Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
From the March 21, 1926 Washington, D.C. Evening Star
Bummer March 24th
March 24, 1918: Scottish-American stage magician William Ellsworth Robinson, who pretended to be Chinese and performed under the stage name Chung Ling Soo, dies of a bullet wound to his lung, the result of a failed bullet catch trick he’d performed the night before. Ellsworth pretended not to speak English as part of his act, but when the bullet struck him, the audience heard him say, "Oh my God. Something's happened. Lower the curtain."
March 24, 1999: A transport truck carrying margarine and flour enters the Mont Blanc tunnel between France and Italy. The truck driver notices white smoke coming from the cabin of his truck and exits the vehicle to extinguish the fire. The fire explodes out of control, and he exits the tunnel. Two minutes later, authorities are called to fight the fire.
Drivers who had entered on the French side of the tunnel weren’t able to turn around their vehicles to exit the tunnel and were forced to wait in their vehicles for rescue. By the time firefighting vehicles arrived, the wiring for the lighting inside the tunnel had melted, so the tunnel was not only completely dark but also filling with toxic smoke. The margarine inside the truck acted as fuel for the fire. Nine people died while attempting to escape on foot; 29 people died inside their vehicles.
March 24, 2015: Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately crashes Germanwings Flight 9525 into the French Alps, killing himself, five other crew members, and all 144 passengers aboard the flight. Lubitz had locked the other pilot out of the cockpit when the other pilot got up to use the restroom.
March 24, 2019: The Dar-ul-Arqam mosque in Escondido, California, is set on fire in an Islamophobic arson attack. Although seven people are inside the mosque when it’s set on fire, no one is injured.
***
And now, for something completely different, an affiliate link to a Gumroad creative product you may enjoy: The Abandoned Realm Audiobook
November 2, 2004: Vincent Van Gogh’s 47-year-old great-grand-nephew Theo Van Gogh, a filmmaker, is shot and then has his throat slit while riding his bicycle on the east side of Amsterdam. His killer is a 26-year-old man, Mohammed Bouyeri, who has ties to Egyptian terrorist group Jama'at al-Muslimin, a radical Islamist offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Van Gogh was a vocal critic of some Islamic practices, especially those associated with fundamentalist Islam.
November 3, 1793: Playwright and early feminist Olympe de Gouges is executed by guillotine by the French Revolution’s Revolutionary Tribunal. Although convicted of “seditious behavior” and attempting to reinstate the monarchy, of which de Gouges is not guilty, her real “crime” is criticizing the Revolution and wondering in writing if it had gone too far.
November 4, 1918: One week before the Armistice that will end the war, the poet Wilfred Owens is killed in the First World War.
November 4, 1982: The family of Dominique Dunne takes 22-year-old Dominique off life support after medical tests reveal that she has no brain activity. The young actress has been in this state since she was attacked and strangled by her estranged boyfriend on October 30th.
Her killer was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder and sentenced to only six years in prison. Dunne’s parents, Dominick and Lenny Dunne, became advocates for crime victims after the outrage of their daughter’s killer’s light sentence.
November 5, 1605: Guy Fawkes attempts to blow up the English Parliament, an act known as the Gunpowder Plot. The plot is foiled, Guy Fawkes is convicted and hanged, and burning an effigy of Fawkes becomes an English tradition.
November 7, 1837: Anti-slavery newspaper editor Elijah Parish Lovejoy is shot to death by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, which is near Illinois’ border with “slave state” Missouri.
November 7, 1908: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are killed in a shootout with police in Bolivia.
November 7, 1980: Actor Steve McQueen dies in his sleep following surgery in Juárez, Mexico. He’d been diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, which metastasized and caused large tumors in his neck, chest, and abdomen.
Between February and October 1980, McQueen had attempted to treat his disease with alternative therapy directed by William Donald Kelley, who called his quack treatment regimen “non-specific metabolic therapy.” In McQueen’s case, the treatments didn’t distract him from seeking conventional medicine; his doctors had already told him his cancer was inoperable and terminal. The quack “alternative medicine” did, however, cost him thousands of dollars while having no effect whatsoever on his disease. Kelley also falsely claimed in the media that his treatment of McQueen was successful, and this false claim may have cost other cancer patients their lives if they chose not to seek conventional treatment. Kelley, who died in 2005, did not have a license to practice medicine.
