(Anne and Joe are married for 30 years) Anne was 21 in 1960 and she is 81 now. Joe was 23 in 1960 and he is 93 now)
I am Joe Goldberg. I have two prized possessions in my life: my tongue wagging Autobiography and this Villa converted into a nursing home for Anne. I am a Nonagenarian now, spending my last days in my Seabrook Villa. Doctors have asked me not to overexert as I had a heart attack in the past. I spend most of my time reading books and composing poems. Presently I am reading out my Autobiography to an old woman who has senile dementia with acute memory loss. The gorgeous old lady who I am reading out this fascinating story to was my Darling Wife once upon a time. I was an impecunious but poetic country boy, and this affluent Octogenarian patient, who is listening to my story was a city girl, Anne Hamilton who loved me to the moon and back. Little by little, I am unfolding a lumber-scented summertime we spent at Seabrook. We were best friends, neighbors, husband and wife, and then a happily divorced couple. Due to Alzheimer’s, she cannot remember our story and I am helping her recall. Anne is listening to my Autobiography with rapt attention as I proceed.
In the late 1960s, a wealthy twenty-year-old Anne Hamilton would often spend summer vacation at Seabrook (South Carolina) with me. My father, Noah Goldberg was a Professor of American Literature in a local college, while Anne’s parents were Business Tycoons who often went to London to see the Queen at Buckingham Palace. One day, I brought Anne to an ancient dump house, right next to her Palatial mansion in South Carolina, and mentioned to her that he would buy it, refurbish it and be her neighbor one day. Anne tried to get intimate with me on many an occasion, but I rejected her advances saying I did not believe in kissing a girl before marriage. So, Anne thought very highly of my values. Anne’s parents did not approve of the friendship blossoming between us since I belonged to another social class, and they were keen on shifting to Louisville for an important assignment. Anne met me before leaving and I gave her the most beautiful memory, never to part with. I took her on a boating date at the Seabrook Island, located less than 30 minutes from historic Charleston, South Carolina. Well treed and edged by nearly four miles of ocean and riverfront beaches, Seabrook Island was home to a spectacular range of wildlife and a thriving ecosystem. I was a nature lover and Anne was totally fed up with dining at fine dining restaurants, attending expensive concerts and balls, wearing hats, applying make – up and participating in conversations replete with affectation. She enjoyed the feel of rural life and loved to paint pictures. I introduced her to countryside hobbies like climbing trees, fishing, swinging in the woods and feeding birds and beasts. She despised cars, jets and luxurious lifestyles, and bodyguards. She enjoyed rowing with me and searched for beautiful things in nature. My mother was extremely fond of Anne and thought of her to be a simple girl, but she was not aware of my sexual orientation. Someone in the Church talked about Homosexuality and she suddenly became unconscious. When Anne went to Louiseville, she wrote to me saying she had taken admission to a Nursing College. I wrote 365 letters to Anne, but her mother Christina Hamilton never delivered them to her daughter. Anne assumed that I forgot her completely and our friendship was over. I had got into the habit of sharing every secret with Anne. So, I serenaded to her through letters and poems to which I got no response. I had confided in her, saying I was a Gay nerd who was seeing a local worker called Dick Smasher. When my letters failed to evoke any response, I assumed that Anne was prejudiced against my sexual orientation and wished to discontinue the friendship.
Anne started serving the wounded soldiers at a Military Hospital in Louisville. She was too busy to write and I too stopped writing to her as she had never replied. Anne was fascinated with Army Officers, clad in their dynamic uniforms. She met an injured soldier, Benjamin Wilson in the hospital, who fell in love with her. After recuperating completely, he invited Anne’s family for a scrumptious dinner. Benjamin had an illuminating personality and Anne’s parents loved his gait and manners. He had an unfailing sense of wit and an irrepressible sense of humor. Benjamin proposed to Anne and the charming lass fell prey to his charms. She asked, “Ben, aren’t you overestimating my parents’ affection for you?” Benjamin replied, “I am Chivalrous like a Knight in shining armor and a true Patriot. I cannot call my eyes off you. Will you marry me?” The wealthy and handsome Army Officer proposed to Anne and stole her heart. He gifted her a solitaire and soon their engagement was announced. Anne wished to invite her long-lost Best Friend, Joe Goldberg for her engagement but preparations kept her busy and she totally forgot about it. In the meanwhile, I became a Business Magnate and started Agro Tourism activities in Seabrook and my aim of buying a Villa next to Anne’s Mansion turned into reality. I thought of auctioning the Villa and put an ad in the newspaper along with my picture. Anne accidentally saw the ad in the newspaper and got nostalgic. She asked Benjamin if she could visit Seabrook before her marriage to catch up with old friends and revel in the reminiscences of the past. Benjamin replied in the affirmative.
