It was another flight home from Chicago. I hadn't flown in and out of Chicago so much since the summer of 1978 when I was involved in an a project that had me visit a number of steel mills along Lake Michigan. Flying in and out of O'Hare was becoming as familiar as flying in and out of the Raleigh-Durham (RDU) Airport. Air travel no longer excited me as being something different and special. It hadn't felt that way for some time. What made it special, if anything did, was where I was going, what I was going to do (or coming back from what I had already done) and who I was doing and had done it with, if applicable.

Despite sleep deprivation of the most pleasant kind, I was mostly awake on the flight back and adding to my journal on my way home. There was so much to add to my journal. There was all the physical sexual things to recount and how it all felt to me. I liked Jody. I liked her a lot. The sex and the sexploration with her was great. The way it started back in September with Catie and Jody was a fun memory to have. And the things we did on my "layover" with her were on par with what Catie and I had done together and/or what Abby and I did together. I know that the sexploration that Jody and I did took her to some realms of sexplay that I doubt she had thought about until Catie and I met and started playing together. Then again, the sexplay between Catie and Jody went beyond my previous experiences with two (younger) women at the same time (on my 21st birthday). It was difficult to separate all the strands of thought, particularly as erotic as they were (and as hard as I was sitting in the seat of a Boeing 727).

I was also conflicted about my time with Jody. The conflict seemed more distinct than my time with Mark and Jody together. And although I knew I couldn't "cheat" on Catie (dead or alive), somehow I wasn't sure that this was really the path I should be choosing. It might be different if Jody wasn't involved with Mark. But then again, I would have the same issue of dealing with Catie's memory with her best friend. This was more than I could solve on a single flight from Chicago and I finally filed it away for further consideration later.

I called my ex-wife when I landed at RDU and told her I could pickup our son from school. He knew I was coming home and he was quite happy to see me after I had been gone again for more than a week. When I arrived to pick him up, my skis were on top of my car and all my skiing gear was in the trunk. My ex-wife dropped by and brought him some items from her place. I talked to her in very general terms about the way the workshop went and the skiing in the various areas but gave her no information about what I was doing (or who) in Chicago. My son was happy that he was going to spend the night with me at my house and we spent the evening doing "normal stuff" like going grocery shopping, spending time together, him telling me what he and his friends were doing, and the latest new Nintendo game information. We ended with an evening of book reading bedtime stories. I missed this and I knew that I had missed a lot of time for this bedtime routine with him. This was one thing that Catie loved about me and the interaction with my son...the bedtime routine. I didn't dwell on that. But it was one thing that Catie would never get to experience and that made me sad and tearful when I thought about it that way.

I took my son to school on Tuesday morning (February 5th) on my way to the office. I had spent a good amount of January away from the office because of Catie's death, clearing out her apartment, the workshop in Denver, and the skiing. All anyone in the office knew about the previous week was that I had left early to ski the weekend in Colorado prior to the workshop and was planning to stay the weekend afterwards. I hadn't mentioned anything about my other non-skiing activities to anyone. Not even my ex-wife.

When I returned to the office, I was greeted with "Welcome back, stranger," or some similar types of greetings. Given that I had been away for most of the summer and fall of 1985, my not being in the office was not "unusual." There was one female coworker who was a case of sexual harassment going somewhere to happen with all of the sexual innuendo and double entendre that she liked to toss about. Although others in the office played into that sexual talk, I didn't. I saw how destructive and demeaning that could be in a previous work environment. I was always professional with my coworker. But that didn't mean she didn't try to engage me through suggestive comments and conversation. For example, for her, fit guys going skiing was, in her mind, an invitation for screwing (maybe somewhere on the slopes or certainly at the hot tub at the end of the day). Most her skiing nonsexual skiing experience was with cross country skiing, not alpine downhill skiing like I was learning to do.

When she saw me, her first question was "How was the scewing?" combining the words skiing and screwing together into one word (and then realized her embarrassing mistake). I told her she had a one-track mind and the skiing was fabulous. She asked where I went and I described the ski areas where I skied (Breckenridge, Keystone, Arapahoe Basin, and Vail). Vail always had a magic allure to it. And I even described my first attempts at skiing deep powder in Vail. I certainly wasn't going to tell her of my sexual exploits in Chicago either before or after my trip to Colorado, nor did she know anything about Catie and my experiences with her and and the others around Catie and I. In fact, no one in my office knew anything specific about any of the activities I had engaged in and only one person had guessed that I had met someone after I came back from Chicago the first time. If Catie had come to stay with me and attended my Christmas party, these people would have met Catie. As I outlined in the previous book, she didn't and things went very differently than we had hoped.

My professionalism was significant because, to my female coworker, I was an enigma; someone who wouldn't take the sexual bait. At least, not in the workplace. To her, I'm sure the thought that I was gay probably crossed her mind. Why else wouldn't I succumb to her sexual overtures? It just didn't seem to occur to her that I had a much higher standard for professional conduct than she did.

