Men and Supermen

“But I didn’t order any water,” she protested.

“This was the address we were given,” said the delivery man, handing her a note. It was from her husband, saying: “You forgot to take the water out of the swimming pool.”

Divorced men can be divided into two types: those who left their wives, and those that were left by their wives. If you marry the former, you worry that he’s going to do the same to you, if you marry the latter, you worry whether he’s still crazy about his first wife, and trying to compete with her. First wives always look like Scarlett O’Hara, or are wonderful little homemakers like Katie in the Ads, who spend their time running up thousands of delicious puddings tasting of Oxo. Or they are boots who don’t get married again and cost their husbands a fortune in alimony.

Even if a man’s first wife doesn’t cast a long shadow, there are always his children to amuse on those eternally long weekends. Scenting weakness, they generally play the new wife up shamelessly. If she cooks their favourite food, they say their mother makes it much better. If she plays with them, they get over-excited and won’t go to bed. If she tries to suck up to them and buy them expensive presents, they’ve always got them already.

“I got it from a 13th century recipe. Was it all right?”

And then there are those endless dreary afternoons on the Serpentine steering the little mites away from necking couples, or at the Zoo steering them away from copulating animals.

If she’s a girl friend rather than a wife, they spend their time telling her how much prettier the girl friend was who came last weekend. Having snapped at them, she remembers they’re victims of a broken home and feels guilty.

“Now, come of children, you do remember Susan …”

Don’t catch men on the rebound immediately after they’ve been left by their wives: they’ll sob all over you, and then go off with someone else.

Any girl who is determined to get married should go for a man who’s been married six times, and get him into bed. He will then divorce his sixth wife and marry her, being one of those incurable romantics who believes that if he sleeps with a girl he’s got to do the decent thing by her.

Divorced men who show no sign of marrying again and appear to be thoroughly enjoying themselves will be a constant source of irritation to their friends, for the men will be jealous and the wives will sense their husbands’ jealousy.

Another person who will be disapproved of by society if he appears to be enjoying himself is the lover.

LOVERS

“There always seems something so dirty-sweatered and dirndl-skirted about living with a man you’re not married to.”

ELAINE DUNDY

Lovers live in unmarried respectability, furnish their love-nests from Co-habitat, and are disapproved of by society, which feels that the man is having his cake and eating it and that both of them shouldn’t be avoiding tax. Society is slightly less shocked by men living in sin with girls under twenty-four, because it doesn’t feel the man has yet ruined the girl’s chances of getting married.

It never enters anyone’s head that it might be the girl who is refusing to get married.

Lovers in fact behave far more respectably than married couples. Have you ever heard of a mistress- swapping party? Although they wear their unconventionality in public like a banner, in private they are watching television, washing up and having sex 2·8 times a week like everyone else.

A liaison like this usually begins when a girl is moving flats and wants to leave her luggage somewhere so she dumps it with her boy friend. Before he really knows it, she’s moved in, had a key cut, changed the wallpaper in the drawing room, and is adding the usual little feminine touches—bras dripping over the bath, make-up on the carpet. For the first few months they enjoy the thrill of living in sin and playing at being married. The possibility that Daddy might roll up with a horse-whip adds an edge to the situation. Soon other couples are asking them to dinner and they start asking them back, until it becomes a habit.

Men who are living with women are at pains to tell you within five minutes that they are not actually married. On the whole they seem to be more overtly randy than married men just to prove they’re not tied down.

SCHOOLBOYS (see Students, Bachelors, Lovers, Married Men, Divorces)

Class

CLASS AS A subject is as taboo today as sex was during Victorian times. Nevertheless there are still certain differences between the classes.

THE ARISTOCRACY

Sir Galahad everyone in sight

“Open yer legs, dam’ yer!”

Aristocrats spend their childhood being beaten by fierce nannies and their later years murdering wildlife, so it’s hardly surprising their sex lives are a bit cock-eyed. When they get ‘awf’ with a girl they automatically expect her to go to bed with them—a hangover, I suppose from the old droit de seigneur days. The girl will have to experience a good many gaucheries de seigneur first, including a lot of coarse fishing around to find where her bra unclasps. She should be careful if she makes love to him in his own house, or the bedroom door may be suddenly flung open and the general public pour in, having been charged 50p to see over her.

Aristocrats have their mouths permanently open so that the back of their throats is coated with flies like a windscreen after a long journey. They have double-barrelled fowling pieces, wives called Fiona, and never go on holiday.

THE MIDDLE CLASSES

The middle class man indulges in wife-swapping parties and swinging—it is all-important for him to keep it up in front of the Joneses. He buys a great many porny books and magazines which he carefully locks away every morning, in case the daily woman finds them. He inconsistently disapproves of what he calls P.D.A.—public displays of affection, or necking in the street. The words ‘privacy of one’s own home’ are often on his lips. He keeps a large box of Kleenex for Men by the bed.

THE LOWER CLASSES

Ever since Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the lower classes have retained a tremendous reputation for being sensation in the sack—more vigorous and muscular, less fastidious. It’s all part of the New Brutality.

Photographers of both the lower and the upper classes are very much in vogue. But the upper class ones