“Funny, scarifyingly witty..” said Vogue. Digital cover by chowciaodesigns.com

I
       Skin flick.  My skin.  Open scene inside my head.  Deep nothing.  Camera moves into bosky afternoon of a bedroom.  I would like this a little more early Jeanne Moreau.  But he alas is somewhat hardcore porno, all ego, rough, armored Michael.  And I alas am not Moreau.  I am just your everyday late-blooming adulteress and when this scene gets really kinky, I have to grit my teeth to keep from laughing.

       Am I rushing things…beginning the scene in bed?  I cannot resist.  Bed is where I’m making it these days, friends, and sometimes it seems I’m only limping along elsewhere.  Of course, no one would ever suspect.  On paper my life is beautiful, meaningful, creative, posh.  Sensitive devoted husband.  Perhaps slightly anxious about my success but it scarcely shows.  Good marriage.  One fine offspring, our remarkable unfuckedup wise little Maggy.  House and Garden real estate, overlooking Central Park and on the dunes in the fiercely stylish Hamptons.  Booming career.  I am a screenwriter.  I am the screenwriter, Katherine Wallis Alexander.  Not too many hassles these days.  They are talking Redford, Fonda, Coppola and $150,000 with a very nice percentage for my next script.  Everyone is thinking Woman this year and I am the woman to write it.  I looked thin and not a day over thirty-two at the Zanuck-Brown party in Women’s Wear two weeks ago.  Donald Brooks wants to dress me wholesale.  Elaine never denies me a table.  “Great Kate,” writes Vincent Canby.  “Gentle Kate.” Life is spectacularly beautiful.  But bed is best.  I can’t seem to get enough.  I’m hungry all the time.  For so long I was sheltered in the nunnery of my ambition.  My fantasy was Oscar the status doorstop and love letters from Pauline Kael.  I was caught up in the joys of monogamy for a long time.  And while I was on ice, a lot of guys seem to have learned some very fancy fucking.  Even the bastards are more fun in bed than they used to be.  And so am I.

      Michael could be a bastard.  And Michael is killing me softly in Room 828 at The Algonquin.  His pose is butch but he can be sweet.  He is dynamite bright, confused, a beautiful guy.  Pink cheeks, ice-blue eyes, ash silk hair.  Remember Wheaties.  Michael is dirty Jack Armstrong and his hands know my body as if he invented it.  Never mind Kate Alexander.  He knows who I am but he is utterly uninterested.  He doesn’t ask if I hated what those clowns did to my last movie.  Or what happened between me and Max Palevsky.  He wants to know: “What do you think when you’re eating me?” “How does it taste?” “Would you whip me if I asked you to?” I am my gender.  “Woman, eat me,” he says.  “Woman.” Never Kate.

      “Why me, Michael?” I ask.  “Why not some of those cute little groupies that lurk in the corridors waiting for you?”

      Brutal Michael: “You could catch the clap fooling with that trash, love.  Kids today all have the clap.”  Flexing his wrist, admiring fist framed in leather and heavy chain links.  “They talk.  They sue…crazy jailbait.  I have to be careful.”

      Michael could be a bastard.  If he were ever in town long enough.  Michael wrote that book of love poems for the illiterate and the retarded.  Made a fortune.  But he’s even richer from writing jingles for television commercials.  Does the music too.  Whenever he comes to New York, he checks into The Algonquin and between his appointments and mine we fuck like there’s no tomorrow.  And there rarely is.  Tomorrow he is gone.  How often do I get to Santa Fe?  Never since location for My Friend Larry.  That’s where I met him, playing the loony crooner in the nightclub scene.  And he comes to town now maybe three times a year—a beautiful crazy from Santa Fe “direct in concert” or imported to orchestrate a chorus of dancing toothbrushes.  Ideal transient bedmate for the wife who strays and stays, SuperKate, loving hausfrau. 

