Tonight I discovered this early piece of writing from my journal under the heading “Mountain Dew,” dated 10/29/91. (I was 10.) Just before my handwriting goes haywire, perhaps on account of the aforementioned Dew, I confess: “I like the taste of the night going down my throat.”
The Mystic Blue
Out of the darkness, fretted sometimes in its sleeping,
Jets of sparks in fountains of blue come leaping
To sight, revealing a secret, numberless secrets keeping.
Sometimes the darkness trapped within a wheel
Runs into speed like a dream, the blue of the steel
Showing the rocking darkness now a-reel.
And out of the invisible, streams of bright blue drops
Rain from the showery heavens, and bright blue crops
Surge from the under-dark to their ladder-tops.
And all the manifold blue and joyous eyes,
The rainbow arching over in the skies,
New sparks of wonder opening in surprise.
All these pure things come foam and spray of the sea
Of Darkness abundant, which shaken mysteriously,
Breaks into dazzle of living, as dolphins that leap from the sea
Of midnight shake it to fire, so the secret of death we see.
69’ing with your best gay friend on the dance floor while he thrusts and pulls with 6” platforms on. This is about staring danger in the face - and about commitment. Can’t we take our clothes off together just a little more often? Please?
A Further Tragedy on the Theme
“My blind eyes are desperately waiting for the sight of you.”
“There were quite a lot of people in and around the pool, all suntanned and all drinking the Sunday morning liveners.… I was enjoying this small social triumph, but then a girl sitting on the other side of the pool lowered her book, took off her sunglasses and looked at me. She was so extraordinarily beautiful that I nearly laughed out loud.… She was unquestionably gorgeous … She was lavish. She was a dark unyielding largesse. She was, in short, too bloody much, and not only that, she was totally ignoring me.”
“You don’t realize of course E. B. how fantastically beautiful you have always been, and how strangely you have acquired an added and special and dangerous loveliness. Your breasts jutting out from that half-asleep languid lingering body, the remote eyes, the parted lips.”
“Richard was magnificent in every sense of the word … and in everything he ever did. He was magnificent on the stage, he was magnificent in film, he was magnificent at making love…. He was the kindest, funniest, and most gentle father. All my kids worshipped him. Attentive, loving—that was Richard.… From those first moments in Rome we were always madly and powerfully in love. We had more time but not enough.”
“December 27Continued with the same gifted pen. It’s no use pretending that you are an ordinary woman. Quite clearly, like this pen, you are not. I don’t mean, for a second, that you are in any way comparable with a pen. And yet you are, like this divine pen you are heavy and light at the same time.… How [to] watch the puritanical face relax into slow lust? How to watch that watch catch its breath, and, for a speck of a speck of a millionth of a second, become the animal that all men seek for in their women? And since we’re talking of pens and you, how [to] watch the ink splurge out of the pen … reach[ing] out from the inner depth of the divine body. Will you, incidentally, permit me to fuck you this afternoon? Yours truly (you have just come into the room), R.B.”
“I love you, lovely woman. If anybody hurts you, just send me a line saying something like “Need” or “Necessary” or just the one magic word “Elizabeth,” and I will be there somewhat faster than sound. You must know, of course, how much I love you. You must know, of course, how badly I treat you. But the fundamental and most vicious, swinish, murderous, and unchangeable fact is that we totally misunderstand each other … we operate on alien wavelengths. You are as distant as Venus—planet, I mean—and I am tone-deaf to the music of the spheres. But how-so-be-it nevertheless. (A cliché among Welsh politicians.) I love you and I always will.… Come back to me as soon as you can …”
“I am convinced it would be a good and constructive idea if Richard and I separated for a while. Maybe we loved each other too much. I never believed such a thing was possible. But we have been in each other’s pockets constantly, never being apart but for matters of life and death, and I believe it has caused a temporary breakdown of communication. I believe with all my heart that the separation will ultimately bring us back to where we should be—and that’s together.… Wish us well during this difficult time. Pray for us.”
On April 25, 1974, they announced their plans to divorce, and Richard let it be known that he would give Elizabeth everything she wanted—possession of the Kalizma, Casa Kimberley, $7 million worth of jewelry, all the priceless art they had acquired over the years. She was also awarded custody of Maria Burton, the much-loved daughter they had adopted in 1964, who bore Richard’s name. He wanted Elizabeth and all their children to be safe and well looked-after. That was his role now, to provide for his entire family, to be the father he had never really had—because Richard “Dic” Jenkins, his own alcoholic father, had provided for no one.On June 26, 1974, citing irreconcilable differences, Elizabeth was granted her divorce in a small, wooden-frame courtroom in the Swiss town of Saanen. Richard was still too ill to attend the proceedings and was represented by a medical certificate. The judge asked the inevitable question he was required to ask: “Is it true that to live with your husband was intolerable?”“Yes, life with Richard became intolerable,” Elizabeth answered softly, dressed in a brown silk suit and wearing dark sunglasses.
But neither of them could stay committed to their current paramours: Burton’s engagement was called off when he was photographed walking arm in arm with Jeanne Bell, an African-American actress and model, and by August 1975, Elizabeth had ended her romantic relationship with Wynberg. When Elizabeth and Richard re-met in Geneva to discuss their business affairs with their Swiss lawyer, a tearful Elizabeth fell into Richard’s arms. On August 21, 1975, their publicist, John Springer, announced that they were in love and planned to remarry.They decided to have the ceremony on the banks of the Chobe River in the Chobe Game Reserve, in Botswana, on October 10, 1975. In a note to Richard after the brief ceremony, Elizabeth playfully wrote:
“Dearest Hubs,How about that! You really are my husband again, and I have news for thee, there bloody will be no more marriages—or divorces, either.…Yours truly, Wife.”
Nine months into their remarriage, the couple divorced again, and Richard wed a green-eyed, 27-year-old model named Susan Hunt (who had been married to the Formula One racecar driver James Hunt). Elizabeth married John Warner, a former secretary of the navy under President Richard Nixon and a future U.S. senator from Virginia—an office Elizabeth used her considerable star power to help him win.
“It became a 24-hour nightmare,” she later said. “It didn’t matter that we didn’t get good reviews. We still played to packed houses. No one was coming to see the English drawing-room comedy anyway. Everyone bought tickets to watch high-camp ‘Liz and Dick.’ And we gave them what they wanted.”After the run of Private Lives, Elizabeth and Richard met a few more times in London, but they continued to stay in touch over the telephone. They were still each other’s best friend, and they still had their combined families in common. But the letters—except for one—had stopped.
Elizabeth received her last love letter from Richard in Bel Air. He had mailed it on August 2, 1984, so it arrived a few days after his August 5 death.
via Vanity Fair, July 2010
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Puerto Vallarta. I’m lucky enough to have had them in my dreams since I was 12, in dreams as lovers in love, often on the shore in Egypt. After a night of smoking pot with Lynda Resnick, eating shrimp balls (and drinking Fiji water) at Mr. Chow’s and breaking down the patio at my friend Mia’s, I’m going back to them. ASAP.
No longer active but nevertheless a must-see for anyone double-checking if their shrimping is okay or not (you are okay!) - here you can find the best of the deeper loves within the criminal report. My deepest respect for Supervert and the subsequent book Perversity Think Tank that has followed. I had never won anything in my life until Necrophilia Variations during their annual holiday book giveaway. That has saved me - in addition to their invaluable libraries of Baudelaire and De Sade. Go looking.
