Boreal

FAREWELL POSTINGS

If Not God, Who Do You Call Upon At Times Like These?

March 8, 2024

There is seldom a night these days that, before I fall asleep, I don’t call on Lucette to come and get me like she used to do almost every Friday around supper time when I returned by train from Montréal.

THE BROKEN CONDOM

(Abbreviated from Love, Sex and Islam, Boreal Books)

The year was 1993. It was early in the first year of two consulting contracts that would keep me in Montréal five days a week for the next five years or so when, after more than 10 years of marriage, I had my first one-night stand. It was a one-night affair that would prove to my wife that I still loved her and loved her very much.

1993 was also the year the Montréal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup. No Canadian team has won it since. I was at one of Montréal‘s landmark bars on Crescent Street when the Canadiens hoisted the trophy symbolic of hockey supremacy. The crowd at Winnies not only erupted in cheers, but it was hugs all around. The last person I hugged, or hugged again, was a thirty-something female lawyer with whom I had gotten acquainted while watching the game.

When it was time to leave the celebrating around the corner on St. Catherine Street, Montréal’s main commercial east-west thoroughfare, had gotten out hand with looting and an overturned police car on fire. We decided to retreat to my apartment at the Chateau Royale, the only apartment hotel on Crescent Street.

She had condoms, but not very good ones, as it would turn out. Something didn’t feel right, but it felt good and she didn’t seem to mind so we continued doing what we were doing. When it was all over I noticed that the condom was rolled up like a wrinkled cellophane wrapper at the base of a drooping culprit.

The AIDS scare was at its zenith and I had just had unprotected sex, for all intents and purposes, with a stranger. It was only the second time since our wedding night that I had intimate relations with a woman other than my wife. The first indiscretion was not a one-night stand, and it left my Lucette doubting that I still loved her. A busted condom would set her mind at ease.

Needless to say, I felt a bit sheepish when she met me at the Ottawa train station that Friday around supper time. As usual, she had prepared everything for a most romantic dinner; a prelude to a special night, and often a special weekend to make up for the five days I had been away.

I was not hungry. She asked what was wrong. I told her about the condom incident and that sex was out of the question for at least ten days (from what I understood at the time was the earliest the AIDS virus could be detected) if she still wanted have sex with me.

She rose from her chair, stood next to mine and asked me to move it a little. She then sat on my lap, put her arms around my neck and kissed me. It was a lovely and totally unexpected gesture which left me wondering.

“You must really love me,” she said, “to admit having sex with another woman to protect me.”

I didn’t know what to say.

She got up and took my hand. “Let’s go upstairs,” she said. “We can use those leftover condoms in your night table from when Margaret used to visit you at your old place.”

....

During our time together she proved her love in tangible ways that made those other things that lovers do to express their affection for their partner pale in comparison. One of those profound, undeserved expressions of how she felt about me occurred on the Sunday following that Friday admission of infidelity.

We were in bed. I would again be leaving on an early train to Montréal the next morning. I had already put on a condom when she reached down, and instead of doing what I thought she was going to do, she pulled it off.

“I don’t think you have AIDS,” she said, “and even if you did, and I got it, it wouldn’t matter as long as we are together.”