Byko: Why The Donald thinks the way he does about sex
THIS PAST WEEK, a couple of Trump-related events closed a circle for me.
THIS PAST WEEK, a couple of Trump-related events closed a circle for me.
News of the death of Atlantic City's Trump Taj Mahal took me to its birth, which I covered. What happened on that April night in 1990 puts Donald Trump's recently reported lewd remarks and perhaps conduct into a sexual focus.
After the glowing speeches, after the celebrity guests had been paraded around, I waited for The Donald to get a few exclusive words from him for my column. The ballroom was enormous, the chandeliers were dimmed, but I always knew where Trump was - all I had to do was follow a puddle of light as it snaked around the ballroom.
The puddle of light came from TV cameras that shadowed him around the room as he crowed about his new venture.
There were a number of young and decked-out women on the edge of that puddle of light, drawn to him like iron filings to a magnet. They clearly were enraptured by Trump - maybe the money, maybe the fame, maybe the hair - I don't know.
I do know that was his reality, so I wasn't surprised when, 15 years later, he told Billy Bush that when you're a star, you can do what you want with women - "they let you do it. You can do anything" - even grab them by the you-know-what.
He was right if he meant there is a genre of women - not slut-shaming here - who love to bag celebrities. And by "bag," I mean bed. He was dead wrong if he believes that is true for all women because it is not.
The reality is some women - I said some - are sexual aggressors who unabashedly enjoy sex for fun as much as men.
This is not news to most of us. It has been celebrated in popular culture, such as the 2002 movie "The Banger Sisters" in which Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon, playing '60s free-love hippies who, in their younger days, ferociously bed every rock star they could get their paws on.
Groupies are available to almost every band in every city. Chicago artist Cynthia Plaster Caster achieved fame, and no doubt orgasms, by making plaster casts of rock-star penises, starting with Jimi Hendrix.
I may be accused of "mansplaining," but the truth is there are women who happily will give it up - for fame, for money, for bragging rights, whatever. That is the reality Donald Trump knows. It is also the reality of Wilt Chamberlain, who claimed to have bedded 20,000 women, and even of John Bolaris, who at one time couldn't enter a bar without women throwing themselves at him. Sex is a primal urge, and both genders want a slice of that pie.
After the sexual revolution, we now find the sexual lines are blurred. I read we are living in a "rape culture" at the same time we are in a "hook-up culture" and have "friends with benefits," yet a young man can be prosecuted for sexual assault if he tries for "second base" during a make-out session. Even though we are all over the sexual lot, there remains a line between rape and seduction.
Some feminists talk as if sex is an act committed by men on women, as if women don't have sexual urges and sexual fantasies.
"The Fifty Shades of Grey" trilogy - built around bondage and sadomasochism - sold 100 million copies worldwide. The primary buyers were women.
Let's step into the locker room, a term used by Trump, which enraged a number of professional athletes.
I don't spend much time in sports locker rooms, but I have been to the gym and bars and have heard men talk in their unguarded moments.
My reality is that most men don't talk like that, don't act like that, don't even think like that. When I have heard it, it came either from Alpha males, the top of the pyramid, or men of the lower class, the bottom of the pyramid.
Don't fall for the line that the piggish Trump represents all men. He doesn't - any more than Bill Cosby does - and Trump's remarks don't prove there is an oppressive, anti-women "guy culture."
As rich men use money or power as bait for beautiful women, those women use their looks to attract men, wealthy if possible. They used to be called gold-diggers, and the most notorious example was gorgeous 1993 Playmate of the Year Anna Nicole Smith, who married multimillionaire octogenarian J. Howard Marshall, who looked like a head of cabbage. She did not represent all, or even most, women.
Not a single word I've written excuses Trump. I'm just saying he comes from his own reality, which is warped by fame and fortune.
"Let me tell you about the very rich," wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald. "They are different from you and me."
215-854-5977 @StuBykofsky
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