What Part of No . . .
"Wanna go up to my room?" Jack asked.
"Huh?" I said.
We were waiting for the doors to open for a hotel banquet. More than a hundred people were packed into the cocktail party before the meal. The room was hot, noisy and uncomfortable.
I was sure I heard wrong. Jack was my friend. Okay, he was someone I talked to at conferences. I liked him.
Jack knew I was married. I'd mentioned Don often enough.
He couldn't be hitting on me.
He was. Jack invited me up to his hotel room for a quickie.
"I'm married," I said. "I've been married forty years."
I thought that staggering number would squash any further attempted friskiness.
"Me, too," he said. "Thirty-two." He grinned like he was proud. Of what?
"Excuse me," I said, and elbowed my way through the crowd to get away from him.
I haven't lived a sheltered life. I worked some thirty years for newspapers, radio and TV stations. The news business is hardly a ladies' seminary.
I know adults commit adultery. They also smoke, drink, cheat on their spouses and their expense accounts. I may have stretched some mileage figures but I don't bed hop.
I take marriage seriously. I'd promised to love and honor Don. I made sure the word "obey" wasn't in my vows. I wouldn't swear to anything I couldn't do. We'd agreed to love each other, and if the marriage didn't work out, then we'd call it quits. But I wouldn't make a fool out of my husband.
I'd always thought adultery was about revenge: It was a way for angry cheaters to get back at their spouses.
Many offices are like high school: People run in cliques. The drinkers meet at the same watering hole. The druggies have their own secret signs and signals, and mainly sell pot to one another. One of them, a middle manager I didn't much like, was known to make a profit off his friends. They bought from him anyway.
The office cheaters were a rather dreary bunch who seemed to enjoy sneaking around. They got their kicks coming back to the office with faces flushed and clothes slightly askew. They enjoyed knowing the staff saw their minivan rockin' in the company parking lot.
(Yeah, you read that right. A minivan. They were married with children. Stolen sex among the stale french fries. Gets ya hot, doesn't it?)
The cheaters weren't the beautiful people, either. The average adulterer was . . .well, average.
I don't like displaying my vices in public. Like most of the staff, I went home to my family.
Whenever I started work at a new place, some of the cheaters would hit on me. Once I made it clear I wasn't interested, they went back to their world and I stayed in mine.
That's why I was so disappointed and angry with Jack. I'm no femmes fatale. I didn't flirt with him. I wasn't wearing a provocative dress. I'd known him for years and thought he was one of my "safe" friends. Now our friendship was over. What the heck was he thinking?
I quietly asked a few trusted female friends. They said Jack had never hit on anyone they knew.
Why did he change?
If I had gone up to his hotel room, what next? Would I have to look at him adoringly the whole conference? Would we run to each other's rooms at the next convention? Or pretend it never happened?
I have no idea.
That's why I'm asking you, TLC. Why did Jack suddenly go rogue?
