ADULTERER’S DESK REFERENCE

Jerry Harkins

Q:  Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?

A:  I will.

       —The Book of Common Prayer, 1979, p. 424

Qualifying Examination:

I am (check all that apply):

O            A Republican

O            A Born-Again Christian

O            A Thoroughly Stupid Democrat (Republicans get the Stupid Point automatically.)

O            Male

Count the number of boxes you checked.  The total is your score.  (If you can't count,  If your score is:

0            You are not authorized to read this document and should shred it immediately.

1-3            You should read this document thoroughly and take its message to heart.  When you’re  done, hide it wherever you keep your pornography.

4            You are welcome to read this document but do not expect any benefit from it as you are a hopeless case.           

Introduction

This pamphlet addresses a common male problem that is not addressed in the Boy Scout Handbook or in any approved sex ed course you may have taken.  It does not purport to teach you how to commit adultery.  That knowledge came free with your first purchase of testosterone.  Here we deal only with what happens after your adultery is exposed. 

You will certainly be caught.  Adultery releases certain enzymes which short circuit the parts of the brain responsible for clear thinking and self-preservation.  Now you understand why your father came home with lipstick on his shirt collar or in some even more suggestive place.  Fortunately today’s lipsticks incorporate the kiss-proof technology developed at the old Bell Labs and this particular kind of self-destructive behavior is on the wane.  Congress has allocated several hundred million dollars to the Centers for Disease Control to develop a pill to prevent the transfer of perfume scent to the male or his clothes.  This is supposed to close the circle of self-incrimination.  (Like all other Congressional theories, it will not work and, even if it does, it won’t help you because Congress will surely conspire to keep it to itself.)    You are not a member of Congress (I know this because you appear to be able to read).  It’s okay though because they get caught too.  All that power and glory does not make up for male stupidity.   Thus, our objective is not to avoid detection but to plan your response when you are caught.

It Bears Repeating:  You Will Be Caught

Adultery, in most jurisdictions, is not a crime. It is merely something human beings —mainly post-adolescent males—do.  Just as “fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly,” men gotta wander off the reservation.  The commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is proof positive that the god of Abraham was never the omniscient wise man he was made out to be but rather a naïf or a nerd.  [Sidebar:  Adultery is still a felony in Idaho, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin.  It is also a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  In Texas, it’s a civic virtue.]

Even if adultery is not a crime, for all practical purposes it is treated as such and the presumption of innocence does not apply.  Nor does the quality of mercy.  In fact, guilt is always assumed and the eighth amendment is suspended.  This rarely turns out to be unfair.

You will be caught because they are smarter than we are.  Evolution made them that way to compensate for us being bigger.  Women think with an organ called the brain which is encased in their heads.  We think with a different organ located between our legs in a much more confined space.  I recently had an email from Joey G. of Brooklyn, New York who theorized that since we now all think with our iPhones, the playing field has been leveled down to the dull-normal range.  It might be true if our team could only get past the porno sites but that, Joey, is not the way to bet.

I Did Not Have Sex With That Woman

You cannot talk your way out of this.  No one will believe anything you say about it including an abject apology and what we used to call a “firm purpose of amendment.”  But all is not lost.  Females are born with a genetic predisposition to expect and overlook male transgressions.  Do not confuse this with forgiveness.  It is merely empiricism.  You will never be forgiven for cheating on your significant other.  Repeat after me:  I will never be forgiven for adultery;  it just isn’t going to happen.  Women, you see, tend to follow the advice of that noted feminist philosopher, Tammy Wynette who said, “Stand by your man” (SBYM).  This can work in your favor especially if you wind up facing public ostracism.  Perhaps you recall the knowing smile with which a former first lady minimized the importance of her husband’s faithlessness.  “He is,” she said, “a hard dog to keep on the porch.” She was quoting a 1983 Gail Davies country song the refrain of which was:

You're a hungry old hound that keeps coming around

Eatin' my groceries and drinking one down

You run with the pack and you come slinking back

Needin' some rest and me to scratch your back.

The genetic basis for SBYM has yet to be fully understood by science and it is by no means the strong force of domestic tranquility.  You can tell that by the looks you often see on the faces of otherwise very attractive women while standing by their man at the inevitable press conference.  While he is reciting the line about a broken and contrite heart from the fifty-first Psalm, she is looking as though she’s just swallowed a live worm.  Speaking of the Psalms, Freddie W. of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania points out that King David himself was a world class adulterer.  “That’s gotta mean something,” he writes.  Not particularly, Freddie.  Just that he was a male and Bathsheba was a female who liked nude sunbathing.  Dave liked girls.  He had at least ten wives and a harem full of concubines.  He didn’t actually need another wife, especially a wife already married to his good buddy Uriah the Hittite.  Bathsheba was a royal but excessive indulgence whether she looked like the stevedore painted by Rembrandt or like Susan Hayward in the 1951 Hollywood biopic.  That’s the thing about adultery:  it’s inexplicable.  Ben Franklin, an acknowledged polymath, said you can’t tell the difference between women in the dark.  Even the greatest men are addicted to saying stupid things from time to time.  The only reason Ben never committed adultery was that Deborah and he were never legally married.  Otherwise he was once of the eighteenth century’s most noted swordsmen.

But If It’s Not A Crime, What’s The Big Deal?

