Insatiable (10 page)

And with its eight-dollar potting-shed table stripped and stained, the needlepoint dining chairs, the massive stone fireplace, the turn-of-the-century stained-glass windows, and the custom-made kitchen with its handmade copper range hood, it was a showpiece.
House & Garden
came to photograph the two of us in the open kitchen and get my recipe for mushroom-cream cheese strudel and cold tomato-sour cream soup.

One Saturday, the gifted photographer John Dominis and reporter Anne Hollander came up to photograph our place for a
Life
magazine feature on churches transformed into other uses. They were on their way that afternoon to the Woodstock Festival, which had been forced to move to Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel because Woodstock’s town council had refused a permit. They invited us to come along.

“It’s supposed to rain,” I said. “And I hear traffic is backed up for miles.”

“But
Life
has a trailer with air conditioning, a bathroom, and ice cubes,” Anne said.

What was the matter with us? We said thanks but we’d pass. I cannot remember why. I think we were both pleased with our prescience when we saw the photos of mud-wallowing bodies. What was happening to us? We’d promised to be children together forever, loving, spontaneous. How had we gotten so stodgy?

Then, on a freelance assignment in Los Angeles, I let the unthinkable happen. Half a bottle of red wine, two desserts in that dimly-lighted Hollywood restaurant. I was nervous. He was too good-looking, my friend’s ex-husband, wonderful Irish face, blue eyes, and a romantic shock of thick black hair. It could only have happened in a far away zip code. He kissed me and I let him. He touched me and I burst into flames. I let myself. After nine and a half years with just one man, just Don’s touch, just that familiar smell, just that one cock, I was invaded by a stranger. I was trembling, unable to stop, scared, keening and giggling and feeling alive again.

When Don called the next day from New York to say good morning, I could barely talk, my throat paralyzed by guilt. “Laryngitis,” I croaked. “Let me call you back later.” How would I ever face him? I had thrown away the best thing in my life . . . for what? For a hot night with a man I’d never see again. No. I’d done it for sex. To feel sexual again, to emerge from a cocoon of nothingness, where I felt isolated and ugly. I looked in the mirror to see if what I’d done was somehow written on my face. I saw a little abrasion from his unshaven stubble.

Don would know at once, I was sure. He would see it in my eyes, just as I would see it in his at once if he were unfaithful. I got home from the airport before he came in from the office—late, as he often was those days. I offered to do a frittata for dinner. He’d eaten, he said. I chattered away inanely about the shoes I hadn’t bought and the irresistible date and nut chocolate ice cream at Wil Wright’s. I’d bought a pint and eaten it all, one spoonful at a time, I confessed.

He looked at me.

“You’re cute,” he said. “I really missed you.”

We made love that night.

Once I’d taken the unthinkable step, it was thinkable. There was no retreat. I dedicated all my philandering to my marriage. If a man was attractive and interested, we found a bed or the backseat of a taxi, or a hotel suite. I didn’t have to nag or make Don feel my need. . . . I would find sex where I found it and love my husband forever. I talked about this in my head and it made so much sense to me. I became an expert on foreplay and fork play and, once again, a scholar of married men. I reasoned that a married man had as much motivation to be discreet as I did. That didn’t mean single men were necessarily out of bounds. At times when I came home, I was sure Don could smell the pheromones and the sex even after a shower. And then he would want me and we would make love. And even when we didn’t, there was always so much hugging. So many times we said “I could never live without you.”

Danish Meat Loaf

T
his meat loaf started life as a meatball recipe in the
Times.

6 slices of dense square packaged pumpernickel (Wild’s Westphalian is perfect) or 3 1/2-inch slices of bakery pumpernickel

2 large eggs

2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

2 tsp. coarse salt

1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

3 medium yellow onions (1 cup) finely chopped (not minced)

2 cloves garlic, minced

3/4 lb. ground beef

1/2 lb. ground veal

3/4 lb. Italian sausage, squeezed from casing. (Sausage can be sweet or hot. Guess what? I prefer hot.)

Plain store-bought or fine homemade bread crumbs to sprinkle on top

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Soak bread in warm water for 3 or 4 minutes. Squeeze out water and tear into pieces.

Combine lightly beaten eggs, Worcestershire, salt, and pepper in small bowl. Using a big mixing bowl, mix bread and egg mixture together, then add onions, garlic, and the meats, and blend together with a wooden spoon or your hands.

Pat into an oval or square baking dish or a loaf pan, then sprinkle with bread crumbs. Bake 1 to 1 1/4 hours or until instant-read thermometer registers 155° F.

Remove from oven, pour off excess fat, and let it rest for 10 minutes.

Serves 6 to 8.

14

M
EN
I J
UST
C
OULDN’T
R
ESIST

I
WAS LIKE A TEENAGER AGAIN, EXCEPT IT WASN’T THE REPRESSIVE FIFTIES,
where I’d felt like a wanton aberration. It was the “anything goes” seventies, and I wasn’t wasting a moment.

Years later, I would glance at
Time
magazine and my breath would catch in my throat. There were two men on
Time
’s January 9, 1978, cover and I had been to bed with both of them. No, no, not Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin. I wasn’t sure how I felt. Even in the freest sexual moment of this century, I thought I would die if anyone knew, and at the same time I wanted to shout it out. I was a woman of appetite. I wasn’t afraid to feed my hunger. Still, I was surprised to see the two of them, linked . . . not by bedroom antics, but by movie box-office magnetism.

