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It was painful not to tell the heart of the story, of what I had felt about Steve, Ushi, Heather, and how Tony came up with that crazy dream of a nudist beach project. It involved a taboo. Of course, Steve's logic had broken the taboo, but could I ever make Sylvia, or anyone else, understand what I didn't fully understand myself?
Oh, Steve had made it sound so easy. For him it had been easy. He grew up with the idea for years. But it hadn't been like that for me. One thing I learned from him: one cannot be dishonest in science. No one can ride on the coattail of another's work and hope to succeed. I had to move by my own steam, a seemingly hopeless task.
By some miracle, I survived the grand party without spilling one wrong word. I had in mind to put it all on the table right there and then and ask, "aren't we all human beings? Why can't we deal with one-another as human beings? Why can't we lay down the Jewish jarmulka that we all wear, or the Islamic hijab, or the burka, or whatever isolating symbol we hide behind in so many ways? Why can't we begin to regard one-another as human beings, even sexually? Why must every woman, other than 'our own' be regarded as a creature from Mars, or from another world, which would make it a crime to embrace her even as one would cherish a rose?"
As it was, I didn't say these things. It seemed impossible to say them. It wasn't that I had ever dared to cross swords with the demands of marriage before. Once had I invited a girl for lunch that I had admired in the office. It had taken me weeks just to get my nerve up to ask. I was scared, God knows of what. And then, during the week until the great event took place, oh God! These had been days of being alive, of exuberant feelings, of having the world at one's feet. I had been proud of having the opportunity to have lunch with that girl. Then, when Sylvia asked in the evening about how my day had been, I didn't deny for a second that I have had lunch with a lady. This openness towards her hadn't destroyed anything. Only now, the situation was different. Sex had made everything different. The myth about sex was too powerful for me to risk letting Sylvia to be harmed by it. I simply couldn't. And so the old lye was reasserted that we are not primarily human beings after all.
It's not that Sylvia was old fashioned in her attitude to life. She had close business associations with some exceptional men, beautiful people, open, whom I count myself lucky to know. But these associations would never have included sex, as if sex was something apart from life. It seems to shift living unto a different level that nobody seems to fully understand, which people are afraid of.
In the days that followed my return from Key West, all that I could think of was that Sylvia would inevitably get hurt if I didn't sort this thing out, and bring what happened there, into the open. But how could this be done? It was hard enough to look her in the eye, knowing deep within myself that I had fallen in love with four other women in three weeks. To say this out loud was unthinkable!
Still, the logic was imperative. It had to be said. However, it had to be said in a scientific way. It became apparent that there was a parallel between our marriage and the world's political marriages, and between sex and whatever related deeply to a person's identity as a human being in the political sphere. No, to say that this would never work wasn't right. It had to work. In this respect, whatever demands my affair with Heather had thrust into the open, would have to be researched, faced, and be resolved, not hidden. Whatever pain this would bring, would have to be endured. Whatever effort would be required, would have to be expended.
I had become a diplomat, because I had felt that our being able to live together as human beings in this world, was foundational to staying alive in the nuclear age. Now, all of a sudden, I couldn't meet the simplest challenge myself. The sacrifice that I wasn't prepared to make, was to be responsible for seeing Sylvia in tears. But why should she be in tears? There had to be a way to avoid that.
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