underground station and offered her an adequate breakfast within my means and she left for home. In the afternoon, the Scottish team had a date to go to a certain pub which sported a pleasant garden. Unfortunately I stupidly spoiled the evening by telling Al that Dawn missed her train and spent the night with me but that “nothing happened”. Al took it coolly but did not address a single word to Dawn all evening, which seemed to upset her terribly. That was needlessly silly of me and excessively naive! Mea culpa!
The epilogue of this story was that our three Cornell friends came to Cairo that summer. Dawn was invited to stay with Gail at Kimon‟s family home and the Scottish team apart from visiting Cairo‟s highlights undertook a trip to Alexandria in which I participated. I did not, however, stay with them at the hotel because my family had a house in Alexandria and I spent the night there. Consequently I do not know if the romance between Al and Dawn resumed though, while together, they seemed friendly enough.
I still think of Dawn, that worthwhile person, and wonder how life has treated her.
Sometime in November 1963, I got a phone call from Al. I cannot recall why it was a phone call. Was he living elsewhere at that time? In any case, in a highly excited and emotional voice he asked me, “Guess who was assassinated a few hours ago?” I immediately answered, “Gamal Abdel Nasser.” It was the first thought that came to my mind. “No,” he replied, “President Kennedy.” Well, it was a shock. Not just for me but the whole world. Kennedy still had, at that time, the aura of the stern, courageous, and glamorous champion of the Cuban Missile Crisis despite the previous Bay of Pigs debacle. He was young, rich, handsome, idealistic and eloquent (Ted Sorensen was his speechwriter and allegedly the actual author of JFK‟s Pulitzer prizewinning Profiles in Courage) and seemed on his way to great achievements. His star, of course, lost most of its sparkle as time went on. He initiated America‟s space program that landed man on the moon but also the disastrous US involvement in Vietnam. He championed civil liberties, started the Peace Corps and his domestic New Frontier policies promised greater welfare through federal funding.
Inevitably, after his death, stories were unearthed about his father‟s ruthless business dealings which made him a multi-millionaire together with his extramarital dalliances with famous Hollywood actresses. Then JFK‟s womanizing came out and the scale of this enterprise was astounding. So was the banality and casualness of his needs ( at least one woman a day - film stars, high society personalities, White House secretaries), the organization of the procurers (close aides, the secret service, his brother-in-law Peter Lawford and the Sinatra Rat Pack . . . etc.) and, finally, his ineptitude as a lover. Lovemaking apparently relieved his back pain; that‟s what counted and all it took was his own personal, speedy, and selfish orgasm. Some of the women that provided the service also provided the details.
JFK was succeeded by his vice-president LBJ, Lyndon B. Johnson, another womanizer. It is perhaps unfair to stigmatize a great politician in this manner but it is what remains in the mind of the man-in-the-street after the passage of half a century.
An unpleasant-looking hulk of a man, he was undoubtedly a great politician in the House of Representatives and later in the Senate. As president he was ranked favorably due to his domestic policies in which he tried to turn America into the
“Great Society”. His great and tragic fiasco in America‟s foreign policy was his relentless escalation of the Vietnam War which ended in the shocking defeat of a great power at the hands of a dirt poor, badly armed but determined nation.
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The war caused the death of 58.261 young American soldiers and untold hundreds of thousands of anonymous Vietnamese who were doused with chemicals, napalmed, raped, and massacred. Lieutenant William Calley will be remembered as one of the great villains of history. With his group, the Charlie Company, they entered the hamlet Mai Lai, encountered no resistance from Viet Cong soldiers, yet three hours later there were over 500 civilian Vietnamese, men, women, and children, dead.
The massacre, its attempted cover up, and the court cases resulting from it had a profound effect in draining support of the American public for the war.
LBJ‟s amorous exploits even if they pale when compared to JFK‟s were, nevertheless, considerable. He had a room next to the Oval Office which he used for his sexual jousts. He was a formidable personality and when he wanted something he invariably got his way. I always wondered at the women who succumbed to his demands. It could not have been for his great good looks. What were their motives?