Presently Anne has taken a little break. She needs to take her medicines and take a siesta for a while. Anne is absolutely loving the story which I am reading out to her. She is totally engrossed in the riveting story and says, “I think that boy sounds familiar to me and I think I know the girl as well.” She asked the story reader to continue reading. “What happened next? Why did you stop? I want to know, who did the girl eventually choose? Did she ever get to meet her Best Friend, Joe?”
I continued reading. Anne felt divided between her first love and her commitment to Benjamin. She went to Seabrook and was once again mesmerized to see the ancient trash house converted into a bewitchingly beautiful Villa. She surprised me with her visit and gifted me a dozen paintings made my her.
The 200-year-old home that I restored for her made her realize that she had feelings for me and she was compelled to choose between her fiancé and her first love. Dick Smasher, my Gay Partner paid a visit to meet Anne and passed waspish comments on her lavish lifestyle. Anne’s visit did not go well with him. But my Mom, Romona Goldberg looked the happiest. She had negative views of gay people and showed high levels of psychoticism and inappropriate coping mechanisms when she got introduced to certain gay nerds. She would faint, overreact and curse whenever she spotted gay couples snuggling and cuddling in the woods. Due to this reason, I could never take my mother into confidence and convey the naked truth about my sexual orientation. Her visceral negative reaction to gays and lesbians often made me feel that she would never accept a same-sex partner entering my life. I did not depend on anybody for validation. For quite some time, I ignored my Mom’s impulsive actions and stubborn denial of a genuine problem. Homophobia was a “culture-induced disease,” and Mom’s personality traits probably interplayed with factors like religion and conservative values. She grew up in a staunch Roman Catholic family and despised same-sex relationships. One day she caught me with Dick Smasher and escaped a massive heart attack. She just fell flat to the ground, pretended to die, and asked me to fulfill her last wish of tying the knot with Anne Hamilton who was visiting Seabrook at that time. Anne and I had a memorable time tasting the delicious sunlight every morning, farming and cultivating vegetables during the day – time, and rowing towards the swans in the evening. Anne was in the seventh heaven of delight. Benjamin visited her one day and came to pick her up for her surprise birthday party but Anne returned his diamond ring and said “I am sorry, I cannot break up with Joe. I spent sleepless nights when I shifted to Lousiville and saw him in you when you proposed to me. But a visit to Seabrook opened my eyes and here I am. I am feeling guilty for not keeping the word. I am not bitter anymore because what Joe and I have is real and what you and I have is an illusion.”
Benjamin had tears in his eyes. He felt shattered, dumped, and cheated. Yet he said, “If in some distant place in the future, we see each other in our new lives, I will remind you of the moments we spent in the hospital. The place where we first met. You could heal my wounds then but you cannot heal my wounds now as they are invisible.” This conversation took place in my absence otherwise I would not have stopped Anne. I would have told her that I was gay and couldn’t keep her happy. Anne told me that she sent Benjamin away and made up her mind to settle in Seabrook permanently in her old house, next to my newly furbished Villa. Anne asked me “Why didn’t you ever write to me?” I replied, “Anne, I wrote letters every day, in fact, I wrote 365 letters in a year and sent you pictures of the Villa under construction and my poeticized friendship with Smasher.”
Anne called up her mother and reprimanded her for hiding all the letters from her. Her mother replied, “Joe Goldberg is trash. A petty, sundry boy. Scum of the earth. He is not right for you. Come back and tie the knot with Benjamin.” Anne hung up the phone and said, “I am marrying Joe Goldberg this weekend.”
I did not know all this. Anne confided in my Mom and conveyed her final decision. She caught hold of me in the Church and said, “I may not live for too long. I want to see the two of you married.” Well, I knew it was downright emotional blackmail but Mom was always an apple of my eye, so, I ended up making her happy by keeping my sexuality under wraps and marrying my Best Friend, Anne.
