The Dilligaf Heiress
by
For
JC
(“if you want to win at doubles, choose your partner wisely”)
Outline
Prologue
Heartbreak Beat
A Phallic Narcissist
Her High Bidder
The Public Flogging
Somers Gillette
Jewish Oral
Pink Peonies and The 7th Mistake
Jack and Annie Come up With a Name
“Sake Makes Me Horny”
“These People Like REO Speedwagon for God’s Sake!”
Steinbeck and xx’s and oo’s
Millbrook Vasocongestion
A Day at the Farm
A Summer Pool’s Priapism
The Doorman
JG Melons and EPT’s
Dr. Schwartz and Central Park
Hey Man Nice Shot
“Jesus H Christ…Get Me a Glass of Water!!”
A Quest Wedding
St. Thomas’ Church and Atheism
The Ambassador and Campagnola
The Rectory and John 14:2-3
Epidurals and Last Names
Board Dreams
The Asparagus Plate Toss
“No Tats, Gats, or Fat’s”
Thongs for Sale at the Fall Fair
Parent’s Association Scheming
Hobe Sound: The End of Sex
The Internet Crash and 9-11
Interior Decorators: The Co-Conspirators of Divorce
The Chimney
Board Resignation’s
The Shadow of the Day
Lyford Cay Flirtations
Une Bonne Speculation et Le Denouement
The Saudi-London Web
The Cravath Meeting
The Libyans Pull Out; the Mini-Dachshund Pulls In
Sun Valley Revelations
“How Did Nick Ever Marry Her?!”
The Club Tennis Championship
A Week at The Links
“I Want a Divorce”
Marshmallow Clouds
Just One lie Among Thousands
Somers Speaks
“Did She Just Say Physical Abandonment?!”
Post-Separation Grinding on the Adirondack Club Porch
Bermuda Gales
The Nanny Gets Fired, then Obliterated
The Decree of Dissolution
Iceland, Milos, and a Bathroom Surprise
‘Lucy’ Pulls the Ball Yet Again
The Stealth Victim
Dymphna’s Corner
The End
Three Words: I and Love and You
Epilogue
Letter for Somers
Exhibit
A Country Club Dream
Dymphna’s Playlist
She's
frequently kind and she's suddenly cruel
She
can do as she pleases, she's nobody's fool
And
she can't be convicted, she's earned her degree
And
the most she will do is throw shadows at you
But
she’s always a woman to me
(v. Billy Joel)
Prologue
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
-- 1 Corinthians 13:13
You lose, she wins… Life’s a zero sum game to The Dilligaf Heiress, my fatwa imama of Locust Valley.
No one ever said marriage would be easy…then again, no one ever said it would be this hard. I’m a big believer in the wisdom of Erma Bombeck, ‘Marriage has no guarantees…If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.’ My ex was society’s Lucy (‘Lucifer’) Van Pelt, pulling the ball away every time I was about to kick.
I’d have swum across an ocean for that woman…and she’d drown me when I was furthest from land. When I asked for rope…she handed me a noose. I’d have gone through hell for her…and that’s exactly where she wanted me. In the end, hers was simply anger as pleasure. Well…, nobody’s perfect. This is a Balzac talking head tale of consumerism, social disconnection, political stagnation, and modern malaise. And that’s just my marriage. Please call me Seb.
I’m studying the evil ex syndrome in detail these days. My tentative conclusion: my ex has ‘em all beat. Her victory and reach were made all the more possible by the nature of her smoldering beauty…simply and declaratively stunning. The trust fund merely underwrote her mayhem. There was never a day of rest for her wickedness and her dystopia view of humanity was shuddering.
She plumbed pathological depths scientists and psychologists hadn’t considered reachable, a cosmos of malice that only theory had been attached to prior to her arrival, and I’ve asked the pro’s… Ultimately the only act she didn’t commit was first-degree murder, not that she didn’t give it the old college try. A thousand years will pass before another human gets close to just ten percent of her depraved accomplishments. I can now appreciate the extent of her diabolical bent though: it must say something about me, that I could have married such an overachiever.
She was a biblical assault in Oscar de la Renta. She has a Futurist psychology where she examines certain events not yet come to pass but which she simply appropriates as having already happened. She has a Preterist psychology, a casual dismissal of historical events when it suits her fantasies. She has a Historicist psychology where she identifies with certain historical people and events, but only when it flatters her self-love (and only at very large parties). And finally she has an Idealist psychology, not in the sense that you and I might think, but rather where she trumpets events that support the triumph of evil over good. In other words, she’s the Book of Revelations but ass-backwards.
My wife infected me like the simmering Thais to Alexander the Great, taunting him to needlessly burn down the glorious city of Persepolis, Thais’ sexual attraction mocking Alexander’s strength. When he agreed to burn the city, that one useless act forever ruined East-West relations (and when an act committed in 330 BC still has legs 2,000+ years later, it’s epic…my wife will affect similar glory).
Before we start, I should tell you a little bit about me. I think (and even she’d concur) I’m stranded in the wrong time, as if someone teleported me to a future I never belonged to. I shave acoustic and grow holiday beards, I’m hypnotized by hotness but respect all, and about the very worst you could say about me before her was I had cobra yawn.