Sexual gratification? Being kissed, penetrated, and fertilized by the irresistible President of the USA? Is power really a woman‟s greatest aphrodisiac as Henry Kissinger once declared? In any case, everything eventually comes out in the wash. I read in a reputable newsmagazine an amusing incident. A society lady was spending the night as a guest at the White House. In the middle of the night LBJ enters her room, in the darkness, presumably in his pajamas for I cannot imagine this ungainly hulk walking naked in the corridors of the White House though he undoubtedly had the gall; he stumbles to her bed and tells her, “Move over. This is your President.” Unfortunately, the magazine did not elaborate on the sequel. Nor the source of this piece of gossip.
From this digression we return to 3, Wetherby and Flt/ Lieutenant Fontes. At one time, Basil had a colored girlfriend from Somalia who was a model. Fashion magazines had just started employing colored girls as models especially those of a lighter skin color and more delicate features than the purely African. Most of them were Ethiopian and I have seen some very beautiful women from that country. I do not remember her name and she only came to mind recently when I read the story of Waris Diris, a Somali girl who was brutally circumcised as is the custom in that country, and at the age of 13 was the intended bride of an elderly herdsman. She escaped her home walking barefoot across the desert and an elderly woman relative managed to send her to London where she worked as a servant and then at a MacDonald‟s. While working there, a photographer noticed her beauty and helped her become a model, whence she reached the top of her profession.
Basil‟s girlfriend was not as beautiful as Waris Diris but she was slim and tall and had a graceful bearing. She must have been on the fringes of the profession and probably not earning much because at that time she was looking for a room and Basil recommended 3, Wetherby. Basil was excited with his conquest as it was the first colored girl he ever had but the romance did not last long and eventually broke up. I used to see her now and then on the stairs and we exchanged a hello but nothing more than that. The few things I learnt about her were from Basil. Apparently she had a hard life. She fell pregnant, had to give up her child and perhaps because of that went in and out of depressions which may have been an added factor in Basil‟s breakup with her.
A few weeks after their separation, she phoned him and asked to see him. She told him that Flt/ Lt. Fontes had repeatedly forcibly entered her room late at night and had sex with her against her will. She resisted and fought him as much as she could but did not shout so as not to create a scandal and she did not know how to extricate herself from that situation. Basil told me about it but we were too young and stupid 60
and unsure of ourselves to offer the girl any substantial help. Basil just advised her to go to the police but the girl left 3, Wetherby suddenly a few days later and we did not hear from her again. There are some things in one‟s life one regrets bitterly after the event when the time for action is past and just the bitterness remains. There are few things in life I loathe more fiercely than a bully. Flt/ Lt. Fontes was a despicable bully and half a century later I regret I was unable to help that poor girl defend herself and her dignity from rape and allowing an injustice, that of a rapist, remaining unpunished.
When I returned to 3, Wetherby after the summer holidays for my final year in London, I found George Cosmatos and George Zeidan in situ while Al left to share a flat with an Egyptian couple and Taki Raissi, who married his English School sweetheart Leila Tabet, rented a flat not far from us. Andy Vayanos and Basil lived elsewhere but always within walking distance.
My friendship with Andy had cooled off considerably because a year or so earlier we got into the habit of playing poker together. He was a skilled and wily player and my debts to him piled up to enormous amounts, at least relatively so for a pair of students. At one point, I resorted to bankruptcy, that is, I refused to pay. I told him what we were doing was ridiculous if not unethical and half the blame was mine but the other half was his. I did not have the money and was unwilling to pay in installments, as he suggested, which would drastically limit my spending. At the time our living expense allowance from home was £50 Sterling per month. Not an awful lot but sufficient for a comfortable existence in the early sixties.
Andy was adamant in demanding his winnings and threatened to take me to court. I asked Basil‟s advice and he gave me the address of a solicitor he knew at the West End. I went to his crummy, one-room office and explained the situation. Before giving me his counsel, he asked me for a guinea (£1-1s). I gave it to him and after he put it safely in his pocket he told me that gambling debts are not enforceable in English courts. That allayed my fears and I told Andy he could do whatever he pleased. He said he would write and demand the money from my father. This unyielding insistence of gamblers to collect by hook or by crook the gambling debts due to them is a universal characteristic of gamblers. It was not particular to Andy and is something weaklings like me will never understand. That hard nosed attitude towards money perhaps explains why Andy has amassed a considerable fortune in his lifetime and I can hardly claim to have been successful in business. He also had, of course, the drive and the brains.
