Comic timing

Scene: Morning. Hosea is getting ready to leave for work. Wife is sitting in bed recovering from foot surgery a few days ago.

Wife: Have you seen yesterday's newspaper? I had it here for a little while yesterday and then it disappeared.

Hosea: "A little while"? It was on your bed all day. When you finally fell asleep last night I scooped it up ... I think I recycled it.

Wife: It wasn't on my bed "all day"! Just since Leia came over to visit me.

Hosea: [peevishly] Oh stop it. You don't have to contradict everything I say. Just let it go.

Wife: I'm not contradicting everything you say ....

Why is this man angry?

After my fight with D earlier this week, you'd think I would know better than to dare write anything about politics. But this isn't about politics ... not really. It just happens to be about one particular politician who is in the news right about now. And it's really about sex. Sex and marriage. Sex and adultery. That sort of thing.

I was as intrigued as anyone when I saw the news a couple of days ago that Marianne Gingrich had given an interview in which she said that Newt had asked for an open marriage after telling her about his affair with Callista Bisek. Not that the affair itself was news; Newt had already confessed publicly to a number of affairs (including this one). But we don't often see the words "open marriage" in print, ascribed to our major political figures.

And of course Newt was asked about it at the beginning of the South Carolina debate, and of course he bristled and snapped back angrily. One could hardly expect him to do anything else. The news was likely to reflect badly on him while he is trying to collect votes for the nomination, so of course he would want to bury it -- or, if that's impossible, to discredit anybody who mentions it. All this is absolutely predictable.

Only ... it occurred to me this afternoon that maybe there was another answer he could have given. It would have been a long-shot, but it might not thereby have been false. Certainly it would have been more interesting than anything he did say. I have written out just such an alternate answer below. I don't know Newt's style well enough to imitate him. I am aware that what I have written is pompous and self-serving, but I hope that makes it sound believable in the mouth of any politician. And while some of the ideas here are recognizably mine, please don't take the whole character of "Newt" here to be any kind of mouthpiece for me.

Anyway, it runs something like this:

Yes, I asked Marianne for an open marriage before we divorced, so that I could remain married to her and still continue to see Callista, with whom I had become deeply involved. As you all know, nothing came of it. Marianne turned down my suggestion, and we divorced. But to this day I am proud that I did the right thing by her in asking first, ... in giving her a chance at another way to write our story.

We all know that divorce is sometimes necessary, sometimes even unavoidable, but always -- always -- destructive. It tears apart households and lives. I thank God that Marianne and I had no children at home to be caught in the middle, but the cost of a divorce even on the separating couple themselves is deep and harsh. What I offered Marianne was a chance to avoid that calamity, the devastation of divorce. What I offered her was the best -- and only remaining -- chance for the two of us to stay true to the vows we had sworn to each other so many years before: always to be there for each other, never to leave. Marianne chose otherwise, and of course I wouldn't dream of second-guessing her, or of trying to force her hand. I will say that her choice saddened me, because in the end she chose to sacrifice our marriage to her own ego. But we live in a free country, after all, so I had to respect her choice even if I disagreed with it.

Marianne might say that she didn't choose out of egotism, that she didn't choose to leave me, but that all she asked was for me to stop seeing Callista. But that was a profoundly selfish thing to ask. At that point, Callista and I had been involved for some six years already. And we all know, if we are honest with ourselves, that the bonds forged during a long-term affair are just as deep, just as heartfelt, as the bonds we enter into before witnesses. At that point no clergyman had yet solemnized our commitment to each other, Callista's and mine, but the good Lord could already see that our love and our commitment to each other were deep and profound. To give up Callista at that point would have been just as destructive, just as devastating, as to give up Marianne. You can argue that Calista and I should never have become intimate in the first place, and I suppose we could be here all night debating that point. All I can say is that that horse had long since left the barn. By the time this conversation ever happened, Callista and I had been involved for six years. And six years is simply a long time.

