Soon after Don died, and I had not of course had enough of him in my life--- he was only 45-- and I was afraid that sufficient sex had eluded me, a gorgeous actor (he WAS, he WAS, and greatly gifted as well, having portrayed sexily one of the great religious figures of all time, and very well, too, as he was as gifted as he was beautiful) called me to ask me out to dinner. I assumed it was a kindly sympathy call-- there were a number of those, even in Beverly Hills, from a friend of Don's who had not been all that friendly to me, who was being thoughtful. So I went out to dinner with him, in a restaurant that was very fashionable, and we had a lovely meal, not that personal, but not that distant. I was very touched, especially as he came from a different civilization, one that has always seemed more civilized than ours. And then he went back.
Some years passed, during which the emotional upheaval that was like a slow-moving volcanic eruption overtook me, I moved around a great deal, coming to rest on a cliff above La Jolla. There where the loneliness I imagined I had avoided by changing perches all but swallowed me up, I got a phone call from him, from late at night in his favorite gentleman's club. Besides his dazzling good looks, he had quite the best voice I had ever heard, a voice, I may have written at a more ambitious time, that went between a woman's legs, deep and velvet with innuendo. In no time at all, the rates being what they were, the innuendo was stripped away.
And there came there then the hottest pitches I had ever heard, obscenities so silken, as he told me what he would like to do me, and where, and how, and in front of whom, they seemed like poetry. Especially in that voice, and at those rates.
The calls came nightly then. Those of you who have known me for a very long time may have had the cold and drafty pleasure of visiting me on those-- well, they weren't quite ramparts, I don't think, but they were the tops of a cliff where the sun for some reason never hit, and they were bleak, as well as cold, and the house had no insulation, and I was frightened about money, so was sparing with the heat, heating the pool while I slept so I could hit it at six in the morning for a swim that would energize me for the battle of returning to life. I would say check out Downton Abbey and young widowhood, but last night's return to TV was curiously unmoving and boring. So I will reference my own story.
There I was, caught at what now looks to be a quite young age, alone, widowed, atop a sunless cliff looking down at the sea, with only my little dog and this really sexy man on the telephone. And as he was bright as he was beautiful and sonorous, and there were dashes of wit in-between the smut, what could I do but listen? (I did in truth, later, make creative use of it, as I try to make use of all interesting moments in my life in my writing, repeating all of his lewd suggestions, in full detail, in The Princess and The Pauper, the novel I was writing at the time, attributing them to a brash and horny character. (I speak of that novel unashamedly, as it was really funny and is doubtless most likely not even available from Alibris for $0.99, the fate of my books once I stopped larding them with gratuitous sex, which in books is usually the most profitable kind.) And so it kept up, as I imagined, did he.
And then he returned to Beverly Hills. And called me. And did his number, now become a concert piece.
"Why don't you come down here, " I finally said, since we could now make it a reality.
He never called again.
I saw him last night on television, and had difficulty remembering his name. I am circumspect about not mentioning it, as he is still alive. Sort of.
I wrote a little poem about the whole episode that I cannot recall, except for the last couplet:
For lust and thrust do pass, and Time has shown
They only want to do it on the phone.
