The Perils of Adultery

Eighty percent of all married men cheat on their wives in this country. The other 20 percent cheat in Europe. Ba-da-bum.

Girls, if you happen to be reading this, I wish I were kidding. I wish I were a stand-up comic and that that statement were my show-closing line. The one that sends you out the door in a fit of laughter and has you asking your husband a half hour later at home, "That's not really true, what that comic said about all men cheating on their wives, is it, honey?" And your husband, after clearing his throat to assemble a coherent thought, coughs back, "Hell no, baby. That guy's exaggerating. You know I would never hurt you like that. Now, move over an inch or so. I think you're lying on the remote."

If you'd like to close out the last leg of the 20th century believing that monogamy is a sacred and sanctified way of life in your house, go right ahead. I believe the messages in fortune cookies, so who am I to judge? But I would be willing to bet on a stack of Masters and Johnson sex manuals that there have been times when you've wondered, when you've felt your safe little world rock and tremble from the tips of your toes to the highest hair on your head. Those times when Kevin let the pot roast go cold or Jimmy's poker game went long again or Johnny's Acura died on the highway six miles from the nearest pay phone or Frankie came home smelling like Chanel No. 5. They're all good men. They tuck their children into bed and never forget your birthday and have no philandering in their pasts. So why would you ever think that they have cheating on their minds?

I'll tell you why. Because we're men, plain and simple. We're a different animal. And as (continued on page 118)Adultery(continued from page 113) far as fidelity goes, the genders are worlds apart. Even when our heart belongs to you, our mind wanders over to her, even if our bodies don't. Can I be frank? It's a dick thing. And sometimes there's no explanation other than what a famous comedian once told me: You show me the most beautiful girl in the world, and I'll show you a guy who's tired of fucking her.

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For many men, the science of cheating--or the pursuit of illicit pleasure--is an endeavor that ends only when life ends. How many other things do we take to the grave? Or more accurately, how many other things do we hone, shape, form and practice with as much pleasure and painstaking precision as infidelity, or at least thoughts pertaining to it?

I know men from every rung of the economic ladder, men who have made their fortunes in all fields, and I know for certain that nothing brings them closer than talking about pulling off the perfect affair.

I carefully set up a roundtable dinner of men who have lived their other lives as wolves, rogues and rakes. And I quickly discovered the most common passion among them is correcting the current rumor that too many of "us" are getting caught.

There's sound reason for concern: Men have been getting sloppier (Joey Buttafuoco), more brazen (Gary Hart), more famous (Bill Clinton), more careless (Hugh Grant) or doing it too close to home (Robin Williams). "When you get caught cheating, it isn't an end to cheating," one of my dining companions said. "It's just an end to the particular way you were cheating."

Here are some of the rules of the road. Commit most of them to memory and keep them in a safe spot. If your wife finds them and asks, "That's not really true, what that author says about all men cheating on their wives, is it, honey," clear your throat and tell her I'm exaggerating. It's all right, I'll cover for you. I do it for my married friends all the time.

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The computer age is killing us. There was a time when beepers, car phones, faxes and voice mail were the perfect ways to keep in touch with your girlfriend. Not anymore. Get rid of them all.

Beepers, and the numbers they display, leave a wonderful paper trail for your wife to follow. A car phone is especially horrible the first time you forget to turn it off and it rings when your wife is with you. What do you do? If your wife answers it and it's her, you're dead. If you let it ring, your wife knows you have something to hide. So better than remembering to turn it off, just throw it out. Our grandfathers cheated all the time. You know how they did it? They carried a dime in their pocket and went to a pay phone. Phone booths, particularly the four-sided glass booths, are our friends. Use them.

And whatever you do, don't mess up your home phone with caller ID or any of that other mumbo jumbo. All it adds up to is your wife's first big collar. She'll feel like Nancy Drew for the rest of her life when you say you're calling from work and the number flashing on the caller ID box is definitely not your work number. "That's funny, honey, the phone says you're at 555-5272. When did your work number change?" Don't say I didn't warn you.

Even your office can prove disastrous, especially if you've got a secretary who has a crush on you or, as is often the case, is friendly with your wife. Lipstick kisses faxed to you anonymously during the workday generally give you up as a cheater. So do too many suspicious personal calls from a sultry-voiced female. Or unexplained afternoon absences.

Even e-mail has its downside. It's easy to direct a steamy missive to the wrong address in the office. Leaving messages on your computer is risky, too. Unless you respond immediately and then trash both her original letter and the one in your "sent" folder, you're asking for an appearance in divorce court.