November 8, 1965: 52-year-old journalist Dorothy Kilgallen dies at home of an apparently accidental overdose of alcohol and barbiturates.
November 8, 2020: Beloved Canadian-American game show host Alex Trebek dies of pancreatic cancer.
November 11, 1995: Kenule (Ken) Beeson Saro-Wiwa, who belonged to the Ogoni people of Nigeria, became a well-known playwright and environmental activist in response to the degraded environment of his native Ogoniland region caused by irresponsible petroleum waste disposal. He is assassinated by hanging under the false charge that he’d been involved in the murder of four Ogoni chiefs. Eight other activists are similarly falsely accused and executed by Nigeria’s military dictatorship.
November 12, 1981: Popular 1950s actor William Holden dies after slipping on a rug in his bedroom, striking his forehead on the bedside table, and bleeding to death while apparently too intoxicated to help himself in Santa Monica, California.
Suzanne Vega reads the account of Holden’s death in the newspaper while sitting in a diner and memorializes this diner trip in her song “Tom’s Diner.” She was a frequent patron at Tom’s Restaurant, on the corner of Broadway and 112th St. in New York, while she attended Barnard College.
Vega performs the song “Tom’s Diner” a capella on her 1987 album Solitude Standing. In 1990, English music producers Nick Batt and Neal Slateford, working under the artist name DNA, add an instrumental background to Vega’s track. The collaborative version was certified gold in the U.S. and was a #1 hit in four European countries.
The lyrics include:
“I open
Up the paper
There's a story
Of an actor
Who had died
While he was drinking
It was no one
I had heard of
And I'm turning
To the horoscope
And looking
For the funnies”
The day Vega describes must have been Nov. 18, 1981, when the New York Post carried the story about the discovery of Holden’s body. We know Vega read the story in the Post because it was the only one of New York’s then-daily newspapers that had “funnies,” or comic strips.
November 13, 1974: 23-year-old Ronald DeFeo Jr. shoots to death the other members of his Amityville, Long Island family: his father Ronald DeFeo Sr., mother Louise, sisters Dawn and Allison, and brothers Marc and John. John, the youngest, was nine years old. The house in which the familicide occurs will later become infamous as the focus of the Amityville Horror book and films.
November 14, 1928: Dr. Sabin Arnold von Sochocky, the inventor of radium dial paint used to make wristwatches that glow in the dark, dies of aplastic anemia caused by his exposure to radium. His death helps make the legal case for the so-called “radium girls,” workers in the watch factories who became sick and often died from the same exposure to radioactivity, who sued their employer for the unsafe conditions in the factories.
November 14, 1916: Masterful British short story writer H.H. Munro, who published under the pen name Saki, is killed by a German sniper while serving in the First World War. His last words are reportedly, “Put that bloody cigarette out!”
November 15, 1959: Herb and Bonnie Clutter and two of their four children, Nancy and Kenyon, are murdered by Dick Hickock and Perry Smith in Holcomb, Kansas. The murders form the basis of Truman Capote’s “nonfiction novel” In Cold Blood. All four were shot, and Herb is also stabbed.
November 16, 1960: 59-year-old actor Clark Gable, who has had a heart attack on November 6th, seems to be recovering when he suffers a second, fatal heart attack.
November 20, 1934: Poet, printmaker, and adventurer Everett Ruess is seen for the last time when he sets out to explore the Escalante River Basin in the Utah desert. Ruess’s two donkeys are discovered in February or early March 1935 in a corral he’s made for them. No other sign of Ruess is ever found.
November 22, 1963: C.S. Lewis dies in Oxford of kidney failure. Approximately seven hours later, Aldous Huxley dies of laryngeal cancer in Los Angeles. This news is overshadowed by the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy on the same day.
November 23, 1958: Despite valiant efforts to revive him, comedian Harry Einstein dies of a heart attack he has suffered during a Friars Club roast of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Einstein collapses onto fellow comedian Milton Berle. Berle asks the audience, “Is there a doctor in the house?” This is initially taken by the audience to be a joke. When it became clear that Einstein needs medical attention, two physicians in the audience try to treat him. He is pronounced dead in the early hours of the 23rd.