Anne loved me and found me awfully cute and adorable but she did not realize how and when Cupid flew in the wrong direction, shot the arrow without looking, and hit the wrong person. This was the story of Anne Hamilton’s unrequited love. Anne formed a Utopian image of her ideal partner. She never serenaded any man except for me.
I never showed signs of being interested in any girl for sex but Anne felt strongly for me. She thought of me to be shy and reserved. I was horribly terrified but I accepted the proposal and ensured that Anne had an unforgettable time. I made a ring for her out of leaves and flowers. She thought it was more precious than the Solitaire she wore some time ago. I could not gather the courage to tell her that I was gay. She eagerly waited to be kissed under the stars as the sparkling waves touched the trembling mermaid’s bosom. I rejected her erotic advances and said, “I abhorred it before marriage.” The romantic rejection left her with an emotional scar but she handled it with grace. She was so used to my companionship that she could never imagine her relationship with me to be a one-sided one. She would often bake cakes for me and send me flowers every single day. As they say, unrequited love puts on blinders. I could never give Anne what she wanted and for Dick Smasher, I was the only Sweetheart on the planet. Dick cried, howled, and abused me for stabbing him in the back. Anne convinced herself thinking that I was a conservative man who thought of kissing a girl before marriage to be blasphemous and outrageously inappropriate. Anne had my heart and I couldn’t disappoint her. I met Dick in the woods and promised him that I would never break up with him. But we homosexuals, Joe Goldberg and Dick Smasher temporarily bid adieu and played the sacrificial role to avoid all sorts of eye-ball rolling questions.
Anne and I had a showy wedding during which we exchanged mismatched vows. I very well knew that I could never make Anne completely happy and satisfied due to my hidden alternate sexuality. However, it rightly said, “What can’t be cured has to be endured with a smile.” Anne was on cloud nine.
At this time, the Octogenarian Anne started raving and ranting in the midst of the story. “I will kill you! You are a cheater, a criminal, a villain, a knave, and a giant monster! You ruined Anne’s life. How dare you jeopardize Anne’s life?” The nurses arrived and calmed down Anne with tranquilizers. Anne was beginning to recall the story but she couldn’t gather that the Protagonist of the story, Anne was herself. It was the story of her life. Anne asked me to continue the story when the effect of drugs minimized. She dressed up and sat by the fireside to listen to the rest of the story. “I wish to know what happened after marriage? Were they happy together?”
I read out,
Anne and I chose Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, Buxton, Chimney Rock, Cades Cove – Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Bryson City, Pisgah National Forest, Asheville, Jockey’s Ridge, Nag’s Head, Goose Creek State Park, Washington. Cape Fear Riverfront, Wilmington as our honeymoon destination. Nature did not complement our moods and emotions. A bikini-clad Anne Goldberg put on tantalizing shades of lip gloss and put in laborious efforts to arouse me but to no avail. I tried my best to co-operate with her. Poor thing! She had to buy lubrication gels as she would dry up immediately and I would sweat like a pig, trying to hold on to my erection somehow. She had very painful sexual intercourse due to my anal preferences. I barely gave her eight seconds of sex which was like obliging her anyhow by fulfilling my marital duties. Her disastrous honeymoon broke her hopelessly romantic slumber and armored her for a battle called marriage to a partially impotent person. I hated the tag “impotent” but I did not carry it for too long and managed to get Anne pregnant.
Anne was seven months pregnant when she misconstrued that I had used her for procreative purposes. It was heartbreaking for her to discover that I never loved her romantically. We were Best Friends and hugged each other often. But after marriage, she realized, “Love was gravel blind and marriage was an eye-opener.”
I was a confirmed homosexual who had forcefully got into a heterosexual marriage to avoid being stigmatized. Anne caught me frolicking with Dick Smasher who was no less than a dimwit to Anne. He was effeminate who wore floral prints and pastels on our gay dates. Anne thought, he looked repulsive in his quirky attire. She must have felt like pulling out Dick’s dick on many an occasion as she opened my cupboard and found an album full of my half-naked pictures with Dick Smasher. Anne got up with a jerk one night and said, “I was nauseated and odious.”