But if you're a gadget guy, I realize you probably won't be able to part with all your gizmos. So if you must use a beeper, at least have her beep you in some kind of code only the two of you share. And if you must keep your $2000 state-of-the-art cell phone, never leave it at home or have it in the car when your wife is with you. And if your secretary weeds through your voice mail each morning, tell your girlfriend to always call in reference to a "credit problem" or "insurance policy" or "school council meeting"--something nondescript and boring.

Your best bet, my dinner guests agreed, would be to install a small, nonringing phone in the office that no one but you knows exists. Act as if it's your home phone and keep the outgoing message brief: "Hi, I'm not here right now. But if you leave your name and number, I'll call as soon as I get home." Simple. This way she feels like she has your work and home numbers and can reach you any time she desires. Sometimes that's all she needs.

Are you sitting down? Do you realize your wife can bust you via the Internet? For some stupid reason, American Express records all your charges on the Internet. That means with your creditcard number and a few taps of her fingers your wife can see that you racked up a $200 dinner bill at the Cafe Alibi on the same night that you told her you were attending a mandatory safe-driving course. This is really disturbing since, throughout the years, American Express has been wonderful in helping us sustain double lives. I have one friend who uses his green Amex card for business, his gold card for personal and family matters and his platinum card--which his wife doesn't know he has--for cheating. Also be careful of those year-end itemized statements American Express sends you. They're great for cheating on your taxes but hell if you're cheating on your wife.

The credit-card bust is a moot point with most of my pals since they resoundingly agree that a good cheater always uses cash. "If you see a man paying cash for a $45 lunch bill, he's cheating," one friend maintained. "Everybody uses credit cards these days. But using cash ensures that you don't leave a paper trail." Remember never to overtip when dining with a girlfriend. Despite the need to look like a big shot, overtipping ensures only one thing: The waiter will remember you. Who needs that, especially when your wife wants you to take her to the same restaurant a few nights later? "Nice to see you again so soon, sir." Be frugal. Nobody remembers a cheapskate.

Once a relationship with her has gone beyond intimate dinners, there is much more to consider and get busted for. Therefore, the man who decides to live a double life has to establish rules that must never be broken.

"If you choose Tuesdays or Fridays as the nights you go out with your friends, never, ever waver," one friend insisted. "Establish a routine. And this has to be drummed into your wife's head, so she knows that on this night she can never expect to see you earlier than one or two A.M."

My friend is rigid on this, to the point that he maintains, "Even if you have nothing to do--all your girlfriends are busy or sick or whatever--go to a motel, rent two or three videos and come home late as usual. Establishing a routine and then maintaining it is paramount."

Our friend has been playing a fourman poker game every Wednesday night for the past 15 years. Except that it's really a five-man poker game. That way one guy gets to go out every fifth week with his girlfriend and his wife never gets wise to it.

Now's a good time to talk about covers. Not bedcovers, but the person you sometimes entrust your married life with while you're out living your other life. Your cover can't be a flake. He has to be extraordinarily smooth and know exactly how to run interference for you if your wife calls. You should never have to call him to say, "I was with you tonight if my wife calls, OK?" He'll automatically know how to handle it. Who makes a great cover? Use a guy your wife knows, someone whose name you drop every so often. First, you have to feel him out. Is he a rake, a rogue or a wolf? Perfect, he's your man. All you have to do is make sure he doesn't turn up anywhere near your wife on the nights in question.

Don't laugh, but a lot of guys I know use their mothers as covers. Yes, dear old mom. Remember, a lot of moms believe their sons are too good for their wives in the first place. So the idea that sonny boy is out having a good time for himself isn't such a horrible thought. "I've been going home and showering at my mom's house for seven years and my wife has no idea," a friend said. "Sometimes my mother doesn't even hear me come in. Sometimes she does, and she says, 'Did you have a good time tonight, son?' I tell her, 'Yeah, Mom,' and she says, 'That's nice.'

"Only one time did my mother confront me about my other life. But she softened a little bit when I told her, 'Mom, I'm your son, first. I'm her husband, second. Who do you care more about, me or her?' And that was that."

Sometimes the best cover is no cover at all. "I don't want anybody knowing where I am," one guy said. "In fact, I trust only me. When you get right down to it, I'm the only guy who can cover for me."