        I need the Michaels just passing through.  Michael loves to do all these things as much as I do.  “The stranger who desires you and convinces you that it is truly you in all your particularity whom he desires, brings a message from all that you might be, to you as you actually are.” I cut that out of The New York Times Book Review.  I feel more official now, acting out all my erotic fantasies with the Times Book Review’s cognizance as it were.  I come and I come and I come again and then when I don’t think I can stand it anymore, Michael grasps the soft little hill of my pussy bone and does diddle diddle diddle till I am nothing but a pussy on fire.  Out of my head and into the cunt.  That glorious sense insanity just one screaming millimeter this side of unconscious.  That must be what this is all about.

      “Does your husband know about you?” Michael asks.

      “Does he know about you?  No, of course not.”

      “That’s impossible.  How can he not know?  He must know.”

      “No.  That’s part of the love contract.  I promised to love honor obey—surprised?  Well, everybody promised to obey in those olden days.  And lie.  It’s cruel to tell.  I’ll lie and lie and lie.  If he walks in that door and find us here together, I’ll say it isn’t happening.”

      “He’s no good in the sack,” says Michael.

      “He’s wonderful in the sack but it’s none of your business.”

      Well, now Michael puts on his skin-grazing black leather jeans with the grin of zippers up the calves.  He couldn’t get into them otherwise.  And the shiny black tunic with the hardware that makes me think of whips and chains.  He tilts a shiny lizard-skin cap at a menacing angle on his straw-blond hair.  His goggles are mirror so you can’t peer in to see if maybe, please, Michael’s just kidding.  I’m too numb to laugh.  Then he’s gone.  Michael is my Hell’s Angel gangbang.  He fucks hours before coming and he could go on forever if Bristol-Meyers and Hunt’s Tomato Sauce didn’t demand his attention.  He’s gone now to do some bubblegum rock for iced tea in a can and I can lie here bruised and fragile till the flesh heat ebbs and the compulsive writer’s ego reaccelerates the motor of my mind.  I feel full of pleased giggles.  I am trying to imagine hustling Harry Hinkenstadt’s eyebrows if he suspected how Kate Wallis Alexander likes to spend her afternoons.  Harry is my agent, loves to talk about my integrity (when he says it, the word has five syllables).  His eyes get moist when he catches me holding hands with Jamie.  “You two,” says Harry, “give me false hope for marriage.” Billy Hutch, infamous producer of slick shlock, told Rona Barrett he lets me have my way because I have balls.  Two-faced bastard.  Only Kate knows Kate.  I get my way yes.

Photo: Alex Gotfryd 1986. All rights reserved.

       At least I think that’s what happened in Paris yesterday.  With movie people, you never know.  Except for that Cowboy, the beautiful smartass know-it-all.  I’m not going to think about that now.  I’m going to concentrate on my knees now, make them stop shaking so I can get out of here.

      “The script is beautiful, Kate.  Ryder loves it.  You’re going to love Ryder, Kate,” Billy Hutch promises.  “Women lose their marbles over Ryder.”

      “You’ve been reading Photoplay, Billy.” If I were meeting Ryder Meade in bed, I wouldn’t be so nervous.  I’m not reduced to reading Photoplay but I hear he’s something of a cocksman.  Of course that could mean anything—stud, scorekeeper, narcissist, only rarely, a lover of women.  Anyway, on the vertical I bet we’re going to make static.  Fox has stashed Ryder down this sedate corridor of the Plaza-Athénée.  My favorite hotel in Paris.  I am in a broom closet but Ryder is behind gold-piped doors at $175 a day.  Billy Hutch just happens to be producing a movie here in Paris.  Ryder is on tour promoting his newest film, with time to talk about the next.  So at the drop of about 1,000 tax-deductible dollars, I have been flown in for a little talk.  My agent, Harry Hinkenstadt, reluctantly in attendance at my insistence, Harry the Great Compromiser, is digging his fingers into my arm.  He has read the color of my outrage.

      “I wasn’t sure how Ryder’d go for that big fight scene,” says Billy.  “But he likes it.  Now that is what I call a sense of self.  Ryder is amused he should get kicked in the groin by a skyscraper chick.  In fact, he thinks it might be better a whole regiment of Amazons.”