She very well knew that our marriage was an unsatisfying and oppressive component of her life. I told her plainly and honestly that I had absolutely no intention of hoodwinking her. I told her that he mentioned his sexual orientation clearly in his letters which never reached her. Anne asked her mother to send the letters to her. She unsealed all the letters at the weekend and read each one at length. Anne uttered a loud cry saying, “I rejected Benjamin’s love for a boy who’s a gay nerd but he expects me to understand and respect his sexual orientation because I am his best friend.”
I miserably failed to satisfy Anne sexually, but I was consistent in my love for Smasher. I felt contented, fulfilled, and pleased when I was alone with him. He was a complete intellectual bankrupt but aggressive in bed. His frenzy was violent enough to harm Anne. Way before accumulating Anne’s hostility, he would collapse into self-pity.
Anne and I would socialize a lot, attend funfairs, laugh uproariously, and shouted out loud on the maddening Giant Wheel, Tora Tora, and Columbus. Dick Smasher would want to join us everywhere but Anne would throw him out of the plans, calling him an asshole. Anne and I went to the circus, watched old English classics, loved music and concerts. We had a great deal in common except for sexual compatibility.
One thing was very much in my favor. I was not incapable of fathering a son. For a very long time, I pretended to be a heterosexual and sacrificed my sexual orientation while making babies with Anne. Smasher would pass salacious, crude, vulgar, offensive, indecorous, and unwholesome comments on Anne only when he was heavily drunk. Anne once hit him with a stick and threatened to castrate him. I was constantly under Anne’s microscope. Sophisticated people living in our Society heard our fights and tempers soaring. I asked Dick not to enter my society but the fellow never listened. He thought I met him only as per convenience and ignored him by producing lame excuses.
I vividly remember the orphan nights spent by Anne. The nights refer to her empty bed and her unfulfilled lubricious desires. Many times, I accused Anne of hypersexuality as her sexual behavior drove me aggressively mad. I was certainly not indecent or morally depraved but no one in my family understood what I was going through. I know, I should have faced the truth about myself that I had always been gay. By accepting the wedding proposal, I was pretending to dwell in my straight nature. It became clearer and clearer to Anne that I was gay, no matter how hard I tried not to be. I constantly had a lot of fear of being found out, even though I never attempted to act on my desires. I thought I was doomed to be living a life of secrecy and frustration. Well, marrying Anne had certain advantages. She was not only my wife but my Best friend who understood me but we never talked about sex.
I certainly did not want my marriage to fall apart. People in the twenty-first century are vocal about their relationships. Now there are gay liberation organizations that support gay rights and parade the couples in pink. In those days, there were no communities and no one openly dared to declare his / her sexual orientation in public.
I was married for more than a decade and Anne had been very kind to me. She had not divorced me but she had been immeasurably deprived. I had some guilt, not for my sexuality, but for having tied up to Anne for all those combined years, binding her to bear my child when I knew she never resented me for my cowardly behavior over all those years of my youth and young adulthood, as I hid myself from detection. I had wasted the best years of Anne’s life.
My mismanagement of sexual identity was one bad, chicken-shit decision. Yet I looked at the positive side of my marriage and confessed that there was nothing more precious than being a dad to my beautiful, smart, and loving son. My gay partner, Dick Smasher could not beget me a child. Anne literally tolerated me and continued to be supportive and never once asked me to change and “straighten” up. I was a committed to my relationship with Dick Smasher but we had different perspectives and plans in life. I could never abandon Anne and Peterkin, my kid. Dick Smasher was an orphan who had no plans of endorsing a fake version of heterosexuality to please society. He was loyal to me. Anne and Smasher couldn’t stand each other. Anne stood like a fortress and tried to turn my dark days into bright new ones by going out of the way to make me happy. She put in extraordinary efforts to keep the family together. I was not always insensitive and callous. I was there for her too whenever she was heartbroken and jaded. I enjoyed her company and missed her when she went to meet her parents leaving my Peterkin behind.
Anne and I slept together and make an attempt to have sex, exactly five years after having Peterkin. It was really awkward. She was patient and didn’t back away. She wanted to build a family and have another child with me. I wished to fulfill my duties and vows as a husband. My sex life with her was not active and as I was not sexually attracted to her. I met Dick Smasher often and that was the only thing that anguished Anne’s soul. But of all the titles, I was privileged to be called “Dad” which was by far the best.