Andy finally wrote to my father and both he and I received a letter each, in which he wrote how pained he was with this affair. He told Andy that paying this sum was not a problem for him but he would not reward our regrettable behavior. He said that for a moment he thought of contacting his father but on second thoughts decided to spare him the pain and distress that he himself felt. An intimate and rewarding friendship was put on hold for many years but a lesson had been consolidated. I never touched a pack of cards since.
Basil remained for a short while in his Queensgate room without Brigitta but was about to leave it because he could no longer afford the rent on his own. He had a few sporadic amorous flings here and there until he met Juliet, his future wife and sealed, at least romantically, the next twenty years of his life. The London period up to his marriage I recounted in a memoir called Omar and Juliet.
I saw George Cosmatos much more frequently at 3, Wetherby in my final year as well as his future wife, another beautiful, tall, blonde, Swedish girl also called Brigitta. She worked as an au pair at an English family but was often at 3, Wetherby.
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A more rounded picture of our relationship and its unfortunate break is in the memoir La Belle Isabel. Cosmatos was quite close to Taki Raissi. Taki was from a wealthy Greek family of Egypt and was a smart dresser. He was particularly finicky in the choice of his wardrobe and he often passed articles of his used clothing to Cosmatos.
Cosmatos was not by any means hard up but he accepted the clothes with alacrity, especially Taki‟s shoes, which fitted him perfectly and were barely worn out and often showed them to us with an unselfconscious complacency. He visited Taki and his wife at their flat and often took Brigitta with him. Taki‟s wife was a tall beautiful girl, an English School student, from an aristocratic Coptic family. Her father was the chief of King Farouk‟s cabinet before the Revolution.
Often after such visits, especially when Brigitta was with him, Cosmatos complained to me that they were treated by the Raissis with condescension. He was sad and hurt and wondered what the reason was. I told him I did not know what the reason was but as a first step to remedy the situation he should stop accepting Taki‟s used clothing and footwear. Secondly, he should space out his visits because there is an English saying that familiarity breeds contempt. I don‟t know if that advice was useful because our relations cooled and I did not see much of Cosmatos after that.
When I returned to 3, Wetherby after my summer holidays for my final year in London, two new girls were working as cleaning staff and general caretakers in the house. They were Austrian, both in their middle twenties and both good lookers.
Ricky (Fredericka) was tall with a well-formed, mature woman‟s body and a pretty face with shoulder-length chestnut hair. Her beauty did not immediately strike you.
There are some women with this unfair quality. Their beauty becomes evident only after the second look. Ricky became uncommonly attractive when combed and made up. Bettina was in a class of her own - a real femme fatale. She was not only beautiful but glamorous. She had a heavenly, sexy body with lovely breasts and a face with large almond eyes, a milky-white complexion and long, jet-black hair which she often collected in a glorious queue de cheval.
Well, most of the unattached males at one time or another made a pass at them but there was no evidence of a permanent relationship inside our house. The two girls went out together in their free time for coffees and dancing and I suppose on dates with men they met. I often saw them leaving the house well dressed and made up looking gorgeous. Especially Bettina. I don‟t think there was a London cover girl at the time that looked half as good. Cosmatos told me he made a pass at Bettina before I returned from my holidays. His Birgitta was away in Sweden visiting her family and the opportunity could not be missed. He invited her to his room, started kissing her and attempted to undress her but was so flustered and shaking that she stopped short his clumsy attempt at seduction and told him that no woman would give in to a man who is so obviously ill at ease. He must be cool and collected. I empathized with him.
Bettina would have given me the shakes as well.
I have described George Zeidan in my memoir La Belle Isabel. He was a wonderful, intelligent boy doing his PhD at LSE but was nothing much to look at.
