Nicholas Bruner
Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Young Adult Author
What I’m Reading: The Other Man
The Other Man, a memoir written by former Calvin Klein model and Baywatch star, Michael Bergin, is primarily the story of his torrid secret love affair with Carolyn Bessette. Interestingly, Michael Bergin has claimed he never intended to write a book about or profit off of his affair with Carolyn Bessette. He only did so in response to the book, The Kennedy Curse, which according to Michael, mischaracterizes Carolyn based off an interview he had with done with the author. Thus, Michael’s proclaimed purpose in writing this book is to set the record straight on his experience with Carolyn and who she really was. Arguably, Michael does not succeed in defending Carolyn’s reputation in this memoir. Instead, the reader comes away feeling that Carolyn, while not a drug addict, was rather a selfish love addict who was secretive and deceptive.
Michael Bergin grew up in humble and happy beginnings in a hard working family that loved him. He, like many attractive young people in the late 20th century, ended up New York City due to some chance modeling gigs that gave him amazing opportunities. That being said, when Michael first moved to NYC, he mainly worked as a bell hop and made little money. It was during this period before Michael hit it big and became a Calvin Klein model that he met and fell in love with Carolyn Bessette.
It was a chance encounter at a bar one night after he got off his bellhop shift that Michael first laid eyes on the 5’10” willowy blonde. Immediately Michael was hypnotized by this alluring woman despite being out with another girl that evening. Michael got up the gumption to approach Carolyn, who was surrounded by others.
Within a week after meeting that night at the bar, 23-year-old Michael and 26-year-old Carolyn, began a passionate affair that would span seven years of breaking up and making up. This affair proved bad for Michael’s mental health; Carolyn turns out to be deceptive and obtuse, refusing to ever label their relationship, thereby allowing herself the room to keep her freedom in case a more successful suitor comes along. Which of course did happen in the form of John F. Kennedy, Jr.
Throughout this book, the author tries to humanize Carolyn Bessette with glimpses of her humanity and generosity (i.e. Carolyn crying after moments of intimacy with Michael, or Carolyn helping Michael professionally as a Calvin Klein model as she worked for Calvin Klein). The author does succeed in anecdotal evidence that Carolyn had moments of sensitivity and kindness. But the general summation of Carolyn Bessette in this book is that she was an ambitious, lost, and selfish person who occasionally did drugs socially, and slept with other men throughout her relationship with Michael Bergin, including eventually her husband, JFK, Jr.
Carolyn told Michael that despite getting pregnant by him (and then getting an abortion) that she would not marry him due to his poor prospects at the time. Obviously, Carolyn felt she could do better than Michael during this period and on some level Michael agreed with her. While it bothered Michael that Carolyn kept their relationship secret and refused to commit to him, he permitted this unfair arrangement because he felt she was too good for him. Carolyn was polished, elegant, and elite. Michael, while from a good family, did not speak eloquently, nor did he have the trappings of the Kennedys. When Michael finds out that Carolyn’s main focus was always getting John F. Kennedy, Jr., it upsets him but it also makes sense to him. In fact, there is a scene in the book in which Michael finds a People magazine of John F. Kennedy Jr. stashed away hidden in her apartment.
It would take years of Carolyn dramatically disappearing from his life and then reappearing for Michael to realize that their relationship overall was an unhealthy one… and that Carolyn did not view Michael as husband material until she married John F. Kennedy Jr. Disturbingly, Michael realizes that Carolyn was hard to get to know because she was duplicitous and not particularly communicative. In retrospect, Carolyn’s actions screamed that she was incapable of love and monogamy. And this is demonstrated when Carolyn sleeps with Michael while married to JFK Jr.
The final chapters of this book are tragic for Carolyn Bessette. Michael details that despite her marrying America’s Prince, JFK. Jr. she still continually reached out to him, even going so far as flying out to see him in LA while Michael was starring in Baywatch. Michael knew that having an affair with a married woman was wrong, but he makes an exception for Carolyn, allowing himself to be The Other Man.
In their last encounter, Carolyn begs him to “save her” from presumably her unhappy marriage, and Michael refuses. In fact for the first time, Michael acts with self-respect and rejects this married woman. He shares later in the book that he does wish he had been kinder to her when he last saw her because soon she was to die in another Kennedy tragedy. But life moves on and despite being very messed up by the painful love affair he had with Carolyn, Michael eventually moves onto greener pastures, marrying a woman who was happy to have his children and to devote herself to him. Michael moved on to a much better life, ridding himself of the pain of his adulterous relationship with Carolyn Bessette Kennedy.
BOTTOM LINE: The Other Man starts off as a love story, but ends up as a journey of discovery and maturation for Michael Bergin. Enamored with the beguiling, sophisticated, and beautiful Carolyn Bessette, Michael puts up with years of a relationship in which he is treated as if he is unworthy of monogamy and marriage. He returns to her again and again, even when she marries John F. Kennedy, Jr., but finally realizes that he will never find his own way with this woman who doesn’t truly respect him. Finally, he moves on from her, removing her from his life and thereby avoiding more pain and suffering, and finally finds true happiness with a suitable, respectful partner. Though he claimed at the beginning that his goal was to set the record straight on Carolyn after a hatchet job interview, his honesty throughout the book–even if unintentional–gives a true, deep, and ultimately unflattering portrait of one of the most glamorous and talked-about women of the 1990s.