      I have no choice.  Ryder is it.  Guaranteed box office.  My wonderfully sophisticated and wryly witty futuristic vision of a colony of wonder women is rapidly being destroyed by a triumvirate of cretins.  “I can’t wait to meet the legendary cocksman.”

      Harry coughs.  “No need to be bitchy, Kate.  So, Ryder likes women.  Women like Ryder.  You two could get along like—”

      “Not if Ryder is talking about bringing in somebody like Ernie Tidyman to do a major rewrite.”

      Snorts now.  That’s Billy.  “Bullshit.  You know we can’t afford a big gun like Tidyman.”  Do these dumb doors open?  Someone on the other side can’t decide whether to push or pull.  “Besides,” Billy is saying, “if we didn’t want that special Alexander quality, we wouldn’t have killed ourselves bidding on that script, Kate.”

      Ah, the salon of The Star.  Gucci shoulder bag.  Hermes attaché case.  Professional hairdryer.  Champagne on ice and white, starkly funereal gladiolas.  Somebody dead.  Probably me.  What looks like a very elegant streetwalker is on the phone to Room Service.  “Five slices of lean bacon, lean, l-e-a-n, bien cuit, pas de fat.” Red sateen sleaze and purple platform ankle-straps, Dracular crimson fingernails.  It’s not Ryder’s mother so it could be his Gal Friday or a loan-out from Fox. Two blondes in licorice hip boots flutter over the custom-crafted Vuitton wardrobe trunk.  Could be fan club.  Traveling avec The Star, perhaps.  One of them smoothes the nape of a royal-blue suede blazer, caresses The Star’s tweed pants, inhales deeply as if feeding on his scent.  The room is heavy with Brut.

      “And Raquel Welch as Wonder Woman is just about the cliché casting of our time,” I am saying.  “Ryder is always saying he hates Raquel Welch.  Now all of a sudden he wants her.  I say he just wants her because he’s afraid of looking vulgar next to an actress of Lydia Rowan’s class.”

      “Or being upstaged by Rowan’s boobs,” Harry chimes in.

      “Boobs, shit,” says Billy.  “It’s Lydia’s balls that worry him.”  He pours two inches of gin into a tumbler of ice cubes.  “Shall I start with Alka-Seltzer or finish with Alka-Seltzer?  Oh God, decisions, decisions.”

      Harry is whispering.  “Don’t go into this with a chip-on, Kate.”

      “A chip-on.  What, dear Harry, is a chip-on?  A hard-on for women?”

      “Are these men assaulting you, lady?”

      Behind me, just emerged from Ryder’s inner sanctum, lazy Texas vowels, some kind of cowboy, lean, tall, sulky mouth, piercing blue eyes.  Matching blue turtleneck.  Doesn’t look like a man who would put that much thought into a turtleneck.  Boots, dungarees, Mississippi gambler cigar in teeth.  Curiously young face for that wild salt-and-pepper hair.  Kate is cool.  Nothing shows, I swear it, but the man’s presence is like a blow.  Cool Kate laughs.

      “No, I meant it,” the Cowboy says.  “These men are being damned rude.”  His glare is ice.  Hutch and Harry freeze, Hutch in the middle of a belch.

      I feel a sudden flush.  There, you see.  I wade knee-deep in psychological abuse and I don’t even notice it anymore.  I’ve become oblivious to the hostility in Harry’s patronizing humor.  “Oh, it’s just a manner of speaking.” I shrug.  I don’t like the look in the Cowboy’s eyes.  “But…well, you are sweet to…” His eyes dismiss me.  Abruptly he wheels and settles at the desk phone, back to us all.  A very peppy cheerleader in a pink knit tube, midriff-bared, forehead edged with a jagged silver crewcut, sticks her head into the salon.  “Mr. Ryder says where the hell is the Champagne and what do you-all want for breakfast?  He won’t be but a minute on long distance.”