Perhaps because I place so much importance on beauty, male and female, I never figured how girls would ever look at George. He was not ugly; just slightly seedy, slouchy and slow-moving with thick myopic spectacles and a piercing stare but on the other hand he had a wonderful smile and laugh, a sense of humor and well, the intelligence that, in the last analysis, compensates for everything. Nevertheless, I had the feeling that if I were a girl, I would keep him at bay.
He had a TV set in his room and one evening I went there to see a certain program. He invited Ricky and Bettina as well and after the show he put on some 62
music and we started dancing, Although we exchanged partners, I mainly danced with Ricky because she stuck to me more than she abided George. Soon enough Ricky and I were kissing passionately. I do not know how George fared with Bettina because I could not very well keep tags on them while engaged in our passionate exchange. Of course I would have preferred to have Bettina in my arms but it was not to be. When I danced with her I kissed her but not on her mouth. I held her tightly, caressed her and kissed her cheeks and neck. I clearly felt she wanted more but my situation was constrained and then I felt she was so much above me in experience that I could never follow up on the demands of such a relationship. Not in terms of money or time or style. An erotic kiss on the mouth is an invitation for further intimacy and a relationship with her would have been catastrophic. It happened with another Arab boy eventually. He became her boyfriend of sorts and ran after her like a little poodle, with anxiety and little tantrums of jealousy. It was inevitable; she was a goddess and he was just a little guy. He lost his mind completely and with that, his self respect.
Ricky started coming to my room in her spare time which was usually in the evenings. She was a good looking young woman but had one great fault. She could not stop chattering. As she was not particularly educated or intelligent this interminable garrulity became unbearably tiresome. To some extent the kissing which went on and the beginnings of sexual intimacy compensated but often I had to ask her politely to leave because I had to study.
Soon after our romantic interlude in George Zeidan‟s room the girls left 3, Wetherby after a quarrel with Flt/Lt. Fontes, whose cause I do not recall. They moved into a room at Earl‟s Court and started searching for a job. Ricky called me on the phone to give me their new address and I visited them. The house was only a five-minute walk away. We talked for a while and Ricky brought out an album of pictures of her life in Bregenz, which was their hometown. Most of the pictures were of her big love affair with a good looking man who seemed to be in his forties while she was a very pretty young woman probably in her late teens. Apparently she accidentally fell pregnant with someone else and the man in the album helped her get an abortion and later became her lover until they separated a year or so later. She talked fondly and nostalgically of him but I did not ask for details. She must have been in love with him and he probably left her eventually because he was married. These stories of separations where hearts are broken on one side always make me sad.
Bettina was bored stiff. “She always brings this album out when we have visitors,” she complained. By and by I got a small dosage of Bettina‟s biography. She married at eighteen with a very rich Persian (Iranian) boy who was studying in London. They later got divorced and again my natural discretion did not allow me to ask for the reason why. Like Ricky, she talked well and was full of admiration of her ex. Admiration of a very specific nature. He was very rich, handsome, but short and she was fascinated by the meticulous way he dressed. Always the best and most expensive: suits, shoes, ties, cufflinks, watches. . .the works. He took hours preparing himself. Not a word about his character, his education, his work. Just his clothes, his taste, and the care he took in his appearance. She still saw him sometimes and one day we met by chance in the neighborhood. She called me across the street “George. . .
.George. . .” I turned around, crossed the street and she proudly introduced him to me.
I smiled, shook hands with them, and left very quickly for there was no social or psychological space for anything else. The truth is she towered over him, looked gorgeous, and was far above him despite his spic and span appearance and aura of millions. As I grow older I am less and less impressed by riches. It is the person that counts and not wealth. Perhaps I tend to think in this way because I missed the train 63
with affluence, and because the modern world has become appallingly mercenary and superficial.