The silver-haired Anne found herself immersed in the strangely alluring fairy tale of the young ardent lovers’ highs and lows as if my manuscript possessed the unfathomable power to penetrate the opaque clouds that shrouded her sad soul. What was I trying to convey? Are all summertime idylls doomed to fail? Anne finally identified herself as the Main Protagonist of the story and asked me, “How are my children doing? Peterkin! my Peterkin and my Catherine? Where are they? Do tell them that I love them.”
I was successful in helping Anne recall our past. I told her “We have two children. They are married and well settled in New York City. Peterkin has two children while Catherine is in the family way. They will see us tomorrow.”
Anne said “That’s wonderful! But you must complete the story. You must never leave stories and conversations unfinished. Remind me of all the good times and bad times we had.”
And I continued.
I used to go out to gay bars and dance and objectify the hot men together. I lived my best life….then my daughter was born and something flipped…Anne could no longer handle my sexuality. I thought we coped well and everything was still good…being with Anne felt like home…sex became boring but it still happened …years went by…I loved my life, all aspects of it. Then the shit hit the fan. Anne was exhausted. We stayed married for thirty years. I held onto the hope she’d change…knowing it was foolish. We got divorced then after thirty years of marriage. Anne romanticized our relationship and regretted our marriage…I never ditched Dick Smasher and she never contemplated having an extramarital affair. I was 53 when we were divorced. Anne stayed with the kids and I transferred our Villa in her name. I shifted to Dick Smasher’s apartment who tried his best to look after me, but he wasn’t as good as Anne. I missed Anne and Kids. But I kept convincing myself that a gay man could be married to a woman and still be happy. Smasher used a foul invective and portrayed Anne in a negative light. He called her a whore for cheating on me and accused her of moral turpitude. One day he told me that she spotted her with her Therapist in a coffee shop. I couldn’t be happier. I wanted her to live her life to the lees.
According to research, males are linguistically expounded in terms of their virility and sexual prowess while women are defined as the sexual objects of men’s desire. Thus¸ the androcentric language used by Smasher could not escape the negative representation of Anne. Smasher was a Misogynist. Anne was innocent. It was I who was not ready to face the social consequences. Anne’s behavior towards my gay partner Dick Smasher was always repellent, nauseating, sickening, and abominable. It was very clear to her that Smasher had come to smash her mixed-orientation marriage. A mixed-oriented marriage is a disastrous kind of marriage, wherein, one person is heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or asexual while the other is of a different sexual orientation.
The Octogenarian Anne got up from her chair the moment I narrated this part of the Story. She said “Where’s Smasher? I want to throttle him to death! Where’s the scoundrel?” I replied to Anne that she couldn’t kill a dead person. Smasher died a year ago. Anne looked at me and suddenly smothered me with kisses, saying I was a good husband. She asked “You must publish this book in order to show the pains and pangs of a mixed-oriented marriage. It is important for you to show how heterosexual wives of homosexual men feel when their husbands keep their sexual orientation under wraps.”
It will certainly help the readers. What more did you write? Read it to me.”
I went ahead.
My wife Anne felt deceived and cheated, traumatized, crushed, flabbergasted, pained, and ravaged after learning the truth. She put up with it for a very long time. However, she felt isolated, bereft, desolate, and miserable. She battled with despondency and disconsolation. Anne’s plight, her suffering, oppression, and her disordered psychic or behavioral state resulted from acute irritability, anxiety, mental or emotional stress. Her trauma and harassment can be compared to that of any other heterosexual wife of a homosexual husband who is penalized for no fault of hers. She left me out of sexual frustration and left me to grapple with Dick’s tempestuous misogyny. Anne stayed with me for thirty years but then appeared to be doleful, woebegone, crestfallen, and dejected. Then she met Bonnie Kaye, a researcher, specialized in aiding the mentally ailing wives of homosexual husbands. Bonnie, who herself underwent the trauma of a fractured marriage and heartbroken relationships was helping out women who had mixed-orientation marriages. My Homosexuality became an unanticipated reason for the demise of Anne’s marriage, our marriage. There was an enormous layer of thoughts and emotions to contend with. It was quite an uphill task for Anne to realize that the person who married her was not the person she met and entered the wedlock with. This was quite devastating for her, whose emotional and physical needs could not be met anymore. Often there was an accompanying sentiment of deceit, hurt, disloyalty, and infidelity, and perhaps annoyance, vexation, and rage at having been cheated and betrayed. Anne felt petrified with the fact that her body was being used to produce children by an unforgivable lifestyle lie. She would have stayed back if I had promised to abandon Dick. But Dick and I were thick and constant and instead of exposing our daughter to my sexual orientation, she preferred to leave. Anne went through a wide range of emotions from shame, guilt, kids’ responsibility, and much more. It made her ponder and wonder if I was ever really attracted to her sexually. She must have asked me this question a thousand times while we were planning our second daughter, strictly abiding by the ovulation calendar.
