A Few Crazed Notes on Elizabeth Taylor

So I told my esteemed shrink Dr. Mars yesterday that I was really going to do it this time—the “it” being telling The Cowboy that I'm not going to see him any more. Dr. Mars reminded me that I’d already tried this four thousand times to Not One Single Pathetic Avail, a reminder which put me in so bad a mood that I had to switch topic to Elizabeth Taylor.

“Here’s what I really loved about Liz,” I said, and I said it quickly because, thanks to some new insurance nightmare, I now get shrunk only every two weeks and have to talk fast to fit it all in –the “it” being my weakening tether to horrid reality and increasing need for romantic delusion.

“She could juggle all those ravenous appetites simultaneously without getting either confused or denied," I said.  "Like when she first fell for Burton---you’d think all that fabulous sex would have sufficed---but nooooo---she still had to have that chili from Chasen’s.”

Never mind that Chasen’s was in Beverly Hills (never mind Eddie, never mind Sybil); Elizabeth knew that one flick of a kohl-laden eyelash would get that chili to Rome in such a big hurry her minions wouldn’t even have to reheat it.  They'd serve it up hotter than Burton himself. 

“It is so quintessentially Female,” I told Dr. Mars, who, being male, needs such reminders, “to be having the best sex of your life while concurrently planning your post-coital snack."

The other thing I told him I loved about Liz was that, in addition to her many Real Husbands, she liked to have Pretend Husbands too--a habit I well understand because I myself have four Pretend Husbands --(although, when I get my Pretend Divorce from The Cowboy, I guess I will only have three—but never mind that particular desolation, let’s get back to Liz)--my favorite story being when Montgomery Clift got in that car crash and she saved his life by reaching down into his mouth and pulling his teeth up out of his throat.

" I know Real Wives who wouldn’t have done that,” I told Dr. Mars who, although he admits he's never  been married, probably knew that already just from being: (a) Old;  (b) A Shrink; (c) Someone Who Watches Old Movies.

(Did I mention that The Cowboy has been divorced from two Real Wives himself, the first of whom he’s spent the past year driving to and from Kaiser while going insane while she slowly and painfully dies? Did I mention I'm going to stop seeing him?)

Speaking of death—and, let's face it, what else should one speak of, besides food, I mean--I told Dr. Mars that the two people for whom I felt the most pity upon hearing of the deaths of their loved ones were Elizabeth Taylor and Caroline Kennedy. Kennedy when her brother died, because he was the last person on earth who would ever know or share her whole story, and Elizabeth the day Dick succumbed.

“She’d married him—really married him--twice!” I felt I had to remind him. “They’d had all that sex! All that chili from Chasen’s!”

“Time’s up,” he said, with his usual grateful glance at the clock.

“Okay,” I said, chilly but rising. "But mark my words, the next time I see you, The Cowboy will be a thing of the past."

My past, I meant.  As opposed to The Past.  Although who can tell about either.