re: The Adventures of Bette Porter and Sissee Gardner After Yale, (Part 8, Chapter 2)
PART 8: ORANGE GROVE, CALIFORNIA

Chapter 2

Our entire social life was circled around couples. Couples from the neighborhood. Couples from the police department and then couples from youth sports. It was in the latter group where I became attracted to women, one after another through the years all of which became emotional nightmares for me without, for the most part, sex. I tried to seduce them and lost their friendships instead. It always amazed me that Howie never found out.

He worked long and arduous hours. He was a very dedicated cop and by then he was promoted to sergeant, working a grave yard shift in the Uniform Division. It gave me a lot of spare time because if he was not working, he was sleeping or coaching youth sports.

I began writing a novel around that time that I called, “Attaboy! Attaboy!” an expose on youth sports. It was an expose because of the sexual conduct of the parents in as much as more than cheerleading was going on, on the sidelines. I knew because I was the main character in my book. When the story line turned to my affair with one of the coaches in Pop Warner, and then, unbeknown to that coach, an attempted affair with his wife, I knew I could never try to get it published. It would have destroyed my marriage as well as others. It was a challenge and I finished it but I never let anyone read it.

It was in 1994 that I went to work for a weekly newspaper that covered five Orange County cities but what it also did was open up new contacts that resulted in new conquests. One of the people I met on staff was an adventurous writer named Bay Harrod who was married and had two young sons. We became extremely close friends and while under the influence of pot one day, we began a sexual affair which continues to this day. Bay told me early on however that she did not want any , “emotional entanglements”. She wanted sex without feelings. It has been hard for me not to go there but perhaps that is why it has lasted so long and I at least have sexual gratification from a woman once in a while, with whom I can close my eyes and pretend that she is Bette.