Ironically, this woman had some of the same physical attributes as Catie. For me, that was where the similarities ended.

During that first day back in the office, I went to lunch at the closest shopping mall to the office so I could go to one of the anchor stores. I remember which store I went to. I don't remember what for. I entered the mall through one of the main entrances (not a store entrance) where I came across the coworker who I just mentioned above. She and a friend of hers were sitting on a bench in the mall across from the entrance to a sporting goods store. They were two divorced women (with children) and they liked to sit and watch the guys (with cute butts) returning their rental ski equipment to the sporting goods store. Maybe looking for prospects? Certainly my coworker was.

I said hello to my coworker. She introduced me to her friend. It seems I had heard about some of the adventures my coworker and her friend had at one (or more) of the local bars. They told me what they were doing (watching for cute butts) and my coworker told her friend that I had just come back from skiing in Colorado. I was asked if I was returning ski equipment. "I have my own," I said.

We chatted for a few minutes about my trip and I remember remarking how thick the air seemed after being at altitude for more than a week. Anyway, I bid them farewell as I had my errand to run and walked away down the mall.

My coworker later reported the words her friend spoke as I walked away from them. "That's Gary?" I was nothing like what she imagined from my co-worker's description of me. She liked my lips and the way my long legs went up and made an ass of themselves under the fabric of my pants. Once my errand was completed, I returned to the same entrance where I entered and passed them still sitting on the bench, guy watching. I don't remember stopping; just waved and kept on going to my car. After lunch, my coworker found me and told me that I needed to call her friend as she told me what her friend said and the she was really interested in me. I was still in a great mood from my skiing and my fucking and I picked up the phone and called her almost immediately.

We chatted for a couple of minutes and set a lunch date together for a week later.

I was at a bit of a loss to know where to start from scratch all over again. Catie and I went directly to a sexual relationship and the "dating" came later. I didn't feel I could say "Hi, I want you to know that I met a woman on a cross country train trip last September. We shared enemas, she surrendered her anal virginity to me, we slept with and shared enemas with one of her friends, her younger sister in Oregon , a swingers group in Minneapolis, AND I got her pregnant (with twins). And then she and her mother were killed in an auto accident just before New Year's. Since she died, I've slept with a couple of her friends including the first of her friends and best friend that we shared together in September. I fucked her with her boyfriend last weekend and fucked her alone Sunday night and Monday morning after coming back from Colorado. We liked enemas and we liked to fuck orally, vaginally, and anally...with multiple partners. Is that something you'd be interested in?"

I didn't really think I could get anywhere with that type of approach. Instead, I told her about my mountain climbing and skiing experiences and my summer in the Pacific Northwest. She already had an idea about my situation with my marriage from what my coworker (and then I) told her about the situation. This woman was about seven years older than I was and had a daughter from a previous marriage who was about three years older than my son. All the women I had been sexually involved with didn't have children. This one did and that was a serious limiting factor in the way this relationship could (and would) develop.

As I began this relationship, it began the closure of the five months of extraordinary times that began after Labor Day 1985. But I really missed what I had and had lost with Catie and there was no way to get Catie back. Almost thirty nine years later, it still brings tears to my eyes to think about these times. Certain music from those times as well as recent music brings tears to my eyes, too when I think about Catie

And it's amazing how a matter of a few minutes here and a few minutes there, and even a few seconds, made all the difference to how my life and our lives changed. There's a line from the movie Field of Dreams where Dr. Archibald "Moonlight" Graham says: "We just don't recognize life's most significant moments while they're happening. Back then I thought, 'Well, there'll be other days.' I didn't realize that that was the only day."

I didn't talk about Catie with this new person. And the reason was simple. Catie had died. She died in a senseless accident and, at a very personal level, I would reopen those feelings of loss about what could have been and never was. I didn't see how that could be fair to this or any other person I might become involved with. They would be competing with a ghost. Where Catie never gave any indication of feeling 'threatened' by a comparison with the experiences with my ex-wife, I found that this person I had just met was threatened by those comparisons with my ex-wife. In the moment, I realized that comparisons with Catie might be a much more of a problem. How could anyone compete with my memories with a dead person.

There was nothing guaranteed about this (or any) new relationship. One thing I noted at the time was it certainly wasn't as easy as the development of my relationship with my (ex) wife or the relationship that had developed between Catie and I. But after the whirlwind I had just been through with Catie, something slower (and a little more normal, sane, or boring) might just be the thing I should look for. I wasn't looking to replace Catie or fill the hole I felt in my heart. And this new person and I didn't rush into anything with each other. She, like me, had some 'past relationship' issues to deal with. So, we began slowly after that first lunch date.