A fictionalized confession.
I was sitting in the lounge of a brothel, attempting to decide whether being there counted as cheating. It was an impressively narrow question from a man who had already made several decisions to arrive on the sofa.
I had not discussed the possibility with my wife. I knew it was outside what she understood our relationship to be. Still, I tried dividing the evening into increasingly small parts: arriving was not an encounter; considering was not doing; leaving would mean nothing had happened.
The distinctions mattered, but I was using them to avoid the simpler fact that I had gone there intending to conceal the visit.
I left without a sexual encounter. I was glad I had stopped. I was also tempted to treat the decision as proof of excellent character, which would have allowed me to skip examining the decisions before it.
The people working there had not made my relationship agreement. There was no reason to turn my discomfort into contempt for them. The issue was what I had chosen in relation to my wife and what I was now prepared to acknowledge.
On the way home, I kept rehearsing an explanation that would make the evening sound less serious. None felt entirely honest.
Leaving had changed what happened that night. It had not explained the frustration, secrecy, or willingness to cross a line that brought me there. Those questions were still waiting when I got home, and I could not answer them by congratulating myself on eventually standing up.
