The Other Man

The Rival with a Thousand Faces by Glen Retief

The Rival with a Thousand Faces by Glen Retief

Infidelity may be the oldest narrative conflict. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero enrages the goddess Ishtar by rejecting her marriage proposal, because he has heard how she cheats on her male lovers. In the Garden of Eden, Eve’s attentions wander from Adam to the snake—a thinly disguised allegory for s****l dalliance—and as a result humans become mortal. You might say as a species we received the death penalty for our tendency to stray from our mates. But among all the stories I’ve read that address extramarital s*x, the one that most deeply haunts me—the one I keep coming back to, because it speaks most closely to my own experience—is Graham Greene’s postwar classic, The End of the Affair.

Sarah, the adulterous heroine, and Bendrix, the protagonist, make love in a London townhouse during the Blitz. A V2 rocket hits them. Bendrix is knocked out and looks as though he is dead, but comes to, unharmed. Soon after this, Sarah leaves Bendrix. Bendrix assumes she has gone back to her husband, but later he suspects her of having what we might call an Other Other Man, a rival’s rival. Ultimately, though, he learns she made a deal with God. If God saved Bendrix’s life in the V2 strike, Sarah would leave Bendrix and return to her childhood Catholicism. Her “illicit” afternoon trips are to pray and confess in a church. In effect, Bendrix’s secret rival is God Himself—almighty, omniscient, impossible to outmaneuver.

I count myself fortunate I have never found myself in romantic competition with any deities—with any Allahs, Krishnas, or Jesuses. I have never been dumped by a guilt-ridden Christian believing he had to choose between me and his Savior. It is true that my husband, Peterson Toscano, spent his youth in ex-gay programs, where he met and fell in love with men before abandoning them out of a belief that homosexuality was sinful. But that all happened years before I met him, and today he is out-and-proud. Neither have I had a lover desert me for a Tibetan Buddhist monastery journey or a Lourdes pilgrimage. But my most dramatic experience of a partner’s infidelity—the one that will always, for me, define the essence of what it means to be cheated on—nevertheless had, it seems to me, something of a theological quality about it, as if I were up against not a man but a spiritual archetype.

At the time, 2002, I was thirty-two years old and living in Madrid, Spain, with Alejandro—a balding, kind, intelligent, thirty-three-year-old graphic designer, whom I then believed without question to be the love of my life. We’d met three years earlier, in a bar, while I was on the final leg of a backpacking trip before heading to Tallahassee to pursue a creative writing doctorate. After a gloriously romantic week of walks, coffee, flea markets, and museum-hopping, he saw me off at the bus station with a single red rose. Two years later, after visits, emails, phone calls, and one major failed attempt on his part to get a work permit in Tallahassee, I passed my doctoral exams, drew a dissertation writing scholarship, and packed my suitcase for Madrid, where I would write an apprentice novel while figuring out a way to remain with him.

At first, my new life was magnificent. Cheese, cured meats, and olives at the market; vermouths and tapas at sidewalk cafés of a summer evening…I thought I had arrived in a cobblestone paradise, where people laughed, wrote poems and music, drank wine, and knew how to enjoy themselves. Although Alejandro was still in the closet with his father, a retired physician, the family welcomed me to their Sunday feasts of shrimp, lamb, and gazpacho. Alejandro’s mother, a buxom woman who wore floral dresses and smiled a lot, told me, “I’m so glad you’re with my son.” His father was politely welcoming. He looked at me hard with his pale blue eyes, quizzed me about politics and soccer, and corrected my verb conjugations. Alejandro and I traveled to his family holiday apartment on the Mediterranean coast, where we swam in turquoise coves smelling of lavender, and to green Celtic Asturias, where we drank cider poured from ceiling-height barrels.

It wasn’t too long, though, before the practicalities began to catch up with us. My temporary student visa—I had enrolled in afternoon Spanish classes at a local university—gave me no right to work or stay long-term. I had thought that with a looming doctorate in English, I’d be able to find a school to sponsor me as a language teacher, but as I spent my afternoons submitting CV’s, calling university departments and language academies, and dropping by to talk to neighborhood ESL shops, I soon learned my lack of a European passport would preclude me from most legal work. Finally, there was the question of accommodation. Alejandro’s apartment belonged to his father—it had served as his consulting rooms. Like most young Spaniards, Alejandro did not earn a living wage. What would happen when the old doctor needed to sell this property? Was it even ethical for us to live there, under the pretense Alejandro was “helping out a foreign friend”?

Soon the days seemed empty. Alejandro left early to commute to a publishing house in an industrial satellite town an hour and a quarter away. He got home at six or seven in the evenings, exhausted, he said, not just from the work itself and from the traffic jams, but also from the homophobic mentality of his employers—right-wing, Catholic supporters of the patriarchal Opus Dei movement. Alone in an unfamiliar city, I struggled to structure my days. In the mornings, I headed to my computer, ostensibly to write my dissertation, but my novel scenes and sentences seemed clunky to me—contrived, ham-handed. My creative sessions spiraled into hours spent watching BBC news. In the afternoons, discouraged by my unsuccessful job hunt, I wiped down windows. I bought and made dinner, cleaned and folded laundry. I read novels. When I got bored with all this, I strolled around the nearby La Vaguada mall, looking at the pants, shoes, cellphones, ceramics vases, and vacations I could no longer afford. Before long, I was feeling depressed and tired most of the time, taking long siestas, which ended with me trying to estimate the numbers of identical flowers stuccoed on the bedroom ceiling.

