Dreams Of A Political Arriviste - The Consort Of A Kingly Leader And Finding Him In Washington

Barbery Byfield was a typical girl of her generation - coquette, ingenue, but with that precocious sexuality that most girls affect but she had in abundance.  She was indeed a Lolita, a nymphet, a girl barely out of high socks and school uniforms, who had desires well beyond her age. 

When she read the Arabian Nights, or Rapunzel, Goldilocks, or The Fairy Princess, she did not let them float happily in her fantasy.  When she dressed up in sequins, crinoline, and glitter, she was not just pretending to be a prima ballerina, noticed by the Tsar of Russia and invited to the Winter Palace.  She was that ballerina. 

When she saw pictures of the palaces of Persepolis, Constantinople, and Babylon, she was not just an imagined princess of the pasha's harem, but was that lady of exotic charms. 

She spent her classes daydreaming, imagining a world far beyond Chillicothe, Ohio, the farm, the cornfields, and the Methodist church - a world of wonder, limitless possibilities; a life of sybaritic pleasure, sexual abandon, frankincense and myrrh.  

Her grades slipped, her teachers critical, and the principal dismissive.  'Unless your grades improve, Miss Byfield, I would be remiss if I didn't remind you of your responsibilities', said the principle, an old queen never satisfied; but Barbery knew that her future was not in conjugations, the Hundred Years War, or Jeffersonian expansionism. 

Where was it, then? she wondered.  'Dreams are misfortunes in disguise', her mother had warned her, a woman who had had her share of promising but ultimately disappointing love affairs.  In fact, Mrs. Byfield was never entirely sure that Barbery was the offspring of Mr. Byfield or the ravishing Viscount of Northumberland who had swept her off her feet, treated her like a queen, then left her for the Duchess of Kent.  

Such is the stuff dreams are made of, she recalled; and best warn her daughter off such fancies before it was too late. 

But too late it was, for whether a product of genetic destiny or environmental influence, her daughter Barbery followed in her footsteps, enamored of the princely life, the romantic, and the wellborn. 

'At least keep your knickers on

, her mother finally said to her precocious daughter, 'until Mr. Right comes along', but those were words of an older generation of women.  Hers, feminist, demanding, and impatient, was different.  If she wanted a trail of disappointed men behind her, so be it. 'Reputation' today was more a question of dominance and success than virginity. 

It was a fine line to walk, the one between the slatternly and informed choice.  There were the usual suitors from which she assessed like Portia - Bobby Parker, captain of this and that, a bit slow off the mark but zesty and confident; Alfonso Evans, eccentric artist with little talent but with an insouciance which appealed; Dickinson Putnam of the Putnams, the Putnams of the Davenport expedition, the Salem trials, and the founding of New Haven; and Ralph DiMarco, goomba, the first New Haven Italian to be admitted to Yale, a political foundling with all kinds of connections and good in bed. 

Women have made fame, fortune, and history thanks to their ineffable and irresistible sexual appeal.  Margaret, wife of the weak King Henry VI, tired of his shilly-shallying rule, took over the reigns of power, defeated the French and saved England from foreign rule.  Cleopatra made short work of her Ptolemaic adversaries, and ruled Egypt for decades, in the meantime bedding Julius Caesar and having two children by him before luring Marc Antony into her bed chamber.  Ibsen, Strindberg, Dreiser, and Lewis wrote of indomitable women who took what they wanted and left a trail of men behind them. 

The problem was this: there was no American royalty, no cultured legatees of a thousand years of history, not even a significant aristocracy to speak of.  Yes, there were the Cabots and Lodges, Rittenhouse Square, Beacon Hill, and the Waldorf, but they couldn't hold a candle to the Bourbons or the Windsors. 

All that America had was this unwashed, hungry, bourgeois class of go-getters - the Zuckerbergs, Bezos, Buffets, Gates, and Jobs and their successors; so Barbery's fantasies of a palatial life were as fanciful as ever.  Times had changed. 

Or had they? Was an affair with an Ohio Congressman, an important member of the Ways and Means Committee of Congress, he heir to the wealth that only a few years in elected government can provide,  not the same as a rung on the ladder of viscounts, counts, and dukes but a reasonable aspiration?  Distasteful perhaps, but equivalent. 

So with a higher prize in mind, Barbery shared her bounty with others in Washington, moving her way up from interns to Congressional aides to inner circles. 

It is supposed that the political elite is a notch above the rest, more savvy, canny, and worldly wise; but the reverse is true.  These politicos, especially those with tenure, were particularly vulnerable to the blandishments and advances of young women like Barbery. 

As Shakespeare well knew, men are boobs and women can run rings around them.  Viola, Rosalind, and Portia were marvels of misandry, dismissing men like so much lint.  Lady Macbeth and especially Queen Margaret wife of the Danish regicide king and uncle to Hamlet, were the most well-known examples of native feminism.  Not to mention Tamora, Queen of the Goths or Dionyza harridan and murderous queen. 

 

So these fools in Washington would be easy pickings; but would bedtime with the nation's philanderers  be any satisfaction of Barbery's desires?   Would a liaison with the likes of Newt Gingrich, Mark Sanford, John Edwards, or even Bill Clinton, duplicitous, craven, heartless idiots, be the apogee of her ambition?

Doubtful.  Washington has no aristocratic sophistication, no Old World cavalier culture, no royal entitlement, and worst of all, no class.  It is a barnyard, pigsty, rutting free-for-all. 

Yet there is value and honor in accepting the challenge and wearing the laurels of victory.  So what if Congressman X is a rube from the sticks? Having him prostrate, vulnerable and hers was worth something.  Perhaps not in the annals of Mme. de Maintenon or Marie Antoinette, but a statement nonetheless. 

And so it was that Barbery Byfield found her home - not the Palais de Versailles or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon exactly, but a fertile ground for dominance and sexual satisfaction, the very essence of woman. 

 

Was the President of the United States immune to feminine wiles?  No President in American history led a faithful, uxorious life.  Every single one of them had a mistress except perhaps for Jimmy Carter who admitted only to having 'lust in his heart' which of course counts for the same thing, almost. 

Donald Trump has a beautiful younger wife and during his long career has squired the most desirable women; and since all men even at an advanced age think of sex every waking moment, the President would certainly be fair game. 

Particularly now when he is at the top of his game he would be at his most susceptible. All powerful men reach an inviolate plateau, a no-fly zone, an untouchable position from which they feel they can do anything without prosecution.  Especially in a president's second term in office, his last by Constitutional injunction, he feels more empowered and immune than ever. 

Former President of France Nicolas Sarkozy kept his mistress in the Presidential Palace, the Elysees, at his beck and call.  President Mitterrand's lover and illegitimate child mourned at his grave alongside his wife and legitimate children. 

There would be no fuss - there could be no fuss - if Barbery moved into the presidential quarters, but that was  putting the cart before the horse, engaging in one of her romantic fantasies before political reality.

The old adage - men will always be men - has not changed in millennia. Men are and always will be suckers for sexual attention and will throw fidelity, trust, and honesty to the winds for sexual adventure. 

In fact the older a man gets, the more insistent he becomes about expressing his virility; and a May-December affair, if ever achieved, can be transformative for an older man.  

Now, Donald Trump might be a hard sexual nut to crack, but he's no different from John Q. Public, wanting that nubile, silken freshness that only the likes of Barbery Byfield can offer. 

At this moment Barbery is in wings, but soon will show herself in all her marvelously seductive allure,  Why Barbery, you might ask given the tarts, comers, and glamorous showgirls of the world? Because some women have it and some don't, and this President  among all before him knows what's what.