Innuendo by R.D. Zimmerman Page B

verbally abusive to both his wife and sons. His mother had been sweet on the outside, but torn with anguish within, coming to life only after her husband had drunk himself to death. In retrospect, Todd thought they should have divorced, for neither parent had been happy. It was, looking back on it, a pathetic waste of two lives.
    Yes, Todd had grown up with that archetype and had for a good while mimicked it nearly to a T. He'd married Karen, and they'd looked the beautiful Chicago couple, he a dashing reporter, she a successful physician. They'd been popular and well-off, the quintessential yuppie couple all about the Windy City. The entire time, however, Todd's truth, his sexuality, had been eating at him, and eventually he did the best thing he ever did for his wife, he divorced her.
    So he didn't want either the type of relationship he'd seen while growing up, or the type he'd lived before coming out. Yet for all intents and purposes, his relationship with Rawlins had fallen into that marital model and that monogamous expectation, at least until recently.
    “I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, I really do,” Rawlins had said over dinner last month. “But I'm not sure a monogamous relationship can really work, that it's really practical for two guys. Do we want to be that confined? That restricted? I mean, if by chance I end up having a quickie with someone, I don't want to have to end up lying to you just to save our relationship.”
    Totally unprepared, Todd asked what immediately came to mind. “What… what are you saying? Are you trying to tell me you've already had sex with someone else?”
    “No, I'm just trying to be realistic, that's all. And I'm not just talking about gay people either—just look at all the straight people screwing around and lying about it. They always end up splitting up because of some stupid expectation. I want us to be better than that and… and I don't want us to break up. That's why I've never been in a monogamous relationship before.”
    “Well, maybe that's why none of your other relationships has lasted more than a year.”
    “Todd, come on, be serious.”
    “I am. It's fine for other people, but an open relationship is not what I want. I just don't think it can work, at least not for me. I don't have that kind of energy.”
    No, either he didn't have that kind of emotional and mental energy to be continually processing who was seeing whom and doing what with whom. Or he simply wasn't secure enough. It was, he thought, surely a combination of the two, but the latter, if he was completely honest to himself, was probably the far greater of the reasons. No, he didn't give a rip what anyone else did or wanted or how they defined their happiness, but in this restless world he wanted one rock that he could claim and rely upon as his and his alone.
    It was the beginning of an ongoing conversation, one that didn't leave Todd with any warm, fuzzy feelings, either.
    “I don't want to be confining and restrictive, I really don't. The last thing I want to do is try to crush someone,” Todd had recently said. “But, I'm sorry, I just can't handle the thought of me staying at home watching TV while you're off screwing someone else.”
    “But what about this: You're out of town doing a story, you have too much to drink, and a gorgeous waiter seduces you. It could easily happen, you know.”
    “Yeah, but, Rawlins…”
    “Yeah, but what? If it happens you'd rather lie about it?”
    “No, I… I…”
    The closest they'd come to a compromise was to agree upon total trust and total honesty. In other words, they wouldn't go looking for it, but if something happened, if one of them strayed outside the relationship, the first to find out would be the other. And then it would be no big deal, end of story.
    Todd's black cat, Girlfriend, came sauntering into the room, her tail swishing from side to side in that seductive kitty way. She jumped onto the couch, then made