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After six and a half months apart, I had no trouble recognizing my wife. Out she came on to the driveway to greet me as Charlie the horny driver brought a sleepy Greek boy home after a long flight from the Bagel. I pretended not to know her and embraced the maid instead, but it didn’t work. My son and two grandchildren added to the merriment, playing along when I asked them who that lady was who tried to kiss me. Here’s some advice to all you young whippersnappers: women will forgive anything as long as you keep it light and make them laugh.
I’ve been in trouble with women throughout my life. That’s because I like them so much I can’t keep my hands off them. By that I don’t mean inappropriate touching. I’ve never done that; it’s always been by invitation only. The invites were aplenty when I was young, and even after I got older. For some strange reason they are quite rare at the moment, but that’s because of the pandemic, or so those who owe me money tell me.
Never mind. Fresh from my failure with Peyton — that was the real name of the lady I dubbed Peggy some issues ago because of her jealous and much older husband — I continue to maintain that male monogamy is no marriage enhancer. Monogamy for ladies, on the other hand, has kept thousands of marriages healthy and happy, at least in civilized Europe. America gets most things the wrong way round, including monogamy. Lying is, I suppose, essential if one wants to live graciously. But it’s not really a question of lying, rather one of withholding the facts.
Forty-nine years ago, when Alexandra and I began living together, she accused me of having an affair. I swore to her that the relationship in question was strictly platonic, and that God should strike me dead if it was not. As I said it, I collapsed with a thud on the parquet floor. She did not fall for it but burst out laughing. It’s been a smooth ride ever since. Actually, my wife decided early on that demanding the truth on matters of fidelity leads to an unhealthy marriage, at least if you are hitched to a womanizer. The result has been that we’ve been extremely happy for 49 years. (OK, Alexandra has thrown a few ashtrays at me over the years, but she’s always avoided beheading me.)
Candor is bandied about nowadays as a status symbol. But admitting to an affair is for mean people as far as I’m concerned. Admissions hurt people, and only those who look like Jeff Bezos and need to advertise go around fessing up. It used to be that when a man told a lover or a wife what he did with another it was called cruelty or kinkiness. Now it’s called sincerity. Invention, the withholding of information — even the fabrication of fact — make the object of that deceit more comfortable.
I think it was group therapy that encouraged the discussion of feelings and promoted the importance of shared experiences. Needless to say, these meetings were invented in America. I’d rather spend a day being quizzed by the Gestapo than take part in such a humiliating process. But that’s me. It has since evolved into a kind of demon principle that one should be open to everybody. Under the advice of some quack, reasonable people confess to having been naughty and the result has been a lot of broken relationships. (The Roman Catholics, very sensibly, confess to someone they can’t see.)
The sexual liberation of the 1960s, surprisingly, did nothing to lessen the pain of jealousy. And to bring things up to date about fooling around, a piece by Melanie McDonagh in the London Sunday Telegraph dealing with the subject of divorce in Westminster — in which she quotes Sarah Vine, who is now divorcing her ministerial husband Michael Gove: ‘Ministers are surrounded by people telling them how brilliant they are’ — hits the nail on the head. It also reminded us that ‘plain men are able to attract good-looking younger women given the benefit of power’. In other words, in real life ugliness plays a role. There are fewer chances to make whoopee and get caught if you have no power, no money and look like Bezos. It’s easier to remain faithful if you’re ugly, powerless and poor than if you are good-looking and well-off. It’s unfair, I know, but such is life.
America has become a jungle of screaming women and angry men. Everyone, it seems, is offended by something somebody said. Strictly unsolicited and tediously long-winded details about someone’s sex life can drive most people to drugs. In America, people spill the beans about their most intimate details even when not on drugs. Small talk was devised by the wise to escape such bores. Never admit, never bore, and everything will be hunky-dory. Such is my advice to the young and restless.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 2021 World edition.