I was definitely not a bisexual but I could not keep myself chaste homosexually and heterosexually. I became a “hostile oppressor” and Anne became the “oppressed.” My inability to love and make love made me seem weak and hopeless to her. It resulted in a one-way emotional relationship that has no future. She observed fidelity to me as far as she could and as long as she could, but when this loyalty was mocked at when this loyalty was disrespected, she was bound to drift to another man. Her therapist pointedly concluded that her strength as a woman lay in refusing the limits of marriage.
Her intelligence and ambition in business¸ her single mindedness¸ her love for the children and later on a passion for the Therapist Dr. Gabriel D Cruz are all admirable. She was neither selfish nor ignominious as she took up cudgels against me reluctantly. Her life is a story of anguish and pain. Feminists would find her transgression exciting and not entirely iniquitous. I want Anne to be known as a progressive figure and model for women because of her refusal of all that simpering. I want her to be celebrated as an icon of resistance’. I want her to be regarded as a source of potential strength and power rather than a source of weakness. Anne demonstrated her wifely forgiveness and loved me more than I actually deserved. She retained her dignity.
At this time, my eighty – year old woman is not willing to let go of my hand. She says, “You are a marvelous author! You have put me on a pedestal. What have I done to deserve this adulation? I have been so unkind and mean-spirited. Yet you tried to understand things from my perspective. I love you to bits. May your tribe increase! Read further. I am totally in awe of your writing.”
I took a little break and started reading.
Anne would continue to be an inspiration who would inspire a common lot of women and bring them to their senses as well as to their meaning in History. She taught women that they need to deconstruct their socially constructed “feminine” identity. They need to speak out and give their testimony. Anne’s identity was built out of pain, suffering, and experience. Her desire was repressed or misrepresented in a phallocentric society. As a homosexual, my behavior towards Anne was totally unforgivable, unjustifiable, indefensible, unpardonable, inexcusable, reprehensible, outrageous, despicable, contemptible, and disgraceful. Like a patriarchal despot, my Gay Partner, Dick Smasher rebuked her for being too intimate with her Therapist. Smasher was a man given to outbursts of emotional violence and ungovernable passion, absolutely devoid of intelligence.
I am deeply grateful to Bonnie Kaye and I deeply appreciate her book Why Gay Men Marry Straight Women. I found her number from Google and asked her,
“Is there any way to definitely know if husbands are gay before the marriage?
She says, “there is only one sure way to know that, and that is if the man is honest enough.” I said to myself: “Joe Goldberg, you weren’t honest enough to confess your love for Smasher before or after marriage. Since men turning gay after marriage is a rare case, there are certain behavior patterns that could be identified as evidence, if they have resorted to homosexuality.”
Bonnie was so right! I found Anne’s advances towards me, odd and obscure. She informed Anne that “a gay husband seems to be suffering from erectile dysfunction of sorts and finds it very difficult to be sexually aroused. He gets turned-off by a normal sexual activity and unsparingly accuses his wife of being sexually frustrated, oversexed, and aggressive when she has normal and healthy sexual needs and desires. The gay husband does not look for erotic pleasures in a relationship with the opposite sex. He saves his energy only for his homosexual partner and releases his hormones only after mating with him. His Oxytocin levels get a boost only when he has sex with his gay lover.”
