Chapter 14: Agnostic Roommates

Scorpions take refuge from the cooler fall weather by finding their way inside the house. Bill takes care of them.  Spiders, too. Our air conditioning filters need to be changed every few months. Bill takes care of it. The bathroom faucet started leaking last week. Bill fixed it. I had to go to the emergency room a while back and was admitted for emergency surgery. Bill drove me and sat with me in the ER until I insisted that he return home.

We have a beautiful home, live well, and look forward to a comfortable retirement. We have traveled to Hawaii, Tahiti, Mexico, Key West, DC and took a magnificent train trip across the Canadian Rockies. We make great travel companions, and I can always rely on Bill to take care of things.

Still, Bill has his secret vices and lives with demons I can’t even begin to know. There is very little affection between us these days, and sex is mostly a distant memory. I would have been justified in leaving him countless times over the past six years, and I came very close on several occasions. I found an apartment close to Brian’s school and was literally writing a check for the deposit when I received a text message from Bill that said, “I don’t want to lose you.”  Reluctantly, I left the rental office and went home. This scenario repeated itself several times over the years, whether it was me looking to escape or whether it was Bill. Somehow, we always pulled through, but the erosion of trust never recovered. Not for me. It never will and I have had to come to terms with that condition.

I even thought about having an affair of my own as a form of retaliation and self-validation.  Of course, I thought better of the idea. There was no sense in making the situation even worse or lowering myself to Bill’s standard of fidelity and integrity. Bill has the addiction, not me.

I suspect it was the onset of COVID that ultimately put a damper on Bill’s extracurricular sexual activities. At first, he was convinced COVID was not real, a media-created sensation to bring down Trump’s administration.  Just another form of the flu for sure, he insisted. That baseless attitude changed when Bill learned of active and retired cops he knew and respected who succumbed to the disease and were dying in record numbers.

As for Bill’s crossdressing, I have grown a complete disdain for it. What used to be innocent, fun, and quirky became a daily reminder of what Bill was up to behind my back because his dressing was part and parcel of his debaucheries involving other men. At times I felt as if he was competing with me for who was the most feminine and compelled me into a role I never wanted. I try not to look at him getting dressed as he selects his silly-looking panties, pulls them on, and admires himself in the mirror. When we get our monthly pedicures, Bill usually wants me to approve of the shade of pink nail color he selects, but I just shrug my shoulders and say, “Whatever you like works for me.”  Bill is free to do what he likes and to engage in whatever makes him happy, but these days, I shy away from giving his obsessions any kind of validation. I do my best to ignore it all, which is torture for someone like Bill who relishes the exhibition.

My experience with this underground world started with a hint of knowledge and the journey has ended with a fuller understanding. Knowledge about something is not the same thing as understanding it. I genuinely suspect Bill is gay, but not in the sense that he wants a romantic relationship where he would walk hand-in-hand with his partner at gay pride parades. His attraction to men appears to be purely sexual, but then one can never be sure. I know I can’t.

I believe, too, that Bill’s marriages were a disguise or a front for his true self. An identity that he could not possibly undertake as a way of life. Certainly not in the male-dominated and masculine profession of law enforcement, being on SWAT, and serving as a high-ranking leader. While he took astonishing risks in his sexual endeavors, he could not possibly risk people knowing he loved dressing in feminine lingerie or engaged in homosexual encounters.

On the positive side, Bill’s neat, likes things organized, is financially responsible, likes to travel, and watches classic movies – just like me. For now, I have come to live with and accept the reality that we have become agnostic roommates.