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Unless you're a real fool, you've probably already heard of cheating's first cardinal sin: Don't shit where you eat. I realize that obsession can blind two people quicker than a water pistol filled with lye, but the first cardinal sin--and I'm not even sure of other cardinal sins, to be frank--is carved in stone. Bringing her to your house is taking out a billboard ad that says I'm an Idiot. One guy at our table tried it, only to have her "forget" her watch on the nightstand. Guess who found it

If you're a traveling cheater, where by you live your other life on the road, you'll probably never get caught. So have a drink on me. But there are still some guidelines you have to follow to keep your other life breathing.

For starters, never answer your hotel room phone. Have the hotel operator screen your calls. Nothing ruins a party quicker than a phone call from the wife when she's in the bathroom disrobing. "One night I sat on my bed and listened to the phone ring 32 times," a friend said. "It rang 32 times and I didn't pick it up. It hurt like hell, but nothing hurts like your wife finding out something she doesn't need to know."

Proximity to shopping malls is an important thing to consider. If you're not planning on an overnight cheating spree, you might want to choose a spot that's close to a mall. Come home with something from Sears or Nordstrom and let that be the reason you were late for dinner. Again.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, has it better than businessmen in Toronto. The Toronto Blue Jays play in the Sky Dome. The Sky Dome is attached to a hotel. In fact, if you look closely when fly balls are shot turning into home runs, you can actually see men and women in the rooms. Trust me on this: The businessmen who hold season tickets for the Blue Jays hardly ever see the games, but I bet they can describe every nook and cranny in the attached hotel. I can just hear the conversations taking place in various suburban Toronto towns:

"Ah, Jesus, I almost forgot, hon. I have Blue Jays tickets tonight. It's my night and I can't get out of it. Christ, I don't even want to see this damn game. Oh well, I'll be home around 11, more like midnight if the traffic is anything like the last game."

You want a quick nightmare? I have one friend who got busted by his nine-year-old son. He had told his girlfriend to phone him at home on Sunday mornings between eight and ten because his wife would be at church. Of course, having your girlfriend call your home is stupid in itself, but one Sunday the phone rang around 8:30 A.M. My pal says, "Hi-ya, sweetie pie." Two hours later, his wife comes home and asks if anybody called. He says no, but then his son corrects him, "Yeah, Dad. Remember, Sweetie Pie called."

Everyone at my roundtable agreed that you can't slack off in bed at home. The minute your performance drops off, your wife will suspect infidelity. Make sure you play just as hard on the home court. Always try new techniques, different positions, new fantasies. Most men I spoke with seem to think that keeping a wife sexually happy holds her Nancy Drew tendencies at bay. But remember to be subtle. If you come home one evening and insist on doing the lambada as soon as the kids are asleep, you're busted.

Holiday time is especially troubling. You have to spend additional money buying extra gifts, and you spend more time in traffic. Plus you run the risk of bumping into your wife at the mall. Just to be on the safe side, most men I know buy the same gift for their wife and their girlfriend. That may sound strange, but it means you'll never screw up. Perhaps worse than your wife finding out that you bought something for another girl is your girlfriend finding out you spent more on your wife.

As much as men worry about getting busted on foreign turf--a restaurant, a hotel, the opera--it's actually in their own bedrooms when that horrible moment of discovery most often arrives.

"When I'm dating a blonde, I don't wear navy blue suits," a buddy said. "I stay with grays and browns. Nothing shows up better than a blonde hair on a navy blue suit."

My friend is right. Sometimes color-coordinating and cheating go hand in hand. You don't want to believe this, but sometimes her night is not a success until she knows she left a clue for your wife to uncover. And nothing works better than her hair on your suit jacket--or worse, her hair stuck in your zipper. There is no easy way out of that one.

Now's a good time to talk about hickeys. Those little red bruises on various parts of your body are always ugly. Why we thought it was cool to have six hickeys on our neck in the seventh grade is beyond me. At any rate, hickeys happen. And it takes only a second of carelessness. But we all know the feeling of reaching for a turtleneck on a sweltering August day when your wife, in her sundress, looks at you with confusion. There's no way around this: Just say no to hickeys. While we're at it, here's a quick word on back-scratching. We all want a woman to scratch our back when she reaches orgasm--it's like a warrior's mark. It has your friends at the tennis club thinking, Wow, he's got some animal on his hands. But in the end, those marks will give you away.

Her perfumes are a quick giveaway, as well. Wives can smell the difference between Chanel No. 5 and No. 19 from ten yards away. With her, establish from the get-go that you have a perfume (continued on page 155)Adultery(continued from page 120) allergy. That means she cannot wear perfume on any night you see her. That works well with longtime affairs. But sometimes opportunity presents itself--however briefly. If you're talking about a one-night stand here, then you may have to be resourceful.