For sure, Bonnie Kaye would influence women like Anne in getting divorced. There won’t be any silent sufferers like Anne, in the future. I had serious ED issues when it came to Anne and it was not easy for me to stand up and salute her. I got turned off by her foreplay and I found her oversexed and aggressive while making love. I never looked for carnal pleasures in marriage. I reserved my energies for Smasher who released all the feel-good hormones in my body. Anne certainly experienced brutal treatment from me on many an occasion. Unfortunately, my sex with her appeared to be rehearsed, mechanical rather than a passionate union of two souls. My activity lacked foreplay and after – play which Anne seemed to enjoy a lot. The very fact that I had two children shows that we had some amount of sexual activity only for the sake of reproduction. I claimed to be feeling “depressed” due to my lack of sexual desire for her. I would display mood swings quite often and refrain from granting her, adequate attention. I would often gulp sexual performance enhancers such as Viagra or Cialis to avoid being labeled as impotent. However, they did not make any effort to excite Anne. I mercilessly asked Anne to use sex inducers and sex toys on me because I wanted my prostate stimulated.
Anne started sobbing as I read further. She blamed herself for rupturing the marital bond. I consoled her and put her off to sleep as the credit given to her was too overwhelming for her. She said “Joe, I want you to read out the concluding part to me tomorrow morning. I am feeling much better. I have recalled everything. I can never thank you enough, Darling.”
The next morning, I read out the remaining part of our story to Anne. She listened to me patiently and carefully while sipping coffee.
I started reading further.
I am a common man fighting for gay rights. No Gay Man has the right to be unjust to his female partner by faking his affections towards her or giving her a raw deal. Kaye rightly told me that “the condemnatory behavior of a homoerotic husband compels him to delete all the cookies and erase the computer history on a regular basis. When the wife checks his phone, she is likely to find gay porn and pop-ups of gay pornography, while he would claim he never watched all that out of curiosity or interest.”
I made Anne feel “trapped” in the marriage. When Anne caught me writing love letters to Smasher, I suddenly became beauty conscious, frequently visited gay bars and salons claiming to frequent those places to meet Smasher. My ego boosted up when I received compliments from him.
In Kaye’s words, “Some men have sexual activity with their wives for many years because of their emotional need to prove they are straight and they do love their wives. But some of those men also fantasize about other men in order to perform with their wives.” Kaye asks women to believe in their sixth sense and follow their instincts guiltlessly. Women who have straight husbands do not come for counseling thinking that their husbands are gay. Women can sense it immediately when something is wrong in a relationship.
Well, Anne was very kind to me. Statistics say that over 50% of gay husbands are never honest with their wives; in fact, they run away from reality. They never tell them the truth about why the marriage is not working. They often turn the tables and make the wives think that women tend to imagine things even when they have enough proof to produce. I had an opportunity to meet Carolyn Moos, the renowned basketball star who was engaged to Jason Collins. Collins announced her misery and dismay on television and Sports Illustrated as well. Her announcement came as a thunderbolt to many people. Carolyn handled the media’s attention and intrusiveness with grace and maturity. Carolyn said, “I had no idea why. We had planned to have children, build a family. Nearly four years later, I got my answer. My former fiancé, Jason Collins. announced last spring in Sports Illustrated that he is gay.’
Gays have every right to fulfill their homosexual desires, but there is no reason why women like Anne should save their marriages. They too have every right to satisfy their emotional needs and carnal pleasures. Anne asked for Champagne as I read these power-loaded paragraphs. We raised a toast and celebrated our exhilarating moments. The paramedic staff of the nursing home joined us in our little moment of joy. Anne said “Kudos to my Best Buddy, Joe Goldberg. He has made me an epitome of women empowerment.” Our children and grand Children visited us when I read the last paragraph of my Autobiography.
“Feminism, as a liberation struggle, must make a sincere endeavor to eradicate domination and dismantle oppression, repression, and suppression in all its forms. I am a feminist and I want my confessions to prove to be useful to feminists all over the world to examine the social conditions which are instrumental in compelling women to take on alternate identities because of oppressive patriarchal structures. I have opened an NGO for heterosexual wives of gay in order to try and eliminate the societal organization that is based upon male supremacy and exploitation of women. This kind of revolutionary change is exactly what I desire to bring through my confessions.” Anne and I hugged each other tight and handed over the reins of the NGO to our children.
The kids took our picture and said “Kudos to your revolt, protest, and insurgence! We love you unstoppably!”
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