Post: #1

Was tweeted by Heartiste and thought i'd bring it to everyone's attention.

Quote:Originally published in the February 2001 issue

I have cheated on my wife with thirty-two women I can name (perhaps even correctly) and another dozen or so who flash into recall only as situations: that up-and-coming editor at the New York Post, the beauty I locked eyes with in the elevator of a dismal tenement near Yankee Stadium, the stockbroker in pearls who kept winding up seated opposite me on the number-4 train into Manhattan, the hot-eyed countergirl in the Brooklyn bodega where I stopped for a cold soda on a scorching day during one of the long-ago summers of my career in sales. The passing years changed my profession but never my proclivities. I did a Bill Clinton before Bill Clinton, at age forty-six carrying on a yearlong affair with my twenty-year-old intern. There were others who were young, too young--admiring students whom my superiors at the university entrusted to my care.

Link to article here - http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0201-FEB_INFIDEL

My reaction after reading the whole thing

Post: #2

About halfway through. This is awesome, really reflects a lot of the knowledge talked about here

Post: #3

I wonder why he bothered to get married. His count would probably have been higher then.

Post: #4

My new hero.

Post: #5

Very well written and worth a read!

My favorite part:

Quote:My most audacious ruse involved H., my young intern, who worked nights as a waitress. I brought L. (his wife!) in for dinner without giving H. any advance notice. She stumbled through serving us, at one point spilling water and then almost dropping a basket of garlic bread into my lap. Nothing untoward was said, however, though H. gave me a good talking-to about it later.

Alpha move to the max!

Post: #6

fun read, but this reeks of significant 'creative freedom ' of telling your story.

Post: #7

This was a powerful read. Interestingly enough, I don't feel that anyone was harmed throughout this story.

Oh wait. Those 40 or so Betas who went on to live their lives without any female attention while their counterparts were pining for the hero. Not that I blame him, but this is a stark reminder of how brutally unequal the sexual market has become. It's adapt (or be born a natural like him ) or die out there.

Post: #8

Damn, this should be made into a mini audiobook.

Post: #9

Wow, that was an interesting read. Hearing this 50 year old recount his tales, it really makes you think about the endgame. To me, it's very bittersweet: he got what he wanted (mostly) and made it through society appearing like a normal person, but there's the nagging regret at the end of the toll it took on his family and his own vague feelings of shame.

Makes me wonder how my life will turn out, and how it will sound when I play it all out in my head as an old man.

Post: #10

I don't know, it sounds like he's won. He's had the best of both worlds - he's notched up a far above average count and scored himself a very feminine submissive albeit aging wife and children. Note her reaction to his admission to having a mistress. This is an ideal cook/housekeeper/wife.

I like how he notes how the married women he's banged mostly divorced their husbands whereas an incorrigible cheat like himself stays with his wife. Note to the media on the Petraeus scandal and any other story of cheating politicians and celebrities: a woman who cheats is committing a far graver violation of marriage vows than a man who does likewise.

Post: #11

My impression is he only uses one sexual position, woman on top. With each woman he gets locked into only one location and one sexual position with her, done until exhaustion. Early in, you need to force variety, and one indicator of things having played out between you two is decreasing variety and lack of creativity.

He's still quite successful, but I think he'll be stuck at his current plateau until he's learns to be comfortable mixing it up.

Post: #12

Dude pretty much had it all

Post: #13

Best article I've read in a long time.

There's so much raw honesty that's totally gripping when a man bares his soul with eloquence.

I'd also say his decision to stay with his wife (and his wife's decision to stay with him) reflects the "Old America." Where a man provides for his wife and kids, and the wife *appreciates* her man for it. Granted, the wife appears to be a very passive, meek, and submissive type -- but hey, they obviously still love each other.

His "forced silence" about his alternate life is also a sad reflection of uptight America. He wouldn't have had any problems telling this to his close friends if he lived in say, France, or other parts of Europe/South America.

Some highlights:

Quote:It may also surprise you to hear that I've seldom struck any special pose for the purpose of attracting women. Pat opening lines have played almost no role in my romantic life, and you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that they play much of a successful role in anyone's. True, if the chemistry is all wrong, almost nothing you say can fix it. But if the chemistry's there, at least in my experience, almost nothing you say will queer the deal. As Marshall McLuhan might have put it, the man is the message.

Quote:The bottom line is this: To the extent that I've enjoyed success with women, it's been less a function of what I've said than of picking the right woman to say it to.

I've been told (not, I think, as a compliment) that I possess a built-in sensing device that homes in on melancholy. I prefer to say I've always been drawn to soft, fragile types, women in need of a hug, which becomes an embrace, which becomes more.

Quote:After N. came another lengthy period of promiscuity. (That is how I catalog my romantic life: "faithful" periods and "promiscuous" periods, "faithful" defined as being in a relationship with just a single woman outside my marriage.) Even during my periods of promiscuity, I don't think I ever went to a bar or anywhere else with the specific goal of "getting lucky." My luck with women, on the contrary, has tended to find me going about the course of whatever it is I'm doing. My lovers have been my customers, my clients, my secretaries, my interns. In one case, she was my traffic cop. In my most disastrous relationship, she was my editor.

Quote:An affair forces women to face something inside themselves that they'd rather not acknowledge, even today, thirty years post-liberation. It is my experience that a married woman will go to extraordinary lengths to put a genteel spin on her involvement outside marriage. She'll speak of coveting "emotional fulfillment" or "a man who really listens when I need to vent" or "someone who appreciates me for who I am"--all of which may be true--but as time goes by she finds it increasingly difficult to kid herself about why the two of you have paired off. The real reason an unfaithful wife wants to do other things with her lover besides screw, I am convinced, is not so much to do those things as to surround the sex with enough distractions that she can continue to rationalize the true basis of the relationship. The specific itinerary of any day's tryst may vary--it could be dinner, dancing, bed, or bed, lunch, museum, or beach, bed, movie--but the common denominator, always, is bed.

Quote:Sara moved back in with her parents that very night, went into therapy, filed for divorce. I can't face you anymore, she told me. It felt like Leslie all over again, in spades. In the dark, alone, I wondered what was wrong with me. Could I please a woman? Could I keep a woman? And the darkest thought of all: Was there something about me that made them cheat?

Though I wasn't conscious of it at the time, it's clear to me now that my outlook on life and love cleaves into before and after that day. After, I never again expected fidelity from a woman. And as it turned out, I never again could give it.

Quote:Somewhere in the middle of my years with N., L. and I stopped kissing during sex. The act got so mechanical that I could diagram her orgasms: I noticed that she always came precisely the same way, making the same sounds--a series of seven moans, with a rising inflection on numbers three and four and a noticeable loss of amplitude on moans six and seven.

It is never a good thing to become that familiar with your wife's sexual response.

Quote:Over the years, I've taken perhaps a half dozen people into confidence about my philandering. All of them ask why I stay. "I stay for L.'s sake," I say. It's a line that tends to elicit nods from men (who I think understand what I mean, even if they can't see themselves in my shoes) and something akin to the gag reflex from women (who think a married man whose datebook includes more affairs than wedding anniversaries is doing his wife no favors).

Post: #14

I wanted to shake this guy's hand until I read the $100,000.00 tag. That is a lot of money to waste on strange.