'I've Come To Fix Your Pipes' - The Afternoon Assignations Of Small Town America

The Fifties were an idyllic time.  America had just won the war against Japan and Germany, GIs were returning home to build families and restore the faith in God and country so tested by Hirohito and Hitler.

Everything was perfect in New Brighton, the small New England town setting for the story of Bettina Alston, a housewife and mother who represented the best American values - fidelity, caring, love and affection, and civic pride.  

Every Thursday afternoon while the children were still in school, Bettina volunteered at the local hospital, greeting new patients, comforting those who brought them, and instilling a sense of confidence and trust.  The hospital was one of Connecticut's best. 

On Tuesday mornings she chaired the Ladies' Auxiliary of the hospital, a group who had been responsible for the fresh flowers on the surgical wards, hot chocolate and donuts on the pediatric floor, and cute little blue and pink stuffed animals for new mothers. 

On Friday morning she played bridge with 'the girls', wives of doctors at New Brighton General.  Anita Lacava brought the sweet rolls, Marfa Potter the almond cookies, and Elena Fitch an urn of coffee.  In the Spring if the weather was good, they played cards outside on the terrace overlooking the rose garden; and in the winter in the living room which Bettina had appointed with a Carrera marble fireplace, Venetian sconces, and Florentine lamps.  

 

'Too Italian' advised her husband, but there was nothing appealing about old English chairs, highboys, and settees. Bettina could never understand the appeal of Revere, Townsend, and Copley. 

Her house was one of the finest on Lincoln Street, classically Georgian with impressive Ionic columns, a cute breezeway, New Hampshire shrubbery and a garden that had been featured in New England Home. 

Then one fine May morning while she was sitting on the patio, taking a break from making the canapes for her dinner guests on Saturday, something did not seem right.  The bluebirds were at the bird feeder, the robins were fluttering in the birdbath, the squirrels were chasing each other in the trees, and the sound of distant traffic hummed in a low vibrato; but today it all looked and sounded different. 

Everything suddenly stopped in place.  A squirrel sat up and didn't move.  The birdbath was calm and the chirping of the bluebirds pecking at the feeder quieted.  It was like a freeze frame of a movie, an abrupt halt to the action which brought the viewer almost breathtakingly close to scene.  You could almost smell Marilyn's perfume.  

Yet there was nothing intimate or settling about the scene that Bettina witnessed.  In fact it was disconcerting.  Not exactly the panic attack that Irma Carlson had told her about, the day that she got into her Plymouth and everything seemed strange and unfamiliar.  She sat dumbly with her hands on the wheel, confused and unsure not only what to do but why she was there in the first place.  The garage itself seemed to be closing in on her on all sides, the tools, pitchforks, old tires, and sleds placed there by someone else, an intruder, a stranger. 

No, this vision of Bettina was nothing like that, and just as quickly as the frame had frozen, life resumed.  Yet she was troubled by the vision, worried that some untoward and insidious thing was brewing inside her head. 

The doorbell rang, and it was Mr. Swensen, the plumber. 'I've come to fix your pipes', he said, and no one could have been more welcome - someone who brought her back to earth freed from the worrisome panic of the back yard. 'Won't you have a cup of tea, Mr. Swensen, before you start work?' to which he readily agreed, and the two of them sat comfortably in the den talking about children, the park, and the town. 

Now in modern metropolitan America, no one sits and has tea with the help - it simply is not done - but in the settled, civic, and congenial Fifties it was not unusual.

Bettina looked at the young man and smiled.  He reminded her of a Viking pictured in her favorite childhood book, Tales of the North - blond, blue-eyed, strong and direct, the kind of man she hoped one day to marry. 

 

Instead she had married Harold Alston, a good man, a good father, and a good provider - all a woman could ask for, really - but she could never stop thinking of Rolf the Viking, especially when her husband was pounding away at her, grunting and groaning like a wounded bear, finally finishing with a, 'Wow, that was nice' when for her it was nothing but stress, patience, and disgust. 

'Well, I really must be getting to your pipes, Mrs. Alston', he said, but Bettina wondered if there was some way she could hold him, freeze frame him, keep him in her den, immobilize him. 

'I'm being silly', she said to herself after he had finished for the day, but any chagrin or embarrassment disappeared when he said he would have to come back the next day to address her risers.  

New Brighton was typical of many small towns in New England - there was the upper class, the former industrialists who built the factories that supplied the American war machine during the European wars and the Union Army in the Civil War; the professional class, the doctors and lawyers who saw to the medical and legal needs of the community; the skilled craftsmen, carpenters, electricians and public school teachers; and factory worker at the broad base of the pyramid. 

