Writing about marriage and infidelity demands absolute sexual candor and frankness. I have tried to be truthful and not to make anyone feel uncomfortable, including myself. And being completely explicit at this point turned out to be very important in understanding what had happened to Tom.

 What was the heat that drew us so powerfully to each other? What was burning up our bodies and souls from the moment we met? That old cliché about it being bigger than the both of us was pretty much true for us. It’s a wonder we didn’t set the Tip Top restaurant on fire.

 There was never any doubt that we were both physically attracted to one another. The dinner portion of our first date had gone well. We’d both been dating for several years, so we were pretty familiar with the drill. Meet, talk, check the other person out, see how you feel. Everything about Tom seemed perfect to me. He couldn’t make a wrong move: his genial friendliness to the Hungarian couple, the way he got my jokes, his serious questions about my life and life in general, his deep interest in theater and movies, and his favorite romance movies; the man was flawless. Sure, it was lust, but lust is funny thing. You can find someone very attractive when you meet them and suddenly something they do or say just kills it. Tom was the opposite. Everything he did inflamed my desire and admiration for him. Yes, he could be very charming when he wanted a woman’s love and affection.

 After the Tip Top, Tom took me back to my upper west side apartment to drop me off. He was subletting a place not far away. In those days, the Upper West Side was still quite affordable for actors and artists. We stood by the gate at the entrance, and, with a bit of encouragement, Tom began kissing me goodnight. He was a great kisser. In fact, Tom was great at everything he did. He had terrible performance anxiety, which he dealt with by constantly perfecting his performances, on stage and in life.

 I still remember that goodnight kiss. He put one hand on the back of my neck and the other around my waist, then he tipped his head sideways, bent down and began kissing me very gently. There was none of that slobbery, eat your face, hungry kissing. No, Tom was a master of underplaying a scene. He could get more emotional impact out of one line than other actors could create by storming around the stage, yelling, and throwing furniture. And it was the same with his kissing.

 His gentle kiss was so tantalizing that he very thoroughly tickled my fancy with his lips. I had no idea I had so much fancy to be tickled. He went on forever just with his lips on mine until I thought I’d go crazy. Then he slowly upped his game and opened his mouth and mine, but still no intrusive tongue, just pure sensual enjoyment of lips engaging each other in kissing. Never in my life had a kiss driven me so crazy. By the time we had to stop and draw breath, I was leaning against the metal railing, barely able to speak.

 As he started kissing me again, I realized that we had to get inside before we did something indecent right there on the sidewalk. I was unprepared to ask him in. I had no wine or beer or anything to offer. Like, “why don’t you come in for a glass of wine?” No, stupid me thought this was just any old first date, where we’d part at the door. “How about a cup of tea?” was what I still remember with great chagrin offering the best kisser in the world.

 We never had a drop of tea till breakfast the next morning. We began the kissing again on the couch. And we engaged in everything that goes with your clothes slowly becoming more and more obstacles that have to be breached, until it’s clear they have to come off altogether.

When Tom took his shirt off, I realized he was a much bigger man than I’d thought. He had broad, well-muscled shoulders, with tattoos on each of his biceps, which were a shock. And his chest was enormous. He really didn’t have a waist, just wide chest from shoulder to hip. And he had a lot of black chest hair, but that didn’t bother me. I liked it. But I liked everything about Tom.

 “Where’s the bed?” he finally asked, looking around my studio apartment with some concern. “You’re on it.” It was a pull-out sofa, and we pulled it out pronto. From kissing, he moved on, and it just got better and better.

 For me it was a wondrous night. For Tom, it started well, but kept going on and on. But something was wrong. After several hours of lovemaking, he confessed he was a little bit worried because he couldn’t finish. He apologized and was embarrassed about having to keep going for so long, swearing that this had never happened before.

He continued to make love, but, although he reached the heights of passion again and again, he failed to climax. For Tom, our increasingly heightened passion was becoming sweet torture. Again, and again, he reached the peak of sexual arousal, breathing hard, sweating, yet nothing.

 He simply couldn’t climax. And he was getting more and more upset and perplexed.

Looking back, I realize this was the first obvious sign that there was something slightly off about Tom and sex. Knowing what I know now, I think because we were so blatantly made for each other, for him, this was no longer casual sex. In bed, with a woman he found very attractive, his body and mind were on fire, uniting his desire with his intellect and passions. So, what went wrong?

 This was my first encounter with his hidden self. There seemed to be some very powerful brake on his libido which had control over him; and though his desire was powerful, his body was forbidden by his hidden self to surrender to pleasure. Final capitulation was a very long time in arriving that night.

But no matter how thoroughly something in him fought back, once he’d gotten into bed with me, he was a lost man in many ways. He’d never be able to completely escape love’s clutches again, except by dying. Now I believe that after that night, I owned some part of him emotionally, but the real battle for Tom was just beginning. For some reason, he was terrified of falling in love, but on this night, love flew in under the radar guarding Tom’s heart.

 One other thing happened that night which connected Tom and me in mysterious ways that would result in some important signs from the afterlife much later. When we got to the door of my apartment, before I opened it to let him inside, I playfully warned him that he would have to pass my dog test, telling him my dog had very decided opinions about the men I dated. He was a little wary about meeting the friendliest dog on earth.

 However, Tom and my dog became best friends. Tom’s favorite dinner was spaghetti and meatballs. When he noticed that my dog would eagerly lick up his leftovers, he decided that she deserved her own spaghetti dinners. Many years later, she accompanied us to live in California, having attained the grand old age of nineteen. Eventually Tom had to take her to be put down, because I couldn’t bear to do it. She was blind, deaf, and lame in her back legs.

However, there was another misstep that first night which persisted for the rest of our marriage. If Tom’s small, unimpressive restaurant was a disappointment to me, at first, I think my apartment made a very bad first impression on him. I remember his asking when he looked around if I had just moved in. No, I’d been there for several years, but just hadn’t bothered with a lot of furniture. I lived very modestly in small studio with a garden. Unfortunately, this did not conform with his idea of a successful model, a misperception that I paid dearly for the rest of our life together. Modelling was only a stepping stone in my life. I was on to other things and trying to figure out what those things might be. I didn’t want to be prisoner of my lifestyle.

 My place was a far cry from a penthouse on Park Avenue, like some models rented. But I wasn’t looking to marry a millionaire. I had a lovely garden apartment on the Upper West Side with two rose trellises in the backyard, a great kitchen and huge windows looking out on the garden. It was a small livable paradise in Manhattan.

 I believe he incorrectly pegged me as only a modestly successful model, good looking and fun, but nothing more. The fact was that I knew that modelling was a career with a shelf life of about age thirty. I was trying to figure out what to do so that I didn’t end up broke.

For me, that first night was it. It couldn’t have been more fitting that Tom played the Wedding March at dinner, because I married him that night. There never was another man in my life. Never dated or kissed, or even looked at another man. No man’s touch ever excited me like Tom’s did. I was his, body, heart, and soul from that night until he left this world, which is why it was so shocking and devastating when I learned that he’d never been faithful or rated me very highly as a person.