The Playboy was in his 70s. I knew he was a playboy because he told me so. He boasted that he had never dated anyone older than 25 until he met his wife, whom he had met and married about 7 years earlier. He claimed she was 10 years younger than he was.
We were flying across the country, seated next to each other on a plane. I was on my way to a funeral. I flew first class since the airlines were no longer doing bereavement fares, and first class was the only thing available at short notice on frequent flyer miles.
The Playboy's father was a self-made man who built his company from scratch, and the Playboy inherited his wealth and the company. A mini-Trump. The Playboy knew he would never have to work a day in this life. From the beginning, he decided that the only thing he needed to know was how to talk to women (and get them to sleep with him). In college he attended no classes, and jumped around from one college to the next, flunking out of each one.
On his second cell phone (the one he keeps secret from his wife, which serves as his "little black book") he showed me photos of some of his girlfriends, including the one he was going to meet at Legal Sea Foods in Boston on Friday night, for dinner followed by sex at his hotel.
I made a derisive remark about how his young girlfriends were basically prostitutes who were giving him sex for money and presents. He chastised me for being so judgmental. They were nice, ordinary young women, he insisted. One was a schoolteacher. Everyone was having fun and getting something out of it. Nothing wrong with it.
The flight attendant overheard more than she wanted of our conversation. She glared at us disapprovingly.
The Playboy proudly boasted that he had never read a book in his life, and didn't intend to. He hastened to add that he knew how to read---he read contracts for the business.
I told him the story of Fermat's Last Theorem and explained the mathematical statement. I had managed to explain it to two young Japanese children with whom I didn't share a common language, so I knew I could explain it to him. Mathematics is a universal language. I told him the story of 1729, Hardy, Ramanujan, and the taxi cab, and showed him the 2 ways to write 1729 as a sum of 2 cubes. His trip included a planned reunion with his high school buddies. He said they would never believe that he spent the whole flight having a great conversation with a math professor, that he got a math lesson, and that he enjoyed it. He was looking forward to telling them all about it.
He was, in fact, quite charming.
The Playboy spoke fondly of his wife and seemed to love her. However, when he was on the road she phoned him every night to make sure he wasn't running around behind her back. He was furious that she didn't trust him. I reminded him that she was right not to trust him. He was convinced that she had no idea about his liaisons, and it was terribly unfair that she doubted him.
As an afterthought, he decided that it wasn't a problem that he told me about his girlfriends, since I didn't know his name. I didn't point out that during our conversation he had dropped his first name twice and his last name once, and his name was partly visible on the boarding pass in his seat pocket.
I knew I had to convince him to read a book. What to pick? It would have to be short and sweet, and at a child's level. Enticing and easy to read. But I also wanted something that would teach him a lesson. Even better if it were profoundly disturbing. I told him that as his teacher, I was giving him one assignment. It was to read "The Little Prince". I assured him that it was short and had lovely pictures.
A little sleuthing online afterwards not only gave me his wife's phone number, but also revealed that his wife was his age, not 10 years younger. I wonder whether she lied to him, or he lied to me. Could she have fooled him for that long?
I fleetingly considered contacting the wife to let her know about the rendezvous at Legal Sea Foods on Friday, as a show of female solidarity, but I decided that would not be helpful (plus, the Playboy had enough resources to retaliate against me).
I didn't contact the Playboy either, but it would be nice to know whether he did his homework and read "The Little Prince".