If your IQ is equal to or greater than your age, you can skip this section.  If on the other hand you are a member of the hairy-chested gender, read on. 

Do you remember Ben Casey?  In a portentous voice, Sam Jaffe would intone, “Man.  Woman.  Birth.  Death.  Infinity.”  In less scholarly parlance, this is known as the Battle of the Sexes otherwise known as the Theory of Everything.  And in the high drama of life’s war, adultery is high treason.  Which is why the Bible says, “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.”  One of my correspondents, Kent H. of Wilsey, Kansas, thinks that times have changed and indeed he is right.  We no longer execute adulterers but that merely prolongs the agony of the punishments we do mete out.

In any event, the treason analogy rules out certain defenses that are nonetheless often invoked.  Never say:

          It didn’t mean anything.  It was just a one-time fling.

          It was over before I knew it.  Didn’t even enjoy it.

If the devil does make you say something really stupid (How else to explain Ben Franklin’s remark?), at least make sure she doesn’t have a burdizzo within easy reach.  You say you don’t know what a burdizzo is?  It’s a device for castrating pigs.  The end product is called mountain oysters and is quite tasty sliced, marinated in beer and sautéed lightly with salt.  Served as hors-d'oeuvres at the best tailgate parties in Texas.  Trust me on this:  you don’t want your crown jewels to be the hors-d’oeuvre at her sorority reunion.

Paying The Price:  Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend

Charlie Brown once observed, “There’s no problem so big you can’t run away from it.”  Of course, Charlie was only eight years old at the time and had yet to encounter the problem of adultery.  Still he did know a lot about women.  For example, he knew for a certainty that every single time he tried to kick a football being held by Lucy she would snatch it away at the last second sending him head over heels on his ass.  Every time without exception.  He concluded quite correctly that girls have different definitions of “teamwork” and “winning” than, say, Vince Lombardi.  Did he walk away in disgust?  Of course not.  Even at eight, Charlie knew that the Red Queen is a metaphor for the way women approach the game of life.  His role was to assure she always “won” regardless of what it might say on something as irrelevant as a scoreboard. 

In dealing with adultery, there is a scoreboard even if you can’t see it and wouldn’t understand the scoring system if you could.  The score is kept in carats which are assessed as a function of several variables including the age and other vital statistics of the bimbo, the frequency of the husband calling to say he has a client meeting and will be home late, and precisely where the wife is in her monthly hormonal cycle. You don’t actually have to appease her with diamonds but the carat count is an indication of the value of the expected settlement.  Of course diamonds are always welcome as is cold cash.  Just remember you can’t buy forgiveness.  You can just mitigate some of the less agreeable concomitants of her enmity.  You are still in hell but you get to take a cold shower once a week.

What’s Sauce For The Goose Is Poison For The Gander

In case you haven’t noticed, life isn’t fair.  That’s a quote from Jack Kennedy, a man who knew whereof he spoke when it came to adultery.  He was no doubt talking about the well known fact that 99.9% of the wages of sin are paid by men.  Believe it or not, statisticians tell us that women stray too.  But for them it’s not cheating because the rules are different.  I hate to be the bearer of bad news but you might as well know the truth.  The tide of history is running against us and we no longer make the rules.  It used to be that they needed us to be the breadwinners so they could nurture the children.  It was called the division of labor and, for most couples, it worked well enough.  Now, however, most women are in the workforce.  Some want to work outside the home.  Others have to because we don’t earn enough anymore.  No matter.  Now the question is how’re your going to keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?  [Sidebar:  The song refers to soldiers coming home after World War I.  But it’s appropriate anyway because the key line is, “Reuben, Reuben I’ve been thinking what a great world this would be if the boys were all transported far beyond the Northern Sea.”]  Applied to today’s women, the answer is you’re not.  They are no longer financially dependent on us my friend and in a few short years we’ll no longer be needed for reproduction either.  They’ll be able to buy whatever sperm they want over the counter at their local Rite Aid and it will be synthetic sperm customized to deliver just what they want in their offspring.  If you doubt this, you haven’t been keeping up with the Journal of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry.  Human sperm will be synthesized on a base of animal or vegetable DNA.  It could be worse.  Your sperm could be replaced by the slightly altered sperm of a pig.  But it will be easier to begin with the genome of Polychaos dubium, a single-cell protozoan that reproduces asexually by binary fission.  It has 670 billion base pairs to work with compared to the 3 billion you have.  They’ll keep some of us around, live specimens in zoos and stuffed ones in museums.  Those who can be tamed may find work as house pets or eunuchs. 

The point of all this is you’re not dealing from strength.  It is advisable to bear this in mind as you practice begging, cajoling and groveling.  Above all, when she gets up from her chair it does not mean she’s finished berating you.  Do not say, “As long as you’re up, could you get me a beer?”  Marty F. of Flathead County, Montana, a former client, asked me if it would be okay as long as he said “Please.”  I said “Sure Marty although the shock of hearing you ask politely may kill her.”  Unfortunately, Marty didn’t catch the sarcasm.

The Take-away

In Montana taverns they call it the Go Cup.  Whatever you call it, the moral of the story is that only in heaven is there more rejoicing over one repentant sinner than ninety-nine just men.  For one thing, only in heaven will you find as many as ninety-nine just men.  Down here, all hundred are sinners and all rejoicing is restricted to watching them as they twist slowly in the breeze.