I write this on Valentine’s Day, having run into the King of Greece early this morning in the local bank asking a teller where he could buy a Valentine card for his queen. (He received a blank stare for his trouble.) After 47 years of marriage, it’s nice to know that even kings bring Valentine cards to their queens.
Personally, I’m not a big card man. Love letters, yes, Valentine cards a no-no, romantic emails only when dead drunk. The purpose of a love letter is obviously to seduce. If seduction has taken place already, then it means the seducer wants more of the good stuff. I know, I know, it sounds awfully cynical, but I’ve been around for much too long to fall for all the rest. They say that seduction, unlike a marriage proposal, can never occur between equals. This is why I’ve been having so much trouble with my long-time fiancée. She is the deputy editor of The Spectator and I’m a lowly regular contributor. The inherent imbalance explains why seduction is always exploitative in one way or another.
Mind you, for seduction to be possible, one person must want sex more than the other — or else have less to lose by it. Two sainted Spectator editors ago, there were all sorts of seductions taking place and nobody lost nuttin’, as they say, except for the publisher, who gained a child. The only one who didn’t get lucky was poor little me, but then I was playing outside 56 Doughty Street, our then headquarters.
Looking at the seduction scene can be quite comic. The methods employed and the tactics used resemble those of Rommel or Guderian before their famous stroll into France back in 1940. Whether or not the seducer gets his or her way, a happy ending is a confirmation that sex is still number one where games are concerned. The real Casanova and the fictitious Don Giovanni revelled in the after-sex moment. They took pleasure in the exercise of power. It was their cavalier approach to sex that makes modern feminists loathe the pair, and dinosaurs like yours truly love them to death. People can, of course, also get hurt, like Donna Elvira, but this is a happy kind of column, and I only want to write about good things. (This week, at least.)
I went to a moonlight party up at the Eagle and had one too many, gave a very silly speech and then proceeded to dance with a beautiful widow for hours, the trouble being that she was already dancing with a German friend of mine, Wolfgang, who turned out to be as polite as he’s good-looking and allowed me to dance à trois. Then came my magic moment. I went to the Palace Hotel and met a beautiful French girl named Anne-Sophie, who lives in London and is as feminine and graceful as a French lady can be. All I can say is the deputy editor better watch her step. Next time it might be the poor little Greek boy who doesn’t show up at the wedding. (Just kidding.)
Most of you won’t remember this, but 35 years or so ago Mario Vargas Llosa punched Gabriel Garcia Márquez because the latter had made a pass at his wife, Patricia. When Márquez demanded to know why the knuckle sandwich, the Peruvian Nobel prize winner — as he then was not — said, ‘It’s for what you did to Patricia in Barcelona.’ I suppose funny things happen in Barcelona all the time. I am in love with Rebecca Hall because of Vicki Cristina Barcelona, the film, and I’ve cut out her Speccie picture of two weeks ago and put it next to the deputy editor’s on my wall.
Latin Americans fight a lot over women, perhaps that is why they are so bad at fighting wars. I don’t think I’ve ever had a fistfight over a woman, although I’ve been unfairly attacked many a time for being kind and solicitous to lonely women, especially in nightclubs. I’ve been in two major brawls when boors manhandled the ladies I was with, but I’ve never initiated a confrontation.
The ones who make me laugh are the Americans. Especially where high-profile people are concerned. Once caught with their pants down, they usually make a public confession and act contrite because in America cheating on a girl means they are also capable of cheating on their taxes, are corrupt in business and steal from church collections for the poor. I’ve heard of businessmen confessing to their employees for having cheated on their wives. No wonder business ain’t what it used to be in the land of plenty.
The French die laughing about American confessions. Latin Americans are particularly good at handling infidelity and, as far as Greeks are concerned, fuggerraboutit. Here are a few shocking statistics. Australians are among the world’s most faithful. Dominicans among the biggest cheaters. Brazilians, I suppose, the chippiest, as it was only as recently as 1991 that Brazil’s Supreme Court declared that a husband could no longer murder his adulterous wife and her lover. (Phew!) The widow I was dancing with à trois last week was married to a Brazilian, now resting in peace, but one never knows.
Both men and women in Russia cheat, or so the polls tell us. Living in two-room apartments with a large family does not for peaceful sex make. Russians have sex in order to have a break from the bickering. Crooked oligarchs living in London do not have sex because their houses are too big and by the time they find their tarts the urge is gone. I hope you had a happy Valentine’s Day.
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