I suppose that the news agencies reporting this story all hope it will discredit me in my campaign for the nomination. We Republicans are used to the hostility of the mainstream media, and I'm sure some editor somewhere hopes I'll go into a rage denouncing him for ever printing the article, so that people will think I'm some kind of Mad Bomber. But the truth is that I'm glad this story came out when it did. I've never told it before, because ... shucks, you all know how shy and self-effacing I can be. [smiles, chuckles] But I still believe that I offered to do the right thing in a difficult and complex situation, and I am glad for the opportunity to say so in public. The American people know that their own lives aren't always as simple and tidy as you find in storybooks for little children; and so I look forward confidently to their forgiveness and even approval. In a confusing and challenging situation, I tried to meet my obligations to Marianne and Callista both at the same time. It didn't work out, but I will always carry with me the satisfaction that I tried honorably to do the right thing. Thank you for giving me a chance, finally after all these years, to set the record straight on this topic.

So what do you think? Could Newt have gotten away with an argument like this one? Could this have returned him a favorable verdict in the court of public opinion? Or am I just being silly?

Lots of questions .....

Then of course for another point of view, there is this interview with John Oliver from "The Daily Show."

[I am having trouble remembering how to embed the video, but here is the link: https://www.cc.com/video/mwo060/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-indecision-2012-the-freaker-of-the-spouse-newt-gingrich-s-negotiation-skills]

Twenty-first date

God, but I’m tired.

I’m sitting in the airport waiting for my flight home from Faraway City. D left very early this morning; but getting up early and driving her to the airport before going into the office for most of a day’s work isn’t why I’m so tired. It’s more that she got only a couple hours of sleep last night, and her tossing and turning and crying interfered with my getting much more than that. Crying? Yeah. Somehow last night we got into a huge argument about politics,of all the silly things. It’s still hard for me to believe … and I still don’t get why she wouldn’t just drop it when I said (more than once), “Look,I think this argument is going to turn out badly. Why don’t we just not care who’s right and talk about something else?” All I can say is that she thought there were fundamental moral issues at stake. So maybe it’s worth mentioning that if your boyfriend disagrees with you over this or that public policy issue, it doesn’t necessarily mean he is channeling the Evil One. He might just be unconvinced that the practicalities will turn out quite as rosy as you think they will.

Have I ever mentioned that D can be a bit high-strung?

By morning she had cried out all her combativeness. All that she could say was, “Hosea, I love you so much. I’m so sorry I ever brought any of that stuff up.” I told her, “D, I love you. It’s OK. It’ll be fine,” a couple times – well, no more than a couple dozen – and she let me dry her tears. And then we drove to the airport. So I guess it worked out well enough. But dear God it was hard to get there.
__________

But that’s not the story I wanted to tell.

All told, we had four nights together; and the other three were filled with food, wine, and sex. It had been about three months since I last saw D, and I had a very narrow window into which to plan this trip. Before this, Son 2 was working on applications to independent high schools: he is applying to Hogwarts, where Son 1 is going, but doesn’t really want to go there; he is also applying to two others that I might as well call Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. Anyway, the point is that until a few days before I left, I was busy at home helping him with his applications. And a couple days after I get back, Wife is going to have foot surgery and be immobile for a month. Add to this that my company is in the middle of a reorganization that may spell the end of my trips to Faraway City, and you see why my window was so narrow. Nonetheless, schedule it I did. D got a couple days off work and joined me.

I met her at the airport. She was in a bar right next to baggage-claim, watching a football playoff game. D is a big football fan – much bigger than I have ever been. She says the appeal of the game for her is frankly sexual: she loves watching muscular men running around in skin-tight pants. So I waited till that game was over, slid my arm around her waist, and invited her to steal away with me. We got dinner and a bottle of wine, then checked into the hotel. The sex that night was fast and urgent, the way it usually is the first time after we have been separated for a while.

We talked about all manner of things, as always, but kept coming back – that night and the next morning – to Wife’s conversation with CreepyOnlineChatGuy. What could this really mean? Why would she have such fantasies? D could have understood it if Wife had said that she found our boys physically good-looking but of course was stopped by the relationship. D herself has said things like that about her son – handsome boy, and if she weren’t his mother she’d think more than that. But Wife said no such thing: for Wife, the relationship was the only part she considered at all. What she found attractive about the idea of sex with Son 2 was precisely that he is her son. And how could her sexual wires have gotten that badly crossed?

