The Other Man

He’s a trespasser, an interloper, the peckerwood who gets between you and your lover, partner or mate. The male equivalent of Cleopatra, Mae West, and Jessica Rabbit rolled into one threatening package. He’s an accident waiting to happen: the skateboarder "round the bend, the smiling barista with the extra hot mocha, or the computer geek eager to retool your mate’s hard drive. He’s a relationship gatecrasher, bound by no rules and with no sense of fair play. Who is he? He’s the other man, and like Caesar, he comes, he sees, he conquers, and leaves behind something akin to a lingering, twenty-four hour flu or at worst, a really bad case of the Black Death. If we’re young, in our late twenties or early thirties, there’s a glimmer of hope. We pick ourselves up and move on. If older, our new best friend might be our analyst or possibly the urologist we now see on a regular basis. As the walking wounded, we don’t eat. We can’t sleep. We sense that the earth has stopped rotating. The minutes drag like hours, the days like years. We pass a mirror and see ourselves as we really are: unwanted and unloved. We are too fat, too short, too everything. We should have exercised more at the gym, lifted weights. Spent extra time on the treadmill, less in the Jacuzzi. We finger the dark circles under our eyes and notice the beginning of a double chin. Are those jowls? We notice wrinkles no sane person would ever call laugh lines. In desperation, we secretly check our partner’s computer and search his emails. We open bedroom drawers digging for clues, evidence of his deception. We become other man detectives. * * * * On the flip side, we can be the other man, charging in and breaking the bonds of a committed relationship, sometimes without a thought to the pain and misery we inflict on the injured parties. Face it. We’re not all innocent bystanders in other-man scenarios. In these true and riveting essays, twenty-one of our foremost writers dig deep to discover the truth about infidelity while tackling the subject with candor, courage, wit, and poignancy. They explore the contours, curves, and complexities of this seductive yet unpredictable creature from varying points of view, either by being the other man, suffering the other man, or by dealing with infidelity in their relationships. In a number of cases, writers state or imply that other man experiences have strengthened their unions and contributed to personal growth. Glen Retief, in his early thirties and living in Spain with the man he believed was “the love of his life,” experiences the ultimate betrayal when he confronts his lover’s deception head on in “The Rival With a Thousand Faces.” Mark Canavera, while working for a large international organization in war torn Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), discovers that men, gay or straight in that culture, would never think of divulging an indiscretion to their partners. Telling would be viewed as an insult. In “Complicity,” we discover, as expected, that other man troubles are indeed universal. Perry Brass responds to an intriguing letter from a married—soon to be separated—fan in “A Pitiless Love” and finds himself sucked into an “emotional vacuum” that threatens his mental and physical health. Erik Orrantia is in a committed relationship when he falls out of love with his partner. Unable to make a clean break, Erik invites his new lover to move in with the unhappy couple. Mr. Orrantia’s essay, “Ballad Echoes,” underscores the need for honesty in matters of the heart and suggests that triangles, of the human or two-dimensional kind, are better left to novels and the study of high school geometry. David Pratt’s partner juggles two other men on the side while pursuing his dream of becoming a professional actor in the Big Apple. In “Way Off,” David offers us a personal tour of the Great White Way and points out the traps and pitfalls for those seeking fame and adulation in this world of dreams and brightly lit marquees. For David, the Broadway stage became a player in his relationship, a formidable opponent and the real other man. In “Husbands,” Austin Bunn looks back on his thirties in Louisville, . Loneliness leads him to a succession of liaisons with married men: a chief researcher at a public health office, the boss of an automotive business, a lawyer, a pastor, and a professor at a Christian college. Somehow, there is always an abundant and available supply. As most of these insightful essays convey, AIDS is still with us and still very much a threat after four decades, and it continues to be a major concern especially in matters of infidelity. Felice Picano’s “The Child” and Chuck Willman’s “Turbulence” offer moving portraits of men living and loving in the shadow of this devastating illness. A casual encounter with a man in an adult bookstore that leads to a one-night stand inspires Tom Mendicino to write his first novel. It’s no accident he titled his essay “Any Resemblance to Actual Persons, Living or Dead, is Entirely Coincidental.” R.W. Clinger devises an original, yet shocking, method to punish his lover’s unfaithfulness in the essay, “In the Brokenness of Summertime,” while William Henderson, married with two young children, struggles with his love for a “recovering” crystal meth addict. Lewis De Simone, Jeff Mann, and Philip Dean Walker explore the enduring and wistful nature of first loves, lost loves, and the lure of the unobtainable. Jeffrey Ricker, Allen Mack, Jason Schneiderman, Rob Byrnes, and Wes Hartley offer a lighter approach, proving that, though painful at the time, humor is often the best cure for the other man dilemma—along with style, grace, and a little revenge. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, our relationships stand the test of time and actually last. While other unions dissolve around us, we become The Other Couple—a stable, unchanging presence in our friends’ lives. As exemplars of perfect twosomes, we dole out pearls of wisdom. We provide aid, sustenance, and comfort to the walking wounded yet are always mindful of the tightrope we walk. As Rodney Ross tells us in “And Then There Was One,” we cross that line of neutrality at our peril and suffer the consequences. What we learn from these gifted authors is that we must take heart, that it does get better, and one day our luck is bound to change. We either survive the bumps and detours in our relationship and weather the storms, or we resolve to move on. Hopefully, along the way, we’ll meet someone new and simpatico, maybe even our long awaited soul mate, and life is indeed good again. As it should be. Paul Alan Fahey Nipomo, California