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25 May 2007

MICHAEL LAWS
COLUMNIST

A weekly column published in the ‘Sunday Star-Times'

SO YOUR SHEILA IS PLAYING UP …

One of the great male fantasies is the threesome. The French have sought to sanctify this smutty arrangement by labeling it a ménage a trois but the truth is it’s all about some lucky dude getting it on with two chicks.

Which is why the secular West has it all over fundamentalist Islam. There is no need to blow yourself to bits for a bit of nooky in the West. Better still: you stay alive to enjoy it.

Of course, there are reverse ménages – two guys, one female – but again it is consensual and most men take pleasure in the antics of a bad girl. Even if they are their own.

Indeed despite the rise of girl power, feminism and political correctness the reality is that we men ape our Victorian antecedents. We prefer our partners to be prudes in public but prurients in private. Indeed the whole Madonna/whore dichotomy is as alive in 2007 as it was in 1857.

That said, the rise of the predatory binge-drinking female has had its effect upon the mating habits of the younger X and Y generations. But the age old truth remains; when we find a serious mate, we assume proprietal rights. Whether we are young or old, male or female, baby-boomer or beneficiary.

Of course it is permissible – if risqué - to share your partner with another a la swingers or polyamorists but there must be reciprocal rights. You get to share others too. Having your cake and eating it too, as it is called. The true call of the baby-boomer.

So forgive my surprise at the antics of the ‘Lion Man’ Craig Busch when he arrived home from some boozy party only to discover his missus in the arms of another man. And woman. A couple. This would not be a common occurrence but what happened next is only too familiar.

He proceeded to beat the crap out of his partner. And, for good measure, he did the same thing the next day too. Which would have been just another abnormal day in domestica if Craig Busch hadn’t just happened to be a hero of a TVNZ reality TV show.

At which point it was all high powered lawyers, name suppression and let’s make sure the case takes as far distant from the screened show as decency will allow. And it worked. By the time the case finally came before Judge Michael Lance in the Whangarei District Court, most of us had moved on.

After all, reality TV has a life. Something that happened two years ago may as well not have happened. Dear God, two days ago. So there will be many New Zealanders this morning shaking their heads and going – “who the Hell is the Lion Man?” A question I asked myself when the court case was made public.

But it was not Busch’s reaction, his guilty plea-bargain or the $8,000 payment to his former partner that intrigued. Rather the comments of the sentencing judge that giving his partner seven stitches, extensive bruising and a fractured vertebrae was “human and understandable.”

I mean, there was already one neanderthal involved in this episode. Who would have guessed that the second one would be robed and sitting in pronouncement? Every wife-beater in New Zealand – including a few past and present All Blacks – must be regretting that their activities did not attract Judge Lance’s sympathy.

And yet I must be the only person in New Zealand who thinks Busch was lucky, Lance is a tosser and that the victim has been severely wronged. When I raised the issue on my talkback show this week, there followed three hours of callers acclaiming the jurist’s wisdom. Any man – any woman – would have reacted the same way, was the theme.

Really? Some men would have joined in. A few would have turned on their heel in disgust. Others would have asked if they could fetch a camera. I suppose it all turned on whether the other woman in the ménage – an intriguingly named temptress called Hermes – was hot or not. If she’d looked like Paris Hilton … would Busch have gone bad?

But it was Busch’s ownership that Judge Lance endorsed. Partners as chattels – human cargo. If you’ve paid for it, then some one else fooling around with your goods is not simply a scoundrel but a thief. Particularly if the possession is female.

Which means that literally thousands, nay tens of thousands of Kiwis are fortunate not to be accused of larceny this morning. To be beaten up by their partners and then have Judge Lance dismissing their injuries as the kind of thing that happen when you diss your master.

After all, adultery seems New Zealand’s favourite contact sport. Most reconstituted relationships involve an aspect of infidelity and most marriages and de facto relationships expire because there is a third party. Or a fourth.

And barring the most lascivious of encounters, people stray from their
partners for one simple reason. The grass is greener. And their current relationship is dead, dying, stale, stuffed or stupid.

Infidelity gets a bum rap in this country. This is something instantly Calvinist in all of us that we may be betrayed by our partner. And that they may have an independent heart (and body) that asserts that independence. Because the truth is something we do not like to admit.

Our relationship is in trouble. And the infidelity is but a symptom. That most Kiwis accept this truth is why most relationships survive the stray. We are more mature than Judge Lance allows.

ENDS