It was, in fact, the next morning that I was able to see some light on the question. D was recalling the conversations she had had with Wife about sex back when they first worked together some twenty-odd years ago, and she said that there had been no trace back then of this disturbing kind of sexual fantasy. I thought for a minute, and then suddenly I saw it: “No, you’re wrong. The feeling that it grew out of was there even back then.” D asked me what I meant, and I explained.

There are a lot of ways of interacting with other people. One way, one kind of relationship, is characterized fundamentally by comfort. It is the kind of relationship you have with a friend when the two of you are close to each other, caring towards each other, and – most important – comfortable with each other. What is critical is that Wife does not, perhaps cannot, tell the difference between Comfort and Sex. That is, some sexual relationships are also Comfortable (in this sense of the word) … of course they are. But the overlap is not absolute. There are other sexual relationships which are not at all Comfortable. And of course there are plenty of Comfortable relationships which cannot be made sexual. But I remember even decades ago that Wife couldn’t see this. Even decades ago, she felt that somehow – if only – all comfortable relationships were also potentially sexual.

Once I put this together, it made sense of a lot of things. Most immediately, it explained why Wife would fantasize about sex with Son 2 – because what she really wanted to express was a comfortable closeness to him. But the converse is also illuminating: if Wife believes all Comfort to be (potentially) sexual, she also seems to believe that all sex should be Comfortable. This explains why, although Wife seemed for years to have a really strong sex drive, she has also seemed in strange ways to be afraid of sex – because so often sex isn’t Comfortable at all … because sex, good sex, is energetic, uncontrolled, sometimes violently so. It explains why Wife has always been so strangely, eerily quiet and unresponsive during sex, even when she was really aroused. And it explains why she accused me of rape one time – only once – when we fucked fast and hard, urgent and energetic. She never said “No,” and she even called me at work the next day to ask if I wanted to come home for lunch to have a re-run. But at the same time it spooked her. And five years later, when she decided to paint herself as a victim, she told me she had “decided” that she was going to “count” that one fuck as “rape” so she could tell her friends I raped her.

This conversation with D paid another dividend as well, besides helping me see something important about Wife that I had never seen in quite that way before. As I talked about the difference between Comfort and Sex, and as I pointed out (a little carefully) the ways that sex can be violent, D added as an aside, ”Oh yes, it can. In fact, that’s a direction that I would like to grow our own love-making. I like it when sex gets violent. I mean, there has to be an underlying layer of absolute trust that the other person won’t actually damage you. But what is exciting about violence it that it means the sex is out of my control. And when I’m no longer in control – when the sex is in control of me instead – that can be very exciting.”

Oh really? Violence, eh?

So the next two nights our fucking was more violent. Nothing structured or planned, exactly … not bondage, not domination, nothing you could give a name to. It was just as if we relaxed the brakes a little bit. D struggled as if she were trying to throw me off of her, while I wrestled to pin her, to have my way with her. Only, … in a moment suddenly she was the one who had pinned me, who was having her way with me instead. And a moment after that I couldn’t tell who had pinned whom, only we were locked together, struggling, fighting, frenzied … fucking blindly with everything we had. It was wonderful. And when we finally pulled our clothes on and went out to get dinner, D was floating blissfully on air, basking in a giddy afterglow that seemed to last an hour. Two nights in a row. Damn, that’s good stuff!

The other highlights of the visit seem pedestrian by comparison. We spent all day Sunday at the Faraway City Art Museum, looking at a special exhibit they had there, one that brought together pieces from a dozen different museums to explore a common theme. I went into the office Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. We had great dinners every night, and lots of good wine. We fought about politics, God help us, and by the time we were done I was in no mood for sex Tuesday night. Maybe that’s why D was crying …?

But the sex, and the violent edge … that’s something to remember.

Wife's creepy conversation, part two

After discovering this conversation, I spent a couple of days being pretty disturbed. I wrote to D, who was just as alarmed as I was but who suggested I contact my lawyer. I had wanted to do that anyway, because I know that sometimes there are mandatory reporting requirements on child protection issues and I had no idea what those rules might be where we live.

My lawyer thought it was just as creepy as I did (no surprise), but she had a more productive idea. She called a child protection hotline anonymously and read them the conversation. She answered a couple of questions they had, based on what she knew of the situation, but gave no names. They answered that it sounded very unlikely to them that anything had ever "happened": yes, it is something to watch for the future; but no, there is probably no need to panic.

