Cad (Greek kakos, 'bad,' 'evil'). In classical mythology a robber, the son of Vulcan. He lived in Italy and was strangled by Hercules for stealing some of his cattle.
'Bigamist married to three wives at the same time is branded a cad by judge'.
- The Times (headline) (10 September 1994)
Authority is something to be first aped, then voluptuously libated over, with urine richly tinctured with a three-score aged bottle of dry sherry – tippled earlier that evening to accompany a steak of bloody veal eaten off the firm belly of a Russian gymnast called Olga with flaxen hair and the ability to recite the complete works of Alexander Pushkin if asked nicely. And all with a smile of not inconsiderable distance from each ear, a Palladian arch of the waxed eyebrow, a bellicose flick of the lightly honeyed fringe, and a slight rise of the testicles from their customary pendulum languor.
The cad is one who will both hallucinate sweetly alongside the most furious head-hunters of the Amazon with the rarest, most perilous, opiate – and sashay on to Rio to frog the sex-famished wife of the British Ambassador.
The cad shall arrive (single-stem rose in hand), imbibe (liberally from your father’s drinks cabinet), deflower (with the hunger of a war-returned Spartan), outrage (your sedate little rural seat) – and with that (and a gossamer vein of blue cigar smoke) he is gone.
The cad is closer than think. And yes, you want him.
