The Con As High Art - The Sexual Ponzi Schemes Of A Very Clever Woman

Much has been made of 'the truth' these days. Of course there is no such thing, despite the claims of politicians who insist there is - as long as its theirs - all of which results in the circus atmosphere of American politics. 

There was the Southern governor who went missing from his desk for a week to chase his Argentine firecracker to Buenos Aires where he was caught in flagrante delicto but not before he had covered his tracks with a story about hiking the Appalachian Trail; or the Senator who had not only lied about his extramarital affair and his illegitimate child, but paid an aide to take the blame.  'His child, not mine', insisted the Senator in an angry press conference. 

Lying, chicanery, bowdlerizing, and deception are par for the course on Capitol Hill, at the White House, and in Foggy Bottom.  The most outlandish tales are currency on the power avenues of the capital.  Who did what to whom is only the beginning, followed by innuendo, sly reference, winks and nods and finally downright, bald-faced whoppers, and the demand for information whatever its source or veracity is limitless. No one cares overly about what the truth is in all the allegations and accusations.  It is enough that something is plausible, fits a behavior pattern, or jibes with other past reported events. 

 

None of this should be a surprise.  Not only have politics always been a smarmy affair, but such chicanery and magic tricks with the facts are part and parcel of all our lives. 

Take Blanton Pease who since childhood never had use for the truth.  He fibbed, lied, and deceived his parents, his teachers, and even the easiest mark of them all - the priest behind the screen in the confessional.  He made up sins just to make his Act of Contrition more noteworthy, adding a few venial sins- disobeying his mother or taking a chocolate kiss from his sister to leaven the load - the whoppers were what got Father Brophy’s attention.

The priest in fact, sworn to secrecy about the identity of those who confessed, was under no obligation to keep quiet about the sins themselves; and the the sinful strides of Mr. X were worth telling when he and his buddies got together over cigarettes and beer.  

Or poor Henry Lerner whose own childhood was so pitifully plain and ordinary compared that of the swells at St. Grottlesex who summered on the Vineyard, wintered in Gstaad, and breezed through calculus, that he invented his life, creating a fictional family that one-upped his classmates with stories of the casinos in Monte Carlo, downhill racing, and dreamy Sundays in St. Tropez. 

Or Farley Biggs, a serial adulterer whose excuses were more fabulist than anything Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, or Ursula LeGuin could possibly have invented  He was a genius, a brilliantly talented liar who could fool Einstein. 

None, however, could match Loretta Sorel, a woman as deft, agile, and believable a liar as there ever was, and use her unparalleled talents to one use and one only - to bed the most eligible, marriage-worthy, admirable men in Washington. Now, Loretta was a woman who could have easily negotiated her way to a secure future.  She was of modest background, good lineage, and ample finances; and honesty in these regards could have landed her a man of integrity and responsibility; but she had her sights set much, much higher. 

Where she got her dramatic flair, her Greta Garbo, Sarah Bernhardt melodrama, her Shakespearean cajoling trickery no one knew, let alone her.  She was not a woman to parse, analyze, and decipher.  She simply loved to see men trip over themselves to get her eye and never give them so much as a wink, only a fare-thee-well air kiss when she turned her attention elsewhere. 

 

Of course the deck was stacked in her favor.  Men have been chasing women forever, caught in one romantic fantasy after another.  It was that frustrated lover Petrarch who in the 15th century with his sonnets to his beloved, Laura, created the idea of romantic love. The time was right for the idea to catch on in an age of chivalry, knights, fair maidens, bravery and honor, and it has persisted without much deviation to this day.  

Loretta, like Shakespeare's Portia in The Merchant of Venice knew that she could best men at every turn, and enjoyed watching them in the curious St. Vitus' dances of courtship.  One prince after another came to Portia's salon and were offered the chance to bid for her hand.  Guess what is in the casket, she said, lead, silver, or gold, and the correct answer will award them her sexual bounty. 

The men concocted one self-serving, posturing, presumptuously arrogant explanation of their choice after another.  'It must be gold because I am golden, worth the riches of Croesus, a man of wealth beyond wealth....But no, that is too obvious.  I am a man of sterling virtue, of wealth to be sure, but without exaggeration...It couldn't possibly be lead, but then again, the placer of the prize might value solidity, permanence; and I am of such permanence...'

 

Portia watched and listened with her servant to the absurdity, the absolute ridiculousness of the princes' claims.  She, like Cleopatra who laughed with her eunuch, Marden at the silliness of the fawning Antony, enjoyed the courtship of the men who posed and postured before her. 

If Loretta could have been one of Shakespeare's women, she would have been Cleopatra, the Queen of the Nile who bedded emperors, and who completely, absolutely snookered Marc Antony, convinced him of her love and loyalty, then tricked him at the sea battle of Actium without a second thought.  She knew that this big fish had already been hooked, and the future of Rome with the young Augustus was far more promising than this faded hero. 

Loretta was the enchanting, queen of the pasha's harem, the irresistible woman of A Thousand and One Nights.  She was the nauch dancer of Rajput princes, the geisha to shoguns - and all with nothing behind the veil.  She had such an uncanny understanding of male desire and feminine, alluring sexual wiles, that there needn't be anything of substance behind the inviting smile or the airy caress.  

Word spread and this infinitely desirable, impossibly alluring woman who was beyond reach became every man's object of desire.  She was a gorgeous chameleon, dressing the part for Iowa rubes and Brooklyn Jews, tempting in their cultural lingo, keeping them in line and on a string.  She saw not one, but many, and her sexual Ponzi scheme kept adding value, adding investors, status, privilege, and attention.  Like all Ponzi schemes, there was nothing there, zero added to zero at every encounter, but her ascribed value was in the millions. 

She had the pick of the litter by the time she was ready to pack it in with the best of the lot.  Despite her fun at the expense of men she was no Bernal Heights flannel-and-jackboots tough girl.  She was a bit like the Marquise de Merteuil in Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses - conspiring with Valmont to seduce young girls in a marvelous sexual charade. Her fair game was men.  

At last report Loretta had gone back to Frog Hollow, but that could have been her own favored fable of the day; and reports that had her in Rimini with with the Count Emmanuel de Fauchon-Berrier were much more believable.