snippet: Portrait of a Player

My guess is that he went along as a boy. He lacks the natural ease with which a true philanderer sports the appearance of a gentleman. The true philanderer may be a gentleman, a lover of women, skin, sweat, sex, variety.

He doesn’t. He isn’t. He isn’t a lover; he’s an accountant. Or is that fair? He seems, in spite of his calculated haircut, wardrobe, and heavy steel jewelry, nice enough, just a boy who went along with the role of the ladies’ man, because he had a talent for it, the way some boys go along with the role of Byronic poet, banker, fire chief, or father.