The Inquisitor

I met Rebecca at a bakery in Portland's Old Port on a Saturday afternoon. She was eating a piece of Rhubard pie; I was eating a piece of the blueburry and cream cheese pie.  She launched into a conversation with me the way strangers with no awareness of boundaries have a way of doing, which I found refreshing for a Mainer, who are normally too conservative to befriend anyone on the spur of the moment.

Rebecca was 62 years old. She had the sparkling but spooky blue eyes of some of the Mainers here with Scandinavian ancestry. I also thought she was once very beautiful with her high cheekbones, fair skin and dark blond hair. Now, she was a bit overweight, and she talked too much about needing to lose some pounds.  In the first fifteen minutes of our conversation, she asked me about the reasons for my divorce, my relationship status, etc., questions I found off-putting for a first-time conversation, but I did not want to dismiss a potentional friend too quickly. We made all sorts of plans that day, and she invited me to go to Orchard Beach the following Saturday with her on the shuttle. 

When she called later that week to confirm our plans, she launched into yet another assault of questions; this time she included ones about my sexual experiences.   Again,  I was open-minded about her questions; I thought she wanted to share a woman to woman talk about love, sex and relationships. Maybe, even compare notes. Really, I told her everything, at least what I understood about my experiences.

Rebecca was also forthcoming: she had never been married, and it seemed that she had been traumatized by an experience with a married man in Miami (she lived there for a short time when she was in her 30s) that sent her into a guilt-triggered breakdown for which she had to be committed.  I sensed then some religious zealotry about her feelings of love and sex.  After that relationship, she went into a self-imposed celibacy that she practiced even now. But, this is where our conversation got weird. After she gathered information about my life, she proceeded to judge my answers. Our conversation then became a question and answer forum that seemed to be leading to a sentencing of my life actions, which went something like this:

"Do you now want a casual or serious relationship?" she started
"I don't know. I would like to fall in love... "I responded.
"I can't do casual."
"Well, it is important to know..."
"Don't you ask these men whether they are married before you get together with them?"
"There hasn't been that many, but I don't believe that every relationship can be serious."
"Do you consider yourself a moral person?"
"What do you mean?"
"You don't ask them if they are married? Are you Catholic? Aren't you afraid of going to hell?"
"Do you mean about sleeping with a married man?"
"That is committing adultery."
"I don't know if I have committed adultery."
"Are you Catholic?"
I am not a practicing Catholic. Really, my views have changed so much."
"I was raised Catholic, and I think that really messed me up."
"Well, it's never too late to re-evaluate...."
"Aren't you afraid of going to hell?"
"Why would I go to hell?"
"Sleeping with married men."
"I don't know if I've slept with married men."
"You don't ask?"
"Sometimes, it never came up. One of the men I fell in love with once was going through a divorce"
"And you believed him?
"I trusted him."
"That's a good way of getting your heart broken."
"But I knew he loved me."
"Do you consider yourself a loose woman?"
"What do you mean?"
"You have slept with men without asking if they are married."
"Well, it is not that I have slept with that many men.  I have had short and longer relationships.   I don't have regrets about any of it," I continued.
"Are you a moral person?"
"Well, I don't kill or steal. I lie only when necessary. Is that what you are asking?"
"Aren't you afraid of going to hell?"
"I haven't thought about it."
"Do you consider yourself a nice person?
"I try to be."
"But aren't you afraid of hurting somebody's feelings?"
"Whose feelings?"
"The women of the married men you slept with."
"I don't know about sleeping with married men."

The questioning went on for 2 hours. I was horrified, riveted and curious about my predicament and her sentence of me:  I was a "witch" being tried for my "unchristian" ways by a Puritan/Catholic  inquisitor.  I understood then that even in 2013 the "witches" of modern day New England, like her sisters from Salem and yesteryear, could not avoid the gallows at the hands of such a forthright, repressed, angry and all-knowing executioner.

Needless to say, I decided against pursuing any friendship with this woman.