Genius reveals itself in crises, like that man who has recently been caught in a lie, who looks into his partner’s eyes and explodes with his eyes wide open: What is infidelity? What is it, you say as your blue student stares at my student … Infidelity? And you ask me? Infidelity is… In another version of the story, the man in question would be in his forties and have a three-day beard; Straight jeans, a black jacket, a guarded rudeness – he is fond of French poststructuralism, and paraphrases Roland Barthes to be able to live: Dear, forgive, but only the one he loves can betray, Isn’t there something beautiful in all this, isn’t there, Aren’t we asserting ourselves in this discussion, in this common pain? Sometimes, however, the man — who wears chinos, boat shoes, and plays tennis on Sundays — shows up at home with a smile and a bouquet of flowers, which resemble the oranges in “The Godfather”: announcing the tragedy in Morse code.
Few things excite the imagination more than infidelity, the driving force behind humanity’s who-knows-how-many discoveries: literature began in Troy, and three thousand years later, Sofia Coppola broke up and filmed “Lost in Translation,” a film that makes you think that there might be things more intimate and intense than sex between two lovers who have just met and been unhappily married. Where does infidelity begin? Jabois writes that there are more cuckolds sending a good night each day to a woman who smiles at you and listens to you than there are cuckolds who have bad sex, or two, in an elevator (some lives are more intense than others, yes). Technological advances have skewed questions of monogamy, and now we’re talking about petty infidelity, the intersection of the ancient sin of thought with 21st century means. For example: Is it cheating to like a woman you like but don’t know on Instagram? Is it considered adultery to follow it, send a reaction to a story, or dream about it? May I comment on the pictures? Is watching pornographic films regularly a betrayal or just a vice? Are you talking to your ex-girlfriend? What if you recreated that ex-girlfriend using AI? Do we need more signs to escape?
Infidelity is one of those topics that comes up after dinner, although once the discussion begins there are only two possible endings: the front door or the infirmary. The game is fun, and of course takes us to “Temptation Island”, a program in which participants have developed surgical precision to spot infidelity: your partner can sleep with someone else without cheating on you (they cuddled all night, but didn’t cover themselves with the sheet: thank God), and hug each other in the pool two centimeters from the model’s mouth without it being a mistake, but a horizontal kiss is unbearable. It is a desperate logic reminiscent of that patient who discusses with his doctor how much he can smoke without killing himself very quickly, or the fruit seller who picks up rotten apples like Hamlet’s Yorick’s skull and says: He was very strange to me.
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