High life
Green-eyed
Taki
Athens
W as it Byron who wrote that if incest i5 the unreported domestic collie, jealousy is the unreported domestic ewe. tion? Of course not. It was Julian Barnes writing in the Observer. I don't know why thought of Byron in the first place. He was 4 a bit incestuous but he certainly wasp jealous. Every time a girl left him he wrote 3 • poem ,full of icy bitterness, but never one tinged with jealousy. Well, all I can saY is how I envy Byron, and not only for his poetic talent. In fact, given the choice be!' ween talent and the inability to feel jealous; I would choose the latter. Mind you, when speak of jealousy, it is only where woolen are concerned. I am lucky enough never 1f) feel envious or jealous of other people s possessions, looks or background. Not even of their women. What drives me mad with jealousy is when a woman I love looks at someone else, c'est tout. And as everYorte knows, there is no fifty-fifty where love is concerned. It is always uneven, the person who is loved less is usually the one wh° s jealous. In my case it makes no difference, although when I happen to be on the losing side already, my jealousy takes on Path°. logical proportions. Julian Barnes's piece on jealousy, is the only thing that I have read in that Wert, that I have totally agreed with. If anY ° you missed it — and I cannot imagine arlY Spectator readers buying a subversive PaPe.r like the Observer — here are a few of II! pearls: first of all he suggested that the received wisdom that jealousy is reasonably uncommon, largely confined to the callow' and gradually becoming extinct, is pure hocus pocus. Jealousy is here to staY' he wrote, and I remember breathing a sigh of relief, as adding callowness to the on Its of vices I am proud of was not on. Further more, he wrote that the Sixties assulnPII°11 that the more people one slept with, Ole more relaxed one became about the wh°Ie thing, was also wrong. Truer words have never been written. I am more jealous now than I ever was before. Ironically, I do not suffer from 01,11 Barnes called `retrospective jealousy' at I couldn't care less what the girl I'm in loo ,e with did before me, as long as she hasn't been, say, on Khashoggi's yacht, or made, it in Hollywood. No, it is not the past Ilia! worries me, but the future; and the constant booby-traps I fall into through jealousy' Thetotallyl tmaginianeocsueoeuinsggetsatukrinesg of icaoclel,osFej assignations I think I've detected. If only and were English and cared for port, dogs an birds instead of women. UnfortunatelY, jealousy for me is an emotion concomitant with love, and the very definition of love supplies me with the excuse to be jealous. Because if there wasn't an element of ex- ;InslYitY in love, why then love at all? Might as well join all those 'ladies' at Greenham `ninmon. What I cannot handle is the fact that ra- tionality plays absolutely no role when one is Jealous (or in love, for that matter). 1 recognise the origins of the emotion but am Ineanable of doing anything about it. Not too long ago I advised a friend whose girl Lhad left him for another. No dramas, I told um?, because there is nothing that will keep at girl away more than a sad countenance. Keep her laughing, 1 said. A month later I fatted to follow my own advice and began acting like Othello. So a young don, Danny ,u,aggenhurst, gave me a strong lecture on we merits of acting with insouciance where nmen are concerned. (I followed his ad- vice for about an hour.) Its fortunately, jealousy is not even a sin. ,„ simply self-destructive. The first girl I ,,`Yr. kissed was an I1-year-old called wlarma• I was 12. When 1 next saw her she wt,as, talking to another boy and I threw a [741171. Marina, who preferred a quiet 'Le, began kissing him instead of me soon i.,ter my little scene. Thirty-four years later, hilice the Bourbons, I have not forgotten, nor
worse have I learned. What is even
fora I cannot even go to Daddy and ask a Yacht to get over my melancholia. I ,tiess I will have to try and become a come- 'an, despite the fact that some illiterates have suggested that I already am one.
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