THE DIRTY DOZEN

There's this gazillionaire golfer all over the news right now. He's made explosive headlines for the past decade -- but nothing like this. Apparently he's been cheating on his gorgeous blonde wife for years, and with several women at that. I'm not paying attention -- I am purposely NOT paying attention, I should say -- but I've heard that there about a dozen now who claim to have slept with him.

I've heard my guy friends say they're surprised because these women aren't really attractive ("He could do so MUCH better than that!" they exclaim). My girlfriends seem to wonder why these "other women" are not more accomplished or from "better" backgrounds. My husband, a golf enthusiast who, unlike me, has been paying very close attention to this story, throws around the term "ragdoll" every time one of these women appear on TV -- in reference to the athlete's preference for rough-and-tumble sex apparently.

As for me, I started tuning off when the women began to come forward with their stories and proof straight from their cellphones. If the story is on the news, I change the channel or walk away; if it's on print I don't read it. I don't even know the names of these women -- and I prefer it that way. And here's why.

If a woman's going to have an affair with a married man, if she's going to insinuate herself between him and his wife, the only decent thing left for her to do -- I believe -- is to simply shut up. Not for his sake surely, but for his wife and (any) children. If she wants only sex from him, then she's getting it anyway. If she wants money or material things, she's probably receiving that, too. If she wants him only for herself, then letting his wife know about the affair will not serve her purpose because it will only get him incredibly annoyed and she'll never have him that way.

My concern isn't for this famous wayward husband, but rather for the innocents -- his wife and kids and the rest of their families, who are now subject to constant public humiliation, thanks to all the gory details being revealed practically every hour. (Seriously, if you were the wife who found out that her husband was cheating on her, would you really want to know everything?) These other women who for the past week have dominated the daily news aren't coming forward for honesty's sake (the act of cheating with a married man alone already stripped them of any semblance of honesty, let's face it), but for what they can get for their brief moment of infamy. 

I was walking by the living room the other day while my husband was listening to one of the women explain how betrayed she felt at discovering she wasn't the only one in his life as there were many others also. She continued to say that she often wondered why he never had much time for her; she thought it was only because of the demands of his career.

I stopped right in my tracks and yelled at the TV: "What you stupid whore? You thought you were the ONLY ONE? What about his wife, you idiot?"

Sorry, but I'm never going to listen to any sob story told by any mistress; I just won't hear of it. When a woman chooses to get involved with a man who belongs to another, she knows exactly what she's getting into. His wife, however, may not have had the fortune of such clarity when she married him. So I don't listen and I don't read anything about this story because I don't want a single television program or publication to profit from my patronage. I also hope that when no one else is paying attention anymore, that these women (and their new lawyers and agents) finally go away silently in the night, where they should have stayed in the first place.