The Casanova complex by Peter Trachtenberg

Author:Peter Trachtenberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychosexual disorders., Compulsive behavior.
Publisher: Poseiden Press
Published: 1988-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

— THE SIX FACES OF CASANOVA

Tamower wouldn't give up Jean entirely, and indeed he imposed a perverse parity on his mistresses, alternating visits from Tryforos with visits from Harris, vacations with one woman with vacations with the other. Both women had clothes in his closets. Both served him not just as bedmates but as amanuenses: if Mrs. Harris disparagingly referred to her rival as a ''girl Friday," she could hardly deny that she herself was editing her lovers newest ''masterpiece" while he went off to a dinner party: he acknowledged her assistance with a check for $4,000. In his will the doctor left both women almost identical bequests—$200,000 for Lynne Tryforos and $220,000 for Mrs. Harris.

In late 1979 and early 1980 the tension between the two women, and between Mrs. Harris and Dr. Tamower, reached a critical point. A mysterious caller kept phoning Jean at her home. Jean in turn kept calling her rival: Lynnes phone number was unlisted but Jeans anonymous caller had given it to her. Someone sent Jean a copy of Tarnower's will, with her name scratched out of it. On a visit to the doctor's house she found that her clothes had been slashed and smeared with excrement. Tarnower accused Jean of harassing Lynne, of harassing his friends for an invitation to a testimonial dinner to which he had failed to ask her. His neglect of her was growing, and she found herself begging for his time, his affection, for the pills that she now needed in order to keep up her duties while her spirit was disintegrating: her lover had become her pusher. On March 10,1980, she drove from Virginia to Westchester with a loaded gun, intending, she later claimed, to kill herself at Tarnower's house. She found him in his bedroom. According to Harris, he told her, "Get out of here. You 're crazy." Then he tried to take the gun from her. She shot him three times; the doctor was dead before he reached the hospital. Later, in police custody, she wondered "how something so ugly and sad could have happened between two people who didn 't argue even, except over the use of the subjunctive."

WAYNE: "THE KEY.. .IS HAVING THEM WANT TO GIVE TO YOU"

Casanovas' relationships can range from the ephemeral couplings of hitters to the long and superficially stable arrangements of nest-ters. Like nesters, jugglers often sustain long relationships, but those relationships are far from stable and are never monogamous. Jugglers are true polygynists, who have at least two women in their

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