Comedian Bob Einstein is 16 years old when his father dies; his brother, who performs under the stage name Albert Brooks, is 11.
November 24, 1991: Freddie Mercury dies of complications of AIDS in London.
November 25, 1990: Race car driver William (Billy) John Vukovich III is killed during racing practice in Bakersfield, California when the throttle on his car got stuck and the vehicle crashed into a wall. Vukovich’s grandfather had been killed during the 1955 Indianapolis 500.
November 27, 2019: Taiwanese-Canadian actor and model Godfrey Gao (born Tsao Chih-hsiang), age 35, collapses while filming the reality show Chase Me. Gao is taken to a nearby hospital, where medical personnel attempted to resuscitate him, but is pronounced dead due to cardiac arrest a few hours after collapsing.
American audiences may remember Gao best from the movie adaptation of Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.
November 28, 1694: Matsuo Bashō dies. A wandering poet and teacher who owned almost no worldly possessions, Bashō is considered Japan’s greatest writer of haiku.
November 29, 2001: Musician George Harrison dies at age 58 of lung cancer that has spread to his brain in a Los Angeles home belonging to his friend and former bandmate Paul McCartney.
November 30, 1882: Actress Annie Von Behren is accidentally shot and killed during a performance of Clifton W. Tayleure's play Si Slocum in Cincinnati, Ohio. Von Behren’s co-star Frank Frayne is supposed to shoot an apple off Von Behren’s head. The gun misfires and the bullet strikes Von Behren just above the eye; she dies less than 15 minutes later.
November 30, 1900: 46-year-old Irish writer Oscar Wilde dies of meningitis. His health has been in decline since he was imprisoned and sentenced to hard labor after being convicted of “gross indecency.” His crime was being in a relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, whose father did not like Wilde.
November 30, 1923: Vaudeville and early film actress Martha Mansfield dies of severe burns in the hospital. The previous day she had been dressed in a Civil War-era costume on the set of the film The Warrens of Virginia when a crew member lit a cigarette, then carelessly tossed the match. The match ignited Mansfield’s costume, which was difficult to remove due to its hoop skirt and many layers. The film was finished and released after Mansfield’s death, but is now considered lost.
November 30, 1958: Welsh actor Gareth Jones, performing in a television play broadcast live, dies of a massive heart attack during a break in between two scenes in which his character was to appear. Jones’ character was scripted to die from a heart attack during the teleplay.
November 30, 2013: Beloved Fast and Furious actor Paul William Walker IV leaves a Santa Clarita, California charity event as the passenger in his Porsche Carrera GT. The driver, Roger Rodas, reaches speeds of up to 93 mph in a 45 mph zone. He apparently loses control of the vehicle. It crashes into a lamp post and two trees, catching fire and killing them both. Rodas was 38; Walker was 40.
November 5, 1605: Guy Fawkes attempts to blow up the English Parliament, an act known as the Gunpowder Plot. The plot is foiled, Guy Fawkes is convicted and hanged, and burning an effigy of Fawkes becomes an English tradition.
In V for Vendetta, the character V wears a mask representing Guy Fawkes.
November 7, 1908: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are killed in a shootout with police in Bolivia.
November 7, 1980: Actor Steve McQueen dies in his sleep following surgery in Juárez, Mexico. He’d been diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, which metastasized and caused large tumors in his neck, chest, and abdomen.
Between February and October 1980, McQueen had attempted to treat his disease with alternative therapy directed by William Donald Kelley, who called his quack treatment regimen “non-specific metabolic therapy.” In McQueen’s case, the treatments didn’t distract him from seeking conventional medicine; his doctors had already told him his cancer was inoperable and terminal. The quack “alternative medicine” did, however, cost him thousands of dollars while having no effect whatsoever on his disease. Kelley also falsely claimed in the media that his treatment of McQueen was successful, and this false claim may have cost other cancer patients their lives if they chose not to seek conventional treatment. Kelley, who died in 2005, did not have a license to practice medicine.
