A Little On The Side - The Story Of Male Prerogative And The Breathless Desire Of Hopeful Women

Albert Hereford was an ordinary man - well-proportioned, talented, and a reasonable success.  A good university, good if not storied parentage and family legacy, kind, considerate and obliging up to a point. Albert had his standards of behavior, limited perimeters, and agreed upon ambitions, and was unwilling to compromise them.  

The nuns had tried to corral his unusually precocious behavior.  His teachers, impressed with his ability but unwilling to give him his head kept him on a tight leash, and only when he entered Yale was his true potential realized. 

For the first time free of the yoke of parents, the Church, and oppressive teachers, he could follow his own path, find his own way, and become....Well, that was the sticking point. Become what? But in the meantime youth was not to be wasted, and from his privileged position among the best and the brightest he dated and left scores of Vassar, Smith, and Holyoke girls only too anxious to sample the goods.  Albert's reputation preceded him, and even his desultory attitude did nothing to deter women who wanted to know what the fuss was all about.

 

Albert was an indifferent student at Yale, Gentlemen C's, Fence Club, and a reserve on the tennis team, but none of that ordinary predictability dampened women's enthusiasm.  He was a prime example of hardwired sexual dynamics - women want men who are virile, confident, pursuant, and above all patient.  Men who listened to them.  Men who took them seriously. 

Albert was the ideal - the man of their dreams...their sublimated, undercover dreams of course; for any of the high-toned, high-class women he dated would never betray such primal desires.  They were at Vassar etc. to find suitable mates, men whose career path was already underway, houses on Beacon Hill, the Vineyard, Palm Beach, and St. Tropez and trust funds overflowing - i.e. the standard prescription, the accepted algorithm, the real reason why parents spent so much money on an Ivy League education. 

So Albert fell short of the mark when it came to future promise; but there was something simply irresistible about his charm, his obvious love of women and most importantly his sincerity.  No woman ever doubted his interest in them and them alone. 

He had the pick of the litter when it came to marriage, and after a short interregnum after graduate school, he decided to settle down - a secure home from which he could continue his dalliances.  He was honest about that, at least to himself.  Marriage was to be a home port from which he sailed, a safe harbor, a welcoming hearth but his real life, one of excitement, adventure, and limitless opportunity was outside in the nether lands. 

 

Margaret Carpenter fell head over heels in love with Albert, so much so that she was at a loss for words when asked to explain why.  Such an immediate, soul-shaking, existentially profound attraction could never be qualified.  It just was one of God's gifts. 

Albert understood this and how he had had such a spirit-engaging influence on the young Margaret, and he knew that she was a one-man woman who would never question her love for him or his for her. The marriage was a holy pact of celestial permanence - at least for her, but for him no more than three months passed before he had found a paramour, a beautiful Palestinian queen, a displaced goddess anxious for love and caring. 

 

They first met in the sumptuous settings she had always envisioned - the palatial home of the Maharaja of Jaipur, a friend from Albert's World Bank days, a grand estate built by Lord Mountbatten in the heyday of the Raj and virtually unchanged, still the opulent but tasteful symbol of Anglo-Indian culture. 

'Don't ever leave me', said Usha as Albert readied himself for the long trip back home; but despite her blandishments and loving entreaties, she had become a part of his past, a dim memory in the cavalcade of his adventures, and a clinging woman best left 5000 miles behind. 

The saga of Albert Hereford was textbook - the story of sexual dynamics which, despite decades of feminism and woman power, remained unchanged.  From boardroom to checkout counter, women had never lost their attraction to men like Albert. They went weak-kneed when he approached, and on their knees when they fell under his cajoling, soft, caring attention. 

They hated themselves for such abject hopefulness - strong, independent women were not supposed to be in the thrall of anyone, let alone a known Casanova - yet there they were, bewitched by his  kindness,  

 

And so it was that Albert began the life of a sexual troubadour - a man wedded to his princess in the tower, but laying about with the most desirable, most beautiful, most alluring women of the realm. 

He was man without tether or halter.  His sexual desirability to other women made his wife even more devoted to him.  He was her prince and his sexual dalliances only increased his appeal.  The women at court all wondered what made him so special, and their liaisons with him initially intended as exploratory missions became moments of intractable desire. 

How disruptive to the social norm, many who knew of him and his exploits concluded.  What if all men were like him, sexual vagrants, vagabonds with no ties to hearth and home?  What would become of the very institution of marriage?

Albert heard these chuchotages and smiled. Marriage was a social construct as subject to the vagaries of convention as slavery or le droit du Seigneur. At best it was a launching pad for more exciting, lively adventures.  Why be fussed?

A male prerogative sanctioned by XY and XX chromosomes and played out through millennia of varied sexual relationships.  No matter how configured - arranged, spontaneous, for love or accident - marriage was a male event. 

Of course there were plenty of men who capitulated to women, who subscribed to notions of sexual equality and gender-neutral preference.  These were the men clapping at women's conferences, marching on the mall for equal rights, at the vanguard of abortion rights and fracturing the glass ceiling, but sadly strapped, groomed, and tied to hearth and home, prisoners of their own misguided political illusions. 

Albert was no misogynist and wished women well on their rise to the top.  His understanding of the fundamental grounds of women - their psycho-sociology, their instincts, and their predetermined genetic preferences - did not deter him from admiring their pluck and ambition.  He simply knew that all women were his for the asking if he followed the age-old script engraved in stone long before the Ten Commandments - men and women are fundamentally different and always will be; and the canny man who can decipher what women want - a very simple puzzle - will be king.