Obviously I was very relieved to hear this, for several reasons. I couldn't get out of my mind that I had had a week-long business trip out of the country just about a week after Wife had written her message. (I even wrote you about the last weekend of the trip, here.) So I was kicking myself with worry retroactively. Also, as luck would have it, I had another trip scheduled in a couple of days. I tried to figure out how bad it would be if I cancelled it: I supposed I could conduct the meetings by telephone (not very efficiently, but half-assed). The ticket was non-refundable, so either my company or I would have to pay for it either way. And somehow it made me feel worse about making the trip that I have plans to see D. The last thing I wanted to do was to leave Son 2 callously in the hands of a predatory mother just so I could go see my girlfriend. That thought, and the second-guessing myself that it provoked, haunted me for a couple of days.

On the other hand, there was nothing I could do about the trip in October. It was in the past and I hadn't known back then. That is, I knew in general that Wife is nuts, but I didn't know about this conversation. And Son 2 was glad when I came back, but in a way that was excited rather than relieved. So I was cautiously optimistic that I didn't have to cancel my plans on the spot.

The night before I left I tried to ask Son 2 how old he had been when he finally stopped sleeping in our bed even on occasion. I tried to find a casual way to ask the question, but obviously I bungled it: he sat silent, staring straight ahead and looking terribly guilty, before finally mumbling, "That was years ago." And my heart froze: Was I wrong in my confidence of only a couple hours before? I weighed the question back and forth the rest of the night: he didn't seem to act oddly or wrong, but then what made me think I know what to look for? I came no closer to any peace of mind, and still kept open in the back of my head the chance of cancelling everything at the very last minute. Of course my ability to do so diminished by the hour, ... but just maybe .... I'm not very good at prayer, but that's where I ended up.

The next morning, Son 2 helped me load my bags in the car and I said simply, "I've been thinking more about it, and I'd really please like to ask that you sleep in your own bed, even if Mom tells you she's lonely or wants company." (I figure Son 2's soft spot is probably his compassion, so that's the way a predator could most likely get at him.) He just snorted disgustedly as if I had asked him not to eat baby food or library paste, and said "Obviously." And I felt better. I won't give up on prayer, though.

Respecting your elders

Last weekend we visited my parents. It was a big weekend, with lots going on, but a couple of stories stand out.

Saturday evening I was in the back of the house talking to my dad about not much, and I started to hear quarrelling noises from out front. Thinking I had better check them out, I excused myself and came out to the family room area, where I found a full-scale argument going on between Wife and Son 2. I later found out that it had started when Son 2 had gotten irritated with Son 1 over something really petty and pointless (Son 2 himself assessed it this way when we talked after, adding that he wouldn’t have been grouchy if he hadn’t been hungry at the time), but somehow Wife had gotten in the middle of it and Son 1 dropped promptly out. I don’t know what was said before I walked in, but the first thing I heard clearly was Son 2 shouting at Wife, “I have to listen to you complain every single day! You start as soon as you get in the car to go anywhere and you never stop! And I am going to be so glad next year when I am out of the house and away from you!”

OK. Got that.

Wife for her part was saying something about how Son 2 had to learn to respect his elders, though I don’t remember the words exactly. I interposed myself physically between them and tried to de-escalate the argument. In the first instance this meant getting Wife to stand down. She plainly wanted Son 2 punished (or something), but I asked her softly please just to back away. I urged her quietly, “Please, show that you’re the bigger one in this and just let it go.” After a couple of repititions she stopped growling at Son 2 and walked over to watch TV with Son 1. Then I asked Son 2 to join me out back for a minute.

“So you can yell at me some more?”

“Please just come out here for a minute,” I answered, although truly I had no idea what I was going to say. I just knew that had to be the next step.

So Son 2 slouched unwillingly outside with me and waited for me to say whatever I was going to say. I thought about it for a minute and realized I couldn’t think of anything. So I told him, “Actually I really don’t have anything to say at all, because anything I could possibly say would be something you already know. The real reason I asked you out here was just to put a door between you and Mom so that the whole situation could calm down.” Son 2 grumped and grouched for another couple of minutes until I found something else to talk about … at which point he perked right up, making jokes and contributing cheerfully to the conversation. It was after that that he volunteered his assessment that the whole argument had been stupid from the beginning, and that all he really needed was dinner. And indeed it wasn’t long afterwards that we ate, so I guess the evening worked out OK.

