Kennedy was no romantic. Girlfriends would describe his
insatiable but joyless sex drive. According to one conquest, sex was
“just physical and social activity to him,” a way to stave off the
boredom, or get a rush. He didn’t care about the other person, and in
time, he almost didn’t care about the pleasure it gave himself either.
As Kennedy told the prime minister of Britain in a moment of very
uncomfortable honesty, if he went without sex for a few days, he’d
get headaches. (His father had told his sons that he couldn’t sleep
unless he’d “had a lay.”) Given Kennedy’s terrible back, having sex
was probably painful too—but he never let that stop him.
In one shameful moment, as Soviet and American forces teetered
on the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy
brought in a nineteen-year-old student from Wheaton College for a
rendezvous in a hotel near the White House. Here was a man who
had no idea how much longer he would live, who was working with
inhuman dedication in that crisis to curb the dangerous impulses of
his nation’s enemies... cheating on his wife, choosing to spend what
were potentially his last moments on earth in the sheets with a
random girl half his age instead of with his scared and vulnerable
family.
That doesn’t sound like stillness. It doesn’t sound particularly
glamorous either.
It sounds like a man who is spiritually broken, at the whims of his
worst impulses, unable to think clearly or prioritize. But before we
condemn Kennedy as a despicable addict or abuser, we should look
at our own failings. Do we not fall prey to various desires in our own
personal lives? Do we not know better and do it anyway?
Lust is a destroyer of peace in our lives: Lust for a beautiful
person. Lust for an orgasm. Lust for someone other than the one
we’ve committed to be with. Lust for power. Lust for dominance.
Lust for other people’s stuff. Lust for the fanciest, best, most
expensive things that money can buy.
And is this not at odds with the self-mastery we say we want?
A person enslaved to their urges is not free—whether they are a
plumber or the president.
How many great men and women end up losing everything—end
up, in some cases, literally behind bars—because they freely chose to
barry
(Barry)
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