November 8, 2020: Beloved Canadian-American game show host Alex Trebek dies of pancreatic cancer.
Me and Alex Trebek in 2012
November 11, 1995: Kenule (Ken) Beeson Saro-Wiwa, who belonged to the Ogoni people of Nigeria, became a well-known playwright and environmental activist in response to the degraded environment of his native Ogoniland region caused by irresponsible petroleum waste disposal. He is assassinated by hanging under the false charge that he’d been involved in the murder of four Ogoni chiefs. Eight other activists are similarly falsely accused and executed by Nigeria’s military dictatorship.
November 14, 1928: Dr. Sabin Arnold von Sochocky, the inventor of radium dial paint used to make wristwatches that glow in the dark, dies of aplastic anemia caused by his exposure to radium. His death helps make the legal case for the so-called “radium girls,” workers in the watch factories who became sick and often died from the same exposure to radioactivity, who sued their employer for the unsafe conditions in the factories.
November 16, 1960: 59-year-old actor Clark Gable, who has had a heart attack on November 6th, seems to be recovering when he suffers a second, fatal heart attack.
November 23, 1958: Despite valiant efforts to revive him, comedian Harry Einstein dies of a heart attack he has suffered during a Friars Club roast of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Einstein collapses onto fellow comedian Milton Berle. Berle asks the audience, “Is there a doctor in the house?” This is initially taken by the audience to be a joke. When it became clear that Einstein needs medical attention, two physicians in the audience try to treat him. He is pronounced dead in the early hours of the 23rd.
Comedian Bob Einstein is 16 years old when his father dies; his brother, who performs under the stage name Albert Brooks, is 11.
November 24, 1991: Freddie Mercury dies of complications of AIDS in London.
November 25, 1990: Race car driver William (Billy) John Vukovich III is killed during racing practice in Bakersfield, California when the throttle on his car got stuck and the vehicle crashed into a wall. Vukovich’s grandfather had been killed during the 1955 Indianapolis 500.
November 27, 2019: Taiwanese-Canadian actor and model Godfrey Gao (born Tsao Chih-hsiang), age 35, collapses while filming the reality show Chase Me. Gao is taken to a nearby hospital, where medical personnel attempted to resuscitate him, but is pronounced dead due to cardiac arrest a few hours after collapsing.
American audiences may remember Gao best from the movie adaptation of Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.
November 29, 2001: Musician George Harrison dies at age 58 of lung cancer that has spread to his brain in a Los Angeles home belonging to his friend and former bandmate Paul McCartney.
November 30, 1882: Actress Annie Von Behren is accidentally shot and killed during a performance of Clifton W. Tayleure's play Si Slocum in Cincinnati, Ohio. Von Behren’s co-star Frank Frayne is supposed to shoot an apple off Von Behren’s head. The gun misfires and the bullet strikes Von Behren just above the eye; she dies less than 15 minutes later.
November 30, 1923: Vaudeville and early film actress Martha Mansfield dies of severe burns in the hospital. The previous day she had been dressed in a Civil War-era costume on the set of the film The Warrens of Virginia when a crew member lit a cigarette, then carelessly tossed the match. The match ignited Mansfield’s costume, which was difficult to remove due to its hoop skirt and many layers. The film was finished and released after Mansfield’s death, but is now considered lost.
November 30, 1958: Welsh actor Gareth Jones, performing in a television play broadcast live, dies of a massive heart attack during a break in between two scenes in which his character was to appear. Jones’ character was scripted to die from a heart attack during the teleplay.
November 30, 2013: Beloved Fast and Furious actor Paul William Walker IV leaves a Santa Clarita, California charity event as the passenger in his Porsche Carrera GT. The driver, Roger Rodas, reaches speeds of up to 93 mph in a 45 mph zone. He apparently loses control of the vehicle. It crashes into a lamp post and two trees, catching fire and killing them both. Rodas was 38; Walker was 40.
"But I'm not a psychoanalyst," Dr. Oliver Sacks objects. "I'm a neurologist."
Reclining on the leather couch that Tit Elingtin and I found, for free, given away at a storage facility, I add, "And a ghost."
"I'm not a ghost," he insists. "And this isn't a dream. I'm a figment of your imagination. I'm you talking to yourself again."
