Promiscuous Me: Remembering Margie

It was Lesley Gore’s party, and she’d cry if she wanted to. It’s my blog, and if I want to, I’ll see, just for the fun of it, in how much detail I’m able to recount the minor sexual interactions of decades past.

We will start, sheerly out of caprice, with Margie A—. When my first major live-together (for 40 months) girlfriend had a younger girlfriend (in the nonsexual sense) pulled the plug on our relationship (as anyone would have, I have come to realize), my brand consultants felt it imperative that I replace First Major with another universal object of desire. I asked Pammy and Billy if they knew such a person. They said they did, and gave me her phone number. I phoned her to ask if she might be interested in attending a screening of The Towering Inferno with me. She was.

I, rather a universal object of desire myself at the time, presented myself at Margie’s at the appointed hour in a tight-fitting suit made of bits of reclaimed blue denim much like that in which George Foreman arrived in Zimbabwe, but without German shepherds. I guess I wore the suit pretty well, as Margie’s mouth literally fell open at the sight of me. I would have that experience only one other time. She was very much more impressed with me than I was with her. Had my brand consultants seen us together, I'd have been a goner.

We attended the screening. I found the film ludicrous, but diverting. We weren’t even halfway through the ‘70s yet, and AIDS wouldn’t rear its ugly head for another dozen years, so we headed afterward for my apartment on actual Sunset Blvd. with virtually no debate. We had at it. After we’d both, you know, finished, and then had a cigarette, the sap began to rise anew. Margie asked if I could secure her wrists and ankles to the posts of my bed, open the bedroom wide to make it cold, and slap her around a bit. It was the first time a woman had ever confided an erotic fantasy of that sort to me. I was aghast — for around a millisecond, after which I did my best to provide what she wanted. I won’t pretend that I was nearly as good at fantasy fulfillment as I would get later in life, after realizing that the most important sexual organ isn’t between the legs, but the ears. 

We hadn’t really connected except sexually over the course of the evening, and I drove her home. We had each other’s phone numbers, of course. A couple of days later, trying (as I did all too infrequently) to be a gentleman, I phoned her to tell her, falsely, how much I’d enjoyed our date. She, apparently with reciprocity in mind, asked if I’d like to play tennis. I said I would.

The problem was that I was still a non-exercising smoker in those days, and had no appropriate footwear. The closest I could come was the red Chuck Taylors I’d bought in solidarity with my band’s Noted British Producer. I felt very much a dork wearing them with shorts, and played dreadfully, having not played in years, having never played very well. Neither of us called the other after that. Whether poor Margie ever found happiness is not known to me.

It had been grotesquely impolitic of George Foreman to arrive in Zimbabwe with German shepherds, as they reminded the locals of those with which their cruel Belgian oppressors had terrorized them in the colonial days. Hawking cookware, George later became as lovable as he had been sinister in his boxing days. On the official poster for The Towering Inferno, Steve McQueen is mentioned first, but Paul Newman is actually top-billed. I had a frightful crush on Faye Dunaway at the time, but didn't enjoy even a brief sexual relationship with her.