The classes didn't mix, so Bettina's attention to Henk Swensen was unusual, frowned upon, and simply not done; but she was in a fragile, needy state.  She had felt crushed and ignored by the sweating, lumbering slab of meat banging away at her the night before, was increasingly bored with the chatty, gossipy ladies of the Auxiliary, and of course there was the freeze frame which could not be ignored.  Something was bound to happen.

'Please stop calling me Mrs. Alston, Henk', she said, feeling like Miss Julie in Strindberg's play where social class defines behavior and where sexual desire is mitigated by status; but felt lucky to have such a young, considerate, thoughtful lover by her side. 

They met everywhere.  She avoided her marital bed for months until she figured that a little more deceit, deception, and defilement couldn't hurt, and so it became part of her weekly routine, penciled in her calendar with obfuscated references.  

They did it in the cornfields of Brierly's Farm, in Bray's orchard, and in the tool-cluttered basement workroom of Henk's saltbox on Arch Street. 

After a time she began to feel like Connie Chatterley who, for all the epiphanic sex she and Mellors had, they found they could never have a life together. Their mutual orgasms, Lawrence's metaphor for pure Tantric love notwithstanding, there lives were to be separate. 

No rancor, no tears, no recriminations or regrets, just parting with a hug and a handshake, as it should be, especially for a proper, civic minded town like New Brighton. 

Her freeze-frame pre-panic attack moments which she thought had been extirpated by the long affair with Henk Swensen returned along with the old anomie.  Her husband's routine thumping and whaling away on top of her every Saturday night became intolerable, the cheery greetings at the reception desk of New Brighton General intolerable, but there was no place to go. 

This was the Fifties after all, and she had no money - unlike Strindberg's Captain in The Father where his wife Laura drives him mad with uncertainty about the paternity of their daughter, commits him, and takes control of all his money.  So Bettina's future was uncertain and the present miserable. 

Only string of day-trip lovers kept her sane until she was worn out with the sex, the double life, and the hammering, thudding boredom of it all. By that time she had no energy for defiance, revolt, or sedition, and so resigned herself to a long future of bone-chilling sameness. 

Which is the story of small town American women of the Fifties.  Like Wilder's Grover's Corners, New Brighton looked all well and good from the outside, but was nothing of the sort inside. 

A Spy Story Seamier Than Jensen Huang's - How An Iranian Transgender Chorus Girl Spied On Official Washington

Blaise O'Glory, aka Ahmed Razavi, top Iranian spy posing as one of Las Vegas' best-known strippers, line dancers, and chorus girls, managed to catch the eye of a senior State Department official known for his interest in sequins and tinsel, especially when worn by cross-dressing transvestites.  The official, who must remain nameless, had always been particularly attracted to Persian belly-dancers.  He had spent much time in Tehran and Isfahan as a young diplomat before the 1979 Revolution, never forgot those idyllic days, and wished they would return. 

 

Then Blaise O'Glory came into his life, not tarted up and pimped out for the Vegas runway, but modestly dressed in Armani and Chanel, a secret agent of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard on mission to penetrate the inner reaches of the US security and intelligence apparatus. 

It was a bold move and took years of planning - the transgender alter ego, a place in the chorus line of Bellagio, casual encounters with Mr. X, his eventual mark, and a subtle elision from Nevada to Constitution Avenue. 

Razavi was a 'sexual transfer' as transgenders are called in Iran - a special, unique, very small breed of individuals given recognition and a surprising free pass by the mullahs.  Islam, they said amongst themselves, was  religion of tolerance and accommodation, and while abhorring the excesses of the West with regards sexual anomalies, nevertheless accepted Allah's will and divine wisdom when it came to his creation.

 

Razavi was a devout Muslim and one as loudly outspoken about the need to eliminate the Zionist state and its patron, the United States, and convinced officials that he alone, given America's feverish endorsement of sexual deviance, could make his way into the corridors of power.  The Iranian secret service had already identified liberal members of Congress who were convinced conciliators, friends of Iran, and peacemakers, and deeper intelligence revealed certain sexual interests that could be used to enter the inner sanctum of American foreign affairs. 

So, it was serendipitous and very, very fortunate that the paths of Razavi and the VAJA (formerly Sevak, the Shah's secret police) high command crossed. Razavi, already an American citizen, could indeed infiltrate the ranks of the State Department thanks to its endemic moral corruption.  Mr. X, the target of this well-planned, high unusual subterfuge, was also known to the Iranian regime because of his earlier dalliances in the country's pre-revolutionary days, all recorded by the Shah's men and later the property of the new regime. 

 

Of course, for all the Islamic fervor of mullahs and their government operatives, many had had their own dalliances with the cross-dressing dervishes of Isfahan - an Islamic sect not entirely approved by the Shiite clerics of Tehran, but of titillating interest nonetheless - and it was there that Razavi had his first sexual encounters with men of revolutionary authority.  Sex with Razavi in high-class establishments of superior taste and class was sought after and prized; so when Razavi approached one of this former clandestine lovers in Tehran and proposed his espionage, he was warmly received. 