"Can you explain all the kissing, though?" I ask him.
"I certainly can," he says in his polished English accent. Dr. Sacks is gay, and my interest in him is in his fascinating work as an articulate neurologist specializing in stories of quirky outliers, but god, I love a crisp English accent. My mind flashes on Murray Head (the Somerset Maugham suite. Oh god, the Somerset Maugham Suite!). Then Ralph Fiennes.
A rat creeps out from under Dr. Sacks's arm chair. The cats, Seven and Jerry, race after it, following it down the hallway into my office.
"Clue me in, Doc."
"You spend too much time on Tumblr. You've forgotten how to write a plot that doesn't descend into slashy self-insert fan fiction."
I sit up, one ear listening to the crashes and bangs coming from my office. I hope the cats haven't broken my Shakespeare candle.
"Harsh," I say.
"One day you'll get back in the habit of practicing your craft," Dr. Sacks says consolingly. "Other than in these short, self-referential pieces."
I nod. "Tell me what you meant when you said Charles Dickens had a haunted mind. Were you referring to that last year of his life, after the railway accident?"
He tells me everything, the footnote of the explanation, the digression that his editor made him remove from the book Hallucinations. I smile. At last I know.
Jerry trots back into the room and drops the dead rat at my feet.
II.
Author's note: Vignette II is vintage! This is from a just-for-me fic I wrote in 1998. I cleaned it up, tore out an unfun subplot, and added a cameo by The Pale Blue Eye!Edgar Allan Poe and Augustus Landor.
Finally they arrived at Jack Rabbit Slim’s. They were seated in a car–fortunately, they got a Stingray. Their server looked just like James Dean.
“Last time I was here, Buddy Holly was my server,” Uma told him.
“Who’s Buddy Holly?” he responded.
“I guess he was after your time,” she said.
Erin noticed that despite the nostalgic ‘50s decor, the music being played over the speakers was from the ‘90s. She heard the Spice Girls’ “Too Much.”
Tim ordered a vanilla Coke, but Erin and Uma had the famous five-dollar milkshakes. “The more pregnant you are, the more people try to get you to drink milkshakes,” said Uma. Uma was pregnant with her first child and she was in love.
They ordered burgers and sat talking about the party and about tv until the food came. They’d just started eating when the start of the nightly twist contest was announced. Uma set her burger down and volunteered herself as a contestant. Tim got up to dance with her. They danced to “Are You Jimmy Ray?”
As they danced, the server came and sat across the table from Erin. “You really look like him,” she said.
“I do?”
“Yeah, no foolin.’ I know it’s your job to look like him, but wow! You even have the same nice ass.” He gave her a little smile and seemed to blush slightly. She stared for what seemed like a long time, then said, “Oh my god.”
“I know what you’re thinkin’,” he said, wagging a finger playfully. “And you’re right.”
“You are him, for real.”
“For real, no foolin.’ Do you believe me?”
“I’ve talked to dead people before; it’s not so unusual. Why are you here?”
“I wanted to see her.”
“Uma Thurman.”
He nodded. “She’s the best actress I’ve seen since Natalie Wood. She’s not much of a dancer, though.”
“Give her a break; she’s pregnant.”
“But still hot.”
“That she is. What do you think of the boy?”
“He’s pretty hot, too.”
“I thought you’d like him. He’s a cop, but a nice one. He has to be a nice one to go out with me.”
He raised his eyebrows. Erin asked, “What, do you think I’m a bad girl?”
“Obviously,” he said, “but in the best possible sense. Sometimes no good can come from being good. Besides, you seem like an honest girl to me. I like people who are honest. That’s how I can tell you’re a Midwest girl.”
“I’m from Indiana,” she volunteered.
“Well there then now, that’s something else we have in common. I have to go wait on a Chrysler now, but when I come back I’ll bring you an ice cream. I hope you don’t mind sharing.”
She imagined sharing an ice cream with James Dean and felt the heat rising in her face. The tips of her ears felt suddenly hot.
Uma and Tim sat back down in the booth. “We’ve got the contest in the bag,” said Tim. “Did you see us up there?”
