But she did not forget me and I did not forget her. She went into show business and
travelled; we tried to keep each other advised of moves so that we could make
rendezvous every year or six. She lived a long time for a non-Howard and was a
beauty right up to her death – so much so that she could afford to dance naked into
her seventies, at which age she still gave every man present an erection. Yet her
dancing was never styled to be provocative, nothing like the cootch dancer Little
Egypt of an earlier generation.
Helen changed her name early in her show-biz career; most people knew her as Sally
Rand. I loved Sally and Sally loved me, and we could be apart for several years,
then manage to make a rendezvous, and be right back where we had left off, intimate
friends.
Sally and I shared one oddity: both of us went to school as often as we could manage
it. She usually performed at night; in daytime she was a special student at whatever
campus was nearest. By the time she died (1979) she had far more collegiate hours
than most professors. She was a polymath; everything interested Sally and she
studied in depth. Sally did not drink or smoke; her one weakness was big, thick
textbooks.
Nancy stayed closer to me than did my other children, and I was her husband’s
sometime mistress for sixty-four years… because Nancy had decided it that way
before she married Jonathan. Not often but always when we met and could find
opportunity. I can’t believe that Jonathan truly had much interest in this old
carcass into its nineties – but he could lie about it delightfully. We really did
love each other, and an erection is the most flattering compliment a man can pay to
an old woman. Jonathan was a true Galahad, one who reminds me of my husband Galahad.
Not too surprising, as Galahad is descended from Jonathan (13.2 per cent, counting
convergence) – and from me, of course, but all of my husbands are descended from me
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except Jake and Zeb, who were born on another time line. (Time line four, Ballox
O’Malley) (Oops! And Jubal, time line three.)
As a by-product of Nancy’s offering Jonathan to me, Brian got Nancy’s sweet, young
body – the first incest in our family, I think. Whether it happened again on later
occasions I do not know and it is none of my business. Nancy and I were much alike
in temperament – both of us strongly interested in sex but relaxed about it. Eager
but not tense.
Carol – For Carol I always tried to save 26 June, Carol’s Day, Carolita’s Day,
Carolmas, and eventually Fiesta de Santa Carolita for millions of people who never
knew her.
After 26 June 1918, she gave up her birthday entirely in order to celebrate Carol’s
Day.
During the decade that I spent mostly in Albuquerque she was star-billed several
times in Reno or Vegas on Carol’s Day. She always held her luau on z6 June even if a
midnight show forced her to start it at four in the morning. No matter the hour her
friends flocked to attend, coming from around the globe. It became a great honour to
be invited to Carolita’s annual party, something to boast about in London and Rio.
Carol married Rod Jenkins of the Schmidt family in 1920, when he was just back from
France – Rainbow Division and Rod picked up a Silver Star and a Purple Heart without
losing anything. (One scar on his belly -) Rod had majored in mathematics at
Illinois Tech., specialising in topology, then he had joined up between his junior
and senior years, came back and shifted to theatre arts. He had decided to try to
shift from amateur magician to professional – stage magic, I mean. He told me once
that being shot at had caused him to reassess his values and ambitions.
So Carol started her married life handing things to her husband on stage, while
dressed in so little that she constituted misdirection every time she twitched. She