Sex And The Liberal Woman - Hidden Desire For The Unfeminized Beast

Bettina Campbell thought she knew what's what until her neighbor flew an oversized American flag.  Putney Meadows, the leafy Washington neighborhood that had been solidly progressive for as long as she could remember, now had an apostate living right next door.  Or course he could simply be expressing his patriotism, his love of country, and solid Americanism, but in these days of Donald Trump and the miasma of right wing political infection, there could be no such thing.  Flying the American flag was nothing more than a Make America Great Again banner. 

Bettina had suspected as much when she met her neighbor taking out the trash and commiserated with him about 'the ballroom', the garish monstrosity that Donald Trump was planning to build in the White House, a travesty of history, an obtuse, bourgeois claim to faux culture, and a gross obscenity.  She was surprised when he did not rise to the occasion, but merely smiled, commented on the weather, and asked Bettina about her rose garden. 

'Silence is complicity' was the sign posted on her front lawn, and here was a clear case of it.  Her neighbor simply by deflecting the ballroom comment and turning to innocuousness, showed his true colors - a right wing zealot, an apostate, and a traitor right here in Putney Meadows. She had been right about the flag all along.

'I had a chat with our neighbor', Bettina mentioned to her husband over dinner that night.  'You know the one, the flag one', and without waiting for his response, she went into her now familiar screed about the idiocy of Donald Trump.  This time, however, there was something more to her usual fluid stream of hatred.  Never in a hundred years did she expect a Trump supporter to live in the neighborhood, let alone next door.  How was she expected to deal with such an intrusion?

Her husband said that he didn't know what the fuss was about. The neighbor parked courteously, was careful to recycle his trash, smiled, waved, and brought over fresh figs from his garden. His political beliefs were his affair. 

This of course did not satisfy Bettina who felt the presence of the neighbor was a blight, as bad as a crack house next door, an unwanted, uncivilized, brutish, brooding presence that destroyed the comity of the block and the neighborhood. 

From that moment onward she hovered, waiting for another chance to confront her neighbor.  She tried to be outside when he went to work and came home, looked out the back window on trash pickup day to catch him in the alley, tended her rose garden when she heard voices in the yard next door; but no dice. She was not up to full frontal confrontation - there was a certain sense of propriety in the neighborhood borne of good breeding and education - but was tempted when all her more surreptitious attempts at contact failed. 

Susie Brandon was the woman who knew everything - who lived where, what they did for a living, how the marriage was progressing, whether children were on the way, what schools they went to, what cars they drove etc.  She wasn't actually a busybody, just an interested, community minded neighbor to whom all went for gossip.  How did Judge Fuller die? Is that Marge Adams' second or third marriage, etc. 

So Bettina went to Susie about her neighbor.  What did she know about him?  Now, Bettina, mindful of the neighborhood ethos of goodwill, was tentative and careful in her questioning, but her intent was clear.  Was the neighbor a right wing Trump supporter or not?

Susie said she had no idea.  The flag and the Lexus parked out front were some indications of Republicanism, but beyond that she was unwilling to say. 'Invite them over', she suggested. 

Bettina had of course thought of that, but was afraid of what she might find out.  It was one thing to suspect or surmise one's political affiliation, another altogether to be faced undeniably with it.  No, invitations would not do. The truth would crack the polity of a well-constructed, politically solid neighborhood and better to let sleeping dogs lie than to rile them up. 

Now, it turned out that the neighbor was actually a charming, polite, and articulate man who clearly loved women.  Even in the first alley-trash encounter, Bettina felt his affection and personal interest.  After so long married to the same man and after years in the progressive trenches, she was surprised at her response to her neighbor's quite obvious sexual interest.  

This of course added to her confusion.  Sexual responsiveness towards a political traitor would be capitulation to the Devil, an insidious and unforgiveable lapse of integrity.  However once the flame had been lit, she couldn't deny that her political interest in outing an apostate was merely a cover for something far more pertinent although inexpressible. 

'Conservatives make good lovers' was the meme on the street, a happy-go-luck t-shirt logo worn on the tennis court or mowing the lawn but as in most hyperbole and fancy there is some truth.  Liberal men fall over themselves to respect, honor, and defer to women.  Lovemaking is progressive method acting: 'May I? Can I? Would it be OK if...' and all the rest of the mile markers set up by No Means No women.  There would be no male forwardness in the bedroom of sensitized women. Men would be brought to heel and kept there at women's beck and call. 

Of course most women were sick and tired of such sycophantism and faux demeanor.  They wanted to fucked royally not mollycoddled and deferred to like the Virgin Mary.  It was conservative men who had never bought into the feminist cant, gender inquiry, and pedestal thinking of their progressive colleagues, and who believed that women were to be had, no different from any other desirable item in the marketplace. 

Although women like Bettina publicly raged at such insensate, bullying, intimidating behavior, they privately wanted men like this....men like Bettina's neighbor. 

The cat-and-mouse game continued for a month or two.  Both parties knew the outcome but were willing to play dutiful suitor and coy maiden.  As they grew closer Bettina, began to see that her neighbor was 'not that bad' - his radical conservatism, under the soft lighting of the Jefferson Suite at the Fairfax, did not seem quite so noxious; and it was that joyous epiphany which changed her mind.  She was no longer a one-issue woman.  Not everyone had to pass muster, pass through her political filter, to be acceptable. Political anger was draining, debilitating, and counter-productive.  Politics described but did not define. 

It is hard to keep up let alone leave off a sexual liaison with a next door neighbor, but Bettina and her lover were civilized people; and when the affair was over, they still managed neighborliness and good will. 

Every so often, when she saw his wife leave for work in the morning, she was tempted to slip in the back door and rekindle the affair, but she demurred.  Better leave that one in the rearview mirror.  There would be others now that she had rid herself of the limiting political sieve through which men had had to pass.