The Three-Way Freeway

I'm getting a little tired of tsking and shaking my head. I've practically got repetitive stress injuries to my tongue and neck at this point. It's always the same story, over and over again: some politician screaming family values and marriage-is-the-fabric-of-all-civil-society ends up being either a serial adulturer or wearing out their own tongues and necks working on rentboys during a "fact-finding tour" to the exotic faraway land of My Wife's At Work.

Here we are again hearing about how GOP sometime-frontrunner, the short-of-breath and probably sweaty Newt Gingrich, the self-proclaimed last bulwark between decent folks and earthy, rapine, Clintonian hippie relativism, wanted to install a swinging door across the gateway in the castle of Heteronormative Monogamy at the end of his marriage to his second(!) wife.*

Out of pure reflex, I shake my head, I tsk once or twice... I wince, but the linament helps. Rest assured, I'm thinking what you're thinking. Your questions are my questions, first and foremost amongst which is obviously this: how the fuck does a guy who looks like Newt Gingrich pull chicks?

He's on his third wife. That's three. Three times he's convinced a different, separate woman to have regular sex with him. I know women aren't supposed to be driven by looks alone, but come on. I've done enough online dating to know that that position is a) mostly bullshit and b) has its limits. The weight women give to looks is lower than what men give, certainly, but speaking of weight, my God. We're talking about a scenario of not just multiple but competitive offers for a companianate sexual relationship with a guy who is built exactly like a matryoshka doll. But with white hair. And a speaking voice like a dropped tray in a restaurant. There were times, ladies and gentlemen, after my divorce when I was alone. By myself. Undesired by anyone, let alone multiples. And I work out. What could possibly be going on?

I know power is the ultimate aphrodisiac or whatever, but how much power are we talking about really? He was in Congress. And not even the Senate, the fucking House of Representatives. Know who else was in the House of Representatives? Gopher off of Love Boat. Yes, a U.S. representative job gets you exactly as much pull as the third co-lead in an ensemble anthology series from the 1970s.

And yeah, he was the Speaker of the House, but that's like being the fastest guy at the wheelchair Olympics. Win by as much as you want, but at the end of the day, all you're left with is the deepest wish that you were overqualified to compete.

There's only one other option. The late, lamented Christopher Hitchens said "An average man has just one, outside chance: he had better be able to make the lady laugh. Making them laugh has been one of the crucial preoccupations of my life. If you can stimulate her to laughter—I am talking about that real, out-loud, head-back, mouth-open-to-expose-the-full-horseshoe-of-lovely-teeth, involuntary, full, and deep-throated mirth; the kind that is accompanied by a shocked surprise and a slight (no, make that a loud) peal of delight—well, then, you have at least caused her to loosen up and to change her expression. I shall not elaborate further."

Maybe that's it. Maybe beneath the petulant, droning, scoldish school-marm with an eschatology fixation lies a sly, winking bandier of bon mots and purveyor of polished wit, delivering droll seduction with the kind of James-Bondian élan that induces women to make liars of their eyes and stills the hands scrabbling in the dark for something blunt and heavy to drive that giant red face away for just long enough...

But no, nope, can't do it. My ability to suspend disbelief on that front has been ruined forever by the occasion of hearing anything the man has ever had to say.

But you know, what do I know? And I'm relying on Hitchens, the drunk atheist so devoted to contrarianism he even now refuses even to be alive. Maybe what chicks really respond to is a kind of cynical, forced earnestness informed by opportunism, small ambition and a desire to dominate a conversation with volume (loudness) and volume (amounts of words) when we lack the capacity or even interest to listen. Who am I to argue really? It's not only working on his wife(ves), it's working on a whole mess of ladies in South Carolina at the moment. And probably more than a few dudes, if my understanding of polling practices is what I think it is.

I can argue if I want, but how many presidential primaries have I ever won? Well, I guess at the moment, exactly as many as Newt Gingrich has. But that could change soon. Then I'll re-evaluate.



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*Not the cancer one, the one after that.