      I can’t let that arrogant blue-eyed Cowboy just get away.  He thinks I’m a fool.  Or worse.  Doesn’t see me at all.  “I think I’ll need espresso and two orders of raspberries,” says Kate.  The wild man of silvered, sun-bleached hair curls against his neck, sun-brown, sharp etched wrinkles and a scar.  He does not turn.

      Now the peppy you-all summons is for us.

      Ryder smiles at me as if no one else were in the room.  “Our lady of the raspberries.”  Oh those teeth.  He is handsome, that self-mocking grin even more attractive close up.  He is shirtless and booted, collapsed in a buttress of pillows against the backboard of a giant bed, with kicky slanted heels dragging into the ivory satin bedspread.  He is handsomer than I’d imagined.  The scar across his chin, the furrows of his forehead and the squint lines around his eyes save him from unbearable prettiness.  He is smaller than I’d guessed.  Most movie stars are. 

        “Well, the legendary Mrs. Alexander,” he says.  He takes my hand.  Not quite a handshake, more intimate, a lingering melding of our flesh.  Greetings from Hollywood’s celebrated exhibitionist lady-killer.  “I’m just a simple country boy myself,” he says.  “I like a simple breakfast, fried eggs and ham and home fries.”

      “And a simple Dom Pérignon.”

   
Warner Books ad for Blue Skies, No Candy in paper got banned in the subway.

       It is the Cowboy, come in behind us loosening the wire around the Champagne cork.  Definitely an expert.  Where do these country boys pick up this fancy stuff?

      “Have you met Jason O’Neill?” Ryder asks, receiving the bottle from the Cowboy.  “My land broker and cattle consultant.” Ryder grins.  “Tax shelters.  Jason is a genius with tax shelters.” Ryder pours just two glasses, full to the top, mostly bubbles.  The silver-thatched cheerleader lurches forward on her Carmen Miranda clogs to pour some for Harry and Billy.  The Cowboy declines.  He’s into the bedroom fridge for some grapefruit juice.  He looks like a movie star.  Lean and languorous like Clint Eastwood, but steelier.  I have a feeling some tiny part of the Alexander fortune will be moving into cows.  Beef.  Whatever Jason Watchamacallit is up to.

      “There are almost no problems at all, nothing major,” Billy begins, shifting porky-piggishly inside his black velvet jumpsuit, studying the reflection of the Eiffel Tower or God knows what in his mirror-shiny black patent loafers.  “If Kate is anything, Kate is flexible, a sweetheart, Ryder.  You are her choice for the part of the last surviving twentieth-century man.”

      “That’s true, Ryder,” Kate concedes.

      Ryder winks at me and presses his thigh against my thigh.  I am not moving my thigh.  “Do you like your champagne that way?” he asks.  I stare at the fading froth of bubbles.  “Look at this,” says Ryder proudly, dropping a tiny swizzle stick from a purple felt bag.  “See, those are diamonds.”

      “I thought you said you were a simple country boy.”

      “Diamonds are clean.”

      “What’s that dirty one in the middle?”

      “That’s a sapphire.”  He frowns and swizzles away at my bubbles.  Across the room the Cowboy has settled onto the chaise with the Paris Trib.  I can imagine the smirk behind the newsprint.

      “Will you pour some coffee for us civilians, Kate,” Harry says.
      “No.”

      Silence.  “Jesus, Kate, I didn’t know you were one of the Women’s Libbers,” says the startled Compromiser, grabbing the pot and spilling the coffee into three or four saucers.

      “I wasn’t till sixteen seconds ago.”

       "Not since Henry Miller has a book about sex caused such a furor," said the Times ad. A National Best Seller, it was greeted in 1976 with shock and outrage by male critics and championed by women. "A caviar and foie gras freefall of uninhibited, delicious and tantalizing sex," wrote the Toronto Globe. 

       

        In the first week of publication, three devastating reviews from the most important male critics sent me weeping to my bed. Quotes from women lifted the gloom, especially a line from Ruth Harris, author of the novel Decades. "A super talented writer has taken a completely original voyage into the lushness of a woman's sexual longings. I think of Greene as a contemporary Colette."

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