One Affair

The past few years have brought a string of shame-faced confessions from political figures who were discovered cheating on their wives. One after the other, they trot up to the bank of microphones, with or without the poor woman, to say they are "sorry" and that they "take full responsibility." Liars and hypocrites all, they are usually political conservatives (with the exception of John Edwards) and devout Christians. Fortunately, their God is very forgiving. They'd be up sh*t creek if they had been born Jewish, the religion of the just, rather than the merciful God.

But I never feel a moment of moral superiority, because I can put myself in their shoes with incredible ease. In fact, I have been in their shoes.When I hear about a public figure having an affair, I always have the feeling that "there but for the grace of God go I." Back in the day, before cell phones and email, GPS and satellites, you could duck a way for a couple of hours and no one would know. Now, not so much. I feel sorry for them.

Indeed, in my early 30's, while working full time and raising two infants, I met a man I thought was the love of my life.

One problem: I was already living with the father of my children, who had just divorced his wife to make me an "honest woman." I had just borne his child, and then another. I had two step-children. And the "love of my life" guy had just gotten a divorce from his wife of twenty years and remarried a trophy wife. He wasn't going anywhere, either. Things were, shall we say, complicated.

But you know how it is over that second Martini at the end of a long day. Everybody starts to look pretty good. And I, at the age of 32, was already on my third marriage.
After the demise of marriage number one, the relationship I thought would be forever, I had a rather more modern outlook. It boiled down to, "follow your heart, but not into a joint bank account."

But I only say that in hindsight. At the time, it felt like falling in love...and falling in love...and falling in love. Each time, it was new and different.

This time my designated lover was the superintendent of the largest, fanciest, school district in town. He was a minor celebrity, later to be Commission of Education of another state. He was a wonderful man, smart and funny, generous and thoughtful. Of course he thought the same of me. We were drunk.

We had absolutely nothing in common except the man who introduced us, but that didn't matter. From the beginning, it was animal magnetism, on to which we grafted all the friendly concerns that make a relationship. "How's your daughter?" "Did you get to the day care before it closed?" His daughter was an irresponsible adult; my day care center closed at 6 PM. He was an older man. At that period of my life, I had a great line that I used for all the older men in my life who were beginning to doubt their youth: "I don't think a man is ever at his best until he's 45."

That line worked really well, until I myself reached that age, at which time it ceased to have relevance.

After declaring undying love to each other, we more pragmatically declared that we would never let ourselves to anything to hurt each other's families, and therefore we never would allow ourselves to be found out. That made wrestling in the back seat of a parked car outside a fern bar or stopping by the side of the road untenable, and we had to find another solution.

So, for two or three years, we shared an apartment in a part of town half way between his office and mine. We were nothing if not practical. We met for lunch, and for happy hour, and whenever we could get away. The relationship lasted a long time.

He only stood me up once. I got to the apartment, waited an hour, and he never appeared. Crushed, I went home. Several days later, I found out that his brother had died suddenly, and he had left town to go to the funeral. Naturally, he couldn't let me know. He would have had to call my home or my office, and risk interception at either place. And I couldn't call him; his secretary didn't even know he knew me.

How did it end? He changed jobs, and the stress of the new job made him much less interested in sex, and much less capable, too. We became friends, and gave up the unnecessary apartment. We stayed in touch for years.

He died a few years ago. Neither of our spouses ever found out.

Twelve

When I was a young girl, my dad managed Pearl Bailey, the musical performer and movie actress. Although I said this with pride, I had no idea what it meant. He was her attorney, for sure, but he was also her personal manager, her mentor, her guide and her friend. He spent a great deal of time propelling her forward in her career, and even in telling her how to live. She later wrote a book in which she thanked him for his influence on her life. I remember her as a large part of my childhood, even after I left for college.

After she got really famous, Pearl married a white man, drummer Louis Bellson, in 1952. I remember that my father told them the marriage was fine with him (he was very socially liberal), but he told them not to have children, because he knew that mixed race children were ostracized even in the New York City of my childhood. Another client of his, Billy Daniels, a very light-skinned Afro-American who could "pass" for white, married a white woman. Billy and Martha Daniels had two children, both darker than either parent. My father used them as examples to Pearl and Louis, who put off childraising and opted for a large boxer dog, Mr. Rogers, instead.

The Daniels children, in the mean time, had to be sent off to school in Switzerland.

In 1954, Pearl Bailey starred in an ill-fated (154 performances) Broadway production called "House of Flowers," which was about two rival whorehouses in Trinidad. The music was by Harold Arlen, and the lyrics were by Truman Capote. It was produced by Arnold Saint Subber and directed by Peter Brook. Although I had no idea how important they were, I met them all.