“No,” Erin admitted. “I was busy talking to James Dean.”
They returned to their burgers. Erin wasn’t more than halfway through hers when she noticed another familiar face sitting in the Chrysler booth across from them. He wasn’t one of the servers, yet the man seemed to be in costume. He looked exactly like the famous photograph of Edgar Allan Poe, although rather than a stiff and ill-fitting black suit suitable for a funeral, he wore a finely-tailored brown suit that nicely complemented his gently-curling dark hair. Across from the spitting image of a young Poe sat an older man, perhaps in his late forties, with graying dark hair and a solid build. If Erin’s eyes didn’t deceive her, Poe and the handsome older man appeared to be sharing a chocolate malt with two straws. They seemed to be on a date; she caught them furtively exchanging smiles.
Jimmy came around with the ice cream. He’d had the class to bring one for Tim and, as Uma predicted, an extra-large ice cream for Uma with extra whipped cream on top. People were always trying to get pregnant people to eat more ice cream, even James Dean, who famously thought children should be drowned like puppies. After delivering the chilly treat, Jimmy sat beside Erin. He leaned across the table and said in a stage whisper, “If you really want to see something, meet me on top of that bluff outside the city at seven tomorrow.”
“What happens then?”
“A chickie run. Have you ever been to one before?”
“Sure,” Erin said. “That’s all I ever do.” He took the spoon from her (he’d only brought one spoon for their shared ice cream), ate a large spoonful of ice cream, and left. Erin turned to Uma. “What’s a chickie run?”
The emcee took the floor again and announced that the winners of the twist contest had been decided. He called Uma and Tim back up to the dance floor and gave them the trophy. Everyone felt pretty good.
***
At seven o’clock the following evening, James, Uma, and Tim waited impatiently for Erin to arrive at the bluff outside the city. Finally she came along driving her mom’s 1995 Chevy Cavalier.
“What am I doing?” she asked, getting out of her car and walking over to the others.
“You and I are driving toward the edge, and the first one to jump out of the car is a chicken,” James Dean explained.
“And this is supposed to be a good idea?!”
“Just don’t forget to jump out.” He got into his car, a silver Porsche Spyder. Then Tim went over to the Spyder and rubbed some dirt on James’s hands.
“Tim, I would also like some dirt, please,” said Erin. Tim did the same for her. Uma stood safely off to one side as Tim prepared to give the signal for the run to begin. James and Erin turned on their headlights and waited. Then the signal came.
I’m not going to keep you in suspense over this: James jumped out first, followed seconds later by Erin. Their cars were gone, and although the were dusty, Erin and James were unharmed.
When she hit the ground, Erin was a little stunned. She shook it off, sat up and said, “Where’s James?”
“I’m right here behind you,” he said.
Tim began to cry. “Why are you crying? Erin asked him. “We both jumped. We’re fine.”
“But the cars!” Tim said.
“The Porsche, he means,” said Uma. “No one would cry over a green 1995 Chevy Cavalier.” Tim nodded in agreement.
James said, “Now let’s go hang out in that old abandoned mansion.” Erin went to hang out with her new friends at that old abandoned mansion.
III.
The light in the room seems wrong somehow. Too warm, too golden, even for this Southern California day. I feel like I'm in an Instagram filter designed to make me look vintage. I sense I'm being viewed by the male gaze and that the male gaze is squinting into a pair of tinted designer sunglasses.
I'm in another Tarantino movie, I think. How very Gen X of me. The word "recursion" pops into my head. I hear it in Dan Stevens's accent. Back into the past again. Boats against the current, beating back ceaselessly and all of that.
"Could I refresh your drink, dear?" asks my gracious and beautiful host, Niele Adams.
"Please," I say, sipping the last lime-infused dregs from my iced martini glass. She takes the glass and I turn to talk to the women beside me in the sitting room, all so impossibly beautiful and interesting. To my tremendous relief, each of them is clad in footwear which entirely covers the sides, backs, and toes of her feet. I shan't be forced to stare at any women's soles today.
Niele returns with my refreshed drink. I take a sip and it slakes thirsts I didn't even know I had in me, cool and heavenly, tasting of ascent and aspiration. I think of the 1890s Parisian tourist clubs Jess Cale describes on her history podcast: L'Enfer and Le Ciel, Hell and Heaven. This must be what it tasted like to drink in Le Ciel.
