Recently, a woman brought her car into one of those newfangled surveillance shops, convinced her husband was spying on her.
Sure enough, a quick peek underneath the frame turned up a tracking device. Was divorce next? Nope. She simply had it removed — c’est la vie for the course of love these days — and her suspicious husband arrived the next week demanding to have another device installed.
These days it’s so easy to spy on your lover, cheating of the past seems downright quaint. While watching an old episode of Melrose Place recently, I gasped as a doctor phoned his wife to say he was working late whilst winking at his lover. Call display would surely out him. And get this:
I cheered when I realized it couldn’t be part of the plot line because it hadn’t been invented when that series was shot! It’s not that I support cheating, I just hate the rampant invasion of privacy — even when it comes to sex. Let me rephrase that: Especially when it comes to sex!
If it’s any comfort, cellphones make it easier to cheat. They let you pretend you’re walking the dog when you’re actually showing off your latest Victoria’s Secret purchase to Hugo (explains the growling in the background).
One friend knew her husband had draped voice-activated tape machines around her house and car so she tailored her conversations accordingly. “I just love him so much — he’s so good to me” she’d chirp, making fake plans with her friends and then drive to her lover’s. Her fun wasn’t just infidelity, it was outwitting her prison guard-like husband.
Just as teenagers blow a curfew because it exists, the same goes for cheating. If you’re trapped in some technological cage, you’ll be as determined as Prison Break’s Lincoln Burrows to outwit the authorities.
I remember Tom Robbins asking in Still Life With Woodpecker — how do you make love stay?
I bet he never thought the answer would be a GPS tracker.
