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Dreamed about Steve R_______!
We were with a group of people with whom I was working in some administrative capacity, and I was very nervous that he was going to be cold and critical. But instead, he was quite warm. Encouraging! Even shy. Friendly.
His wife was pregnant, he told me. (How could that be? I wondered. She’s in her 60s.) He’d found religion. Not in an obnoxious preachy way, but in a pleasant, it-happened-because-it-was-meant-to-happen way.
No, we weren’t going to be besties. But it was a relief to find he didn’t hate me. In fact, insofar as he thought of me at all, he approved.
###
Ben, who is fond of constructing romantic taxonomies—I suppose because of their narrative utility—always maintained that Steve was the Great Love of My Life.
I don’t know if that’s true or not true.
It all happened so very long ago.
I do know that the first time we kissed, something happened that had never happened to me before and has never happened to me again: I fell through the kiss into a kind of timelessness. The world stopped.
I behaved very badly in that relationship.
The intensity scared me. And, too, I was very damaged in those days, plus I was coming out of a two-year ménage a trois with My Texas Millionaire and the villainous Suzanne Fox. When I finally blew My Texas Milllionaire off, he decided he really loved me. Really, really! And I’d put all that time into him, and he had all that money, and I was—and remain!—a shallow person.
If only I’d married him, I would have received a large divorce settlement, which I could have invested in real estate so that today I would be enjoying a secure retirement and not have to labor in the Scut Factory!
But I wouldn’t marry him.
‘Cause I knew I really loved Steve.
Here’s a better shot of My Texas Millionaire:
As you can see, we were all very into the British Boy Band aesthetic! Which certainly looks dated now.
Steve and I went on a bicycle trip through the U.K. We rode our bikes from London to Bath and then took the train to selected sites throughout Ireland, Wales and Cornwall. 19th century English novels and medieval English history were My Thing back in those days, and I wanted to visit every site. I was flummoxed to discover the Bronte girls lived in a graveyard and that Bolingbroke Castle is a ditch. (I had a real "thing" for John of Gaunt.)
Another picture from the UK trip:
I haven’t been back to the UK since, though I was thinking I might like to go back this fall to catch that William Blake exhibition at the Tate.
That briefcase contained the collected volumes of My Diary, which I’ve been obsessively writing since the age of 12. In those days, I churned it out with Rapidograph pens and sketchpads. I never went anywhere without it!
###
Both Steve and My Texas Millionaire went on to become doctors.
Steve enrolled in a Genovese medical school. My Texas Millionaire’s father—the tugboat mogul—donated a building to Baylor.
In those days, all my X-boyfriends went on to medical school! Even if they had no absolutely interest in becoming doctors before they met me.
I’m not sure what that signifies.
###
More old photos…
Barbara Angell and I back in the day.
With my first dog. Singha! A Lapso Apso. Whom I still miss.
Barbara Angell was simply the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. I’m not sure any photograph has ever done her justice since a lot of her beauty was her coloring, great wings of tawny hair that she was constantly pushing back from her face—her characteristic gesture!—and eyes that were—are!—a striking aquamarine. Her facial features were very Ingrid Bergman-esque.
Her eldest daughter Aemilia, a midrange famous social media “influencer,” looks a lot like her mother used to look though not nearly as beautiful.
###
Mizz Barbara and I hamming it up.
Barbara was the scion of a very old (at least as “old” is measured in California) San Francisco family that had fallen upon Hard Times, so my mental image of her was all wrapped up with Tess of the D’Urbevilles and Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête.
I will never forget the first time I visited the ancestral manse in Santa Rosa. The driveway was lined with ancient, rusting Mercedes sedans; there was a swimming pool lain in cracked cerulean tile and choked with rotting leaves. And then there was the house itself, which was slowly rotting.
Barbara was the eldest of five sisters, each more beautiful than the last. They were all vain and indolent except for Barbara, who was always frantically scurrying around trying to do straighten out their alcoholic mother’s financial affairs and doing maintenance on the house.
The family had managed to hold onto one piece of property—the Petrified Forest in Calistoga, which they still own and which Barbara still manages under some kind of joint trust. It was almost on the verge of breaking even (finally!) when the great Santa Rosa fire of 2017 broke out and destroyed all the buildings.
The petrified logs are still there!
But it’s a bit difficult to interest paying visitors in pieces of rock without context.
###
This was my girl squad, my official Best Friend Eleanor and the Dickensian-named Linda Goodwill. Is that a Christmas tree I see behind us? Oh, look! Somebody gave us alcohol! In those days, I didn’t drink, so the gift was wasted on me.
Okay! Enough old photographs and warm-up blathering!