Nature calls and I excuse myself to use the guest bath. As I am on my second gin gimlet and a bit tipsy, it seems to me a bit of a trek. Nielle sends me through a den and down a hall. I know the ladies' is on my right, but which door? I turn a doorknob and hope for the best.
I slam the door shut, immediately aware that I've chosen unwisely. I've walked in on the man of the house and he's in the tub.
I shut my eyes. I face the door. Oh shit, I'm still inside the bathroom. Behind my back, Steve McQueen clears his throat.
"I'm so sorry," I say, almost spilling my drink as I fumble for the doorknob. Is it hot in here? Of course it's hot in here; this bathroom is filled with steam. The King of Cool likes his bathwater hot.
"See anything you like?" he asks, laughing. Hey, we have the same accent! We're from Indiana. His is less Kentuckiana than James Dean's.
"I didn't see anything," I say. I'm not entirely lying. All I saw was his stylishly-cut, wet dirty-blond hair.
I hear the water splash as he gets up.
"I'm your wife's guest," I say. "I'm just looking for the guest bathroom."
"You found it," he says, laughing as I feel like dying from embarrassment. "You can turn around now."
I assume this means he's put on a towel. I assume wrong. Now we're standing face to face and he's soaking wet and naked. He takes my drink from my hand, takes a long sip, and asks, "Is it hot in here?"
I nod. I repeat, "I'm your wife's guest." I barely get the words out of my mouth before he's kissing me, hard. He tastes like gin, lime, and tobacco and I have to be forgiven for the moan that escapes my throat.
"My wife's guest is my guest," he breathes into my ear. "How about I show you a little hospitality?"
L'Enfer. This is L'Enfer and I am burning alive. The fabric of my designer dress is soaked now and I don't care.
His feet are bare, but I'm not complaining about that either.
On Wednesday, it's Oh, How Pinteresting! at The Vintage Apple.
Being from the Midwestern United States is hella cool - I think I proved that with my Nebraska post. I'm not from Nebraska; I'm from Indiana. We've got some pretty cool people, too. If you lived through the '80s, you might think of him when you think of Indiana.
http://cheers.wikia.com/wiki/Woody_Boyd
No, this is not young Haymitch; it's the character Woody Boyd from Cheers. Woody Harrelson? Not actually from Indiana. Or even Midwestern - he's a native Texan.
But these people are actually from Indiana.
Probably the coolest, most sophisticated, urbane individual to come from the Hoosier state? Cole Porter. The moment you realize you're from Indiana and so is Cole Porter is a very good moment indeed.
James Dean was from Indiana. Here he's reading The Complete Poetical Writings by James Whitcomb Riley, a 19th century poet also from Indiana.
When I say I hope to die and ascend to bisexual heaven and sit at the right hand of James Dean, amen, you may think I'm being facetious. I'm not. (Religion - it's complicated.) This is Photoshopped, but still - James Dean kissing Marlon Brandon.
Old Hollywood screwball comedy queen - and lost love of Clark Gable's life - Carole Lombard was from Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Fun Fort Wayne fact: its library system has the world's second-largest collection of genealogical records, after the Mormon collection in Salt Lake City, Utah. I visited FW's main downtown library once and had a bagel in its coffee shop.
Steve McQueen, so cool there's a Sheryl Crow song about him, was from Indianapolis. His grandson, Steven R. McQueen, plays Jeremy on The Vampire Diaries.
McQueen's hometown is also the hometown of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. If you can find a greater 20th century American writer, read him or her or them.
Other writers from Indiana include Phillip Jose Farmer (who sometimes wrote as "Kilgore Trout," a fictional writer invented by Kurt Vonnegut), Meg Cabot (The Princess Diaries), and Theodore Drieser. Drieser wrote An American Tragedy, the basis for the movie A Place in the Sun.
Adam Lambert was born in Indianapolis. Probably the most well-known family to come out of Indiana, though? The Jacksons. Michael, Janet and their siblings were raised in Gary, a large city just to the east of Chicago.
