Phil Anders, now entering his eighties, often wondered whether his name had predestined him to the life he had led.  Of course he was already in his late teens when he recognized the implications, but since then he had lived up to the meaning of the word philander.

He had mistreated the women in his life who had loved him enough to marry him. Not slap them around like some men infamously do.  Not as far as he could recall, and his recollection of his evil behavior improved by the month. No, it was his everlasting weakness to give in to the temptation of other women who made themselves available, at the slightest hint they were vulnerable he would betray his wife.

At the time he felt justified for giving in, but from a distance – the distance of fifty years, say – he was not so sure, not even of the sequence of events that had brought it on.

For instance that disastrous fling with a Viennese divorcée ten years older than he. He seemed to remember that that wife – his third – had taken up with a Scottish poet fifteen years older than he or his wife, and in retaliation he started up with Winnie.  But that might or might not be what happened.

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This short piece (autobiographical but for the name) is from a collection Patrick called Scattered Notes.odt dated from 2014 to 2016. I’ll continue to add other segments as time allows.