I wonder if it would be useful, somewhere along the line, for me to talk to Wife about this whole concept of “respecting your elders.” It seems that this isn’t the first time I have heard it from her. The thing is, I remember back when she was younger (since we met almost three decades ago) how positively hostile she was to the idea, and I don’t think we made a special point of it as we raised the kids. What I mean is that of course we insisted that everyone deserves a basic level of respect out of common courtesy. But I’m not sure we ever insisted that one’s elders should get an extra level of respect above and beyond the simple decency we all owe everyone ... simply on account of being old. And if my memory serves me correctly on this point, then that would mean at the very least that to insist on such extra respect now would be to change the rules midstream.

I also have to admit that I am kind of partial to the way Plato handles this very topic, somewhere in his dialogue The Laws. The Athenian Stranger is talking to Cleinias and Megillos, and says he disagrees with the common saying that “Youth should respect everybody.” Cleinias and Megillos ask why. The Athenian Stranger says that he thinks, by contrast, that it would be better to insist that the old should respect the young. Now this really irritates Cleinias and Megillos, both of whom are old men, so they ask the Athenian Stranger what the hell he is talking about. He explains that the young don’t really learn their attitudes by listening to what their elders say; they learn by imitating what they see their elders do. Therefore lecturing them that they ought to “respect everybody” won’t accomplish a thing. If you want your children to learn a behavior, you have to model it for them. So when he says that the old ought to respect the young, the Athenian Stranger concludes, what he really means is that we all ought to take seriously the education of the young … take it seriously enough that we are willing to teach by example, even if that means forcing ourselves to be better people than we might otherwise want to be, so that the young who are watching us will imitate our better examples and learn accordingly. Of course that may be easier said than done, …. (deep sigh)

Wife's creepy conversation: a fragment

[Excerpted from an online chat last October, which I only found out about last night.]

CreepyOnlineChatGuy: [He has just been discussing sex with his brother's wife, apparently in India.] I hope you are open-minded enough to appreciate all that we have talked about today, Babe?

Wife: Of course. I'm not easily shocked. But sex between in-laws is just taboo here. Too bad. At one point my brother-in-law [i.e., Brother] and I were very close. It could have been more than it was, but there was a lot of pressure for us not even to be touching, like hugging or hand-holding.

CreepyOnlineChatGuy: I have no taboos about sex with, say, a sister-in-law or mother-in-law! A sister, I probably wouldn't ....

Wife: I'm fine with that. I know a father-son couple, which breaks ALL taboos -- but they so clearly adore each other that I don't take offense at it. [I think she is talking about the father and the son from the Boyfriend 5 saga. I thought she had finally figured out that was all a fantasy, but maybe it makes a better story this way.]

CreepyOnlineChatGuy: Though while playing doctor, my touching my sister's breasts or vagina, or her touching my penis, would be OK.

Wife: But that's usually a childish game. Among adults, I don't know. I have a very close relationship with my younger son, who still likes to sleep with me when his father is travelling. There's nothing sexual between us, but in another society I think there would be.

CreepyOnlineChatGuy: I would not be shocked if you had more than anything with your son, though in American society I wouldn't expect it, in the Judeo-Christian environment ....

Wife: Right. And so he wouldn't allow it, even though I know he would want it. Too bad, because we're so close that I think it would just make us closer. But all western psychology says that it would ruin his maturation process and interfere with his ability to have relationships with other women later.

CreepyOnlineChatGuy: I think this about ruining his maturation process may be a bit too far fetched. If it were permissible, would you suck your son? Animals do it in nature!!

Wife: Of course it's unreasonable. Hosea says that Son 2 wouldn't be able to separate a mother-figure from a lover-figure. I doubt that. Would I suck him? Yes, or fondle him, and vice versa. Personally, I wonder where better kids are supposed to learn than with the people they trust the most. It's not that it would be so very erotic for me, but that it would be very comfortable and loving. And yes, incest is completely natural in nature.

....

Is this fantasy or delusion? I wish I knew. I'm kind of rattled.