Betty Friedan

Once I was there she told me who her attacker was—John F. Kennedy himself, the 35th American president who was at the time a little over one year into his presidency. She said JFK—who kept an apartment at the Carlyle—invited her for drinks and then pounced. She claimed he stopped once she threatened to tell her father in Detroit. I made sympathetic noises and held her close and said “there, there,” but I didn’t believe a word. Very few girls said no to JFK, the only Kennedy who was not only good-looking and gracious, but also a gentleman, something no other Kennedy clan member has ever been accused of being.

I cannot remember having had a more idyllic time than fifty years ago this week: Cristina back in Paris sending me sweet letters swearing undying love, the Anglo-American, a neurotic but a great beauty staying up until dawn seven nights a week, and the all-American telling me how impressed she was with my habit of working at night in my father’s shipping office. Then it all came crashing down and it was hasty migration time for the poor little Greek boy.

And it was straight out of a cheap movie screenplay. Cristina flew to New York on a whim without telling me. The Anglo-American kicked me so hard on the shin that I bled. The all-American threw a glass of wine on my head when she found out about Cristina, who in turn broke off her engagement, called me a liar and a cheat, and warned me that her father would shoot me if I ever came to Paris. Don’t forget, this was 1963 and men were supposed to act honorably, not like Neanderthals.

I headed for Greece and the safety and comforts of home. My mother even suggested some mustachioed Greek girl as an excellent choice for a wife because such a type would definitely be a virgin. That’s all I needed.

What does all this have to do with Betty Friedan and feminism? A hell of a lot. We men were the bad guys in the battle of the sexes fifty years ago. No longer. If Friedan was worried about the withering of women’s minds by domesticity, what are we poor men to say today, battered nonstop by aggressive women who see lovemaking as rape and all men as potential rapists and murderers? I have never been a pincher nor a groper and am very safe in taxis, but if I sometimes pay a compliment to a lady, I don’t expect to be called a pig for it. I am a victim. Cristina and I married, but she never trusted me, and that undermined our marriage. Poor Taki.