The social-media response to Coldplaygate (i.e., a playfully roaming kisscam exposing an apparent affair between former Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and the company’s not-yet-fired chief HR officer Kristin Cabot) took an exceptionally cruel turn when some in the chorus referred to Cabot as Byron’s “sidepiece.”
What kind of vulgar crap is that? What do these jackals know about it? Maybe Byron and Cabot had been gradually, seriously falling in love — the head-over-heels, what’s-wrong-with-me?, real-as-it-gets kind — and, given the tendency of some lovers to succumb to barking insanity…maybe this crazy feeling of theirs led to that incredibly bone-headed decision to be openly demonstrative that night. Who knows?
All I can tell you is that I’ve been there. (A People magazine affair between early ‘98 and late ‘00.) I know how it feels to have wings on your heels, and so did Rodgers & Hammerstein.
Maybe….make that probably the sex between them was amazing, breathtaking, heart–stopping, etc. It’s really extra shitty of YouTubers and Instagram-ers to cynically imply that the Byron-Cabot affair was just some kind of rip-roaring fling…one of those brief, self-destructive manifestations of ridiculous teenage hormones between consenting 50somethings…a guilty blowjob in Byron’s parked car on the company lot after hours…pure impulse, no plan, no poetry, no heart.
Well, that’s a seriously cheap and rancid thing to say, assholes. At least speculate positively. Have a little faith.
Byron and Cabot have only one play in this social media maelstrom, and hiding out and hoping it’ll blow over is not it. They should co-author a short novelette about the affair..,how it began, how they completely and gloriously lost their minds, how long they knew deep down that their mutual lust and longing was unsuppressable…how long it simmered, how long they fought it, A real-life Damage or Betrayal or a combination of the two.
Once the book has been written or even while it’s being written, the movie rights should be sold, and I mean to a classy, A-level producer…the reformed and semi-exonerated Scott Rudin, say, or somebody in that realm. Persuade the great David Cronenberg (he really knows how to shoot first-rate, deliciously perverse sex scenes) to direct it. Hire Vincent Cassel to play Byron, and…I don’t know, maybe Jennifer Aniston to play Cabot. Shoot the film quickly but earnestly. And put the film into select theatres or least into a grade-A streaming feed within a year or less .