Shopping for ties

Mrs. Lewis was my high school boyfriend's mother and my biology teacher's wife. That's right, I dated my biology teacher's son. It doesn't seem like a big deal now, but it was news in high school. Mrs. Lewis was also a high school teacher. She taught deaf students in a neighboring district.

"Oh, did I forget to mention that she's deaf?"

That's exactly how Boyfriend told me that his mom couldn't hear. She read lips and talked (lots), so most people didn't know until they were told. In fact, Mr. Lewis didn't realize it until they had been dating for quite a while. He just thought that unless he made good eye contact when he spoke to her, she chose to ignore him. (His son was equally observant, noticing that my eyes are two different colors a short twelve weeks after we started dating.)

Anyhow, Mrs. Lewis's hearing loss didn't much get in the way of hours of chatting. It was a little harrowing in the car, barreling down the middle of the road at 80 miles an hour with the dome light on so she could see my lips while she drove. Drivers we passes laid on their horns. The honking did little to phase her.

Our first trip out together was to the mall. It was her idea. We had to replace all of Mr. Lewis's ties.

"Why?" you ask.

Because the first time I had dinner at the Lewis' house, Mrs. Lewis took me up to her room afterwards, opened the closet and said, "Throw out every tie you don't like." She was concerned that Mr. Lewis was looking dated and dorky. She was right.

So there I was, standing in my high school teacher's closet with a garbage bag thinking, I'm going to fail biology. I was a bit mortified. Mr. Lewis was extremely mortified. Boyfriend was laughing his ass off.

I am really good at throwing away things, though. (I get that from my mother. Along with small boobs and almost freakishly large big toes.) So, I followed my baser instincts and started chucking ties. When I was done, there were two left. Mrs. Lewis tied up the bag and said, "Now, we have to shop. What are you doing tomorrow afternoon?"

I should have known from the closet incident that this woman didn't have real firm boundaries, but I was totally unprepared for the conversation we were about to have at the mall. We were walking between stores when she turned to me and asked, "What do students say about Mr. Lewis?"

I said, "Well... you know... they say he has bad ties."

Apparently, lying can be read on the lips. She laughed and shook her head. "No...what do they really say?"

I panicked. "They say he's gay," I blurted out. And then, without taking a breath, I explained, "They don't actually think he's into guys, they just think he's too dorky to be with women." A small town high school--where dorky somehow meant homosexual. Now I know better. A gay man wouldn't be caught dead in those ties.

Mrs. Lewis looked at me, laughed, and said, "He's not gay. You can tell them he's not gay."

I said, "Yeah, I kind of figured that once I met you." I wasn't thinking that my biology teacher was gay. I was thinking that he traded up. He was a little dorky, while she was smoking hot--not classically gorgeous, but undeniably sexy in that way you can't quite explain.

"We have sex every Saturday night and Sunday morning and then sometimes during the week when the boy isn't around," she said.

I wasn't shocked that these people had sex. I grew up in a tiny house with thin walls and amorous parents. I knew that there was sex after children. I was shocked that she was telling me about it.

This wasn't the last I heard of their sex life. And frankly, in the end, it was probably a good thing I had to sit through those initially awkward conversations. They served as fair warning for the time that Boyfriend and I came home early one Friday night and found the definitely not gay biology teacher and his hot wife going at it on the couch.

Mrs. Lewis's fluid boundaries ended up being one of my very favorite things about her. At a time in my life when I really needed someone who wasn't my mom or my peer to talk to, I could tell her anything. I count my conversations with her among the best I've ever had.

I liked Boyfriend.
I loved his mom.