Now, Mr. X saw through the chic clothing of Blaise/Razavi and knew who he/she was, and immediately was taken by her, smitten actually as only the closeted gay man can know.  After many meetings, Blaise revealed herself, and in private audiences with Mr. X performed the most erotic dances and dramatic scenes imaginable; and it wasn't long before secrets of national interest were shared during pillow talk. 

The information shared by Mr. X was transmitted via secret channels to VAJA, the mullahs, and the Ayatollah himself who decided to 'confirm, convey, consolidate, and act' on the intelligence provided.  The nuclear facilities at Fordo were alerted, fissionable materials shifted to other locations, and the staff  prepared for evasive action.

 

Razavi of course never kept a dime of the emoluments provided by Mr. X, although he did buy himself some new clothes, made to order by Finkelstein & Sons of Las Vegas, bright frilly, showy things for his erotic seances with Mr. X; and a cute Armani ensemble for more public appearances. 

Despite the rather raunchy aspect of Razavi's life, he remained a devote Muslim, performed his five daily prayers unless compromised by his dalliances with Mr. X, and when in the privacy of his own apartment, cried out 'God Is Great, Allahu Akbar, Hamdi Ullah' in obedience to the Creator of the Universe. 

When the well had run dry and Razavi had drawn as much intelligence as he could from the unsuspecting Mr. X, he left Washington for Tehran and was welcomed as a conquering hero - quietly, of course, for it wouldn't do to have VAJA's successful espionage operations outed; and it was important to keep Mr. X as a possible return asset, given the growing restiveness of the American government concerning Iran's nuclear ambitions. 

Many in Iran's clerical ranks wondered at the sexual appeal of Razavi.  They of course knew of his earlier years in Isfahan, and not a few were attracted to the idea if not the reality of the likes of Razavi and his sexual dervishes; so it was not long that he became the lover of the holiest of holies and feathered his own nest quite nicely.  He was given a luxurious apartment, fully appointed and outfitted, a staff of servants, and a generous expense account. 

As far as Mr. X was concerned, he was never the wiser until the counter-espionage unit of the Department began to be suspicious about the Iranian regimes movements around military and nuclear installations and wondered if there was a mole in Washington.  Mr. X grew nervous, although he never suspected that he might be the source of the leaks, so confident was he of his adored Blaise; but as the circle tightened, he thought it best to take an innocuous leave of absence until the clouds of suspicion blew over. 

He was disappointed and unhappy at Blaise's disappearance, and searched for him in Las Vegas; but no one there knew anything, so disconsolate and concerned, he repaired to his cottage in Key West where his leave ran out, he submitted his resignation, and finally, once and for all, he came out of the closet and became the toast of the town. 

When Donald Trump blew up the nuclear reactors in Fordo and later attacked Tehran, Mr. X cheered, and hoped that if his lover had indeed returned to Iran, that he was safe; but of course he was probably in bed with a mullah, he thought jealously. 

Still In The Hunt - Seduced, Taken, And Taken Again, Older Men's Curious Pleasure At Being Duped

The Emory psychologist Roland Hart wrote 'The Anti-Pleasure Principle' in which he wrote of older men's masochistic pleasure of being duped by women.  

The libido in men remains undiminished until death and ironically increases the more they are unable to respond. This sexual credulousness - the belief that male attractiveness never diminishes with age - is responsible for relationships that a younger man would avoid like the plague

Armie Nix was one of these credulous men. Well into late middle age, he was convinced that his allure and desirability had not diminished.  He might not be the springboard he once was, but there was still bounce in his step.  He was a snappy dresser, mentioned in the professional press as 'a lawyer still at the top of his game' and often seen at any one of a number of Washington clubs where age was no bar and social eclecticism the standard. 

All the same, he neither looked in the mirror in the morning nor chose to see the quirky little smiles and nods in his direction when he sat at the bar, surveying the crowd.  He, therefore, continued way past his prime to think of himself as an aging Pierce Brosnan, former 007, grizzled and lined but still as sexually confident and appealing as he was in his James Bond days. 

  

He ignored the fact that his smiles were not returned, that the bartender was far too perfunctory, and his Armani suit was not getting the attention it should. He was in a state of denial, suffering God's Greatest Irony, having created man with a lifelong sexual desire but granting him only a scant few decades to cash in. 

Armie had been a philanderer, and that added to his conviction.  If women knew he was married and still were willing to chance an affair despite the odds, his sexual allure must be top tier; and yet here he was ignored, vapor, prop furniture on a period piece set, incidental and noticed only when asked if he could please move his hat. 