On any of those days, the easiest thing in the world would have been to go cruising. A quick train ride, and I would have had the pick of fifteen active downtown bathhouses. With so many men still living with their parents, the public gay s*x scene was livelier than any I’d encountered in an American city. I could have played in the bushes with the men who ogled each other in the Retido park. I could have invited a swarthy South American from Gaydar to kiss, fondle, and gallivant with me in my study in front of the dictionaries, the reference encyclopedias, and the computer with the abortive apprentice novel.

But every time Alejandro and I had discussed monogamy vs. polygamy, he had been adamant he could never cope with knowing I’d had s*x with another man. For him, fidelity was the most important thing in a relationship—the essence of its beauty and sacredness: a litmus test of its health.

“It would be like tearing a piece out of my heart, mí amor,” he said. As I recall, we were sitting at a park bench on the walk from our apartment to La Vaguada mall when he said this. Retirees bowled and played dominoes on the pebbly strip between the sidewalks. Crows cawed and pecked at litter and food crumbs. “I just couldn’t do it. It feels—impossible.”

I, on the other hand, found it easy to separate s*x from love. Getting fellated in a sauna would have tempted me from Alejandro as easily as cake putting me off food. But the last thing I wanted to do was hurt this sweet, lovely man, who hugged me so tight my heart melted. Who held my hand at foreign art films: Ray and Bergman, The Hours and What Have I Done to Deserve This? Who cried when he read me stories about teachers being killed in the Spanish Civil War. So it was fairly easy for me to simply put all thoughts of extramarital s*x out of my mind, like avoiding avocado because it upset my stomach.

But my depression worsened. By December, in the chilly gloom of winter, I was waking in the early hours of the morning, trembling from anxiety. Bouts of nausea plagued me. I skipped meals, stopped cooking and cleaning. Failed writer, I said as I deleted whole chapters. Crushing student loans. Ruined life.

Although I wasn’t yet ready to admit it, today I believe I was falling out of love. What once seemed like Alejandro’s delicacy now struck me as weakness. Shy vulnerability had morphed into immature passivity.

“Menos mál porque estás aquí,” he would sigh when he got home from work—things are less bad because you’re here. His bosses had moved him onto a line of books attacking lesbian and gay equality. “Such hijos de puta!” But whenever I raised the question of his coming out on the job, or even just looking for another position, he shook his head.

“I’ve tried before,” he predicted, gloomily. “How would we eat if they fired me?”

At family gatherings he waited until his father was distracted by the television, then he surreptitiously kissed me on the cheek, giggled quietly, and lowered his voice a tone or two to ask Papá about the football score.

“You hate soccer,” I noted later, as we walked home. “I feel fifteen again, sneaking around behind the old folks.”

But Alejandro insisted he couldn’t be honest. “He’s too old. He could have a heart attack or something.”

I was beginning to figure out Alejandro had problems with truthfulness. But I still felt sure he’d be genuine with me, that the man who tenderly whispered I gave him a reason for living—¡una razon para vivir, mi cariño!—that this man was who he seemed.

A dark spring evening, in February or March. We were in the bedroom. I recall the beautiful rich brown earth tones of the counterpane beneath us, a design he’d made; he’d also hammered together the base of the bed, with large drawers for storage. I remember, of course, the painting on the wall opposite, an undergraduate nude he’d done as an art student. Painted abstractly, with quick, crude brush strokes, it showed a group of faceless male bodybuilders, their physiques radically fragmented. Exaggerated biceps popped off the canvas. Pectorals exploded upwards. It was as though they constituted a repeating, infinite fantasy of masculinity—later, it seemed an exquisitely appropriate backdrop.

Probably we got onto infidelity via finances. A couple of weeks earlier, we’d received some good news: A U.S. study abroad program wanted me to teach a class. If I was able to head home to Florida to pick up a visa, they would sponsor me for a yearlong work permit. No guarantees about the future, and the pay would barely cover my student loan payments, but still, I’d been looking for this all along—a way to stay. Alejandro and I were talking budgets and apartments, whether to stay in the family nest when I got back, or try to strike out independently, when Alejandro suddenly put his hand on my knee.

“There’s something I need to tell you, baby,” he said. “It’s only fair you know before you do this.” He caught my eye, and his voice cracked. “Oh, mi vida, you deserve this at least.”

Does every Other Man talk worthy of the designation begin with a disclaimer? Looking back, I can’t help feeling bitter. Behavior, I want to say to Alejandro. Words are so extraordinarily cheap. But in that moment, I simply stared at him, uncomprehending.

“What is it? What are you talking about?”

