Adultery, The Sport Of Kings

Rafferty Adams had grown up in a modest, middle class home - Main Street pharmacist father, second grade teacher mother, catechism, mass on Sunday, Fourth of July parade, and Cub Scouts; but none of it took  There was something always scratchy and irritating about his family, their friends, and their horrible parties.  

 

'Raffy, darling, please help Mommy set the table' was his hated Saturday bugle call.   There had to be a purpose to it all, some definable end other than the mink stoles of Mrs. Fox, Mrs. Taylor, and the hideous Mrs. Proctor. 

Harry the optometrist took his wife's wrap and hung it in the hall closet next to Bill's wife's ermine, and Sendak's wife's cloth coat.  Rafferty was in charge of taking umbrellas if rain or galoshes if snow, and wiping up the drippings. 

 

Then came Mrs. Lind's Swedish canapes, hot delicacies wrapped in light, nearly transparent phyllo, Arctic char, and truffles-and-egg; and then the refills, the spilled drinks, the cinder burns on the rug, and the farewells. 

There are many ways a young boy can leave home - hopping a freight to St. Louis in the 40s, joining the Arch Street crowd dating across the tracks in the 50s - but Rafferty held his own, biding his time, sussing things out, vetting, deliberating, and waiting. 

He was a star at Yale - dean's list, first team football, Fence Club - but in all this he still felt tethered to his unsavory past.  Yes, he had done well for himself, but along greased rails.  There was still time and opportunity to diverge from this prescribed path, and to be...well, at this point he was unsure what that 'to be' was, but it would come. 

Graduation, business school, Wall Street, and then it all became clear.  Not only was money to be made through innovative, creative instruments, but women were to be had by the same means.  They were as easy to seduce as the credulous investors who believed that their ships were in harbor ready to come in and only in need of a river pilot like Raffy. 

There is a time for everything, and after years of delightful seductions and millions of dollars in the bank, Rafferty thought it time to settle down, marry, have children, and leave a legacy; but given his current trajectory, far from the New Brighton rectitude from which he had escaped, settling down meant only a social pied a terre from which he could continue his unassuming but wholly satisfied life. 

He married Elizabeth Cabot Harrington, heiress to the Cabot and Harrington fortunes, debutante who won everyone over from Beacon Hill to Palm Beach, a lovely, educated suitable prize.  She was taken with Rafferty's charm, absolute confidence, and his unmistakable love of women. They were married that summer at the Gardiner Estate at Rolling Rock overlooking Long Island Sound. 

'I love you', Rafferty said as he looked over the lawn to water's edge and watched the last turns of the Barcroft regatta.  The Cabot estate where they were married had been passed down from generation to generation - a family legacy that the last living patriarch, Lodge Harrington Cabot, left to his great granddaughter to keep in trust. 

He loved Elizbeth more for the way she loved him than for anything unique or special about her; and so retained his aloofness and emotional distance, and went on enjoying women just as he had before marriage. 

Why couldn't a man have both?  His harem of women had not been disassembled when he married; those who had shared bed before were just as happy to share it now and his wife, loving him without question never interfered.  

Of course there were wardens - his wife's maiden aunts who, straight out of an Edwardian set piece were the duennas tapped to assure fidelity - but Rafferty was fully aware that his sexual adventures would only add to his allure for both his wife and his paramours.  As many lovers as he had, all were seduced by his infidelity.  Each lover tried even harder to make themselves more appealing, to his blue ribbon prize. 

Rafferty never set out to become a libertine lover.  It came naturally and he thought no less of women for their complaisance, their credulousness, and their breathless fall for his attention. That was women's nature, and he was quite Lawrentian in his pursuit of sexual compatibility and equilibrium. 

Many men of his generation had fallen under the sway of feminism; and believed that women had never been taken seriously; that they were only sexual objects and looked at only for mating and reproductive potential. Women's inner worth had been overlooked by men in their single-minded pursuit of sexual satisfaction; and feminists were determined to return that notion to the Stone Age where it belonged. 

Rafferty had never paid attention to this canon.  No matter how well crafted the feminist argument might be, the truth of the matter was that women had never changed.  Yes of course they had shown their ability to lead and had broken through the glass ceiling but when they punched the clock and returned home, they returned to the tried and true.  Perhaps not slippers and martinis by the fire but some semblance of feminine submission.

Simply out of pique and challenge, Rafferty wooed Eliza Wood, chairwoman of the Washington chapter of The Feminist Alliance.  A woman of determination and principle, Eliza had championed the MeToo movement designed to teach men a look-but-don't-touch lesson in sexual propriety.  Sexual intercourse was entirely a woman's domain, hands off until otherwise instructed. 

Their affair was brief but passionate; and more importantly his domain.  She was the one who rolled over when instructed, who obeyed his rules of pleasure, and climaxed at his command.  She left the hotel room as satisfied as she had ever been.  He had never once asked permission for anything, just took what he wanted and she gave willingly. 

He came home at night to keep order and civility in his marriage. Prostitutes are paid not just for sex, but to leave; and for male lovers the rule was no different.  Spending the night other than at home added something unintended to the relationship, something unwanted and unnecessary. 

His wife knew very well about his liaisons and said nothing.  She knew that his appeal was the same for all women, and that without it he would be a dull boy; and that she did not want.  As long as he came home at night, all was forgiven. 

Many men who have fallen into the trap of fidelity cannot imagine anyone like Rafferty, a man without moral conviction, a strayer, a man without an ethical core.  He, they said, despite his avowed love of women was actually the worst kind of misogynist, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, respectful of women on the surface but deeply mistrustful of them at heart.

Not at all. Rafferty took women as they were, was as honest as the day is long, and still successfully invited legions to share his bed. They loved him for his no-frills romance, his unalloyed, unmitigated, irremediable desire for them. 

A cad? A misogynistic predator, a testosterone-fueled Paleolithic throwback?  Hardly.  Rafferty was old school and new school, old guard and new guard - but only the trappings were different.  Beneath the wrapping was the same unchanged, native, natural, and uncontrite male.