A few days after this encounter, Ricky phoned me and told me that Bettina was out of the room, would not be back for some time and would I go and see her. It was early afternoon and the implication was obvious. I had not made love to her at 3, Wetherby though we had been very close to it. I took a few condoms along and hurried to her room. We kissed for a while and then undressed and made love. She had a lovely, luscious body and full breasts and for me it was a delicious voluptuousness just to look at her naked in the light of the early afternoon. Almost a dream come true. We made love easily; I am almost tempted to say calmly, and I found out I could prolong the act for very long without reaching an orgasm, which both surprised and pleased Ricky. Of course I was almost totally inexperienced and we did not go through the myriad variations that I learnt later in life. It was simply an exchange of two positions: I on top and then Ricky on top. I did not question at the time why she did not try to initiate other preliminaries, which are almost routine nowadays, such as oral sex. They were, at the time, beyond my powers of imagination though she must have known all about them. I cannot imagine that she did not. And yet during the time I was with her it was the same switchover of one on top and then the other. Nevertheless, our lovemaking was exciting though it lacked the passion of love.
For about two weeks I paid a few afternoon visits to Ricky when Bettina was not around and then that distasteful bully Flt/Lt. Fontes, who must have heard that we were “acquainted”, knocked on my door and told me that on no occasion was I to permit Ricky to come to 3, Wetherby. I was shocked at his impertinence but, to be frank, I was hesitant to let him know outright that I could not accept such restrictions.
I searched and found another room nearby and gave my notice to Fontes. In a few days I moved to my new room but further developments were on hand. After I saw Bettina on the street with her husband, Ricky told me that the couple made up and Bettina returned to him. Ricky could no longer afford the room on her own and asked me to put her up for a week or so until she found a job. Reluctantly, I accepted. I could not decently do otherwise. I knew full well what that entailed in terms of my studies: a complete deterioration.
She moved in and we lived together for about three weeks. It was not quite a nightmare but at times it came pretty close to that. It was her incessant chatter that drove me nuts. In the mornings I went to college and Ricky went out for her job hunting. I returned in the afternoon and when she was at home, I was unable to do any work whatsoever. Sometime later we had to go out for the evening meal and this extra expense strained my limited budget. Back in our cramped quarters she wrote her diary and cards and letters to her family and friends and in between talk, talk, talk. I could not even open a book and I did not go out to see my friends. I did not get in touch with them ever since I left 3, Wetherby. They suddenly lost trace of me. I was too ashamed to let them know of my situation. We made love nearly every night and she showed me how she meticulously marked each occasion in her diary with the code (L.A.), signifying not Los Angeles, but “love affair”.
She knew a man who owned a small hotel and she previously worked for him for a short spell. She went to see him for a job dressed up to perfection and returned later in the evening. She told me he treated her like a lady. Offered her a super-luxurious midday meal at a classy restaurant with hors d‟oeuvres, cocktails and wines and promised to find her a situation. I sincerely hoped so. At other times she went out in the evenings and I did not inquire where she had been. I did not want to seem 64
possessive, which I was not, because I did not want her to imagine I was serious about our relationship. The whole situation was sad in a way. She was a good looking young woman with no brains who was bound to get hurt sooner or later. She sent a post card to her mother telling her she was now living with a nice young man (me!) and got back a scathing letter accusing her of thoughtlessness in sending such details on a post card where the postman could read it and spread the gossip in their small town. Poor Ricky wept bitterly reading her mother‟s scolding. It was sad and funny to see her crying disconsolately with real tears.
At the end of the second week a new development threw us in unexpected agony. Her period did not arrive as it ought to. Worry, worry, worry day after slow-moving, period-less day. She insinuated I was at fault. “But Ricky, I used a condom every time.” Still, the mute accusatory looks; the question, “Who else could it be?” Bettina who called me now and then told me not to worry. She had some effective pills she would give her. It did not reassure me. When she was away one afternoon and feeling utterly desperate, I took her diary and meticulously looked at the recent entries. I found the day she had lunch with the hotel owner. I deciphered the German entry as best I could. She had a wonderful lunch, “ein feudales mitagessen” a feudal midday repast, a German expression of sumptuousness. Next to it, by Jove, was the verdict of my acquittal: (L.A.). That day I had not made love to her. This (L.A.) took place with the hotel owner. I confronted her with the fact and told her how unfair it was to accuse me of something that was not my fault. She did not deny it. It would have been useless. Would the hotel owner have thrown such a banquet without expecting something in return? And after such expense would it have been fair to himself to limit his pleasure by using a condom? I told her it was all over between us and that I would not touch her until she left the room. That she had better go to the chap at once to have him arrange for an abortion.
