Double Standard

Keith and I regularly watch the next day evening rerun of The Daily Show. We're too old to stay up late enough to watch the live broadcast and, well, way too old to watch tv shows online at any old time, which yes, I do know we could do. But we can't because that's just, oh, just so not right. My laptop screen is too small and I tend to spill stuff. But more than the Practicalities, there are Principles involved here: 1) one should have to endure commercials as penance for watching tv; 2) one is supposed to watch tv shows at specific times on specific days--how else will one learn time management skills? and the exquisite pleasure of expectation and impatience?

Anyway, one evening last year, Owen joined us in the living room--

--oh hey!!! Principle 3# of It's-TV-Not-Computer-Watching: the family is to cluster around the tv set (one cannot cluster around the computer--there aren't enough chairs and there's always that annoying booping noise alerting one to incoming chat message thingies for Hugh); if one does not cluster as a family around the tv, what will happen to family values?--

--while we were watching The Daily Show and right out of nowhere, Owen turns to me and says, "It'd be all right with me if you left Dad for Jon Stewart."

OK, then.

But perhaps I should confess that Owen's comment was not as random as it might appear. I mean, we weren't talking about it right at that moment, but the fact is, that as much as I love and adore my husband and think he's really sexy (particularly when he's wearing his clerical robes, which I realize is a little weird, tho' let me note that he has never worn said robes to bed, which would be a lot weird, tho' somewhat interesting, actually, now that I think about it), Owen and Hugh did grow up hearing me assert, on occasion, that I would leave Keith for a select group of individuals.

Paul Newman, top of the list. Not only Cool Hand Luke Paul, when he was at his all-time sexy peak (which must be actually the peak of male sexiness in human history) but Paul at any time (except now, of course, because he's dead)--all that beauty and dedication to craft and social consciousness and quirky humor and that utterly splendid marriage to Joanne Woodward. (I know you're thinking that if I had left Randy for Paul, he would have had to leave Joanne for me, but I would have shared. Joanne's wonderful. And an LSU grad to boot.)

Others on the List of Men I Would Leave Your Dad For: Bruce Springsteen (but he and Patti seem very happy these days), Kenneth Branagh on his good days, the Tenth Doctor Who (a fictional character and so perhaps not very promising, particularly as he's now regenerated as the Eleventh Doctor Who, an engaging character I'd enjoy hosting for dinner but not a man, err, Time Lord, for whom I'd toss aside marriage, children, and life as I know it), and now, thanks to Owen, Jon Stewart.

So, not a lengthy List and not one that poses much of a threat to my marriage (tho' the fact that all seven slots in my car cd player are occupied by Springsteen albums bothers Keith to no end--to which I respond, with my usual sensitivity, Suck It Up).

The subject of my sensitivity, however, brings up a teeny-tiny little itsy-titsy niggling detail: my kids have not grown up with a List of Women Dad Would Leave Mom For. Unlike horrible mom me, at no point has Keith had to comfort a sobbing Hugh and assure him that Bruce Springsteen was really not very likely to come knocking and take away his daddy. Keith's more inclined to comment (out loud at least) on Julia Roberts' incredibly fake puffed-up-looking lips than on any of her more appealing attributes--tho', dammit, he does get totally misty-eyed and tongue-tied and downright goofy on the subject of Keira Knightley in the long green gown in the library sex scene in Atonement. . . .KEIRA KNIGHTLEY!!! Anorexic stick insect Keira Knightley!! She must be, what, 18 years old? Gaaahhhhhh . . . . But the thing is, the boys don't know about Keira. Well of course they know about Keira--what teenaged boy doesn't?--but they don't know of her as Someone Dad Would Leave Mom For. As far as they know, there's no such woman.

Umm, so yes, there's kind of a double standard here. I'm aware of it. I'm not proud of it. Too damn tired to change anything, mind you, but still with enough integrity to feel a wee bit guilty and uncomfortable.

Except, I mean, Keira Knightley. Geez louise.