i am not a cheater

The last bit of infidelity on my part occurred when I was in 11th grade and I cheated on my future ex-husband S by making out with my previous boyfriend G in the backseat of someone's car while I was drunk. I was so guilty about this that I can tell you what song was playing on the radio while our tongues were in each other's mouth: "Three Times a Lady" by the Commodores. I was also so guilty about this that I went home while I was still buzzed (not my usual modus operandi) because S was going to call me at 10 pm when he was on his break at work and I wanted to be there to take his call. This led me to getting bagged by my mom for drinking for the first and only time in my high school career. Since that occasion circa 1979, not only have I never cheated on anyone I have ever been with, I have never been tempted. At all. I don't say that as a mark of my moral superiority--in fact, it's the people who *are* tempted but don't do it who are morally superior from my POV--but just to point out that when I say what I'm going to say, it's not because I myself have problems in this area.

But before we get to that, let's just take a little side trip and discuss G. (Because I know you people *love* to hear boring stories of my youth, featuring people you don't know.) G broke up with me and then spent the rest of our high school years (we went to different schools, however) occasionally feeling the need to tell me how it was the biggest mistake he ever made. Since our whole relationship, such as it was, was based solely on watching the Red Sox together and kissing, (okay, yeah, two of my favorite things admittedly), I don't see why G thought I really was his soulmate whom he stoopidly threw away, but hey. The last time I saw G was when we ran into each other at Liberty Tree Mall in 1995. He told me what he was doing and where he was living, and because I was single at the time and so was he, he gave me his phone number. I never called. G was a very sweet guy, but--how shall I put this?--not terribly terribly bright. He also was well on his way to a drinking problem when he was 16, so there was that. But G was in one of the trades (I can't remember which exactly!) so if only I had played my cards right in 1995, I *could* have had a contractor second husband and I'd probably have beautiful crown molding even as we speak. And maybe I'd be able to write a paragraph without four sets of parentheses in it.

Okay, enough about short, skinny, sweet Irish boys. I want to talk about my favorite news story of 2009, Mr Mark Sanford and Argentine Maria. Wasn't I just going on in here last week about how I could not care less about the sexual behavior of my political leaders? In fact, if Mr Sanford had not been stupid enough to apparently leave the country without informing the proper people, leaving his state ungoverned, and then stupid or callous enough to make up outrageously ridiculous excuses for himself, my reaction to being told that his wife threw him out because he was having an affair would be, "Um, yeah, tell me something that doesn't happen 3 million times a day." I honestly wouldn't see any reason why someone would have to resign from office because of it.

Now I know part of Mr Sanford's problem is that, as a Republican, he supposed to be all about the Family Values, and that if his party would stop sticking their collective noses into other people's sex lives, they wouldn't look like such a bunch of hypocritical idiots when they are shown to be less than chaste and upright, as they inevitably are. I saw all the pundits on the cable news this morning while I was getting dressed frothing at the mouth about how the Republican Party can't find anyone to serve as their "face" because every time someone comes along who looks promising, they, like Sanford, shoot themselves in the foot. But *my* point is, if we didn't care about someone like Sanford proving to be a cheating cheater and instead focused on their actual job qualifications, maybe there'd be lots of fabulous potential candidates for higher office.

I mean, c'mon now. I myself could straighten this country right the fuck out but I'll never get the chance because, god knows, I've got email correspondence that would make Sanford's letters to Maria look like a Sunday school lesson. And then there's this blog!

There was probably another point I was supposed to make in this post, but that's another reason I'll never hold higher office. I go off track a lot.

xoxo