All Is Not Forgotten by Wendy Walker

in the words. Men always use the word “come.” They use it routinely as though it were perfectly normal to talk about it that way. Come, cock, clit, ass, tits, pussy. Men are quite at ease with these terms. Women rarely know what words to use. They uniformly avoid the colloquial terms, but seem to find the clinical terms awkward as well. They usually pause and wait for me to rescue them. I have no problem finishing their thoughts and setting the appropriate boundaries for the conversation.
    Charlotte nodded. Yes. Not one.
    â€œAnd with Tom?”
    Almost always. At least when we used to have sex. It was somewhat regular before all this started. Maybe three times a week. I think that’s pretty healthy for a marriage as long as ours. Isn’t it?
    I nodded with a tilted head, not really agreeing but more taking a pass on the question. The health of their marriage was another topic altogether, and I wanted to stay focused on her affair with Bob.
    But I don’t enjoy it. I don’t know when that stopped. Years ago. There’s more to sex than the … you know. Maybe not for men. But for women, it’s more than that. The dynamic between us changed somehow. It felt mechanical. With Bob, God help me, I could close my eyes right now and imagine his hands on my face and actually get a shiver down my spine.
    This is where the conversation with Tammy Logan came rushing back.
    â€œSo what happens with Bob?”
    It’s just, oh … how can I describe this? I get excited and I want him. He’s larger than life, his personality. Have you ever met someone like that? Someone who just dominates? He can walk into a room and take it right over. He just has this energy. And when he turns that energy my way, when we’re alone, it’s so intense that I lose myself in him. It is so clear in those moments that he is the man and I am the woman in this very primal way. I feel like I’m almost too excited. Like I’ve moved beyond the normal physical … you know, climax to something bigger. It’s not like that with Tom. It feels awkward when I try to let go. When I try to feel that primal. It’s like I can’t feel him as a “man.” Charlotte used her fingers to make quotations around that word.
    And then I asked her the same question I asked Tammy. “But if you aren’t satisfied physically, then what you are getting from him is not sexual. It’s filling some other need. Is that what you’re saying?” They both had the same response.
    Yes. It fills a need. He’s like a drug and I’m an addict.
    Tammy started feeling nauseated about a month after Sean left. Her friends wanted her to have an abortion, but she couldn’t get herself to do it. She wasn’t against the idea on moral grounds. It was Sean, and the thought of him being with her, inside her, even though he was gone, even though she hardly knew him. She didn’t have to explain it to me. You would understand if you could meet him. I can’t do him justice with my words, and this is where the similarities between Bob Sullivan and Sean end.
    Tammy wrote to Sean and told him she was pregnant. A few weeks later, a small engagement ring was delivered to her office, where she worked as a dental assistant. That was all. Just the ring. She wrote him back a long letter, explaining that while she loved the gesture, it was not necessary, that they could work something out. He wrote back three words on a piece of plain paper. Yes or no? She answered right away. Yes.
    That is the kind of man Sean Logan is.
    Still, this was not a romantic love affair. Sean returned to marry Tammy and be with his young infant son, Philip. But his anxiety, and the behavior he used to self-medicate, were not conducive to marriage and fatherhood. He had no patience with his child. And by that I don’t mean that he lost his patience and was abusive. He just could not spend time with his family for