{"id":264,"date":"2012-09-14T12:01:21","date_gmt":"2012-09-14T16:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/?p=264"},"modified":"2012-09-07T16:07:19","modified_gmt":"2012-09-07T20:07:19","slug":"264","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/?p=264","title":{"rendered":"Brushing Them Off"},"content":{"rendered":"

divorc<\/strong>\u00e9e\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 texting\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 restaurant\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 gadabout<\/strong><\/p>\n

gadfly\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 open\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 impervious\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 relish<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ernest Albert Manningham had always thought himself impervious <\/strong>to \u201cfeminine charms,\u201d as he called women’s affectations. He was proud of his ability to detect, deconstruct, and dismiss any woman’s advances. His special talent was rejection of flirtations.<\/p>\n

Ernest could, on command and with equal unconcern, dismiss a potential suitor with a scathing comment on appearance or a sarcastic quip. He opened<\/strong> his mouth, and the perfect remark for the situation flowed out like poetry. He was worse now with texting<\/strong> shorthand insults intended to wither any hope. His friends sometimes challenged him to best his previous performances. A multitude of opportunities presented themselves. Ernest relish<\/strong>ed them for two reasons: Ernest was a strikingly handsome man, and his best friend Lou was a gadabout<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Ernest came from old money and good genes. His parents could both trace their ancestry to\u00a0 minor British royals. In more recent times, his grandmother had been an artist’s muse and model, his mother was a former beauty queen, and his father and granduncle were men of industry.<\/p>\n

What to say about Lou? Louis Carrison III was the son of a steel magnate war veteran and a small-town restaurant<\/strong> owner with big ambitions who nursed a wounded soldier back to health and then married him. \u201cIt’s the stuff of romance novels and dramatic movies,\u201d Lou was fond of saying, rather too enthusiastically, to anyone who would listen.<\/p>\n

Ernest and Lou had known each other since their early years at L’<\/em>\u00e9cole des Infants<\/em> where the preschoolers learned French and snacked on bon bons<\/em>. They had no choice but to be friends. They attended all the same schools until Ernest left for Harvard. Their parents fostered a friendship that flagged only during the middle-school years when Lou’s exuberant sophistication caused rumors of homosexuality. In defense of his own reputation, Ernest took to calling his lifelong friend the gadfly<\/strong> of their company. \u201cEvery group has one,\u201d he explained to the befuddled jocks he lead on the football field.<\/p>\n

Lou and Ernest had known each other for 30 years by the time they were trolling for divorc<\/strong>\u00e9es<\/strong> while on business trips. Those women were easy pickings; grateful to have Ernest’s attention, or desperate enough to ignore Lou’s more effeminate behaviors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ernest came from old money and good genes… What to say about Lou? Louis Carrison III was the son of a steel magnate war veteran and a small-town restaurant owner with big ambitions who nursed a wounded soldier back to health and then married him. \u201cIt’s the stuff of romance novels and dramatic movies,\u201d Lou was fond of saying, rather too enthusiastically, to anyone who would listen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[126,129,130,131,132,128,127],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-60-minute-stories","tag-divorcee","tag-gadabout","tag-gadfly","tag-impervious","tag-relish","tag-restaurant","tag-texting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":266,"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions\/266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.writtenGESStures.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}