Tiger Tiger
It’s rare for me to have anything in common with the world of golfing sexuality. Or, indeed, for golfing and sexuality to have anything to do with each other. But since Tiger Woods’ infidelities have come to light I’ve wanted to express sisterly support for his wife.
Tiger squirms with social embarrassment, not moral shame. He has cheated before and would have carried on if he hadn’t been caught. Like all wife-betrayers, woman-trickers and philanderers, part of the thrill must be the deception itself, playing a woman who thought her love was cherished uniquely. Nobody forced Woods to marry or even to be in a relationship. What does he deserve now? Divorce and a dead career. If only female solidarity were such that other women would not want to touch his traitorous self.
I wonder at the cheats, the liars, the evaders, self-justifiers. The ability to divorce the mind, body and heart, to compartmentalise, to keep silent about one’s transgressions out of a falsely chivalric desire to protect the victim one has created (but really to protect oneself from the shit hitting the fan) – these are not traits to be proud of.
I once discovered that a person I adored was seeing other people. It sounds minor, as if it can be dismissed with a blink and an admission that life is funny and ridiculous. My actual reaction, when I got off the phone at four in the morning, was to sit bowed over, clutching my face in both hands and whispering, “Oh my God. Oh my God.” My face was burning so hotly that I felt my features being branded into my palms. What I believed to be a turn in the wheel of fate was actually the creaking of my lover’s revolving door. What I believed to be the strike of destiny was the sound of another notch being hewn into their bedpost. I thought we were co-writing a karmic legend. Instead, I was a footnote in their sex life.
It was the plot twist that I just didn’t see coming, the ray from Venus that stabbed me right in the back. This person never lied about their liaisons or one night stands or whatever it was. Instead, they said nothing, which had the same effect: to keep me in the dark. I felt blank, the dupe in a trick, the fall guy in a practical joke, watched by a laughing audience familiar with the set-up. It had never happened to me before.
Because my tenderness was procured under a false impression, it was annulled by the discovery. The joy that came from buying gifts and writing letters was poisoned. The gallantry I demonstrated suddenly looked ridiculous. The love poem (yes I did – hilarious), odes, nicknames, all cancelled out. Had I known what was going on, I never would have created them. The specific dates remain, but the mythology, sweetness and grandeur were utterly destroyed. That year, one of the happiest of my life for career and friendship reasons, was vandalised by the revelations, stained with my humiliation, and yet I learned nothing. I think about my friend laughing with exultation as they read my letters on the way to meet someone else. I think about them trading stricken homesick texts with me while on a work trip, where they might have….who knows? How cruel it was that they, with all their intelligence, did not gently put me right.
I don’t know what actually happened or how my instincts deceived me. It didn’t occur to me that because my beautiful and charming friend technically could enjoy many other opportunities, they would, and that I should bear this possibility in mind at all times. When asked, my friend said they would not ‘mind’ if I did the same, and had assumed and asked nothing about my life. That is true. I was beautiful and charming too, at the time. But I don’t cheat, flirt or tease. I really just wanted my friend, because they were excellent, the best one. I would never have hurt them, directly, indirectly, actually, potentially, contingently, structurally. Well, life taught me good. I must never assume that anyone I am involved with is faithful. I must never have enough self-esteem to assume that I am worth fidelity.
Is that what the lesson was? I have no idea.