Time to do some real work.
We were with a group of people with whom I was working in some administrative capacity, and I was very nervous that he was going to be cold and critical. But instead, he was quite warm. Encouraging! Even shy. Friendly.
His wife was pregnant, he told me. (How could that be? I wondered. She’s in her 60s.) He’d found religion. Not in an obnoxious preachy way, but in a pleasant, it-happened-because-it-was-meant-to-happen way.
No, we weren’t going to be besties. But it was a relief to find he didn’t hate me. In fact, insofar as he thought of me at all, he approved.
###
Ben, who is fond of constructing romantic taxonomies—I suppose because of their narrative utility—always maintained that Steve was the Great Love of My Life.
I don’t know if that’s true or not true.It all happened so very long ago.
I do know that the first time we kissed, something happened that had never happened to me before and has never happened to me again: I fell through the kiss into a kind of timelessness. The world stopped.
I behaved very badly in that relationship.
The intensity scared me. And, too, I was very damaged in those days, plus I was coming out of a two-year ménage a trois with My Texas Millionaire and the villainous Suzanne Fox. When I finally blew My Texas Milllionaire off, he decided he really loved me. Really, really! And I’d put all that time into him, and he had all that money, and I was—and remain!—a shallow person.If only I’d married him, I would have received a large divorce settlement, which I could have invested in real estate so that today I would be enjoying a secure retirement and not have to labor in the Scut Factory!
But I wouldn’t marry him.
‘Cause I knew I really loved Steve.
Here’s a better shot of My Texas Millionaire:
As you can see, we were all very into the British Boy Band aesthetic! Which certainly looks dated now.
Steve and I went on a bicycle trip through the U.K. We rode our bikes from London to Bath and then took the train to selected sites throughout Ireland, Wales and Cornwall. 19th century English novels and medieval English history were My Thing back in those days, and I wanted to visit every site. I was flummoxed to discover the Bronte girls lived in a graveyard and that Bolingbroke Castle is a ditch. (I had a real "thing" for John of Gaunt.)
Another picture from the UK trip:
I haven’t been back to the UK since, though I was thinking I might like to go back this fall to catch that William Blake exhibition at the Tate.
That briefcase contained the collected volumes of My Diary, which I’ve been obsessively writing since the age of 12. In those days, I churned it out with Rapidograph pens and sketchpads. I never went anywhere without it!
###
Both Steve and My Texas Millionaire went on to become doctors.
Steve enrolled in a Genovese medical school. My Texas Millionaire’s father—the tugboat mogul—donated a building to Baylor.
In those days, all my X-boyfriends went on to medical school! Even if they had no absolutely interest in becoming doctors before they met me.
I’m not sure what that signifies.
###
More old photos…
Barbara Angell and I back in the day.With my first dog. Singha! A Lapso Apso. Whom I still miss.
Barbara Angell was simply the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. I’m not sure any photograph has ever done her justice since a lot of her beauty was her coloring, great wings of tawny hair that she was constantly pushing back from her face—her characteristic gesture!—and eyes that were—are!—a striking aquamarine. Her facial features were very Ingrid Bergman-esque.
Her eldest daughter Aemilia, a midrange famous social media “influencer,” looks a lot like her mother used to look though not nearly as beautiful.
###
Mizz Barbara and I hamming it up.Barbara was the scion of a very old (at least as “old” is measured in California) San Francisco family that had fallen upon Hard Times, so my mental image of her was all wrapped up with Tess of the D’Urbevilles and Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête.
I will never forget the first time I visited the ancestral manse in Santa Rosa. The driveway was lined with ancient, rusting Mercedes sedans; there was a swimming pool lain in cracked cerulean tile and choked with rotting leaves. And then there was the house itself, which was slowly rotting.
Barbara was the eldest of five sisters, each more beautiful than the last. They were all vain and indolent except for Barbara, who was always frantically scurrying around trying to do straighten out their alcoholic mother’s financial affairs and doing maintenance on the house.
The family had managed to hold onto one piece of property—the Petrified Forest in Calistoga, which they still own and which Barbara still manages under some kind of joint trust. It was almost on the verge of breaking even (finally!) when the great Santa Rosa fire of 2017 broke out and destroyed all the buildings.
The petrified logs are still there!
But it’s a bit difficult to interest paying visitors in pieces of rock without context.
###
This was my girl squad, my official Best Friend Eleanor and the Dickensian-named Linda Goodwill. Is that a Christmas tree I see behind us? Oh, look! Somebody gave us alcohol! In those days, I didn’t drink, so the gift was wasted on me.
Okay! Enough old photographs and warm-up blathering!
Time to do some real work.
