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well, we all know what happened after that . . . we slowly fell deeper and deeper in love (he more than I for obvious reasons). It was truly a surprise to us both, the night he took my hand in his and weepingly admitted that though he loved his wife very much, they had been growing apart for quite some time now, so that when he met me he knew I was the person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, both public and private. I was his soul mate—understanding him in ways he never thought possible. Here he had to stop speaking, he was crying so much, tears streaming down his manly face. Blowing his nose into his hand and wiping it on his shirt, he whispered, “Fate brought us together in space, but we brought ourselves together on Earth. But whether on Saturn or in South Kensington—please do me the honor of being the companion I share my life with.” That was when he slipped the ring on my finger that I never take off except when I’m waxing my knuckles. A gold band with diamonds spelling out the word he came up with, “Carrison.” (We also use it as a gate code in the home we share in London—in St. John’s Wood near the North Star Pub, so we’ll always be within walking distance of that place where we first discovered the shared passion that would continue secretly throughout our ongoing, enviable lives.)
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how can I paint for you the picture of this brief three-month break in the bad weather of no feeling? Sadly, I cannot. And this is not because of the memory loss that typically comes with age—though that is a distinct factor. It is the memory loss that comes with marijuana use. Though in this case, it is not the long-term use that has deprived me of the recollections from these months from long ago. It is the three-month ingestion of what seemed to me to be the brutal strength of Harrison’s preferred strain of pot. This is what takes any and all vivid recollections and crushes them beneath its cruel inhaled heel.
At the time, the reefer took whatever certainty I possessed while in Harrison’s company and traded it for paranoia so intense it took my breath away. What I recall from the rubble of my brain cells is the discomfort I experienced between waking and sleeping, trying to think of something to say other than “Do you love me?” or “Why are you with me at all?” or “Do you know your lines for next week?” or “Can I get you another beer?” or “Where did you get that scar on your chin?” By the way, I believe the answer to that question had the words “acid” and “girl with freckles” in it, and “the toilet seat hit my head and cracked this cut into my chin.” But I am more than probably wrong.
I also doubt much of this was actually said per se, but I know he lay on his back on the couch in Riggs’s apartment telling me the story. And if he did say any of it, I’m sure he made it up.
Though there has been some speculation regarding my drug use during Star Wars, I used nothing other than Harrison’s pot on the weekends during that first film. After that, marijuana was no longer possible for me—it had such a powerful, all-consuming effect on me that I have never used that drug again.
In effect, I can’t remember now what I was too uncomfortable to remember at the time. For three months. From celebration to intoxication to assignation to infatuation to imitation to indignation—this was my trimester of the affair that was Carrison.
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harrison finished shooting first. My last scenes would be two weeks later, so I decided to go back to L.A. for a break and wound up flying there with Harrison. I wasn’t in charge of the movie’s travel arrangements, so I couldn’t have organized things so that he and I sat together, but sit together we did, for a full fourteen hours. In coach.
I don’t know if he was pleased with these arrangements, because he didn’t exhibit emotions and I didn’t record it in the journals I kept, but we did wind up talking. Anyway, whatever I don’t remember of our conversation on the flight, I do remember that he was kind. Kind enough to enable me to close the door on our cinematic episode together, both on-and offscreen, without regret. Which was quite a turn of events when you consider all those silent weekends.
“I’m a hick,” I recall saying to him.
“No,” Harrison answered. “You think you’re less than you are. You’re a smart hick.” And then, “You have the eyes of a doe and the balls of a samurai.”
It’s the only thing he ever said to me that acknowledged any intimacy between us, and it was enough. Not only because it had to be, but because of what I’m assuming it cost him to go that out of character in conversation. We never again acknowledged that anything of that nature had occurred.
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anyway, I keep mentioning these diaries. The ones I kept during the filming of the first Star Wars, the diaries I had forgotten about but recently found. By now, you’re all ears. Or eyes. Time for the reveal.
notes from his periphery, or the glib martyr
One could never call me a quitter
I take something right and see it
Through till it’s wrong
Auctioning myself off to the lowest bidder
Going once, going twice
Gone
Sold to the man for the price of disdain
Some are sold for a song
I don’t rate a refrain.
I guess it was all going just a little too well
If I wasn’t careful I’d be happy pretty soon
Heaven’s no place for one who thrives on hell,
One who prefers the bit to the silver spoon.
Then just when I’d almost resigned myself to winning
When it seemed my bright future would never dim
When my luck looked as though it was only beginning
I met him.
. . .
Sullen and scornful; a real Marlboro man
The type who pours out the beer and eats the can
A tall guy with a cultivated leer
One you can count on to disapprove or disappear
I knew right away that he was a find
He knew that you had to be cruel to be kind
Given this, he was the kindest man I’d ever met
Back came my sense of worthlessness
And my long lost pangs of regret
I was my old self again, lost and confused
Reunited with that old feeling
Of being misunderstood and misused.
Sold to the man for the price of disdain
All of this would be interesting
If it weren’t so mundane.
He is like a fantasy. The inevitability of his escape is most likely his most attractive feature. He submits to the silences without a struggle; I go under shrugging and sighing, finally overcome by the sheer weight of the pause-turned-lull-turned-way-of-life. Silence speaks louder than words—it screams, “BORING!” He’s boring and tries to make it look more like a decision than an accident. The silences make my composure decompose from the inside out.
I wonder what he is like inside out. We often assume that when the surface offers so little the depth must be unfathomable. Whatever is inaccessible must be worthwhile. I hate him and all of his quiet. But I love the implied disapproval, the seniority, the sternness, the disdain, the “strong silent type.”