For the first time in his life he became forward. Women had always come to him, and now finding himself in this vacuous space, he felt uncomfortable and stumbled when trying to chat with décolleté thirty-somethings who reminded him of his halcyon days. 

This new persona did not suit such a man of means.  Yes, men had always been the pursuers, the predators, the lions on the veldt looking for prey, but a man of such sexual privilege needed no overtures.  Lionesses came running. 

His wife of many years had finally left him and gone west to be with their grandchildren, settled in the nicer part of Santa Monica and was a frequent visitor to the Getty and Venice Beach.  That was Southern California for you - nice weather and everything from soup to nuts. 

The divorce, he thought, would give a boost to his charm - he was not only prominent and wealthy but available - but thanks to the inevitable, surprising gullibility of the aging man, he was an easy mark, and the city was filled with women who were looking for an easy ride. It was one thing to join the armies of right fighting for social justice, another to go home to a shared two bedroom in Rockville. 

What girl in her right mind, hounded day after by doughy environmentalists, would stay the course and not pick a ripe, low-hanging fruit and become mistress of the orchard?

And so it was that Holly Barnes from Scientists for Social Responsibility approached Armie Nix at the Edgar Bar at the Mayflower hotel.  Holly might have been young and inexperienced, but she had the sharp sense of a hooker who knew a john when she saw him; and there he sat, a bit down in the dumps, nursing a drink, smiling at the bartender, vacant, absorbed, and clearly in need. 

Now, Holly never considered herself anything but a principled farmgirl who had come to Washington to follow her best instincts - to do good. But simply cutting and pasting articles on climate change, the continued oppression of the black man, and the noble rights of the asylee, and assembling them in a portfolio for the top dogs was not the be-all and end-all of existence.  Washington was a center of power, wealth, and influence, and she would be a fool to leave town without having at least some of it. 

Holly had a natural ingenue quality about her - an innocence and playful charm that hid her less than righteous ambition - and men were attracted to what they saw was a farm-bred innocence.  They wanted to love her and take care of her; and she felt like a flower buzzed by a thousand bees. 

It was time to put this to work, she reasoned, for the clock was ticking, and she had already wasted two years of her life in a nowhere job with nowhere men, and so with an unmistakably inviting, 'Is this seat taken?' introduction, the affair began. 

'Most older men don't see it coming', wrote Dr. Hart. 

They are so absorbed in their plight and trapped in God's Greatest Irony that they welcome any sexual attention.  It can only be their nascent but still powerful allure that seats the pretty young thing next to them.  From that moment on they are goners, rubes ready and willing to be taken anywhere

And so it was that Armie Nix and Holly Barnes became a couple.  Armie couldn't believe his luck, his absolute good fortune, an early Christmas present under the tree, God's bounty, and his prize.  He took her everywhere, wanting to show her off, to flaunt his virility. He showered gifts, Caribbean vacations, and dinners at the best restaurants on her.  He would do anything for her.  His life was now, finally, complete. 

His old Yale classmates told him what was up and not to fall for it, but he paid no attention.  These men, stuck in loveless, sexless marriages without hope or delight were not exactly the mentoring type.' Jealousy', he concluded, nothing more. 

They married in an extravagant wedding in New York - not as well-attended as he expected but enough to fill the small church and more than enough later to spill over the spacious lawn of the Hart compound on Martha's Vineyard 

Life was good for both.  Armie had more sex than he had ever dreamed of, and Holly, instinctively businesslike and financially savvy secured private offshore accounts in the millions.  

Armie had no questions or doubts.  She was free to spend his considerable income - vast inheritance, equities, and traditional savings; so when the time for divorce came, the pre-nuptial agreement meant nothing.  She had become a multi-millionaire in her own right. 

Armie couldn't believe his misfortune - a misadventure he never saw coming and he refused to believe that he had been duped.  She must have had her reasons, he concluded, and never regretted the past; but he had been taken as rudely and calculatingly as any wealthy man had ever been. 

Few men had ever had what he had - a lithe, warm, smooth, luxuriant young woman at his beck and call at his age! 

Yes, he had been surprised at her sudden departure and for a fleeting moment had been tempted by Yale classmates who said that she had this in mind from the beginning, but she remained that unexpected gift under the Christmas tree - a gift of longevity.  God's irony was not so universal. He was one of the privileged few to 'do something about it' in his dotage. 

So, one must be forgiving of the likes of Jensen Huang who got badly snookered by a young, beautiful Chinese spy.  What did he lose after all? A saggy, lumpy old wife, a few billion in settlement payments, all to be made up thanks to a partnership with Elon Musk. And what did he gain?  The indescribable, ineffable, glorious pleasure of sex with a much younger, beautiful woman. Priceless.