He sighed. “I have been having s*x with other guys, cariño. At the bus station toilets, on the way home from work. Meeting them in their flats. I don’t mean to. I don’t want to. But I—I find I can’t stop myself. It’s been weighing on me, this secret. I don’t want to lie to you anymore.”

With hindsight, I notice the courage of this speech—the habitual closet-dweller coming out, unprompted. In the moment, though, I just feel up against a wall—that of my sheer naiveté. This cannot be true. I would have sensed something. A guilty, evasive look. A sated libido.

“Since when?” I ask. The words come out on autopilot. “How often?”

“Since…soon after you moved here. I tried, but—it became worse when you got—depressed.”

“How often?”

He hesitates. His instinct is to hide again, but then he meets my eye and doesn’t look away. He has promised himself, tonight, to come clean: He wants to leave behind falseness. “I don’t know, baby. Most days, something, I suppose—during the week, I mean.”

My stunned brain stirs. Something clicks: those very late evenings, with rose-turquoise summer light gathering on the balcony, as I heard the door latch turn. “Mierda, what horrible traffic.”

“Have I hurt you, baby?” he asks now. “I’m so sorry, my love—I hate myself for doing this to you.”

Yes, no question I’m wounded. Is this the core of it—feeling I have been living in a mirage? s**t, he said, when he got home—those awful buses—and a picture had formed of gridlocked highways, exhaust fumes, stale-smelling air-conditioning, the deafening growl of the bus engine. I’d felt for him, reached out and hugged him. But really, had there been—what?

Perhaps a suit-wearing Catholic boss, with a sweaty shirt. “Go home to that wife of yours, son.” Alejandro had once admitted he displayed an anonymous woman to explain his wedding ring. “Good lad.” Then, apparently a smooth ride back to the city, followed by an hour or two in a bus terminus bathroom. Secretive fumblings at the urinals. Sideways glances. A walk to a stranger’s apartment—now, I masochistically can’t stop myself picturing Alejandro bent over a kitchen table, with a middle-aged daddy patting him on the head. Back in our apartment, Alejandro collapsing in an armchair: “Ah, my love! Things are not as bad because you’re here.”

Yes—a blunt spoon scoops out my chest cavity. Yes—I want to punch this gentle, artistic man, start shouting and throwing plates around like an Almodóvar character: You did WHAT? But mixed in with this pain, pure intellectual curiosity also pricks.

“But you were the one who said you wanted to be monogamous! I offered openness. You were the one who said outside s*x would be desecration. What’s going on in that head of yours?”

“I know,” he says, looking down now. “I still feel that way—about monogamy. Only—something stops me from being able to do it.”

This is one definition of both the divine and the diabolical: something larger than ourselves. Talking to Alejandro that night, I began to feel up against an invincible competitor, a rival with a thousand faces, arms, legs, and p*****s—a contender who, by virtue of his expansiveness, would always be able to offer more variety than I could.

“Do you think we should open our relationship now?” In hindsight, my words seem so mealy-mouthed. Today, I wish I’d stood up for myself: You’ve blown your chance, Alejandro. That’s hardly the only thing you’ve blown, it seems, but it’s the one that matters. From now on cruising is fine for both of us.

But I wasn’t ready yet for this confrontation, and who knows? Perhaps I was still in denial, believing he could change. Perhaps I was already plotting this as an exit strategy.

“Oh no, never! I really don’t want do that, Glen.” We ended up repeating this conversation several times over the next two months. Over and over again, I asked Alejandro how he was doing with monogamy, and he confessed, “I’ve slipped.” Three, four, or five times, I suggested an open relationship, and he replied, “No, if you had s*x with someone else, that would be the end for me. Terminado. I couldn’t cope.”

In Greene’s The End of the Affair, Bendrix yearns for Sarah’s love. But for Sarah, the proof of her commitment to Bendrix is her ability to keep her promise to God to not love him. So the more Bendrix wins Sarah’s adoration, the more he loses it. Paradox. Checkmate. Defeat.

Similarly, for Alejandro the proof of our relationship lay in its exclusiveness. Not just on my part—Alejandro was too savvy to buy into a gay male version of the sexist double standard. No, the proof of how much he loved me—of how lovable I was to him—lay in how faithful he was able to be to me. And on that ground, I let him down without being able to help myself.

In the end, it became too much for me, his lack of self-control and closetedness on top of the relocation difficulties. “I can’t be what you need,” I told him at last, on the phone from Florida, explaining why I’d written to the Madrid study abroad director and told him I wouldn’t be taking up his offer. “I can’t unlock the magic box in your head. I can’t unknot the contradictions.”

“I don’t understand them either,” he admitted. “But you are everything to me,” he added. “Everything, darling. The world.” At that moment, I imagined a whole planet opening up. Oceans and continents, cultures and languages—the weekend we drove to Portugal and stood on the ramparts of a castle overlooking the majestic coastal plane. It all seemed too big a vista to attach to a single love affair, like trying to load a Pyrenee into a wheelbarrow, or attempting to lift a house-sized boulder with a pair of bare hands.