One guy I know worked up a sweat with a woman who wore a considerable amount of Calvin Klein's Eternity. He was panicked, until a brilliant thought occurred to him. He stopped off at a self-serve gas station and quickly doused his pants leg with gas. "The gas tank overflowed on me," he complained to his wife as he walked in the front door. Taking one whiff, she screamed, "Get in the shower, quick!" Whew, close one, but give him a cigar for fast thinking.

Thank God for cigars. You can always do what another one of my pals does after he's been with his girlfriend and is afraid traces of her soap or shampoo or oils are on his clothes. He heads straight to a bar and has men blow cigarette and cigar smoke directly at his suit.

It's always practical to keep an extra pair of underwear in your trunk or office. And it's important to be a one-color guy. If you leave the house in black boxers from the Gap and proceed to get them messy during a rendezvous, and all you have in your trunk are white Calvin Klein briefs, you're screwed the minute you get home and disrobe. Stay with white. It's common. It's easy. It's safe. And it could save your marriage.

Whatever you do, never set up one of your male buddies with one of her female friends. This is a big mistake. The only cheaters who double-date are the characters in Goodfellas. Nothing good can happen on a double date, and there's absolutely nothing that can happen to heighten your pleasure with her. Things can only go sour. Here's how:

First, you've already exposed yourself to two more people who know your other life. They'll tell two people, and then they'll tell two people--and so on. Second, your friend will likely fall in love with the girl he's been set up with. This is common--there's no explanation for it, but it happens. And when it does, watch out. One day he'll take you aside and tell you: "You know, you really can't keep doing this to her. She really loves you. It's time you made a decision to leave your wife or break it off."

"This actually happened to me," one friend said. "And I looked at him like, Are you out of your fucking mind? When did you get so righteous? This is me you're talking to." But it's not all your buddy's fault. What's happening is that your girlfriend is pouring her heart out to his girlfriend, and she's telling him and he's telling you. To quote Robert De Niro's warning to Ray Liotta in Goodfellas, when Liotta's screen wife is threatening to blow the whistle on De Niro's carousing: "I can't have her commiserating with my wife. I can't have it. You gotta take her back." Commiseration has been happening since the first grade. The only difference is that in the first grade it causes you embarrassment in front of your friends. When you're married, you lose half your earnings, the sports car and the Hamptons summer home. Friends can kill you; a best friend can do it better than anybody else.

As far as breaking up with her is concerned, remember: You have to get away smoothly and not feed her resentment. "I wanted to say that my son was deathly ill or something, but then I couldn't because I thought God would punish me and really make my son deathly ill," a friend said.

"I tried everything," another pal said. "I was grouchy. I was ambivalent. I kept ducking out of dates at the last minute. Finally she said to me, 'If you don't want to see me anymore, you don't have to pick a fight with me. Just leave.' She made it so easy."

He was lucky. It's not always that easy. One guy told me that his ex-girlfriend actually rented an apartment in a building right next door to him and his wife. He never knows what he's coming home to. And his wife often asks, "How come you won't even look at the new neighbor?" Oh, I don't know, maybe because she kept the Polaroid collection!

For a certain type of man, breaking up with her doesn't mean he's reformed. It merely means he's between affairs. And not all husbands cheat, of course. Some are guilty of no more than an infrequent one-night stand, followed by sleepless nights steeped in guilt.

Other men, like my friends at the table, can't help themselves. You know the type. He sits at home admiring his kids and telling his wife, "I love you. I couldn't imagine living without you." The next night he's saying the same thing to his girlfriend.

Why do they take such chances? One member of our roundtable tried to explain by telling the story of the scorpion and the frog.

A scorpion is trying to persuade a frog to give him a lift across a fast-moving stream. "I can't do that," protests the frog. "You'll sting me and I'll die."

"Don't be ridiculous," coaxes the scorpion. "If I kill you, I'll drown. Why would I do that?"

The frog succumbs to the scorpion's logic and starts swimming with the scorpion riding comfortably on its back. About halfway through their watery journey, the scorpion stings the frog, injecting it with a fatal dose of poison.

"Why?" gasps the frog during its last seconds of consciousness. "You have doomed us both."

"I couldn't help it," says the scorpion. "It's my nature."

Tell her I'm exaggerating. I'll cover for you. I do it for my married friends all the time.