One night I walked to the meeting about a mile from my apartment and then I asked Curtis for a ride home. I leaned my head back against the leather headrest and laid my hand on his thigh. Fifteen minutes later his cock was in my mouth and he was telling me that he thought about me night and day. I saw possibilities.

We started an affair. He told me about his wife, how he and she were high school sweethearts back in Benton, Arkansas, where they grew up. His wife, the only woman he’d been with before me, was prudish and frigid, he said. I was forbidden fruit, a wild California girl, free-spirited and comfortable with my body. After sex the first time, he asked me if I’d felt “warm.”

“Do you mean: did I come?” I asked.

He winced. “Yes,” he whispered. I taught him the marvel of the clitoris and buried his face in it. He’d bawl after sex with me, blubbering how much he loved me, how lucky he was to have found me. He said he loved his wife too, and his son, and that he was just so torn up inside.

“If you love your wife so much, why are you here?” I asked him. He blinked bewildered blue eyes. “Have you ever thought about divorce?”

He startled. “I couldn’t divorce Susan,” he said. “I could never leave my boy.”

I laughed at him. “You don’t divorce your kids, silly.”

I lied and told him that a doctor at work had asked me out. I said that he was cute and single and crazy about me, and that I hoped everything would work out between us. Curtis didn’t hide his emotions well.

I said, “Honey, you’re married. I can’t put my life on hold for a married man.”

He sat there with his head in his hands. “I can’t stand the thought of you with someone else,” he said, looking like a dazed, sick cow.

“I’m not going to sleep with him,” I said. “Not on our first date.”

“I can’t get a divorce, I just can’t.” I had to keep boxes of Kleenex everywhere because Curtis was always bursting into tears.

Later I got together with my ex-boyfriend Artie. We were still good friends and still had an intense sexual relationship even though he was living with an older, wealthy woman who supported him.

He lit up a joint.

“Get that stuff away from me,” I told him. “You’ll contaminate my urine.” It smelled so good. I love drugs, to tell you the truth. I miss Vicodin, the stony bliss of it. If I could get away with it, I’d be using—not out of control like last time. Now and then. A sensible habit. But I had five years of Big Brother in the form of Diversion in my future.