust that he lost his mind for a while. You could even say he was
so hot for her that he mistook it for love, and once they go thinking it's
love, well, everything's fair game. But a year of e-mails and phone
calls—that's about his mind and his heart, not just his dick. Call me crazy,
but I always think the dick's preferable."
    I was dumbfounded. Finally I
stammered, "You really think it's worse?"
    "Oh, exponentially. Look, I
know sex. And I'd rather Have my man fucking someone else