It means a lot to me that I never went to bed with anyone to get the story. I do confess that once in awhile in the middle of pursuing a story, I just couldn’t help myself. But in the several years of my double life, when I convinced myself I had found a way to save my marriage, out-of-town assignments came with built-in possibilities.

Clint Eastwood had been working all day in the Mexican desert when I arrived on the set of
Two Mules for Sister Sara,
delegated by Helen Gurley Brown in 1969 to dig beneath the studio pap for a profile of the charismatic cowboy. I felt awkward, too dressed for the desert dust, shy, experiencing a surge of the little girl from Detroit who still lived inside my Manhattan persona, intimidated by being that close to a movie star. His manginess, the unkempt hair under his flat-topped leather sombrero, the sweaty rubble of beard, and a mangled stub of a cheroot clenched in his teeth dimmed his unbearable good looks, but not much. He seemed to be cashing in on the silent antihero image of the spaghetti Westerns that had rescued him from Hollywood’s indifference.

“At least it’s me doing my own bag and not someone trying to imitate me,” he said, defending himself when I asked.

Between scenes, he stripped off his shirt. His jeans rode low on bony hips. I’d read the clips. The man was clearly not into food. My flutter of early fame as
New York
’s Insatiable Critic would mean nothing to him. I had a feeling that if he knew my slavish devotion to sweetbreads and smelly cheeses, he would keep his distance. Six foot four of skinniness, he lay collapsed on a canvas chaise—his langorous off-camera self—silently stroking a baby rabbit, unwound, obviously content. Everyone I had interviewed in preparation for meeting him had alerted me: “He loves animals; he has a gentle reverence toward animals.” I interpreted this to mean animals are easier than people, especially nosy women with notebooks and tape recorders.

Suddenly, there was a commotion behind his trailer. A crowd of Mexicans had roped an iguana and were dragging it to the prop tent in hopes of cashing in. Clint recoiled. “I sometimes wonder who is the zoo. The animals or the people,” he said. He disappeared, returning with the writhing iguana, getting slashed by its whiplash tail.

“I bought it for five pesos,” he said, hitching the beast to an awning stake. “What do you think they eat?” After lunch, struggling to set the beast free, he backed into a cactus. The makeup crew was still plucking quills from his back when I hitched a ride back to the hotel to cool off.

I could see the man was exhausted by the time we met for dinner on the terrace in near darkness at Hacienda Cocoyoc, the resort where the films stars were lodged, an hour’s hairpin ride south of Mexico City. The terrace was not lighted, to discourage mosquitoes, I supposed. I wrestled in the darkness with knife and the pork chop I’d foolishly ordered. One bite told me the pork was almost raw. Will I die immediately of trichinosis or later in horrible pain? I brooded, feeling my forehead. Yes, I was warm. But it could have just been proximity to Clint and not imminent death. Clint tossed most of his food to the dogs ringing the terrace, before I had a chance to see what he was eating. I quickly got rid of my chop, too. I kept trying to draw him out. Nothing I asked provoked an insight, or even more than a bored response. I’d already read most of the history he portioned out in brief phrases. But that voice . . . that iconic lazy, breathy voice. I found myself transfixed by it, not registering the words. I had no plan, not even a fantasy. He was handsome, yes, and, for most women, a heartthrob, I supposed, but I felt his indifference, his distance. I’d not ever known a vegetarian, and I doubted any vegetarian would be attracted or attractive to me.

I wasn’t any more comfortable in this charade than he was. But he wasn’t giving up yet. I got the message that he had committed to this interview as the price he must pay for a profile that would inspire millions of
Cosmo
girls to see his movie. I followed him back to his cottage suite, where he stretched out on the sofa beside me and glowered at my tape recorder. He was still Clint Eastwood, and I found him more appealing in the low lamplight than I had in near darkness. I asked a question. He didn’t answer. I looked up from the notebook. He was asleep.

I’d never had anyone fall asleep in the middle of an interview before. Engelbert Humperdinck had been late and rude, so I said, “Forget it,” and walked out. But Eastwood had been unfailingly polite. I touched his arm to wake him.

“Let’s go to bed,” he said.

I guessed he would do anything to escape talking. I realized that I absolutely did not care about his motivation. We made love, gentle and easy. I remember the sweet smell of soap and the sun smells of his skin, the feel of his beard, how lean he was, how tall, the long muscles wrapping his bones. How dark he was against the white sheet. We lay there afterward and he started to talk. I didn’t say a word, for fear of stopping him. He answered questions I would not have dared to ask.

Would I have done it just for the story? Ridiculous question. I wouldn’t have not done it for anything. At that moment, I wanted him. I liked that it was his idea. A few months later, I was in Los Angeles again on another assignment. He came to my room at the Beverly Wilshire. I opened the door and my knees buckled from the impact of his Clinteastwoodness. He seemed even taller than I’d remembered, clean-shaven now, his sun-streaked hair trimmed. The blue shirt made his eyes even bluer, or did his blue eyes make the shirt seem more blue? One wall of the room was all mirrors. I was a puddle of Jell-O. I forgot any questions I thought I needed to ask. I’m not sure we even spoke. It never occurred to me that what we had might have gone on beyond the Beverly Wilshire. It was wonderful sex in an era of wonderful sexual possibilities. I still believed I was having sex on the run to be a better wife to my husband. And anyway, I don’t think I could have lived with a Republican. Or a health-food addict. And in Clint’s case, shared him with those ex-wives and mothers of his children. So, no regets.

The other box-office centurian? I’ll get to Burt Reynolds later.