Yes, you may leer at your wife Tom Smith

Am I missing something here?  There is apparently a blog kerfuffle over whether Sen. Thompson is leering at his wife in this photo, and if so, whether that is sort of socio-cosmically “OK” or not.  For those of you not blessed with strong powers of inference, the blonde person of hotness with the nice figure is Mrs. Senator Thompson and the old, wrinkly guy is Senator Thompson.  Yes, it appears the Senator has married a woman much his junior, who was probably in kindergarten when he graduated law school (is he a lawyer?  I forget.)

There are really two issues here.  The first is whether old and wrinkly, but rich and powerful guys should be allowed to marry young blonde persons of hotness with nice figures.  The second is perhaps two further issues:  2a) Having done so, may they leer at said wives in public; and 2b) May any husband leer at his wife in public without transgressing against the code of what is socio-cosmically OK, politically correct, or whatever. 

The first issue is complex.  My lovely wife Jeanne is strongly of the view that wrinkly old guys no matter how rich and powerful should not be able to marry blonde persons of hotness with nice figures much their junior because it is, to sum up her position, “disgusting.”  I think it is fair to say there is something a bit troublingly transparent about these unions, the most extreme example being perhaps  the rich oil guy/Yale Law grad (whose name escapes me) who married Anna Nicole Smith, when he could hardly get himself up out of bed due to the infirmities of age, let alone, well, you get the idea.  It is as if the couple announces to the world “She likes weath and power, he likes hot young babes, so, hey, they’re both happy!”  Pareto superioty, not to mention evolutionary psychology, may be efficient, but it is not always pretty, and the externality problem has always been a tough one.

But that is not the point of this little debate.  If there is something wrong with Senator Thompson leering at his fetching wife, it is derivative, I would say, from the queasiness some feel regarding the underlying union.  So perhaps it is better to consider the question, may husbands leer at their wives, in general.  To which I would have thought the answer is obvious:  OF COURSE THEY CAN STUPID!  I mean, really.

In case you haven’t been following the development of Western Civilization, the whole idea of marriage is to encourage, among other things, sexual bonding and fulfilment between spouses, and being attracted to your spouse is, obviously, part of that.  If this is sometimes expressed in the barely appropriate, appreciative glance known as a leer by some, that’s swell.  This is called, being alive.  Honestly, what planet are these people from?  And how do I make sure I never visit there?  Has anybody ever heard a wife to complain to her analyst or friends “My husband is just too hot for me; he’s always looking at me like, you know, he’s thinking of that . . . ”  Judging from the covers of women’s magazines at Ralph’s supermarket, the far bigger problem relates to how to rekindle your marital sex life, put the spark back in, and so on and on.  As if husbands leering at wives is a big problem.  I leer at my wife frequently and plan to continue to do as long as my energy holds out.  I am glad to have someone I can leer at legitimately.  Among other things, if you can leer, you know you still have something going on.  You want something going on.  Leering at Mrs. Senator Thompson, especially when I should be leering at my wife, is an entirely different question not at issue here.

Of course, there are lines.  You should not make out with your wife while seated in the playhouse, waiting for A Midsummer Night’s Dream to begin.  But if you can slip away in the first act of that egregiously unentertaining comedy to some place where you can, so much the better. That sounds like a better way to spend a midsummer’s night. If you would rather watch A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream than make out with your wife on one, that is something to address;  leering, you can relax about.  If you can only find some semi-public setting where you might be seen, I say, go for it.  For God’s sake, you’re married.  And if you can make out, you can leer.  You don’t have to make a spectacle of yourself, but neither do you have to hide from the world that you are married and you love each other, where love includes the whole damn messy business.

There are some people out there who don’t like marriage, don’t even like heterosexuality that much, especially the male side of it, and would like to bar from the public space expressions of marital love as much as they would like to bar expressions of religious feeling.  If you want to say Merry Christmas or Christ have mercy, you should have to go into a closed room, and similarly if you want to give your wife a slightly risque squeeze.  Well, to hell with that.  I love God and I love my wife, both of whom tolerate my many faults, and I have no plans to make a secret of either.  Anybody who doesn’t want to see it can get a room.