I took dancing lessons on Saturday mornings at the Jules Stone studio in Washington Heights. After my dancing lesson, my dad often took me down to the Alvin Theatre where Pearl was rehearsing. I got to watch them put the production together, see them fight, and breathe in the weird scents of a Broadway theatre, and I had a chance to show off my mediocre tap dancing to the cast. I did it gladly, because it was one of the few times I was able to make my father proud.

No, let's go further with that. Tap dancing was one of the few ways I could even get my father's attention. He was an absentee father, as they all were, but he was worse, because he had such a strange occupation.

In the morning, he and my mother never got up to see my brother and me off to school. That's because my father's business required them to go out almost every night to a play or a night club to watch my father's clients. My mother, I'm sure, didn't have to go, but she chose to go. As she always told us -- and as he also told us -- when you grow up and go away, we will have each other. So I have to take care of him. That was their theory of parenting. Not only was I in a competition with my mother for my father's attention, but according to their rules, I had already lost simply by virtue of being the child.

In addition, my parents began going to Las Vegas and Hollywood for long periods of time as my dad's clients got more famous and decided to make movies. Going to either of those places (I still dislike them both) involved taking a train across the country for three days, which meant you didn't zip across the country for a weekend, or even a week. My parents were absent for a month at a time, leaving me with a housekeeper, Dilcy.

So you can imagine how much I looked forward to going with my dad to the rehearsals.

But it's amazing how much I didn't understand. During that year, my father talked a lot about pansies and fruits. He was very disdainful of them, and made fun of them and their fights. I got the feeling he didn't admire them. Only after I got to college and began to hang out with people who studied Broadway and were artists themselves did I realize that Truman Capote and Saint Subber were both gay, and perhaps were even lovers during the production of "House of Flowers." I'm sure they didn't "come out," and that even in the legitimate theatre they were looked down upon as "fairies." That was another one of my father's terms for them.

I was always attracted to gay men, because they were intelligent and sensitive. Only I never knew they were gay. Two high school classmates of mine, both friends and confidants, committed suicide after college, neither having the courage to admit their preferences. By that time, Truman Capote was "out," because it was the Sixties and anything was acceptable. All that came too late for Jerry and Stuart, two poetic, sensitive people in a harsh world.

But what did I know? I was twelve.

Thirteen

I grew up in New York City. That's all you need to know. My childhood was not like yours. My father was a lawyer for show business people, who at that time were connected to the mob. I didn't know that, of course. I only knew that some family friends were named "Scarzy" and "Fingers." One, a particular friend of my mother's, a man who painted nice oil paintings that we hung on our walls, disappeared. I never heard where. My parents never told me when my relatives died, let alone the mobsters they befriended.

They later found the guy's remains in a vat of hydrochloric acid on a pig farm in New Jersey. No matter. We had a nice life. I'm sure I was "influenced" by my childhood, but I've never been able to sort it out.

When I was an adolescent, we moved from the German Jewish neighborhood of Washington Heights in which I had grown up (alongside Henry Kissinger and Carl Hammerschlag, although I never met Kissinger and met Hammerschlag only much later) to the tony Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale. It was a big move up, into a building with many more floors and a garage.

In Riverdale, I was a fat awkward adolescent, smart and uncomfortable. I went to a high school for nerds, far before it was fashionable to be a nerd. In the adjacent building lived a family with two kids, a girl my age and a boy three years older. The boy was gorgeous, in my estimation. I have no idea if it was objectively true. No dope, I befriended the girl. I knew I could get to the guy through her.

Sure enough, one day he invited me up to his apartment. I might have been thirteen. I think he was a junior in high school, or maybe a senior. I know I was in 9th grade. And I wouldn't say I was experienced; these were the days of Howdy Doody on television . But I was intrepid. I didn't know what I didn't know. And his parents and sister weren't home.

After a few minutes of what I thought was witty conversation, I got a big surprise. He sat down on the side of his bed and pushed my head down. He undid his pants and asked me to take his penis in my mouth. Never one to admit lack of knowledge, I hid the sinking feeling in my stomach and complied. Now, over half a century later, I still remember the feeling, and it wasn't fun. I felt like I was choking on that big, rubbery thing. And it smelled. After all, he peed through it, didn't he?

He told me what to do: cover my teeth with my lips, do it up and down. Not so hard, not so fast. How in hell did he know? And then he ejcaculated in my mouth. I almost threw up. But that would have been embarrassing, and I was trying to prove that I was a big girl. So I gagged and tried to spit it out, but of course that would have been on his mother's wall-to-wall carpet. He discouraged me.

He instructed me to swallow it, and there I finally drew the line. Finally, I didn't care if he loved me. No, I said, forcing him to get up and get me the Kleenex. Believe me, it was a mess. I'm sure he had a great time. I went home confused and chastened. I doubted this would happen again, for at least 5,000 reasons.

I never told anyone, until now.

What did I learn? Not to go to a guy's apartment if you weren't willing to swallow it. A great metaphor that would carry me through the rest of my life.