My life now rests on two firm rocks, both of which go all the way to the center of the world: my love for my mother and my love for Anita. Everything else is loose, unsettled, shifting underfoot.

Addendum I (June 2, 2000)

A few days ago Anita wrote in passing that she would like to have a child. I was delighted by her wish, and I urged her to broach it with her man. She wrote the next day that she did, but that he was dead against it. Yesterday I asked her why he was against having a child. This morning I found her answer, which was predictable enough: he wants her to finish her doctoral studies first. Half in jest, I asked her whether he and I looked alike, implying that I could give her a child instead of him. An hour or so later she wrote back that she had to stop writing to me because I had become so important to her that our relationship had begun disrupting her day-to-day life. “Perhaps we will meet again some day,” she wrote. Then she added: “Please do not respond to this message.” I just stared at the computer screen for a while before I erased the message. Then my thoughts shifted to my mother.

Addendum II (July 5, 2000)

Mercifully, the crisis is over. Anita is my woman again. I am her man again. We are very much in love again. And we have promised each other that such crises as the last one will not happen ever again. Perhaps all this sounds silly, but it feels very soothing. It feels right, too. At any rate, it feels very good to write these words in love and with love.

The whole process of reconciliation took a bit more than an entire month. Restricted to electronic mail and mobile phone messages, each step was measured and deliberate. Only today I feel that the horror is really behind us. At the beginning, it seemed we were doomed for ever. After nearly a week, Anita apologized, though. Still, she offered little less. I accepted her apology, but remained aloof. I was too hurt to simply forget her harsh words, her dismissal. Soon afterwards, she started bombarding me with declarations of love. She got ever more strident. At times, she became almost aggressive. Her messages kept coming at an ever-faster rate. When I started responding, she relented a little bit.

A funny thing happened next. Anita sent me a message asking whether it would bother me if she came to Reading in mid-September, when I will be running an international meeting hosted by my university. I responded that I would certainly not mind her coming here, and that the very question was painful to me. She responded somewhat callously, I thought. She said she was happy her visit would not bother me, using the same language as in her original question. All of a sudden, I thought that she was simply playing with me. A sense of deep unease propelled me to probe into her intentions. At some point I sent her a message I though was provocative: “Will we ever again love each other, kiss each other, fuck each other?” She responded immediately: “Yes, my love, even more than before.” I was puzzled still: “Why do you love me so much?” “I love you so much, from the outside and from the inside, that I am surprised myself,” she wrote back disarmingly. Realizing that her emotions were genuine, I explained that I thought she was teasing me, playing with me. “I never do anything like this with anyone,” she replied, “but you are the last person I would play with.” I was convinced at last.

The last few messages were full of love, yearning, desire. I wrote to her this morning that I wanted to make love to her. I told her I was big for her. And I was. I was huge. Very much in love, I wrote openly, freely. I wrote as though she was right next to me. “You dazzled me,” she wrote back practically instantly. “I almost fainted when I read your last message,” she confessed. “If you were here,” she continued, “I would jump on you.”

I am big again, of course. I love Anita with true passion. I love her with deep devotion. My love for Anita is pure, undiluted. Although I am capable of banging the first attractive woman I see, my love for my little wife does not change in any way on account of such escapades. Many men would probably feel ashamed of such parallel emotions, but I feel exactly the opposite. My love for Anita has nothing to do with my appetites. It is of an entirely different nature, as is our sex life. I bang her, too, on a rare occasion, but most of the time we are just immensely tender with each other. This is true when I am in her, as well.

When we make love, we usually do so over an entire night. We do not go to sleep. Instead, we nap here and there, but we keep touching each other all the time, even while we are dozing. I take her in my mouth, she takes me in her mouth. Everything we do is slow, slow. Every move is tender, tender. In our slumber, we kiss for a long time. I enter her two or three times during the night and I stay in her for a long time, moving slowly, slowly. There is never any rush. There is never any force in anything the two of us do. Oh, I simply must stop because my own writing will drive me crazy. I want my little wife now!