The next day she went to a party with Bettina. At about midnight Bettina called me on the phone and in a merry tone told me to relax, that Ricky‟s period had arrived a few hours ago. “Here, she wants to talk to you.” Ricky took the phone. “It‟s over, George, thank goodness. I am swimming in blood.” Two days later she announced she was leaving. She did not give me any explanations and, of course, I did not ask for any. The following day Bettina came along to help her move her belongings. A man with a car was waiting outside the house to take her luggage. I kissed her goodbye and I kissed Bettina who laughed and told me in a low voice,
“From one lover to another.”
I called Al and Basil and gave them my address. They arrived literally running. Both were terribly worried and scolded me for not giving any signs of life.
We went for a meal of fish and chips and Basil started telling the owner of the shop my story for laughs. I laughed with them at my mishap. I felt free again and it was wonderful. In our building I had acquired a certain notoriety although it was far from a puritanical abode. It was mainly inhabited by young people and love affairs were criss-crossing rooms and floors. The caretaker was a recently arrived Australian immigrant with his wife. As soon as he landed the job he promptly took on a younger girl resident and left his wife who admittedly was a little worn out. Not all that much but in comparison to the new girl. The man, who was probably from the Australian outback, lost his mind in London and the poor woman lost her man. She sort of gave me wistful looks but after Ricky I was not a candidate. I had fallen far behind with my studies and had a whole lot of catching up to do. At MIT I would have been booted out long ago.
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As Basil visited me frequently, my circle of acquaintances inside the house grew and small gatherings congregated in my room. Two swarthy girls from the West Indies and a stunningly beautiful mulatto from the tiny island Aruba of the Dutch Antilles were standard candidates for my cups of tea. I really relished the Aruba girl but she had an English boyfriend and I had my much neglected studies to attend to.
Another was an Armenian woman older than I was who came often to my room for a chat. On the whole, it was hardly the ideal place for a student but the fact that the exams were nearing made the move to another room impractical. For one crazy moment and not at all seriously I thought that if I shaved my head, I would be too shy to go out for meals and coffees and perhaps the constant visitors to my room would become scarcer enabling me to concentrate better at my work. I got up and looked at myself in the mirror and tried to imagine what I would look like without hair. Not terribly handsome, that was evident. Then I got scared and sat down again but the idea kept buzzing in my head. The fact that I was frightened challenged me and so I went at it. Let me say that nowadays shaved heads are, if not fashionable, at least not uncommon. At that time absolutely no baldies were circulating in London.
Well, first I cut my hair, higgledy-piggledy, as short as I could with a pair of scissors and then slowly shaved what was left with a razor. I did not feel at all happy with what I had done but there was no going back. I called Al and Basil on the phone and asked them to come over fast as I had something fantastic to show them. With Andy I was still incommunicado. They again came at a run. When they knocked on my door, I put a towel over my head and opened the door. “Hey guys, I was washing my hair,” I said. They were excited. “What do you want to show us?” they kept asking as I was supposedly busy drying my hair. “Actually,” I said, “I was not washing my hair because I have no hair.” They looked at me puzzled. I pulled off the towel and they were dumbstruck. “My God, why did you do it?” was the first question. “Because I thought about it and got scared.” Many laughs after the initial shock, with Basil running around alerting my neighbors who gathered in my room to have a look at the oddball. In a way it was a good start rather than meeting them individually on the stairs and having to give lame explanations. The West Indian girls and the Aruba beauty were sorely disappointed but I comforted them. “It will grow again, for heaven‟s sake.” The Armenian girl visited me frequently and we had intimate chats. Before she moved into our house, she had a boyfriend who left her pregnant and disappeared.
She gave birth to the baby and gave it up for adoption, which is something I cannot appraise. It must have been difficult but sometimes circumstances dictate these thorny decisions. She had a merry disposition and told me that Earl‟s Court is full of crazies.
“Even when my belly was fully blown up people still tried to pick me up in the street,” she said laughing.